Review: The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was ok. I thought it would be interesting to read about the wives of the first astronauts, and I guess it was, but the book didn't hit it out of the park.

In fact, I was surprised to read at the end of the book that the author had interviewed some of the wives, because the tone of the book was one of distance. I was expecting to read more about the women's thoughts and feelings. In the book, there is a lot of talk of the Life Magazine reporters who follow the women around, and yet I didn't find the book's depiction of their lives much more nuanced than that.

What I did enjoy was reading about the NASA missions. It was cool to read about the first orbits of the earth, then trip to the moon. I was transported back to the 1960's when this was all occurring, and appreciated learning about the events as they happened, rather than as history. I had no idea that astronauts and their families were so high profile as to be "hanging out" with President and Ladybird Johnson.

I think I would have enjoyed a book about the first few space missions more than this one with the "wives" angle.



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Review: Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home

Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home by Laura Ling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a New York Times notable book a few years back and lingered on my reading list. Glad I finally got to it. It was a quick read, but one that kept my attention.

Laura Ling and Lisa Ling are both journalists. Embarrassingly, not sure I realized they were two different people until I read this book. Laura was a reporter for CurrentTV (Al Gore's network) and Lisa is best known from being on The View and then being one of Oprah's correspondents.

This book starts when Laura visits China to report on North Koreans who are fleeing the country; she goes to a common location for their defection on a river between the two countries, and when she goes onto North Korean land momentarily (not really mistakenly, but just for a moment), she is captured and imprisoned.

The rest of the book chronicles her imprisonment and her sister Lisa's tireless work to get her freed. Laura is held more under house arrest than in a traditional prison, so she develops some unusual relationships with her captors, some of whom are young women. With the fear of imprisonment in a labor camp lingering, she tries to figure out what the best strategy is for being freed.

Lisa, meanwhile, is in the US and is able to talk to Laura three or four times during her four month captivity. She works her relationships with the media to control how the story is played on TV and to contact government officials who can help. At one point she sees how surreal her situation is when she is corresponding with Al Gore, Bill Clinton, President Obama, and Oprah calls to find out what she can do to help.

This book was unique in that in chronicled both sides of an imprisonment - the person captured and the person fighting to get them back. I really enjoyed learning about how relations worked between countries that had no official diplomatic relations, and how Laura and Lisa became a very unusual conduit through which the US and North Korea could communicate. I was also fascinated by how easily Lisa could influence what the major network were and weren't reporting, and how.






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Review: The Mango Bride

The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Found this one just shelf-surfing at the library. I really liked it. I've read so much fiction about the immigrant experience set in India and China, it was really interesting to read a novel where part of the story takes place in the Philippines and the rest is about Philippine immigrants in the US.

The story is about two women, seemingly unrelated although as the book continues their stories end up intertwining. One is the daughter of a high-class family in Manila, the other the niece of a housekeeper, also in Manila. Both women find themselves in Oakland, California, far away from home for different reasons.

Class played a very strong role in this book - particularly in Manila, the comparisons between the "haves" and "have-nots" was sharp. Both women were very likable and both made decisions that were mistakes as young women that had impact throughout their lives. I liked how the author switched between the two stories and through different time periods to weave the narratives together.







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Review: The Aviators Wife

The Aviators Wife by Melanie Benjamin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



For my first time flying with my 8-month old baby (and husband and dog) I was so panicked leaving the house I forgot to bring a book with me for the weekend at my inlaws'! Thankfully my mother-in-law had a copy of The Aviators Wife and recommended it.

While reading this book I kept thinking about how it reminded me of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank - other novels I enjoyed based on the lives of the wives of famous men, in those cases Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright, respectively. I was both happy and disappointed to see the Goodreads review say the same thing. This book was about Charles Lindbergh's wife Anne, told from her point of view. I really enjoyed learning more about Lindbergh and his accomplishments, while also appreciating how difficult a person he was in his private life.

I thought this book did a pretty good job of capturing the time-and-place of the story (the US in the 1920's through the 1950's). The kidnapping of their child played a prominent role in the story, as did Lindbergh's skilled piloting and right-wing politics. The relationship the Lindberghs had with the media was also interesting - they were victimized by the paparazzi as badly as any of today's celebrities are. I was sad for Anne through most of the book, as Lindbergh was not a warm or kind husband or father. She saw some of his weaknesses but also supported him blindly it seemed, even when he was demanding, unfair, or bordering on abusive.

Benjamin (the author) says in her afterword that the best way for her to feel like she's succeeded in writing a compelling historical novel is when her readers want to learn more about the actual history. She definitely succeeded with me.



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Review: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel by Aimee Phan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I found this at the library and it was good. The story is about a Vietnamese family spread between the US, France, and Vietnam. The title character Cherry grows up in the US but the story goes back two generations to the Vietnamese War.

The book jumps around in time, which I liked, because there was an element of mystery around how the characters in the present time connected to the characters in the past. The book also interspersed a set of short letters between characters with the chapters; the letters themselves then became part of the plot and not just a device to reveal certain information.

I thought the character development was pretty good, although some of the characters seemed like caricatures. It made me think about the women I know from my nail salon and whether their families and lives were similar to the ones in the book. That is, is this book representative of the multi-generational Vietnamese immigrant experience, or is it just one example experience.

Either way, I enjoyed it.



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Review: The Abstinence Teacher

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was ok. I noticed it on the library shelf and needed something for the weekend.

The story is about a born-again Christian and a sex education teacher in a small town whose paths cross. The teacher says something in class that the Christian right doesn't like and the school changes her curriculum to be about abstinence, and not grounded in science. Most of the book is about each of the two characters' individual lives and how they developed the values they have, then there is some part of the plot about their interactions with each other.

The writing in this book was very good and I enjoyed getting to know each character. Where I felt like the book fell short was in the conflict between the characters. Each one had such a rich back-story and so many complexities, then their interactions with each other just weren't interesting enough to hold my attention.

The other thing about the book I wasn't wild about was that it seemed to make a socio-political statement that sex ed is good while not respecting religion. I thought the depictions of the born-again character and his church were negative stereotypes while the sex ed teacher was a really positive character - I agree with him, don't get me wrong. I believe in sex ed and science and all that. I just think that the story would have been more interesting if the Christian side of the story were more accessible.



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Review: The Twelve

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I like a good post-apocalyptic story as much as the next person but nothing could have prepared me for this trilogy - particularly since I didn't know it was a trilogy when I read the first one.

This book is a worthy successor to [b:The Passage|6690798|The Passage (The Passage, #1)|Justin Cronin|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327874267s/6690798.jpg|2802546]. It's similarly complex, character-driven, and at times totally gross. (Did I forget to mention that the post-apocalyptic nature of the story was brought on by blood-drinking neon green viral vampires?) At its core, this story is not about vampires, it's about good vs. evil, David vs. Goliath, maybe about the different forms evil can take.

The only problem I had with the book was that I found it hard to remember some of the details from the previous book. I was probably about a third of the way through the book before I remembered all the details of the setup, who was who, and where different allegiances were.

That said, I look forward to the third and final book in the series.



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Review: The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Mom and Jo both eagerly recommended this book to me. I thought it was ok.

The story follows a couple who live on an island and mind a lighthouse. They are unable to have a baby, but one washes up on shore and they decide to keep her. Only when they return to the mainland several years later do they realize the ramifications of their decision.

I thought the characters in this book, both the major ones and some of the minor ones, were really well-developed. Having recently had a baby, I also felt for all the characters in the book who bonded with the little girl.

Conversely, I didn't think the plot was that interesting. After the setup of the story, the narrative was pretty predictable. There were a few things that happened that came from a character or motive I couldn't have predicted (and that I appreciated), but overall that wasn't enough to push the book over the edge into "great" territory.




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Review: The Interestings

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Kudos to Lisa for recommending another great book to me. I really enjoyed this...it's about six friends who attend an arts summer camp together as teenagers, and their relationships for the next 20+ years of their lives. It was especially fun to read this while on my summer vacation, although to call it a trashy summer read would be to minimize the compelling writing.

All six characters in this book were well-conceived although not all given equal airtime in the story. Jules is at this camp on scholarship, from the suburbs. Noah is the son of a famous folk singer. Ash and Goodman are siblings, raised in Manhattan. Ethan is a dorky but talented cartoonist. And Cathy is a dancer whose body is not cut out for it.

What was best about the construction of the book was how Wolitzer would follow one of the characters for a few chapters, then catch up with another one. It wasn't done in an exact rotation, but it wasn't haphazard either - when you had to know something new about one of the characters, she flipped to them.

The story itself was predictable - not in that I knew what would happen, but in that there were lovers, marriages, illnesses, and betrayals. The kind of saga that Messud's Emperor's Children wanted to be.

This was one I was sad to see end.



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Review: Caleb's Crossing

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is another I got from Mom's list. It was pretty good - I enjoyed Brooks' other books (Year of Wonder and People of the Book) and this did not disappoint.

The story is based on a real character - Caleb - the first American Indian to attend Harvard. But the rest of the story is imagined by Brooks, and told through the eyes of Bethia, a young woman whose father is a missionary minister on Martha's Vineyard in the mid-1600's. Bethia befriends Caleb and ultimately follows him to Cambridge, although under much different circumstances than her own matriculation into Harvard.

I was fascinated by this story taking place on the Vineyard, partially because a close friend had lived there for the past few years. I liked reading about the relationship between the missionaries and the Native Americans, and found Bethia an honest and likeable narrator.

Like much historical fiction, this book didn't have the happiest of endings, but the story itself was a good read.



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Review: The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My mom recommended this book to me and it was fabulous! WOW. My only regret is not reading it last year when I was in both Paris and Budapest, the book's two main settings. Totally a first-world problem.

This book follows the story of Andras Levi, a Hungarian Jew who moves to Paris to attend architecture school. His younger brother stays in Budapest, while his older brother moves to Italy to become a doctor. He and his brothers all face challenges as the Nazi party and its anti-Semitism become increasingly stronger in the 1930's and then WWII breaks out.

Andras' story is followed most closely, and also revolves around the relationship he has with a family in Budapest and their estranged daughter in Paris. But various love interests and life event for the brothers are chronicled as well.

While I found the first quarter of the book a little tedious, with a love interest that was on-again off-again to an extreme degree, the rest of the book was enthralling. I had a hard time putting it down, and couldn't wait to see what happened next. I was also interested in learning about the fate of Hungarian Jews during WWII, tragic but different from that of much of the rest of Europe.



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Review: Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food

Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food by Gill Rapley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Meh.

I liked a lot of the ideas in this book - feed a baby what adults are eating, let them decide when to feed themselves, let them choose from several options at mealtimes. The ideas behind these things were to raise a child who was not picky and was confident.

Well, the problem with the book is that it is not based on any sort of science. It's completely anecdotal and frankly some of the anecdotes seem kind of forced. There's no evidence that feeding babies purees is in any way bad, and in fact I was fed that way, and I'm the most secure, adventurous eater I know.

It has influenced me to give Sasha pieces of food now and then to see what she does with them - like turkey cold cut in the grocery store, piece of cantaloupe, green bean from my plate at dinner. That's fun and I think it's good for her to experiment. But if the book were more rigorously researched, I'd have better reason to omit cereals and purees - which for now I am not.



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Review: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was pretty good. I read it to help solve some conflict in my personal life, and though these techniques and ideas were geared more towards business and politics, some of the concepts were helpful. It's from people who worked on Harvard's Negotiation Project.

The two things that I remember most are first, separate the people from the problem. The authors advise sitting on the same side of the table - literally - and listing out interests rather than positions. That is, what are the things that are important to you in this negotiation, not where you are in the negotiation. There are a lot of good examples that illustrate the difference between the two and I came to really appreciate it.

The second thing that I remember the most was to list out a huge brainstorm of solutions before negotiating. Just come up with every possible idea and solution and make a big list of them and don't eliminate anything to start. Very helpful.

Interesting read.



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Review: Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book made my list from the New York Times, and I read it in the Adirondacks this summer. It's another one I wish I could give 3.5 stars to - pretty good, but not great.

Moaveni is am Iranian-American journalist who returns to Iran to cover the rise of the new president, Ahmadinejad. While there, she meets another Iranian-American, falls and love, gets pregnant, and gets married (in that order). This book is a combination of a memoir and a journalist's view of what was going on in Iran during the early 2000's.

I enjoyed the parts of the book that were memoir more than those that were historical or journalistic. I was most interested in learning about the political climate in Iran though Moaveni's experiences, rather than through the dryer journalistic sections. Iran once again became extremely conservative and ruled by strong religious leaders, and her depiction of her own personal civil liberties lost on a daily basis was far better reporting than any of the other sections she wrote.



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Review: Defending Jacob

Defending Jacob by William Landay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meredith recommended this book to me and it came up on my library queue. I wish I could choose 3.5 stars...it was pretty good but not great.

The story follows Andy Barber, assistant DA in Boston, whose son is accused of murdering one of his classmates. Andy believes his son is innocent, but all the evidence starts to point to the boy. The story is told through a combination of narrative and court documents, which was a nice touch.

I thought the characters were pretty compelling - the love Andy had for his son, and the relationship between Andy and his wife in particular. The story read quickly and was a good mystery. However, there is a major twist at the end that really made the book. Without it, it would have been just another murder mystery. I appreciated the twist but didn't think it raised the book to an amazing level.



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