Saturday, March 30, 2019

PACHINKO BY MIN JIN LEE

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
 

Thursday, March 21, 2019

WOMEN ROWING NORTH BY MARY PIPHER


Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.

In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. "If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully," Pipher writes, "we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent."
 

EDUCATED BY TARA WESTOVER


Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.
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Hardcover352 pages
Published February 20th 2018 by Random House

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Showing 1-30
 4.49  · 
 ·  222,899 ratings  ·  26,559 reviews


 | 
Bill Gates
Dec 03, 2018rated it it was amazing
I’ve always prided myself on my ability to teach myself things. Whenever I don’t know a lot about something, I’ll read a textbook or watch an online course until I do.

I thought I was pretty good at teaching myself—until I read Tara Westover’s memoir Educated. Her ability to learn on her own blows mine right out of the water. I was thrilled to sit down with her recently to talk about the book.

Tara was raised in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about
 ...more
Angela M
Jan 14, 2018rated it it was amazing
Difficult to read. Impossible to put down. A powerful, powerful book that you shouldn’t miss. I can’t just leave it at that because Tara Westover’s story deserves more than those few words. I don’t often read memoirs, but when I do I want them to be told by extraordinary people who have a meaningful story to tell and that would be faint praise for this book. It sounds odd to say how beautifully written this is because we are not spared of the ugly details of what this family was about, but yet i ...more
Emily May
May 24, 2018rated it liked it
What an interesting fantasy novel.

I'm kidding.
I think.

Some parts of this do seem farfetched, such as how an uneducated mountain wildgirl clicked her heels together, magicked up thousands of dollars (yeah, yeah, scholarships don't cover everything, you know), and went on to some of the world's most prestigious higher education centres. Intelligence is not the main thing required to attend Harvard or Cambridge; being able to pass exams and perform the system's dance is. Someone without formal ed
...more
Will Byrnes
On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping. I am only 7, but I understand that it is this fact more than any other that makes my family different. We don't go to school. Dad worries that the government will force us to go, but it can't because it doesn't know about us. Four of my parents' seven children don't have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we've never
...more
Debra
Mar 17, 2018rated it liked it
Shelves: netgalley
"It's strange how you give the people you love so much power over you"

I am in the minority on this one, but this did not blow me away. I wanted to read this after seeing so many high ratings. I was expecting to love this book but ended up feeling meh about it. I actually wanted to hurry the book up in parts and other times found it to be a little repetitive. There were other times I wanted her to go into more detail or explain things more. One thing I had an issue with is that her family is desc
 ...more
Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader
Jan 03, 2018rated it it was amazing
5 brilliant stars to Educated! 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

I grew up in a home of readers with a teacher mom and a dad who questioned my effort when I made an A-minus on my report card. When I began reading Educated, I was floored that Tara and her siblings were not in school, and they were not homeschooled either. How could this happen in modern times with compulsory schooling put in place long ago?

Tara made it clear from the start that her family’s Mormon faith did not cause her father’s substantial paranoia;
 ...more
Emily (Books with Emily Fox)
Jan 27, 2019rated it really liked it
Shelves: audiobooks
I had a really tough time reading this book.

The physical and emotional abuse made me want to put it down and forget about it. The manipulation, the abuse she went through left me speechless. While not unique, family issues are still so taboo. Brainwashing your own self into thinking it's your fault, that it wasn't that bad or that you imagined it will hit way too close for comfort for a lot of people.

The author's writing was beautiful and her courage to get an education and stand up to her famil
 ...more
Elyse Walters
Feb 19, 2018rated it really liked it
Tara Westover’s book “Educated” is a distressing & discomforting - alarming & startling exposure of her Mormon fundamentalist family.

“Educated” is a memoir of nonfiction - but names and identifying details have been changed. Aaron, Audrey, Benjamin, Erin, Faye, Gene, Vanessa, Judy, Peter, Sadie, Shannon, Shawn, Susan, Robert, and Robin are pseudonyms.
Tara tells us in her authors notes:
“This is not about Mormonism. Neither is it about any other form of religious belief. In it there are
 ...more
Darwin8u
"Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs."
- Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir

description

This book feels like it was written by a sister, a cousin, a niece. Tara Westover grew up a few mountains over from my dad's Heglar ranch. I don't know her. Don't know her family. S
 ...more
Liz
Feb 10, 2018rated it it was amazing
Shelves: best-of-2018netgalley
I grew up with my nose perpetually in a book. So, the idea of not being able to go to school, of being deprived of an education, hit me really hard. It was hard for me to grasp that things I take for granted, like knowing what the Holocaust was or who MLK, Jr. was, were black holes to Tara.

Tara Westover is the child of a religious fanatic, someone who sees the government as pure evil. And by government, he means schools, hospitals, vaccines, seat belts, car insurance, etc. Everything we think o
 ...more
PorshaJo
This one first came to my attention via a GR review. I thought wow, I need to read this now. The wonderful Traveling Sisters group set it up as a slow read and I was in. Grabbed a copy from NetGalley and was ready to go. BUT.....and a big BUT......I didn't like this one, I had to force myself to finish. Had it not been for the group read, I'm sure I would have DNF'd this one.

So I'm probably in the minority in not liking this one. It was more of a 'having a hard time believing the story' kinda th
 ...more
Marialyce
Mar 02, 2018rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition
2 stars and I know, I am an outlier.

I have been born with a gene called the "doubting Thomas" gene. It has made me very leery of trusting and believing a lot of things and unfortunately this gene kicked in big time in this story billed as a memoir.

While I do believe that the things described by Tara Westover might have happened, I also have to think that this was a book of childhood memories. Sometimes, as children, we distort the truth, and sometimes grown to adulthood we only remember fragment
 ...more
Justin Tate
Aug 07, 2018rated it it was amazing
A monumental memoir that should be required reading for all. The description doesn't do it justice. It's not about getting a PhD, it's about growing up in a family that doesn't believe in school, thinks doctors are a part of a sociologist conspiracy, and that any day the government will shoot them dead--if the end of times don't come first. The experiences Tara describes are horrific, yet oddly relatable--even if your family is nothing like hers (and let's hope it isn't). By the end, she has to ...more
Debbie
5 OMG How did she end up alive and educated? stars

[News flash: I see that this review is WAY too long! I’m such a blabbermouth! Feel free to skip sections. I went way overboard. Geez….]

Tara did a lot more than ride a pogo stick to get from a junkyard in Idaho to a Ph.D. in Cambridge.
Meanwhile, I’m bouncing on mine, going high and far to escape her whacked-out father and super-scary psycho brother. Plus, face it, I bring out the pogo stick when it’s a fantastic read and believe me, this qualifies
...more
Maxwell
Jan 31, 2019rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction2019
Everything about this book amazed me. I will not stop thinking about this book for a very, very long time. I don't think I can even do this proper justice in a review other than telling everyone to go out and READ THIS BOOK! Easiest 5 stars ever. Loved it.
Karen
Jan 15, 2018rated it it was amazing
Wow! Tara Westgrove is one of the strongest, and bravest people I have ever read about! This woman grew up as the youngest child in a big survivalist, Mormon family, in Idaho at Buck Peak. So much danger for her in that life, mostly because of her father and one of her older brothers.
This memoir is so brutal at times and hard to read, your heart just breaks for this girl, and for some of her siblings.
Tara rises up to become extremely “educated” despite the fact that she never attended school, an
 ...more
Linda
Feb 24, 2018rated it really liked it
Shelves: memoirsnet-galley
I must tell you.......

Educated: A Memoir scalded the very edges of my soul. It took me through a whole gamut of my own emotions from belief to disbelief, from hesitation to doubt to wariness, and most importantly, from the weightiness of compassion and empathy to the restrictions of frustration and anger.

Tara Westover tells her story straight out through the reflections seen by her own eyes, her own jagged experiences, and in her own words. As you step inside of Tara's story you will certainly h
 ...more
Cindy Pham
Jan 21, 2019rated it it was amazing
So good. So good. SO GOOD. Ok, I'll try to elaborate. Tara Westover's memoir is incredibly engrossing not just because of the rollercoaster of traumatic events that occur throughout her life, but also because of her ability to weave humanity and complicated familial relationships in her portrayal of events. While it's easy to take these events and market it like a thriller novel, it's that sense of reflection and poignancy in her carefully crafted words that is the book’s strongest asset. As awf ...more
Carol (Bookaria)
Jun 27, 2018rated it it was amazing
I was blown away by this book. I finished it a few days ago and can’t stop thinking about it.

Tara Westover grew up under the watchful eye of a survivalist and fundamentalist family. Her parents did not believe in sending children to school for fear of being brainwashed, they did not believe in doctors, hospitals or medication. Whenever a member of the family was injured they would be treated at home with tinctures, herbs, and homemade remedies. There is a lot more to the story than this brief de
 ...more
Larry H
Aug 30, 2018rated it it was amazing
Wow.

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant, Educated is at times difficult to read and not at all what I expected, but I couldn't tear myself away from it.

"Mother had always said we could go to school if we wanted. We just had to ask Dad, she said. Then we could go. But I didn't ask. There was something in the hard line of my father's face, in the quiet sigh of supplication he made every morning before he began family prayer, that made me think my curiosity was an obscenity, an af
 ...more
karen
Sep 11, 2018rated it really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best memoir/autobiography 2018! what will happen?

this is one of those “eeeeveryone is reading it” books that i always come in too late on, since i rarely read nonfiction and it takes me a while to jump onto nonfiction bandwagons. but here i am, way behind the rest of y’all on the oregon trail, probably riddled with dysentery.



or that. which is probably a good place to dive into this review, because even though its synopsis keeps stressing the word “
 ...more
j e w e l s [Books Bejeweled]
FIVE STARS
This is one of those books that I can't stop talking about. Literally. My dental hygienist even wrote it down because she asked me for a good book recommendation. She likes biographies. YASSSSSSSSS! I'M READING THE BEST MEMOIR EVER!!! YOU MUST BUY IT TODAY!!! (That was in between spitting and rinsing, of course.)

I love memoirs written by unusual people. Tara Westover is not only highly educated, but she is stubborn as a bulldog and pulled herself up by the steel-toed boots she wore as
 ...more
Shelby *trains flying monkeys*
So this book is billed as being along the same lines as The Glass Castle

My little nothing opinion falls around something like this.


Tara grows up in a different kind of family. Her dad knows that the end of the world is coming and makes sure his family is always ready. He has them preparing food constantly, digs a shelter, does not believe in association with anything government (including doctors)...mom is a midwife that practices with herbal cures. The family has strong beliefs that center the
...more
Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin
Going to finally see what all this damn hype is about! 😉



I’m just going to leave it at 3. That’s it!!

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Carol
Buck Peak - a dangerous place to live....at any age!
Tara Westover grew up on a mountain with a paranoid, volatile father who spent his days preparing for the end of the world; a submissive mother who was blind to her children's hurt, five brothers and a sister....one brother so threateningly scary at times, I could hardly believe what he was doing or what I was reading.
Tara's story is one of courage, strength and struggle as a child and as a young woman. To have endured the ridiculous demands a
...more
Berit☀️✨
3 Sad to Say Stars 🌟🌟🌟

Ugh this is hard for me... I really am such a positive reviewer for the most part, but this book I unfortunately found disappointing.... this could be for multiple reasons, I went in with high expectations... I had read so many glowing reviews for this book I was expecting greatness.... also this is absolutely not in my preferred list of genres, but this also could’ve helped the book.... as I have very few books to compare it to.... I finished this book well over a week ago
 ...more
Barry Pierce
Jan 05, 2019rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
Every year, in order for the publishing industry to survive, one poor traumatised adult must delve deep into the blocked recesses of their minds and produce the Next Top Abuse Memoir. It’s a tradition as old as and as common as Christmas. One could argue we all have Joan Crawford to blame for this. Christina Crawford’s book Mommie Dearest acted as a shocking exposé of the once respected actress and described, in campy detail, Crawford’s less-than-conventional approach to motherhood. A couple dec...more
Dan Schwent
Mar 01, 2018rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2018-books2018
When a girl raised on a mountain in Idaho by her survivalist fundamentalist Mormon family sets foot in a classroom for the first time at the age of 17, how will things turn out? Can she ever escape the past?

Yeah, I made that sound like one of the sleazy thrillers I'm fond of but Educated is a memoir, not a potboiler. I don't normally read memoirs but I decided to take Random House up on their offer when they came knocking.

Educated is the story of Tara Westover's childhood on Buck's Peak, a mount
...more
Orsodimondo
Nov 22, 2018rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: americana
LIBERACI DAL PADRE
(E possibilmente, liberaci pure dalla madre)

description
”The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Non aprite quella porta”. Make: 1974, regia di Tobe Hooper. Remake: 2003, regia di Marcus Nispel.

È un esordio, e quindi parte delle osservazioni seguenti potrebbero essere giustificate.
Lo sono meno, ai miei occhi, perché di questo libro s’è voluto fare l’ennesima next big thing, e quindi è stato molto spinto e promosso e discusso.
Inquietante, dal mio punto di vista, la quantità di fotografie che si tro
 ...more
Holly  B
Oct 11, 2018rated it it was amazing
This was impossible to put down! I usually save my audio books for my car trips, but I found myself listening to this one at home. A story about Tara and her childhood growing up in a Mormon family. Her father was a survivalist and thought the world might end at any moment!

Their family home was situated in the shadow of Buck Peak mountain and they lived in poverty. Tara and her six siblings endured much pain under the volatile father and one brother who proved to be quite dangerous. The mother s
 ...more
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