Back When You Were Easier to Love

Back When You Were Easier to Love is an cute Mormon YA romance. I didn't realize it was Mormon until a few pages in. I generally don't read Christian fiction, so I probably wouldn't have picked it off the library shelf had I realized. However, it was fun.

Joy, the main character, dated Zan until he dropped off the face of the earth, without a word of goodbye. She was having agreat difficulty in getting over him, so she decided to drive to his college to get closure. Noah, Zan's friend, tags along. Joy viewed Noah as a "Soccer Lovin' Kid" who was too stereotypical Mormon. On the trip, Joy realized how Zan was something she never had and how Noah has many more dimensions than she gave him credit for. 


Back When You Were Easier to Love is a very very G rated book. Joy even reflects on how kissing among the Mormon kids at her school was a really big deal. The book's cover seems too forward for the romance in the story. In any case, it was an enjoyable read.

A Thousand Lives

Wow. This was fascinating. I bought the audiobook, which was 11 hours long, and listened to it over two days. I couldn't stop listening to it. It was fascinating.

A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres is about Jim Jones and the massacre at Jonestown in 1978. Over 900 people were killed/committed suicide under the direction of Jones. An audio file of the last minutes survived and people can be heard fighting giving their children the poison while Jones and his leaders talked about how everything was fine and that they shouldn't worry. A number of people had injection marks, leading the medical examining team to believe that they were killed rather than had willingly taken the kool-aid. (This is where the term "drank the kool-aid" originates.)

Jones began his church in Indiana in the 1950s as a integrated, welcoming group, but increasingly became in to a cult. People followed Jones from Indiana to northern California to San Francisco and finally to Jonestown, Guyana in South America. Once in Jonestown, Jones descended into to a drug induced fantasy land and his followers suffered. To someone reading the book today, I think it's easy to say WTH about the people that followed Jones. But, the author talks about how it's easy for us to dismiss Jonestown while instead we should be examining how Jones was so successful at getting people to believe in him to the extent of killing themselves.

The whole incident was so horrifying. It's hard to imagine what the residents of Jonestown thought as things worsened. The book says that the 45 minute audio of the final minutes of Jonestown are online and can be listened to. It was difficult enough hearing (audio book, remember?) the bits that the author quoted.

If you're interested in Jonestown at all or just like non-fiction, you should definitely read this. Incidently, you are reading my review on the 33rd anniversary of the event.

Escape and other FLDS stories

Oh my goodness. Escape is horrifyingly terrifying. Jessop was raised in the FLDS group in southern Utah/northern Arizona. She was married to a 50 year old when she was 18 because it was destined by God. She lived through years of abuse from her husband and his other wives. She has 8 children (her husband had over 50 kids when she escaped). Her last 4 pregnancies were life threatening due to placental abruptions, however, her husband was reluctant to let her get proper medical care. Nor was she even allowed birth control when risky pregnancies were a possibility.

I've previously read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and recently read Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall. The lives people lead in the FLDS are so unlike our own and so lacking in basic human rights. Jessop quotes the Utah Attorney General as saying there's a corner of Utah that is worse than the Taliban, and after having read these stories, it has got to be comparable. All 3 of these books are fascinating (yet horrifying) reads.

Shattered Dreams

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I was so frustrated for--and with--the author. I know some of my feelings are blaming the victim, but she stays in the marriage so long yet tells her husband over and over and over she is going to leave, is mad, etc yet never does anything. The constant awful story/whining/author frustration was annoying to read knowing she wasn't going to do anything about it. She constantly would tell her husband she wouldn't do something (go to the wedding with the 3rd wife, for example) then she'd change her mind and do what he wanted.

In some ways, I think the culture of polygamists is so foreign to me that it's hard for me to put myself in the author's shoes to even understand her life or the way of thinking that got her there.

The author was born into polygamy, so she was indoctrinated into the belief that she would be going against God not to be in plural marriage. Yet, she allows herself to be treated terribly (guilt trip over getting her tubes tied so she doesn't die in childbirth?! after 13 kids?!) and live in horrible poverty in the name of God. I can't imagine that God wants one to live such a horrid life.

Verlan, her husband, was such a moron. He believed in plural marriage but practiced it at the expense of his family's health: mental, physical, economic, educational. His view was definitely quantity over quality. He never seemed to have any empathy for his wives, and 5 of them had left him by the time of his death.

I felt sorry for the author, but it was a frustrating read. If you are interested in learning about Mormon polygamists, this is a good book to read, but keep in mind the author's experiences ended in 1981. Jessop's story is more current. But, I couldn't put Spencer's book down.

The Unlikely Disciple

Wow. This is a fabulous book. I was expecting to enjoy it, but it was better than I would have guessed.

I was really impressed with Roose's writing, especially considering he wrote this while in college. The memoir has plenty of relevant statistics and information.
Roose enrolled at Liberty University (Jerry Falwell's college) during the spring 2007 semester, taking a semester break from Brown. He's a liberal guy with a minimal religious background. I was interested in reading this and when one of the challenge categories was "Read a book by a person, about a person, or about a subject that you totally disagree with or dislike. Then write a post and explain if reading the book altered your opinion at all or only furthered your dislike or disagreement," I thought it was perfect. (I sure as hell wasn't going to read Sarah Palin's book.)

I'm not really the evangelical Christian kind. At all. The whole evolution v. creationism argument blows my mind. I'm all for abortion rights and gay marriage. So, Liberty University sounds like my idea of hell. Students can't watch R rated movies or dance. They aren't allowed to hug a member of the opposite sex for longer than 3 seconds.

Roose found the majority of the people he met at Liberty to be friendly and nice people. He did a great job of humanizing his fellow students.

But, I couldn't get past the constant gay bashing, or his spring break mission trip (he refers to it as, "gentle Christian students condemning strangers to hell in Daytona Beach."), or the anti-intellectual attitudes ("My biggest worry...is that you'll become educated beyond your obedience," said a pastor to one of Roose's classes.) or the classes that teach doctrine such as women should submit to their husbands and such.

One of Roose's course is Evangelism 101. He has test questions such as:

God wants to be your_________.
a) Slave
b) Best friend *
c) Priest

Is this a college class or a kindergarten Sunday school class?!

It was a fascinating read and while Roose showed the students in shades of gray instead of only black or white, I still shake my head. Roose continued his friendship with many of the other students after he leaves and goes back to Brown. I really understand this as you get to know a person, but for the group as a whole? Omigoodness. Of course, I'm sure they'd say the same thing about me.

I'm sure this review makes me sound harsh, but I just disagree so fundamentally with their beliefs. I'd say this book only furthered my dislike for ultra-conservative evangelicals and one of their institutions.

I've read several religion books to try to enlighten myself on it all. I loved Take this Bread by Sara Miles (a woman's conversion to Christianity) and Sundays in America by Suzanne Strempek Shea(woman visits a different Christian churches each week for a year.) I also have C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain and Christopher Hitchens's God is not Great to read. I don't feel like I'm unfairly viewing the group portrayed in Roose's book.

The Poisonwood Bible

I had been told toread this book several (5!) years ago after seeing a movie about the ill-fated Lumumba and being interested in the history of the Congo during that period. For whatever reason, I never got around to it til a recent trip when I had to time to do some reading. Wow. I should have read this book years ago. The history is really interesting as the story of the Price family envelopes you. Any time a book gets you to feel so much emotion, its a good one. So if you've been like me, hav...more I first read The Poisonwood Bible back in 2007 .

This is my review from back then:

"I had been told to read this book several (5!) years ago after seeing a movie about the ill-fated Lumumba and being interested in the history of the Congo during that period. For whatever reason, I never got around to it til a recent trip when I had to time to do some reading. Wow. I should have read this book years ago. The history is really interesting as the story of the Price family envelopes you. Any time a book gets you to feel so much emotion, its a good one. So if you've been like me, having this book on your to-read list, get to it!"

I reread it recently and still loved it. It is one of my all time favorites.