Book Talk

I decided to pick up Long Way Down on a whim. I saw that the Knitters Book Club had selected it as their book for March, and it sounded interesting. It was available through my library for free, so I downloaded it right away.

The premise of this book is that a young man’s brother has been shot and killed, and now he is going for revenge. The book takes place over the course of 60 seconds in an elevator. At each floor another character enters, and more of the backstory is told.

I don’t even have words for how beautifully this book is written. I was listening to the audio version and I had NO IDEA that it was written in prose. The narration is flawless. If you get the audiobook, I highly recommend that you also listen to the interview with the author at the end. It is excellent.

I noticed that many people recommend pairing this book with The Hate U Give. I agree that the books have certain parallels, but this book can easily stand on it’s own. I’m looking forward to hearing my teenagers’ thoughts on this book, and if they feel that the books should be read together.

I rated this book 5/5 without hesitation, and I really encourage you to pick it up. The audio version is less than 2 hours long and flies by. If you’re like me, you’ll be sad when it’s over.

Anytime I walk into the library, I have to check the “new releases” shelf before I go anywhere else. A lot of times I find new-to-me authors and books that I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out.

I had never heard of Anne Helen Peterson before picking up this book. I’ll admit that I didn’t even realize that Buzzfeed had serious authors… so I guess I went into this book with some preconceived notions. I was really wrong. This book is concise, engaging, and it really challenged me in ways that I didn’t expect.

The book is broken up into 10 chapters, each focusing on an unruly celebrity who is viewed as being “too much” in at least one area of their life. The first chapter, “Too Strong” is about Serena Williams and is an excellent way to open the book. Anne Helen Peterson covers how Williams’ gender affected the way that she was treated and how her race was used against her. Both the chapter on Williams and the chapter on Nicki Minaj address the fact that women of color are treated differently and held to different standards than white women in the same field. After reading the first chapter, I knew I’d definitely finish this book.

Some of the women in the book will be known to all (like Hilary Clinton and Madonna) and others might not be (Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson were new to me.) I don’t think this makes the book any less insightful. I still enjoyed every chapter and each one left me thinking for days and noticing the subtle ways that society judges these women and other women like them.

I’d definitely recommend checking out this book. Even when I didn’t necessarily agree 100% with the author, I still found myself challenged and seeing new perspectives. I also loved that the format of the book made it easy to read a chapter, take a break, ponder it for a while, and then return to the book.

I love reading books for review, and I was instantly intrigued when I saw the title of Donna Freitas’ new book, The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy. Now that I’ve finished this book, I feel like I have many new ideas about how I want our family to approach the topic of sex.

Donna Freitas uses The End of Sex to describe the findings of her research on hookup culture on college campuses. Hookup culture is defined by the absence of relationships and emotions in sexual encounters, with a hefty dose of alcohol added in for good measure. 😉 Freitas uses the students’ own words to explain how college students are expected to hookup, and the huge pressures within the culture for students to have no feelings for the person with whom they are hooking up. The students explain how dating no longer happens on campuses. In the majority of cases, students either didn’t know anyone who has ever been on a date or they only used the term to describe “serial hookups”, where you hookup with the same person, but still don’t spend time with them when you aren’t intoxicated or having a sexual encounter.

She polled students in a variety of settings — public and private secular colleges, private Catholic colleges, and private evangelical Christian colleges. The results of her study were fascinating. With the exception of private evangelical Christian colleges, the hookup culture was virtually identical on college campuses. Freitas found that private evangelical colleges have an alternate scene – a purity scene – which was filled with its own quirks. Having attended a private evangelical college, I didn’t need any further explanation. 😉 She does, however, suggest additional resources for people who want to read more about the culture of purity.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is that Freitas looks at many different angles of the subject, including ways that different students have attempted to “opt out” of the hookup culture, and programs that have worked (and failed) at college campuses across the country. One of her biggest points is that students realize that they want to have GOOD, meaningful sex, but often don’t know how to get it in the midst of hookup culture. Young men are encouraged to act out macho roles, pretending that they only care about getting a lot of random sex. Young women are encouraged to play out fantasy roles, inspired by pornography, at theme parties every weekend, and feel extreme pressures to neither appear “needy” nor to want more than semi-anonymous sex.

I feel like I am walking away from this book with a much stronger understanding of the sexual attitudes that I want to teach my kids. Freitas’ research shows that students who feel empowered to make a stand to wait for meaningful, good sex are much more likely to avoid the depression and emptiness that many describe as part of hookup culture. She encourages the reader to not only reconsider religious, conservative abstinence-only programs (which do not influence a majority of college students), but to equally scrutinize the far-left curriculum which focuses primarily on avoiding STIs, pregnancy and rape as opposed to being selective about sex. She feels that there is a need for education that shows students that there is a middle ground, and that it is important for both sides to adjust the rhetoric for the sake of the students.

I really enjoyed this book, and I’d recommend it to any parent. It has not been many years since I was in college, but I know that the culture has shifted a lot in a short time. This book adds much to the conversation about young adults and sex, and it is well worth the read.

As I mentioned, I received an electronic copy of this book to review for NetGalley. I was not otherwise compensated, and I was under no obligation to give a good review.

I am not sure what led me to request a copy of No Easy Choice to review. Maybe I chose it because it deals with birth, which is a topic that I always love.. after all, I am a midwifery student, birth doula, and mom of 4. Maybe I chose it because the author is a Christian, and I was curious to hear her take on ethical and moral issues. Maybe it was that I was drawn to the idea of a book that asks the difficult questions about when life begins.. Whatever the reason, I must say that I was really blown away by the quality of this book.

Ellen Painter Dollar uses this book to share her story of living with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) — a dominant genetic bone disorder that causes bones to break, often without warning — and the impact that OI had on her decision to become both a wife and mother. She passes OI on to her first daughter, and then grapples with the decision of whether or not to use reproductive technology, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to attempt to ensure that she will carry a child who does not have this trait.

Besides being beautifully written, Dollar does a superb job of explaining the views on both sides of the debates. She goes far deeper than just the question of whether or not life begins at conception, and explains why focusing on that one issue can lead you to overlook dozens of equally important questions.

The way that the reader is taken on the journey is beautifully crafted, and I can honestly say that I will never consider the ethical choices surrounding reproductive technology and even the pro-life and pro-choice movements the same again. I recommend this book very highly.

I received an electronic copy of this book to review for NetGalley. I was not otherwise compensated, and I was under no obligation to give a good review.