I'm Addicted to the Written Word

Deb Is a Reading Maniac
I've been reading a lot lately, like all me free time--and lots of time that should not be free time. My house cleaning has gone down the tubes, & everyone fends for themselves for dinner. Sometimes I manage to keep the laundry going while I read. I even forget to eat. I'll stay up till the wee hours of the morning & still won't be able to nap the next day, cuz I just gotta read some more. I guess I'm just addicted to the written word. Once I start a book, I just can't stop thinking about it till I get it done. I have to finish it so I can get on with life. But then, I don't get on with life--I just pick up another book. It's like a drug--as soon as I finish a book I want to start another. It's a vicious cycle. Aaaahhhh! When will it end? Here are some of the books I've recently read & my opinions about them . . .Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, Number the Stars (Newberry Medal Winner) by Lois Lowry, Summer of the Swans (Newberry Medal Winner) by Betsy Byars , Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley, Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I know there are some more, I just can't think of them off the top of my head. Jode and I just finished reading Men Are From Mars . . . together. It was very enlighting. The workings of the male mind has long been a mystery to me. Now I can understand it better. It has revolutionized our relationship. We are currently reading The Five Love Languages together. I've read it before, and Jode's read most of it before. It's a great book too. I set out this summer to read a bunch of Newberry Medal winners. Number the Stars and Summer of the Swans were the first two I read. They are both quick reads, a couple of hours. Summer of the Swans is about a girl at that awkward stage of growing up who over the course of a summer comes to terms with her brother's mental disability, sees the adults in her life through new eyes, and learns to get along with a boy bully/enemy and with her older sister. Number the Stars is written by Lois Lowry, the only author ever to win the Newberry more than once. Her other winning book is The Giver (one of my all-time favorite books!). I also love Lois Lowry's novel A Summer to Die. Number the Stars is a fictitious story depicting the struggle of one family who helped Jewish friends escape to Sweden. In actuallity, the people of Nazi-occupied Denmark helped smuggle almost all of their Jewish citizens into the safety of Sweden. Over 8,000 citizens were smuggled out; 99% of Danish Jews survived the Holocaust. This is a wonderful story of bravery and heart. Bella at Midnight is the charming story of the daughter of a widower knight, farmed out to a wet-nurse as an infant. Bella grew up believing she was a peasant and that her foster family was her own. She was best friends with a prince Julian who was also nursed by her foster mother. They grew up together and were dear friends--almost like brother and sister. When they reach the ages of 13 and 16, they are parted and not able to say goodbye to each other. She is called home to the house of her true father who has remarried (a tyrannt and a man insane with grief over the loss of his first wife). Her prince is sent to a neighboring rival kingdom as insurance for the honoring of a treaty between the two kingdoms, which have been at war for over a hundred years. If the king, Julian's brother, were to attack, Julian would be killed at once, as the treaty would have been broken. As Bella returns to her new home, she finds that she is ill treated for her coarse peasant ways, though she is of noble birth; she becomes a Cinderella of sorts. She accidentally learns of the king's plot to make war, and so rides off to warn her dear prince Julian before he is executed. She then manages to stop the battle herself, at great personal risk, becomes a hero, and lives "happily ever after" with her prince Julian as husband. It is a sweet, charming story. I enjoyed it immensely. It had a predictable storyline, but was still well-written, entertaining, and light--a delightful read. Breaking Dawn I read in 2 days. I couldn't put it down. I liked it better than all previous 3 of the series, though I still find Bella a shallow character and Stephenie not the best of writers, though her work has improved with each book. Bella was less annoying in this final book, probably because she's maturing. It still gets me though how she has no self-esteem, even as an amazing mythical creature with endless powers. She finally gets it at the end. All through the saga I've wanted to shake her or slap her for her lack of self-esteem. My favorite part of the book was watching Bella experiment with her shield at the "battle." My favorite thing about the book was getting into Jacob's head. I loved hearing his thoughts. He's so hysterically sarcastic! Even the titles of his chapters are immensely entertaining. Yes, Jacob was my favorite character in Breaking Dawn, though I hated him in Eclipse. I guess he's growing up too. I was disturbed by the delivery scene, wanted to slap Bella the whole time she was expecting, especially because of how she seemed to be making all of the wrong choices, and because of her need for Jacob which she had no right to have, and the way she was hurting Edward more every moment. But I do still agree that Breaking Dawn is the best of the series. I first decided to read The Golden Compass series when Linda Mair suggested it for book club. There has been a lot of hype about it ever since the movie came out. Supposedly, the author is an athiest & depicts the children "killing God" at the end of the series. Linda thought it would make for an interesting book club discussion. She did decide to have us read something else for book club, but I thought I'd read The Golden Compass to find out for myself if all of the rumors are true. It was a non-stop read from page 1 of Compass to the last page of Spyglass. 1312 pages later, I had a lot to think about. Especially from the Mormon perspective, this series is very intriguing. I found myself thinking and comparing Gospel doctrines with "mainstream Christianity" doctrines and Pullman's ideas. It should not surprise us that our Mormon beliefs are not mainstream Christianity. The Christians of the world may think Pullman's ideas are outrageous; the would think the same of our beliefs. I have come to the conclusion that Pullman's writing is not anti-God, but anti-authoritarian. It speaks out against the oppression of the Catholic Church in previous history. But, this oppression can take many forms--in government, church, authoritative families or personal ignorance. All of the rumors about the Compass series are false. It is not satanic, atheist, nor God-killing. In actuality, Pullman's ideas about the body, soul and spirit, about agency, and about the battle between good and evil, and about the true character of God are more in line with LDS Gospel principles than not (learn more at http://www.lds.org/). The body is a divine creation of our Heavenly Father, a divine gift. In Pullman's books, bodiless angels covet the human body for its ability to feel, taste, touch, and experience nature and life. Also, Pullman depicts the true God as an representation of agency, knowledge, intelligence, and enlightenment. He also shows that the Fall was a good thing--creating intelligence, choice, work, family, love. The "Authority" of Pullman's imaginary world is not the Creator, but actually a rebel angel who set himself above the others, and used the church as his tool to inflict his own agenda on people of many worlds and imprison whom he choses. In his old age, he became complacent and hid himself deep in the mountain, appointing a "Regent" to rule in his stead. This regent is the epidemy of evil and ill-justice. This "children killing God" nonsense is just that--nonsense. In the end, the evil regent is emprisoned forever in an abyss by some adults. The children try to rescue the aged authority from some horrible creatures bent on destroying him, the children fight off the monsters and rescue him. They reach to him, he reaches to them out of his protected place, but his strength leaves him and he disappates into the air. But in actuality, the true "God" in the book, the good entity of knowledge, beauty and agency is saved by the children through their choices of unselfishness--freeing the spirits unjustly imprisoned by the authority, thus allowing them to be released into nature and live free as particles of intelligence throughout the world. They also choose to do the right thing by living in their own worlds and shutting the man-made doors between worlds so as to keep the evil spirits that destroy life from entering those worlds and destroying human lives. There are several other things to think about regarding the book. Many, many themes. But even without searching for a deeper meaning, the books are an entertaining read about a world (or many worlds) of interesting characters, creatures, places, events and adventures. I found the books compelling, intriguing, yet not as dark and frightening as Harry Potter. They are more like a Narnia type of read. But I definitely did not feel any evil in the books--like I said, they are not as dark as Harry Potter, or many other books that I have read. I would suggest this series to any of my friends. It is definitely an interesting, thought-provoking read, well-written and creative. Anyway, that's my 2 cents on that.We also purchased a charming children's picture book called My Imagination by Katrina Estes-Hill, illustrated by Alvina Kwong. Kwong is a local artist whose work has appeared in The Friend often. We met her at Barnes and Noble at a book signing. My Imagination is the story of a young girl bored with television who goes outside to use her imagination. It's written in rhyme and very fun! The illustrations are beautiful. It's a fun book! The kids really love it too!Jode's friend Paul Genesse has just published his first novel called The Golden Cord. It is the story of a dragon. We just bought it, & I haven't started it yet. I'll have to let you know how it is. We also bought a book of short stories in which one of his stories is published. It should be interesting. I also just bought Stephenie Meyer's The Host, which I've heard is good. There's still a lot of books out there waiting to be discovered! Aahhh, for the love of reading!