Educating (Educated by Tara Westover)

Maybe this book is a 5 star book, maybe only 4.5, but I give it a fairly high rating. I did buy the book, mainly because the 40 copies in my local library system had 220 holds on it, and I did not want to wait that long to read it. A colleague said it was a "must" read.

Storytelling and writing style: Excellent.

Redemptive qualities or of value because I want to remember something or quote something or look something up, again and again: Perhaps not as much as other books I have bought, but I cried throughout the "Pygmalion" chapter. I'm in love with Professor Steinberg (and Dr. Kerry, too).

Book Discussion Group worthy: Yes, definitely. Topics -- This memoir has it all: Education, Religion, Politics, Family, Friendship, Image of Oneself

Reality: The readers who rate this book the lowest struggle with believing the things in this story could happen. They don't believe Tara could have gotten into the top colleges she did. Scores are everything. Someone quite close to me scored a near perfect score on the SAT and universities welcomed this person who, while not having a complete lack of education during homeschooling, still vastly educated (him or her) self. It is, as Tara writes, that the scholarships are there; however, a student does have to maintain that scholarship and that is the difficult part. But, it can be done. Also, Tara makes clear that she had to have help with math. The second situation readers find unbelievable is the injuries that happen where people are still alive even without the care of doctors. I like essential oils but, if most of the things that happened in this book, happened to me, I would be at the emergency room of a hospital in a flash. However, I have known people to survive horrendous accidents. I can think of three reasons for a person to believe Westover's memoir. First, if you have known anything familiar in the story (and I have). If it is the most bizarre thing you have ever read, then you will find it difficult to believe (much like Westover found it difficult to believe what she heard and saw presented at the college). Second, the boyfriend mentioned at the end of the book, wrote to validate Westover's story even though they were no longer together and he may question her decision to publish the story (that's what it sounded like to me although he also assuredly backed up her story). Third, Random House employed fact checkers to check out her story. Do I think her childhood self may have recalled her memories inaccurately? Yes, especially since she writes of that possibility and gives alternate takes on the story in footnotes. The different views of the story does not change the main characterizations and threads that run throughout the story. Whether Westover should have published the story, I'm with her on this one. Maybe the published story will protect the younger generations of this family.

Hopefully, the story won't make readers think that all home schoolers fail to educate their children because that is not the case. Nor is anyone who ever used essential oils a crazy person. If they never ever take their child to a doctor....that's a little much for me.

💕💕💕 Child rearing is challenging, but this book has enough "what not to do" actions to help any mom or dad avoid the worst of the pitfalls. Our family homeschooled for about ten years, so I would not list home schooling as a "what not to do." We made mistakes, but we did make sure our children had a top notch education. They did not have any academic issues transitioning into a traditional school setting. Other than, apparently, my daughter is never going to forgive me for not educating her on who Michael Jackson was before I sent her off to school. The tougher, more normal challenge, (even though in this book, it was totally abnormal), is how to help one's children have a good image of themselves. If I were to talk to my younger self, I would tell me to listen to older, wiser voices from different walks of life. Get a variety of opinions. Yes, even within the community of faith, find the different voices and check them out. Do the research.

---How I practice having a God loves me image: First, I started trusting that if God says God is Love, then God is Love. Then, I looked at what love is. I put those character traits together with God is Love. Finally, I practiced reminding myself that God says I am God's beloved child and God loves me with what love is. I remind myself of every good thing God has to say about what the Creator has created (you, me, others) and I practice walking in the knowledge that God is with me, in and through everything I go through, and God does it with kindness, gentleness, hope, goodness, charity, patience, self-control, and more. 

Companioning (Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern...sic, as in "spelling is correct")

This book was not on any of my "to read" lists. I was wandering through the local library waiting for my granddaughter to pick out her books, and I saw this book in the NEW BOOK section. Look at this cover! How can a bookophile bypass such an offering? And, a  logophile, also.  So much so that I looked up the etymology of bookophile and logophile. At this point, if I have almost lost you, skip down to the picture! Bookophile is a recent addition to the English language. However, the word that means "lover of books" bibliophile is on record as early as 1820. If I have not lost you, logophile means "lover of words" as does lexophile; however, the latter is used mostly with people who love words in puzzles and the like. It has been at least three weeks since I have reviewed any books (although I have finished six books), and I needed to prime the brain to go into reviewing mode. Maybe I'm not such a lover of writing. What would that word be?

Awesome cover, isn't it? I have ten bookmarks in my library copy so I definitely enjoyed the book. I'm going with a rating between a three and a four. See how I rate in this post. Halpern's novel is entertaining, and I had it read within three days. Some readers think it ends abruptly, too pat (simple, glib, unconvincing) which took me back to my days of teaching denouement -- a tying up of all the loose ends into a conclusion -- a definition which is rather interesting considering I was taught the actual word means "unravelling" as in all the problems are unravelled and life settles (for good or for evil or in the case of great novels, ambiguously). I am truly digressing into words today!

One reviewer quit reading after the first chapter, which is not the first chapter but rather titled "The Marriage Story Part I". He or she called it "chic lit" and stated that starting out a book with college sex did not portend an auspicious read. (My apologies for the big words today; I'm only half way through my coffee; will that work as an excuse?) Skip that part if it would annoy you; Halpern does not actually continue in that vein.

Sliding up the scale from three stars to four, if you give an English teacher or a group discussion leader a book with talking points in it, she's going to like the book. Strewn throughout this book are quotes from poets and authors! Swoon!

There is a story. You might have been wondering. Homeschooled (wait, "Unschooled") girl Sunny steals a dictionary and gets community service time at, yes, you guessed it, the library, where she meets older single woman Kit, yes, the one involved in the marriage story, part 1, but she's not married now (and part of the draw of the story is wondering why she is not married). One also wonders what is going on with Sunny's parents, Willow and Steve.

My connections to the book -- Sunny and her parents do not eat anything with a face which leads Kit to contemplate a bible verse she learned in her college "Bible as Literature" class (Genesis, not Song of Solomon) about humans having dominion over animals. This talking point sent me off on a search of the Hebrew word radah. This is an excellent discussion of four Hebrew words used in Genesis. Rather than Sunny thinking the bible verse is a bad idea as in the book, the real Hebrew word would support her family's desire to protect and take care of animals. Also, in a connection to me,  my eating protocol at the moment is such that I'm not too keen to eat anything with a face...except maybe a fish...but that's a different blog.

Sunny and Kit have a discussion about silence and mindfulness which Sunny relates to because her parents went to a meditation retreat. Then, the two have the homeschool/unschool discussion throughout the book. Sunny states at one point about her ability to get along with younger children: "[It goes with] the whole homeschool / no-school territory. Older kids and younger kids are always tossed together. No one really makes a distinction. When you're little, you idolize the older kids, and when you're older, the little kids idolize you, and you get used to entertaining them" (71).

How about the question of reading the ending of the book first? See, if you're not a book reader, you're thinking, "Who cares?" but this is the type of question which raises voices in a book discussion group.

Another talking point: Characters change (103). Do they? Do the character traits of people change in real life?

Lest you think this is strictly a chick lit book, Halpern delves into the life and thoughts of her male character and his relationships with a group of four older men (thus, one of the aspects of my "Companioning" portion of my blog title). As much as I do not like the current wave of books where each character gets his or her own chapter, Halpern does a great job of transitioning between the characters.

Death and dying. Yup, got some death and dying in here. Got some religion, but church folks tend to get the negative aspects of the book. Maybe homeschoolers/un-schoolers get negative treatment as well, but Willow and Steve are not religious homeschoolers. No..., but I can't explain why without including plot spoilers. As a homeschooling parent who tried the John Holt unschooling, which is harder than using already written curriculum when done correctly, and a private school teacher and a public educator (not all at the same time), I'll just write that there are oddities and lawbreakers in every avenue of education.

I'll close with going back to the words and books. Halpern does include where Robbers Library comes from. It takes a long while for a short little explanation which has nothing to do with the story but satisfies those of us who kept flinching because we thought an apostrophe had been left out. After all, Sunny did steal a dictionary, but it has nothing to do with her. That's not a plot spoiler, folks. That's for all the readers who need to know that Robbers Library is not a typo or grammatical error. As for the books part -- the library -- some reviewers thought these situations would never happen at a real library. Pay attention to the reviews of the small town librarians. These activities could happen at all the small town libraries I have ever been in and used. We know our librarians. They are our people.

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For the children/grandchildren part of my blog: Libraries! Go to them! Often! My children had a library card as soon as they could write their name, between four and five years old.

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For the spiritual formation part of my blog: Check out that link about radah. You may not give up eating anything with a face, but what is one action you could take to protect the world we live in?
Next month is Plastic Free July . Give it a try. I have for several years now, and I've reached the point where it has become habit to avoid using single use plastic or, if possible, not use plastic at all. 

Training (Solomon's Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson)

Once upon a time, after being heartbreakingly laid off, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to review books and connect each book with an -ing word (swimming, walking, sleeping, etc.). "Training" works for this book, but so does "grieving", and both of those indirectly. "Living" describes the contents of this novel, but "living" is one of those generalized words that works for just about any story.

Surprisingly, this is the February meeting choice for our local library book discussion group. While the setting will be known to all of the members (since it is set in our own county and the next county over), the author mentions the faith of the dead husband early on. He had built a chapel on the property where he would go to pray. This automatically screams out "Christian romance novel" to the majority of the members of the book club and some may not even read to the end. Those same members would be wrong. Is that a plot spoiler? Mapson treats everyone kindly in this novel: believer and non-believer alike, so her target audience is obviously not going to be on the far ends of the religious/not religious spectrum.

Left with readers in the middle, those looking for classic symbolism are going to fall away. Solomon's  Oak fits the definition from Oxford Living Dictionary (online): "A fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism." Solomon's Oak is a story with a slightly typical ending in one area but not in two other areas (which I can not mention without spoiling the ending).

Is the book worth checking out of the library and reading? Definitely (for reasons I will mention below). Is it worth buying? Hmmm, that depends on what you want to remember from the book after you are done reading it which brings me to "training."

Mapson's realism comes in describing the training of her dogs (and even in some respects, her horses). The descriptions of training might be a bit much for some readers. I wouldn't say it was overdone, and I liked the variety of approaches she took with her dogs. I might still question her foster son's demonstration of building a relationship in two hours with a snapping, snorting four-year-old mare, but it fits the storyline. As Mapson writes in the story: "It's my belief that animals can help a human being travel to the wounds of childhood. The best part is, once you go there, you can fix things. Get on with life."

The animals in the story are as much a part of the story as the human beings. The main character, Glory, fosters a teenager not doing well in the county social system. The teenager, Juniper, connects with one of the dogs. Part of Juniper's issues involves a mystery, just enough for those of us who don't read mysteries. Maybe not enough of a mystery for readers of that genre.

"Fostering" could have been another word along with "grieving." The English assignment written by Juniper on Christmas is one part of this novel that makes it a definitely-read-this novel. All of the English assignments written by Juniper are as academically bad to read as you would expect from a girl who hates school (with good reason), but the essay on Christmas is eye-opening.

Grieving is what both the teenager and Glory and Joseph are doing. Yes, there's a man and there's a romance, but the characters work well in the story.

"Wedding" is another -ing word but not in the same category. Mapson's attention to detail may annoy some readers who just want to get on with the story. I think each part is described well, including another -ing word: homeschooling -- homeschooling via the John Holt method. Holt would have loved the description as it is a perfect example of what he believed in.

Annoyances for me?
Mild -- Page 72 when Glory and her sister Halle (I could have included "sibling" as a word as well) are discussing their mom who is sixty-two years old as if that is old. Granted the mom has inflammatory arthritis, but still sixty-two is not ancient!
More than mild -- Mapson starts off great with an omniscient viewpoint (something that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years), and then she falls into the same modern flaw I see often these days. Let's change the narrator by titling the chapter with the character's name. Why not learn how to write in the omniscient view all the way through the novel?

On Goodreads, I won't be giving it 5 stars because I reserve that for books I buy, but "Juniper's" essay on Christmas and the details on activities that could be learned within these pages along with a good story push it from 3 (my original thoughts when I started the book) to a 4.
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Since my blog introduction mentions slow track spiritual formation, my take away from this book: "training" when it is done well is not a bad word. We accept training for sports or sporting events. We accept the idea of training for animals, but somehow the idea of training ourselves in the area of spiritual formation seems so unspiritual as if training is too mechanical and lacks mystery. It helps me to think of training as helping my body learn good habits, in this case, good habits of coming to God in relational ways and learning good habits of being kind and patient and forgiving to others so that I can love them as Jesus tells me to love them.

A take away from the book: training myself to listen and not assume what I think is cheery (in the book for Juniper, Christmas) will be cheery to someone else, training myself to look and listen because one dog is not like every other, one human being is not like every other, one person's grief is not like another person's grief.