Crush on You

Crush on You by Christie Ridgway

A fluffy romance with a cutesy plot. I liked the main characters, but didn’t love them. I actually liked the secondary characters (Clare and Gil) better. I wish there was more space for their story.

I think I will try more by Ridgway.

Blue Nights

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Didion has a very powerful, moving style. In ‘Blue Nights’ she delivers an honest account of losing her daughter. She expresses feeling on motherhood, marriage, illness and aging. 

As a Mother, losing one of my children is so horrifying, so incredibly dark, that I cannot even imagine it in any type of detail. Simply thinking of a world without both of my babies in it, has a terrible affect on me. I can’t even go there. My heart broke for Didion, as it breaks for every parent who has lost a child.  

Some Assembly Required

Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son by Anne Lamott

Lamott journals about her experience becoming a Grandmother. I can’t necessarily relate to her feelings, I related more to her son’s girlfriend. However, I still enjoyed Lamott’s journey. At times, I felt she went on a bit much, but overall it was genuine and sweet.

I am not sure how I will feel about being a Grandma, I have awhile before I need to think about that!

Escape

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

My Thoughts:
A brave and beautiful memoir. I wish all the best for Carolyn Jessop. The FLDS belief system is both intriguing and disturbing. I enjoyed following Jessop’s progression to freedom.

Amazon.com Description:

“The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children. When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy. Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name. Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.”

Such a Pretty Fat

Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not the Answer  by Jen Lancaster

I have been a fan of Jen Lancaster’s previous memoirs. But…ouch…this one was a painful read. I think she has worn out the memoir, at this point, and was grasping for material to write about. She definitely lost the witty edge from her previous books. This was just rambling…and more rambling. I struggled to even skim through to the finish.

If this had been the first book I read by Lancaster I would have never tried another, but I know she can produce a really good one! Hoping this one was just a fluke.

You Are Not So Smart

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, And 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself by David McRaney

An interesting read on how the brain works. Am I deluding myself? Yes, indeed!