Review: Sing You Home

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I got stuck walking around Boston during one of this winter's snowstorms and ducked into the library instead of trekking home. Found this book on the shelf and started reading it while I waited out the storm.

I thought this book was OK. Pretty similar to most Jodi Picoult books - likable characters, political and ethical conflict, and very very readable. Sometimes with her books I wish for more linguistic complexity to match the complexity of the conflict and the plots.

The story starts with a marriage that breaks up over infertility. When the exes find new lives and new people to share them with, the question of what happens to their still-frozen embryos suddenly becomes very relevant. I liked the story and looked forward to reading it each night, but over all I didn't think the book was anything special.




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Review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a really special book. It's classified as non-fiction because of the extraordinary reporting and research that Boo did but it reads like a novel.

The narrative follows the lives of several families living in a shantytown outside the airport in Mumbai, India. I've never been to India but it a lot of the Caribbean I always wonder as I'm whisked from the airport to the resort, "who lives there, what are their lives like?" and this book answers that.

The poverty described here is not American poverty - it's not poverty with McDonalds or Cable TV - it's poverty with mud, and sheets that separate families, and polluted water as the local lake, and people who collect and sell garbage to support families of 10. All of this is the shadow of luxury hotels and with the imminent threat of the government bulldozing their homes.

There are several characters who Boo follows most closely, a young man who is supporting his family by finding and selling garbage, a one-legged woman who lives next door, the neighborhood politician who is trying to bridge herself into middle class politics, and her daughter who is going to college. It was hard to remember that these are all real people and not characters Boo made up.

Definitely recommend this book although it is a heavy subject. Kudos to Boo's reporting and attention to detail that brought this "undercity" to life.



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Review: Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book. I first heard about it on NPR's It's Only A Game, and decided to read it right after the Super Bowl when my withdrawal symptoms from football were at their worst.

In this book, Dawidoff basically embeds with the Jets for the 2011-2012 season, as if he were a journalist embedding with a military unit. He attends practices and team meetings, travels with the team to all their games, and gets to know the coaches, players, and staff.

The 2011 season was a strange one - it was the year after Hard Knocks chronicled the Jets on HBO, the year after Rex Ryan's infamous foot fetish video, and the year of the labor strike that divided players from organizations for much of the off season. Cromartie and Sanchez and Holmes were key players that year.

It was really fun to ride along with Dawidoff. He did a great job characterizing the coaches and players, without idolizing them; Rex Ryan is profiled as a likable person, but not all the other coaches are. It was really interesting to hear how the Draft works from the teams' perspectives, and reading about training camp was fun.

It got even more interesting once the season began. I learned so much about how teams approach each game, what the rhythm of their week is like - how much a Thursday game throws them off, and what they do during the bye week. I learned a lot about football strategy as well - what differentiates one team's approach from another, and how they try to design an appropriate defense each week.

Definitely a must-read for football fans.



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When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry by Gal Beckerman

When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry by Gal Beckerman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

WOW WOW WOW.  This was an incredibly well-researched and well-executed book.  At 500+ dense pages, there were some sections where I slogged through a bit, but I am really glad I read this.

When I was a child, my dad took me to Washington DC with our synagogue to protest Soviet Jewry - I might have been 10 or so (it was the late 1980's) and I can remember being taught that Jews in Russia weren't allowed to practice Judaism and that we were going to DC to get our congressmen to change that.  I can remember singing the song the title of the book came from, and I can remember having a "Russian twin" who I mentioned at my bat mitzvah.  Books in my Hebrew School library abounded on this topic - Monday in Odessa is the one I remember most clearly.

So I was interested to read this book to fill in the gaps in my knowledge - little did I know it would be a sweeping history of Jews in the Soviet Union starting in 1963.

Beckerman puts forth two major factors that drove attention to the plight of Soviet Jews that were not clear to me as a 10-year-old.  One was that many American Jews felt guilty that they did not pressure the government to do more to save Jews during WWII, and saw this as an extension of the Civil Rights movement in their own country.  The other was that newly minted Israel needed an influx of immigrants to ensure its safety in numbers and voting.  These two factors are discussed at length throughout the book.

But part of why I enjoyed this book is that Beckerman also painted characters so quickly and sharply that it was easy to get to "know" people.  And there were all sorts of community organizers in the US, USSR, and Israel, there were politicians, dissidents, and many other types of people who joined in the fight.  Famous ones included Heschel, Weisel, Carlebach, Reagan, and most famously Shcharansky.  But the lesser-known people were also heroes fascinating to follow.

Things in the USSR were no joke.  For decades, Jews were regularly harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and exiled to Siberia.  They weren't allowed to practice Judaism (although many did in different degrees of secret), they couldn't learn Hebrew, or speak positively about Israel.  They lost their jobs once they applied for visas out, but few visas were approved and then they were stuck in the country where it was illegal not to have a job.  This was tens of thousands of people - 'refusniks' who could not leave.

There are many other dimensions to this book that I could write about - Soviet-US relations, politics in Israel, a long section appropriately dedicated to Shchransky's imprisonment, American immigration policy, examinations of the prevalence then fall of Communism within the USSR - but I'd summarize by saying that if this time in history is in any way intriguing to you, this is *the* book to read.


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This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a big fan of Ann Patchett's, but with the exception of Truth and Beauty, her memoir of her friendship with now-deceased Lucy Grealy, I've only ever read her fiction.  This book is a collection of her essays spanning several decades of her life.  The essays range from those written for various magazines to speeches she's given.

I really enjoyed reading this - it was reminiscent of reading Anna Quindlen's work - written so smoothly and so easy to digest.  But like Quindlen, Patchett covers plenty of difficult subjects, including her failed first marriage, her current marriage, her decision not to have children, her career, and her friendship with Grealy.

Perhaps one of the most interesting sections was after Grealy's death when Patchett was hired to speak at Tulane's freshman invocation.  Right-wing conservatives at Tulane saw her friendship with Grealy as lesbian and perverse, and she is picketed, protested, and treated oddly during her visit.  Following this essay is the text from her speech as well.

But the book is far more than another memoir of her relationship with Grealy, it also is a memoir of writing, relationships, and even some more mundane adventures - like when she decided to try to get into the LAPD academy.  Overall, an enjoyable read.


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