Category: Book Reviews

We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Tale

After searching for popular, personal essays online, I came across “We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Tale” by Sally Tisdale. The title immediately grasped my attention, so I decided to read it. The first link I clicked gave me this half page text, and I thought how is this a personal essay. Still, I printed and read it. In the five short paragraphs I read, there were tears forming in my eyes. The text was amazing and very well-written. It seemed like it was the full story, a nice slice of story; however, I accidentally clicked another link and this hideously long full text appeared. The part I read was only an excerpt from the essay though it stood so well on its own. I decided to go through and read the five-page personal essay, and I am glad I did.

“We do abortions here; that’s all we do”; that is the first line of the story. It was slicing, blunt, and gave a sense of opinion in the narrator. It goes on to discuss the clinic she works, the clients, and her fellow nurses and doctors. The essay clearly expresses how she feels about her job. Tisdale describes the ugly and bad side. She even exudes fear because of the ongoing debate of Planned Parenthood; sometimes it gets dangerous.

There are multiple things I enjoyed in this essay. One of them is the captivating metaphors and comparisons the narrator uses when describing the relationship between abortion, the clients, and the danger. “It is a sweet brutality we practice here, a stark and loving dispassion.” This is an example of the devastatingly beautiful language Tisdale uses. Another admirable aspect of this piece is the honesty. As stated before, the essay does explain the narrator’s opinion. However, it is an unclear opinion. The nurse realizes that every woman has their rights, but she also feels sad for the tiny, undeveloped babies that are being discarded of. “Each abortion is a message of our failure to protect, to nourish our own. Each basin I empty is a promise—but a promise broken a long time ago.” Another part of her honesty is the way she describes the patients. She gives different examples of the many women or young girls that come into the clinic every day. There are some she feels sorry for—others she does not. She also speaks of the men and their reactions.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this essay. It was very powerful and moving. The entire time I was imagining myself in the nurse’s place. I saw what she saw and felt what she felt. When a piece can do that, it’s obviously good writing. I don’t know if Sally Tisdale is a writer or if she just wanted to speak her emotions in a creative way, but I admire her and this personal essay.
The only thing I disliked about the essay was the structure of it. Sometimes, new paragraphs were created in weird places.

I recommend this personal essay to everyone, whether you’re for or against abortion. Please note there are some detailed information about the abortion process. If you would like to read it, click here.

Matilda – Roald Dahl

Overview: 

Matilda is a fantasy novel by renowned British children’s author Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach) published in 1988. The story follows Matilda, a child prodigy who has received nothing but contempt, neglect, and abusive her all five years of her miserable life. Matilda, unlike the rest of her family, likes to read and educate herself, so as a result, when she goes to school for the first time, her sweet-natured teacher, Miss Honey, is stunned by her ability. And apparently, being competent at reading college level book and rattling off four-hundred times tables is not all Matilda can do; she learns that she has telekinesis.  So the entire book seems like a slice of life genre story, with Matilda dealing with her horrid family, her insane headmistress, Miss Trunchbull (oh, yeah, we’ll get to that psychopath in all due time), and Miss Honey, the only adult who seems to care what happens to Matilda.

The Diction:

I should be lenient; this book was probably intended for third-graders and below. Thus, the book is written in a jargon that is easy for that demographic to understand. But as senior on the brink of graduation, who has been exposed to complex works, the diction is not enough to satisfy. Especially considering the fact that I analyze prose for fun. To support my point, I will quote movie critic, Chris Stuckmann.

Even though it’s a kid’s movie, it could still be of a high quality. I know when I was a kid, I watched good movies and I knew when it was a good movie. Kids deserve movies of just as high a quality as adult; they aren’t stupid, they know when they just watched trash.

Now, I am not calling the wording trash, not at all, in fact sometimes the wording is quite pleasant, and even humorous at times. “The boy by now was so full of cake he was like a sackful of wet cement and you couldn’t have hurt him with a sledgehammer.” But I will say that my point is one can write a children’s novel that has both nice wording and is easy for younger readers to comprehend.

An Appealing Factor:

The most appealing factor is Matilda herself. As a five year old child genius, one would expect her to be an arrogant, little, stuck-up thing. But she is quite the opposite. She is humble, so much so that at one point in novel, she says something that suggests might not even be aware of how smart she is. Matilda is also an adventurous girl who plays pranks on the wicked, mainly Trunchbull and her parents.

Speaking of the Bull.

Miss Trunchbull is a villain through and through. She physically, mental, and even psychologically abuses everyone she comes in contact with. She assaults children who make the smallest mistakes, and even forces a boy to almost die from eating a 18-inch diameter chocolate cake. She’s a villain I like to dislike.

A Potential Turn-off:

The plot was very predictable to me, but I have to remember that maybe children would not have been able to predict the plot twist.

My Rating:

I rate Matilda 3 out of 5 stars. Nothing spectacular, but nothing terribly wrong with it either.

The Innocence Treatment by Ari Goelman

This was a sci-fi book about a girl who was used as a test experiment. The girl started off as a really innocent girl who could not tell if someone was lying to her or not. Someone could make a joke about something odd like someone having an arm for a head, and she would believe them fully. She then undergoes some more experiments and ends up being quite the opposite of what she was. While she was still slightly innocent, she was violent. She was able to fight against nearly anyone and win.

This book was quite the page-turner. I enjoyed the way that the book was set up with journal entries. To me, journal entries are the best way to write a book because you get the emotional scoop of a character without having to see it through another character. I feel this was the correct way to set up this book in particular due to the fact that we are able to recall how she is feeling with all the treatments. Her development through the book was great, I saw a completely different side of her within her first few journal entries.

I feel that the development of the psychiatrist character went off as really dull. He didn’t really show much development throughout any of the book. He was more of an observer of the experiment instead of a friend or enemy. This character struck me more as a fill-in character than anything. The development of the plot was used through this character. While I understand why he was used, his personality added nothing. The plot would have thickened if it would have been the doctor herself reading these journal entries and talking to her through a microphone. Like it is, this isn’t well written to me.

I would also like this book to better explain the sister and what happened to her. I love that the sister was able to become a doctor and get away from the district, however, I want to know what happened to her before the fact or what made her decide to become a doctor.

The ending of this book was great and really summed up the entire book for me. The innocence girl is meant to be mysterious and misunderstood. When she is only seen by her sister for split seconds in the story, I find this just as mysterious as her. She is constantly making the district follow her around. when she runs off she makes the joke of “You know me, pissing some pretty important people off”. This little joke made her sister laugh, and when her sister walks off men in uniforms trail off behind her. The sister makes the connection that they are probably after her, but she doesn’t worry much because she figures that her sister has it handled.

In all this book was really emotional for me. I found myself wanting the Innocence girl to be free more than anything. This book worked well as a Sci-fi and I was genuinely impressed.

“Talking to the Sun” PT. I ‘Hymn to the Sun’ By Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell

“Many of the first poems known to us are magical chants that praise nature and explain things that people didn’t understand about nature—why the sun rises and sets, for example, or why there is thunder.  Often these chants were intended to bring good fortune— to make crops grow or to bring sunshine or rain.”

The book begins inside of a history vault dating back thousands of years of tribal chants and praises.  This quote kicking off the book explains why and how we have  the topic of nature mostly in old poetry and songs.

‘Hymn to the Sun’ is devoted to showing the basis of poetry, and by that i mean poetry by the first people to verbalize their praise and wonderment unto why things happen the way they do.   Honestly, when i picked this book up i noticed it for vibrancy of the yellow on the spine.  Then i saw the title and immediately thought of Frank O’Hara and Vladimir Mayakovsky— who very famously wrote two conversations with the sun.  O’Hara’s conversation even brings up Mayavosky’s conversation with the Sun.  So, that was my prethought of the book.  Just looking at the cover you can tell the illustration will be beautiful.  What i did not expect was the historical value accompanying these beautiful pieces.  The poetry is a valuable history lesson because it is not by the famous modernist authors everyone knows the name of.  They are by tribes and Egyptians and any old group of people that sang and praised together as a communal event.

The very first poem is called ‘Hymn to the Sun’ by the Fang People, who reside in Africa, and it explains that the sun is a warrior who defeats his enemy every morning, the night.  Describing the fight as “The fearful night sinks…Before your lightning eye and the rapid arrows from your fiery quiver…”

The other poems all have a similar touch point of something to do with explaining the sun, praising the sun, or even explaining thunder.  They take on many different tones ranging from appreciation to fear.

My personal favorite of the 8 poems in this category is one call ‘Song for the Sun that disappeared behind the Rain clouds.’  by the Hottentot people of Africa.

“The fire darkens, the wood turns black,

The flame extinguishes, misfortune upon us.

God sets out in search of the sun.

The rainbow sparkles in his hand,

the bow of the divine hunter.

He has heard the lamentations of his children.

He walks along the milky way, he collects the stars.

With quick arms he piles them into a basket

Piles them up with quick arms

Like a woman who collects lizards

And piles them into her pot, piles them

Until the pot overflows with lizards

Until the basket overflows with light.”

This is roughly translated, and at first in was thinking ‘wait, the milky way?  How did they know about that?!’ and so i did some research and as it turns out, the Greeks named it.  They originally named it Via Lactea, which means Road of Milk, and the Romans were the ones who basically started calling it the Milky Way.  So, along with beautiful images and wonder it provided me with a lesson on the Milky Way.

I would most definitely recommend this read.  Thus far in “Talking to the Sun” i have gotten a lot out of the poems.  The book does provide small sidebar explanations, and that is helpful.  The read is insightful and does kick up curiosity in a pretty enormous way.  So, if you are looking for an educationally exciting read, this book is for you.

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

SUMMARY

A Clash of Kings, second in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, begins very shortly after the end of Game of Thrones. Westeros is in pieces—the Starks have been split apart, winter is coming, and five kings—Robb Stark, Renly Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon, and Balon Greyjoy—are battling for the Iron Throne. Catelyn Stark tries to put her shattered family back together, all while her son grows too fast for her to keep up with. Her daughter, Arya, is still in hiding, and is targeting her enemies. In his brother’s absence, Bran Stark holds Winterfell. Catelyn’s oldest daughter, Sansa, is a hostage in King’s Landing for King Joffrey and Queen Cersei to play with as they please. Also in King’s Landing, Tyrion Lannister puts his foot down and establishes his role in the game. In the North, Jon Snow and the Night’s Watch march beyond the Wall. Trouble brews across the sea, too, as Stannis Baratheon prepares to attack King’s Landing with Melisandre the Red Witch and Davos Seaworth at his side. Theon Grejoy, son of Balon, returns home after many years away. Daenerys Targaryen, last of the Targaryen, now mother of the world’s only dragons, struggles to find war ships for her Dothraki. While a red comet flares in the sky, Westeros is falling apart at the seams.

REVIEW

If you’ve ever seen Game of Thrones, you’re familiar with the grit of A Song of Ice and Fire. George R.R. Martin isn’t afraid to go into fine, gross detail on the screwed-up world of Westeros. It can go overboard at times, but it gets its job done. It’s also a case of “Reality Ensues”—as, to be honest, if we lived in a world where there were no ready police force and the law was only enforced in the enforcers wanted it to be (ie the law enforcers can have bias), there would be chaos everywhere. It’s a nice take on how fantasy worlds are usually depicted as cool and peaceful. Even if the detail isn’t gritty, it’s beautiful. Westeros is a place where everything is larger than life, and Martin depicts it well, from the clothing to the food to the many places travelled.

The plot is not action-packed (except for an important and grandiose battle near the end), for good reason. ASOIAF depicts a world where violence can reign, but it doesn’t drive the story. The story is, as the first book tells, a game. Each chapter is a character’s next move, whether it be manipulation, revenge, war strategy, or simple survival. Even characters not in a permanently-violent position, like Sansa, have gripping storylines. Just because a character is “good”, it does not ensure that they will win—or, if they do, that they will come out in one piece. Some characters do not have their own chapters, like Cersei and Littlefinger, but we still get a look in their heads through their actions and words. But though the story is not one with pedal-to-the-medal pacing, it establishes that it is heading in a certain direction. Stannis is planning to march on King’s Landing, Jon and the Night’s Watch are looking out for Mance Rayder, and Daenerys is looking for war ships and who to trust them with.

When reading and watching Game of Thrones, I always thought that Martin’s strongest skill was writing characters. Each character, good and bad, have their redeeming qualities and their flaws. Stannis has his low moments, but he has reason, too. Sansa is somewhat naïve, but she isn’t stupid. Tyrion is clever and cunning, but he doesn’t know how to hold his tongue. And so on, so forth. Even Joffrey, who has zero redeeming qualities, is so immature and hateful that you kind of love-hate every scene he’s in. The characters we root for screw up sometimes, and villains have motives, reasonable or not.

ACOK has an attention-grabbing story, characters, and details. Yet, for the same things I praise, I dislike in some sense. Details, for example, can drag on. There are scenes when a room full of people describes everyone’s clothing, one-by-one. Something that could be summed up in one paragraph stretches on for three or more to fill up the chapter length. Towards the end of the book, there’s a battle scene that goes into such detail, much of the tension and suspense is lost. I found myself skimming through many dragging parts of the book.

Because of this, Jon Snow’s chapters really slow down the pacing, as most is just travelling in the land beyond the wall. As said before, things could be summed it, but instead stretches on beyond necessity. Catelyn’s chapters are not so tedious, but they do have slow moments, as only one thing of great importance happens in them. Sansa’s, Tyrion’s, and Davos’s piqued the most interest, with Arya’s, Bran’s, and Theon’s following.

One thing that I distract from both this book and its predecessor is that sadder scenes are ruined with lengthy dialogue. There’s a very poignant scene from Catelyn where she mourns how broken her family has become, but she goes into such detail about things that the emotion is ruined. The sad scenes that work well are ones that have little to no dialogue in them, like, ironically, another scene with Catelyn.

ACOK is a long read, tedious at times, but ultimately worth it. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this, too.

Too Far by Rich Shapero

Image result for too far by rich shapero

Too Far follows six-year-old Robbie, a child with a lot of imagination and nowhere to put it, living in the Alaskan countryside. Robbie’s parents are in a failing marriage—his father encouraging his curiosity, his mother determined to keep him confined to the house. One day, on a whim, Robbie travels out into the forest and meets a girl named Fristeen. Fristeen is colorful, chipper, and utterly wild. Fristeen is under the care of her easygoing but spacey mother, Grace. Fristeen and Robbie form a tight bond, and the two travel into Too Far, their make-believe wonderland. In Too Far, there is a red lake, a tree named He Knows, a forest of Bendies, and the benevolent but mysterious Dream Man and Dawn. Although Too Far becomes the children’s escape to joy, they soon realize that they can never escape reality, as it soon creeps into Too Far.

Too Far is a book that is told in two parts: Too Far and the real world. The real world is easy enough to understand, albeit told through children’s eyes. Robbie and Fristeen’s parents are presented the way a child would, through very opinionated eyes. To Robbie, his mother is controlling and boring, not wanting him to travel out into the woods, but to readers, we understand where her maternal fear comes from. Robbie sees his father as fun-loving and supportive, though we may think him to be too loose with his child. Robbie looks up to Fristeen’s mother Grace as a wise, mystic woman who is as easy-going as it gets. We, however, see that Grace is often drugged out of her mind, and though she loves her daughter, she also pays no mind to her safety. Framing these characters through Robbie’s and Fristeen’s eyes works both ways: we see them as the flawed humans they are, while we also see how tragically idealistic the children are.

The second part of the book, Too Far, is told in a very mystical, fairy-tale way. There’s a tree named He Knows that talks, a ‘bouncy lake’, etc. Although we as readers know that these are simply fragments of the children’s imaginations, they are treated as fact. The characters of Dawn and Dream Man may seem confusing at first, but as the book continues, it becomes clearer that they represent the children’s parents: they love them, but they don’t always make sense, they do bad things and don’t apologize, and they bounce between caring for and pulling away from the kids. It also becomes increasingly clearer throughout the story that Too Far is more dangerous than the children realize. Playing out in the woods is all fun and games before the reader realizes, “Oh, yeah, these are two children completely unsupervised in a place where they could die.”

Without giving away spoilers, the book does end on a very somber note, albeit not one that doesn’t make sense. In fact, as readers, we may consider the ending to be bittersweet, though it’s a tragic one for Robbie and Fristeen. I think the book overall captures the imagination and innocence of children, while also capturing the adult fear of “These children have no idea about what a bad situation they’re in.” Also of interesting note—the book has a soundtrack! Dawn Remembers is an album by Rich Shapero and Maria Taylor made with the book in mind. Cool.

On a more negative note, there are some slow parts in the book, wherein Robbie and Fristeen are just moseying around Too Far. Now, arguably, this is because they’re two bored kids with nothing to do, but it still makes it a tedious read. Especially noticeable in that the kids follow a sort of pattern every time they go into Too Far. Some scenes with Dawn and Dream Man can be a bit hard to decipher, as they are two unreal things being treated as real—in other words, though they are in the children’s imaginations, they seem to have real-world effect.

And of course, the most controversial part of the book—two kids in a sexual relationship! Robbie and Fristeen never actually have sex…or, if they did, it was too ambiguous to tell…but there are parts where the six-year-olds become…acquainted with each other. Kids learning about sexuality is a really tricky thing to write on. It happens, we’ve all been through it, but it’s very uncomfortable when done wrong, and it can very easily be done wrong. And Too Far’s depiction of the situation is…fine. No, I did not enjoy reading about two children getting naked together, but it could have been way worse.

All in all, though it can be difficult to understand and slow to process, Too Far does give a very interesting take through a child’s view. It is imaginative, worrying, and hopeful at the same time. I understand that it is a very divisive book, though, so I’d day look at a sample and see if it interests you.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Image result for the giver by lois lowry

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry’s The Giver is set in a place known simply as “the community”. In the community, everyone is expected to show one another respect and caring—rudeness, lying, and simple exaggeration are all discouraged. Anywhere beyond the community is known simply as “Elsewhere”, and those who break the rules, grow too old or too sick, or simply ask, are “released” to Elsewhere. People are divided by their numbers (ages) and job occupations. Once a person enters the Ceremony of Twelves, they are Assigned their roles in the community—except for Jonas, who is chosen to be the Receiver of Memories, the highest honor of them all. Jonas has no idea what it means to be able to “receive”, but enters training anyway, apprenticing the previous Receiver known as “the Giver.” As Jonas is given memories, he realizes that he and the community have lost more than just the past.

The simple detail given in the book reflects Jonas’s and the community’s point of views. They do not notice color, shape, or form because they have been taught not to. As the book goes on, the detail grows to show Jonas’s worldview expanding. The twist with color is also a clever one that I did not see coming, as is the more major twist towards the end. Even though we may not be able to perfectly see what is happening, we get the idea clear enough.

Dystopian novels are always hit-and-miss with me, and I feel that the one presented here works. Lowry wisely does not explain every facet of the community, as each answer would probably raise another question. There’s no extremely-advanced technology or a dictionary’s worth of terms to keep up with. Although the community, to us readers, is as bizarre as it needs to be, it does not break logic. There’s some sick kind of reason to how the community is run. The lack of explanation for what caused the world to become the way it is works in the story’s favor.

Jonas, being twelve, offers a naïve newcomer’s view on the events taking place. We learn what he learns. Admittedly, I would say that the only character with personalities are Lily, Jonas’s sister; Asher, Jonas’s friend; and the Giver himself. One could argue that this is the point, to show how the community is boring and unison, but the vocal charismas of Asher and Lily kind of undermine that. The Giver himself is an enjoyable character—you expect him to be quiet and mysterious, in that ‘creepy-magic-old-guy’ kind a way, but he’s actually very sweet and soft-spoken. The way he interacts with Jonas is both heartwarming and telling of the setting the story takes place in. The same can be said for the dialogue spoken in the story. It is stilted and awkward, but with reason.

The subjects that story tackles, and the numb tone to which it does, adds to the eerie and mysterious tone of the novel. Murder, loneliness, solitude, and lack of emotion are all discussed in a speculative manner—i.e., how would people act if they did not know what ‘this’ meant? Jonas himself must deal with great emotional suffering as he realizes that the people he loves cannot and do not love him back. The film adaptation was a romance story between Jonas and Fiona, but it’s more of a tragedy here. Jonas has feelings for Fiona, but not only can she not reciprocate them, Jonas himself can hardly understand them. This helps the curiosity as to what caused society to become the way it has.

Though the novel has many things working in its favor, and it builds a not-wholly-original-but-overall-captivating world, it ultimately could have done more. The book is very short and only takes a shallow glance into its circumstances. Many things are left in the air and are unresolved. Now, it is important to know that the book actually has sequels/prequels/midequels? Other books that take place in the same setting. Unfortunately, it is also said that these books are inferior to The Giver, and I probably won’t be reading them. So, judging the book by itself, I don’t think it took advantage of its setting as much as it could have. Also, I know many consider the ending to be artistic and deep and insightful, but I was simply unsatisfied by it.

Overall, I still think The Giver is a fine, if not simple, book.