Birthing From Within by Pam England and Rob Horowitz

 

Title: Birthing From Within

Authors: Pam England and Rob Horowitz

Genre: Medical/Spiritual

Rating: 4/5 stars

This book was an enjoyable and informative read for the most part - I have tried to just appreciate it for what it is and use other natural birthing books where this one may have gaps. My midwife highly recommended it, so it was one of the first ones I picked up (along with Ina May's Guide to Childbirth). 

In general, this book may border on being slightly too "spiritual" and abstract. I think some new mothers might have a little bit of a hard time with that. There isn't really any way to totally describe or prepare new mothers for what labor is like though, so I think every little bit helps. Although it does offer some great concrete advice, evidence, and statistics, there are a lot of elements that are difficult to grasp right away. In particular, I found the pain management techniques difficult to understand, and I have gone through labor three times already! It kind of comes down to "you do what feels natural" and "let go of your inhibitions," which is fine I suppose, though not particularly informative. Reading Ina May's book, which is full of stories can help fill in some of those gaps about what real women have done to cope with labor pain.    

What makes this book particularly unique is the birth art. I actually read it on my Kindle Oasis, so I didn't see any color, but I have since ordered a paperback copy. The author holds classes in which couples not only learn about the birth process but also have the opportunity to create art related to how they feel about different aspects of the childbirth process. I found that very interesting and am hoping to do some of my own at some point! It was also really interesting to see throughout the book some of the rituals, customs, and art from other cultures and throughout history. Birth has become so "commercialized" in the United States - it's truly wild. Almost everything they insist on in the hospital hinders the natural course of labor, so women are put at a disadvantage right away. But the sad thing is, you are almost considered radical and irresponsible to have a home birth nowadays (though it seems like that might be changing a little bit.) 

Minor things bothered me like the author's distaste for birth plans in general. I remember how the nurses at the hospital acted when we visited L&D to tour with our birth plan in hand. But I didn't expect that attitude from a natural birth advocate. I understand that making a plan can lead to disappointment. However, I think it's extremely important for women to learn as much as they can about the birthing process and understand what interventions are not necessary and be able to have as much control over their birthing environment as possible. The scoffing at birth plans seems counterintuitive to me. And with that being said, my first birth went almost nothing like I "planned" and I don't remember feeling all that crushed or disappointed about it. Looking back, being in the hospital in the first place was my first mistake. Lack of mobility and being on my back made my labors long, exhausting, and difficult. 

Also, this book talks a lot less about home birth than some of the others I have. I can understand the value of presenting both options to readers, but since I have already decided on a home birth, I would have liked to be able to just get some good information about that instead of having to trudge through the chapters about how to tour different hospitals and ask certain questions of obstetricians. In our area we have exactly ONE hospital, and they will only accommodate people to a certain extent. It's nice that people can go "shopping" for the ideal hospital I suppose, and I appreciate the movement to make hospitals better for natural birth. 

This would be a good book for women who are undecided about where to give birth for sure, and new mothers especially. It has a good variety of information - facts about what labor is like, a few stories here and there from women who gave birth in different circumstances, suggestions for coping with pain, facts about hospital interventions, etc. It's one I will want to keep handy during these last few weeks for sure, if only to look at some of the art! 

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Frindle by Andrew Clements

Title: Frindle

Author: Andrew Clements

Genre: Children's Fiction

Rating: 5/5 stars 

I remember reading this book when I was a kid and loving it. I chose this book for our study on New Hampshire, as that is where it is set, but it's one I would have happily read to my kids anyway.

Nick Allen is a good-natured, clever fifth-grade boy who likes to stir up a little fun at school. He is notorious for asking teachers "time-wasting" questions to get out of homework assignments. The other kids eagerly follow him in his mischievous endeavors. When Nick gets to his first fifth grade language arts class with Mrs. Granger, who is a strict/no-nonsense teacher, he attempts a time-wasting question and gets hit with a report instead. Mrs. Granger, above all else, loves words, specifically the dictionary. Nick does learn a lot from his assignment, but he quickly comes up with a new scheme to get under Mrs. Granger's skin. He decides to start calling his pen a "frindle." It's as simple as that, but the more it catches on, the more all the kids start to use the new word, the more resistance he gets from Mrs. Granger. They are soon locked in what Nick considers a "chess game" or a "war" over the word. The use of "frindle" spreads far and wide, and the results are much broader than Nick could have ever anticipated...  

I'll say right away that I'm in agreement with Mrs. Granger about word usage in general. Words have a history, and it does seem silly to randomly and meaninglessly make up new ones just for the sake of it. It's actually a very interesting field of study for linguists though, as it happens a lot more frequently than one might expect, and it seems like it is becoming more and more popular for the younger generations to make up words simply to annoy the older generations and have something of their own. 

That being said, this is an inspiring story. Nick is a natural-born leader, and with just a small amount of creativity and determination, he accomplishes something pretty significant. <spoiler> Of course, the kicker is that Mrs. Granger's involvement ends up being the key to it all. If she would not have resisted and made kids stay after school as punishment for using the word, the phenomenon likely would not have been a big deal and would have passed into obscurity. Nick becomes fabulously wealthy in the end and pays her back in such a beautiful way by establishing a scholarship fund in her name. </spoiler> 

I'm 29 years old, and I cried like a baby during the last three pages of this book (which somewhat surprised my kids!) It doesn't seem like the book is going to yank on your heartstrings like that in the beginning, but it's really quite a beautiful, heartfelt book. 

I would honestly recommend this to anyone, young and old. Kids will be inspired to do great things and be creative. Adults can read this in one sitting and likely will find the story heartwarming! 

Blackout by Connie Willis

Title: Blackout
Author: Connie Willis
Genre: Time Travel Historical Fiction
Rating: 4/5 stars

I can't ever bring myself to give Connie Willis's books 5 stars mostly because of the "looong walk for a short drink of water" feeling. but they are fairly entertaining and immersive. I love historical fiction/time travel books, so I've been listening to hers lately on Audible. I have already read/listened to Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Doomsday book was terribly depressing of course, and I am surprised I actually picked up the next one after reading it, but I found it worth it overall for the historical fiction value. I never really understood how horrible and tragic the Black Death was - I mean, I understood intellectually but not really emotionally. To Say Nothing of the Dog was COMPLTELY different, and I was entertained by it so much more. It was flat out delightful in comparison.
This book lands somewhere in between. There is the ever present "how do I get to my drop/my drop won't open?" theme. The "Mr. Dunworthy said/Mr. Dunworthy is coming to get me" theme, and overall hardship at every turn to accomplish even the simplest of things. The book starts out almost unbearably slow, as the others did. I'll admit I almost gave up. It felt at first like there were WAY too many perspectives to keep track of. There are five or six I guess, but only three really ended up going anywhere and finally converging. The last 20% of the book finally got interesting as things started to connect. Before then, it jumped around a lot and seemed overwhelming and confusing at times.
One thing that's missing from this book in comparison to Doomsday Book is that we don't get to know what's happening in Oxford. In Doomsday Book, we knew there is a pandemic going on that makes it impossible for them to keep Kivrin's drop open, which doesn't end up mattering anyway since she doesn't even know where it is, and everyone is dying around her. But in this book, there appears to be something majorly catastrophic going on, as none of the drops are opening and no retrieval teams are coming. The most engaging part about this book is the desire to know what the heck is happening in Oxford! The characters themselves aren't particularly interesting, though I do sympathize with them as much as I need to.
The narrator for the Audible book is actually pretty good, though at first I had to listen at .9 speed. She reads really fast. But I got used to it eventually and started looking forward to hearing her voice.



I did download the next book right away. This is one of the most painful cliffhangers I have had to experience recently.

The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick

Title: The Young Man and the Sea
Author: Rodman Philbrick
Genre: Children's Adventure
Rating: 4/5 stars


We read this as part of a study of the state of Maine, and I thought it was overall a very enjoyable book.

Skiff Beaman has just lost his mom, and his dad is in the depths of despair, just lying on the couch all day drinking beer. Skiff is mostly left to his own devices and cooks and cleans most of the time. Their boat has sunk, and Skiff wants to get it fixed so he can go fishing, but it's going to cost $5000. So, industrious child that he is, Skiff hatches a plan to set all his father's lobster traps. Unfortunately, a horrible bully named Tyler cuts the line on his traps, making it impossible for Skiff to earn enough money that way. So he decides to go after a Bluefin Tuna, since getting only ONE of the gigantic fish should earn him enough money. That's when the fun begins, as Skiff sets out alone into the ocean to get one...

Not a bad book all in all. I like that it gives a glimpse into the life a child living in Maine. The plot ends up being very exciting, and challenging issues (death, alcoholism, bullying) are dealt with in a good way. I love the themes of "never give up" and "use your head" also.

Some of the things I didn't like about this book are the language and the slowness in getting going.
There isn't any actual cussing, but the language is very "improper/incorrect" (lots of "ain'ts" for example) which always bothers me a lot (like in the Junie B. Jones books) since part of the reason I read to my kids is to expose them to proper, beautiful language. The other thing that was hard about this book was that the first 1/3 is heavy on boat terminology. My kids and I know absolutely nothing about boats, so their eyes tended to glaze over a bit, and it took just a little too long to get to the main part of the story in my opinion.

The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout

 

Title: The Shootist

Author: Glendon Swarthout

Genre: Western

Rating: 4.5/5

J.B. Books, a rather famous shootist (gunman), is dying of prostate cancer as he rides into El Paso, January 1901. After settling in at a boarding house, he confirms with the local doctor that he does indeed have cancer, and yes, it is terminal. He has weeks to live. The people around him regard him with a mixture of fascination, awe, and horror, though no one knows much about him other than what they have read in the papers. The local marshal and certain businessmen trickle in to see him once they catch wind of his upcoming demise, each wanting something from Books (though it's all disguised as "freebies" or complimentary services at first.) All the while, Books is dealing with the inner turmoil of knowing his life is about to end. He wonders how he could have lived life differently. He feels alone. When the pain begins to overwhelm him, he considers dying on his own terms rather than going out screaming in pain. 

This book is definitely outside of my "regular" genre preferences (I prefer dystopian, sci-fi, urban fantasy, and historical fiction), but it ended up being a good palate cleanser. It's certainly not a bright and cheery book. Books is definitely dying - no miracle cures here. It's an interesting look at how someone might feel during their last days. And it's also an interesting look at cancer and how people had to deal with it before modern medicine. Horrifying. 

One enjoyable aspect of this book is that Books turned things around on the people who were trying to take advantage of him and his death. They came offering free services, but Books knew they would be selling his items and hair like wild greedy fools. So he had people paying HIM to do things for him, with the plan of giving the money to his landlady. His relationship with her and her son was a wonderful element to the story as well. <spoiler> She started out hating him like everyone else, but they were genuine friends by the end of the story. </spoiler>

I probably won't be running to buy a lot more western novels, but this was a good book, truly. It's famous for a few reasons, one of which is because John Wayne's last movie was based off this book. I knew that going in, and it's like the book was written for him. He had such a grumpy, "take no nonsense" attitude that fits perfectly with the main character of this book. Westerns tend to feel all the same to me, and this book is not really an exception. But it definitely has some interesting themes and was enjoyable overall.    

Donald Duck Sees South America by H. Marion Palmer

 

Title: Donald Duck Sees South America

Author: H. Marion Palmer

Genre: (Kids fiction) Geography

Rating: 4.5/5 stars 

I stumbled across this book when I was searching for Mickey Sees the USA, a book written around the same time. I remember reading that one as a kid and loving it. I was so surprised to see how old these books were - written in 1945! There don't appear to be any more like them (no Daisy sees Europe or Goofy sees Australia unfortunately). They were affordable for being antiques, so I got both. It worked out really well since we were just wrapping up a rather long study of South America (we'd gone slowly country by country.) 

Overall, this book was an enjoyable supplement, and I am glad we waited until we were finished with our studies, as the kids were familiar with most of the locations, and things made a lot more sense than if we would have just picked this up randomly. 

Donald starts out planning to get to Colombia on a plane, but his seat is taken by some important South American politician, so he has to take a ship instead. But this allows him to go through the Panama Canal, which is kind of a cool experience. When he finally arrives in South America, he wants to see simply everything, and he demonstrates classic Donald Duck impatience when dealing with everyone, at one point having a guide show him ALL of Lima in one day. (We didn't find it particularly irritating. We all thought it was pretty funny.) 

After arriving in Columbia he buys a honey bear and then loses it in the jungle a few chapters later. He goes to the market in Ecuador - and he gets into a rather humorous interaction with a vendor in which they both try to one-up each other with kind acts. He catches a condor in Peru with a lasso (rather, he tries to catch it but is actually yanked up into the air by it and ends up luring it back to the ground with some meat). He gets himself into trouble by posing as a guide in Chile, not knowing the lakes are all frozen in August. He spends some time with an indigenous shepherd family and their llamas, alpacas, and goats in Bolivia. He meets a beautiful Argentinian woman but can't speak to her in Spanish, then hires FIFTY tutors so he master the language, only to show up in Brazil and realize they don't actually speak Spanish but Portuguese.  Finally, he becomes a hero in the end when he rescues one of his snobby shipmates. 

The book touches on locations and customs in a pretty fun way. It's entertaining rather than overly dry/informative. There is one chapter I kind of thought was a waste of space ultimately. On the ship, he and the other passengers get "abducted" by something called the Order of Neptune, and they get dunked in the pool. It's just a silly thing they did on the ship, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with South America, and I would have preferred to have a chapter on Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana instead.  

Speaking of which, the book is, of course, outdated in certain ways, but we didn't find it bothersome for the most part. Guyana is referred to on the map in this book as British Guiana. Suriname is Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana has the same name. I hadn't known about the former names since we only touched on those countries, so that was interesting. This book didn't cover them at all though, so that was disappointing. 

Some of the people are referred to as "negros," so I am sure someone somewhere would find that offensive. I'm not actually sure if it was referring to certain indigenous people or what. The natives were referred to as Indians throughout also, and I know that's not PC in 202o either. 

I don't actually know much about South American tourism, so I am sure there are plenty of other little things that are outdated (and the book certainly doesn't demonstrate how incredibly dangerous it is to go there now as a tourist. This was a completely different time in the world.) 

My family and I really did enjoy this book! 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

 

Title: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep 

Author: Phillip K. Dick

Genre: Sci-Fi

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Rick Deckard is one of the few remaining humans who have not emigrated to Mars. He lives in a mostly abandoned apartment building with his wife Iran, and they (shamefully) own an electric/false sheep that lives on the roof of the apartment building, though Rick is pretty obsessed with obtaining a real animal at some point. He works as a bounty hunter - finding and killing androids who have killed their masters on colonies like Mars and fled to earth. When the book starts out, he is mostly concerned with how to get as many of them as possible so he can afford real animals. When the main bounty hunter in his jurisdiction gets hurt on the job, he gets his chance to go after 6 "andys." One of the challenges of his job is that the andys look and sound totally human, and they can only be caught using a special empathy test called the Voight-Kampff test. He prepares for his job by visiting the android manufacturers of the new Nexus-6 model so he can use the test on real androids and make sure it works properly. During this time he meets a Nexus-6 andy named Rachael who gets under his skin a little. When he begins going after the 6 andys, he discovers it's a little more challenging than he expected, in more ways than one. He has begun to care about the androids more than he should.

I've had this on my shelf for a while, and I didn't make the connection between this book and the movie Blade Runner until I read Ready Player One. 

Overall the book is really engaging, and it constantly keeps you guessing. You think it's going in one direction and it takes you in another. The android deaths are not long, drawn out battles (which I sincerely appreciate). The worldbuilding and sci-fi aspects, while bleak, are pretty interesting. The world is very dismal, full of radioactive dust and very few live animals. They have these devices that can alter their emotions - they enter a code, and it makes them feel the desired emotion. It appears they can set it for anything they want, even depression. They also have a religion of sorts called Mercerism, during which they all connect to a device and have shared experiences about a man named Mercer who is walking up a hill and being persecuted and assaulted by some unknown enemy. All the people who are connected share the experience and their emotions at the same time. 

Although I like a lot of aspects of this book, I can't give it five stars for a few reasons:

-It doesn't seem to really go anywhere. There is some character growth that happens with the main character. He does discover a lot about empathy and himself. He struggles with whether or not he should continue hunting robots, but he doesn't ever reach any kind of conclusion.

-While the main character feels empathy for the androids, I really didn't. The question of their humanity, which seems to be a common theme of sci-fi, didn't really come through for me in this book. I didn't really care about them at all. They were considered criminals because they killed their human masters, but this wasn't explored very much. It didn't seem like they suffered any particular cruelty, and they did come across as very cold and manipulative. 

-The Mercerism cult thing was vague and hard to understand. The technology that allowed them to have a shared experience with Mercer was one thing, but the main character starting having these (hallucinations?) about Mercer near the end that were just odd. 

-The characters kept doing drugs as a matter of course, and emotion altering machine came across as a sort of drug also. Then the main character <spoiler> randomly cheats on his wife and then goes back to life as if it never happened with no guilt whatsoever. That was kind of upsetting. </spoiler>

-Rachael Rosnen seemed like an almost completely superfluous character, and although she made the main character feel things and do things differently than he might have, she seemed almost pointless. <spoiler> And for goodness sake, why would she have killed the goat? Deckard didn't kill her, didn't do anything to her. It was a completely meaningless thing to do. I found it very confusing. </spoiler>

I keep thinking maybe I'm missing some larger message. Maybe it will come to me at some point. Not a bad book, but not a favorite either. 

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Kivrin is a history student at Oxford who has been training for two years to go back in time to the Middle Ages - the year 1320 to be specific. Her mentor, Mr. Dunworthy, isn't in favor of her visiting since it was an incredibly dangerous time, especially for women. On the day of the drop into the past, things go terribly wrong, and the tech running the drop collapses from a mysterious illness. 700 years in the past, Kivrin is also ill. The next few days are a blur in both the past and the present, with Kivrin and the Oxford crew trying to figure out how to reconnect and get Kivrin home.

Rating this book is a true challenge because there are some pretty intense strengths and weaknesses.
The main weakness of this book is its pace, as so many other reviewers have pointed out. I don't think I have ever read a more repetitive book in my life. There were certain plot points that got repeated so many times that I can probably quote 25% of this beast of a book from memory. Badri, the tech, keeps saying that "something has gone wrong (with the drop)" Dunworthy keeps asking Badri what went wrong: "Was it the slippage?" over and over with no response from the delirious Badri. The doctor keeps searching for the source of the virus and then sets about getting a vaccine. One of the archaeologists keeps talking about getting back to her dig. EVERYONE is having trouble getting in touch with people over the phones, which are all "tied up" because of the quarantine. Back in the past, Kivrin keeps trying to ask a man named Gawyn where the drop site is and keeps missing him or being unable to speak with him. All of the above events comprise probably the first half of the book at least. It's kind of a foggy mess, but it does get a little better after the first half. The pace of the last 25% of the book does somewhat make up for the rest of the book.
The technology of the book bothers me less than it does some readers. It is a little hard to suspend disbelief with their total lack of cell phones or reasonable means of communication in 2055, but it does add to the confusing/depressing nature of the book, which is a plus. If they had been able to communicate with each other, the book would have been cut in half.
One thing that bothered me throughout the book was how Americans were portrayed. The English characters kept making comments about how Americans were wasteful and selfish, which got old really quickly. The elitism of the Oxford inhabitants toward the Americans was a really unnecessary part of the book, but I know it's unfortunately realistic in real life in 2020.
I found the whole virus situation truly fascinating given the COVID-19 nonsense going on currently. They repeated a lot of the same things we are being told now about wearing masks, etc. They were able to quarantine one small area and keep it contained since it was caught quickly. The mortality rate was significantly higher than the COVID mortality rate (17%). They were very serious about finding the source and finding the best treatment and then a vaccine. So it was just interesting to have a modern pandemic to compare this with.
The other thing I found irritating was the book's obvious anti-Christian bias. The people in the 1300s were obviously very religious and prayed often. Then when bad things happened, they commented about how God was punishing them or forsaking them. Kivrin would always make snarky comments in her head about how God had nothing to with any of this because he wasn't real. Dunworthy did the same, even going so far as to compare Kivrin being lost in the past with Jesus being "lost" on earth and being crucified as a result, forgotten by his father. That was really bizarre, and it was overall just annoying to have to deal with their anti-God commentary throughout.
The book did have some significant strengths. Kivrin spends quite a lot of time in what she believes is 1320, though she is not sure if some "slippage" has occurred (that is, she knows she may not be in exactly the right time). After being brought to a village by Gawyn and the village priest, Roche, she spends a long time trying to get back to the drop site, but she ends up becoming a sort of caretaker for two little girls, Agnes and Rosamund. She is able to observe some interesting things about the people in the manor. The family has fled their home in Bath for some reason that Kivrin isn't able to determine right away. The lady of the house, Elwys, appears to be distracted and is possibly having an affair with Gawyn. Elwys's mother in law is a crotchety, cantankerous crone who hates Father Roche because he is not as wealthy/polished as the priests she is used to. The good thing about having a book this long is that it allows the readers a lot of time to develop attachments to the characters. Then...you get your heart ripped out. Things get bad, and I will avoid spoilers in this section, but there was one death in particular that had me crying for a good 15-20 minutes. I was on the edge of my seat wondering if Kivrin would ever get back home. When the book was over, I was genuinely emotionally spent. The book affected me in a really profound way. And THAT is what you want in a good book. We remember the books that make us cry or elicit string emotion with hard content.


 Spoilers below!
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Kivrin finally figures out that she is in fact in 1348, right at the outbreak of the plague. Although she has had inoculations and T-cell enhancements, she has to watch people start dying all around her. In the end, literally every single person around her is dead.
I wasn't too emotionally invested to be honest in most of the adults (except for Father Roche, who was a legitimate saint that the world did NOT deserve) but Agnes was about the same age as my own daughter, so I couldn't help but imagine her with the same likeness. That make it all the more devastating when she died, small and helpless, calling for Kivrin. She was so full of life. I cried and cried during that part. It was obviously so upsetting how everyone else kept dying, but I was able to understand how Kivrin and the Steward eventually became sort of detached and desensitized after a while, as it was just all TOO much. They had to focus on helping anyone they could and digging graves while they had the energy.
By the time Kivrin was able to go home, it was hardly even happy or triumphant. She was broken (I WAS BROKEN!)
One positive aspect of the book is how it gives the reader a really in-depth look at the black plague and how much desperation and desolation there was. People were scared. They fled and spread the plague everywhere. They had no treatments. It was legitimately horrifying. We don't really get that feeling of horror when we learn about it in school. You hear that 1/3 to 1/2 of that area of the world died and think it's pretty awful, but you don't really GET it fully. This book displays that brilliantly, and I think people should read it just for that. </spoiler>