Book Review: Hold Still by Sally Mann

Title: Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
Author: Sally Mann
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: suicide, murder, sexual predation

I didn't know anything about Sally Mann when I picked up Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs, all I knew was that the book had been nominated for the National Book Award. I soon learned that Mann is a photographer who originally rose to fame in the 90s, when she published Immediate Family, a book of photographs of her children engaged in all of the intimate moments of growing up with children (sick, naked, vomiting-- she didn't shrink from capturing any of these moments. And the result is not Instagram but art. In Hold Still, Mann's story is all over the place-- she delves back into the distant past of her Southern relatives and the less distant past of the murder-suicide of her in-laws. She writes about racism and the long trip she took around the south with a photo lab in the back of her station wagon.

Just like you'd expect from the subtitle, Hold Still is full of Mann's photographs. And when I looked at them, my initial response was not often positive. These are pictures that demand your attention. They're shadowed and often sort of spectral, and after looking at them for a while, I often grew to appreciate them. I felt the same way about the memoir. The narrative thread of the story isn't immediately apparent, but after reading the book for a while, you realize you're enjoying yourself so much you really don't care. It's a little weird, but it works.

Book Review: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Title: When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Hard Copy
Content Alert: a pretty clean read. There are a handful of swear words, but don't let that hold you back from reading this beautiful book.

When Paul Kalanthi was thirty-six, just a year from completing his training as a neurosurgeon, and just on the verge of finally achieving adulthood, he was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. In When Breath Becomes Air, Kalanthi looks back on his life, especially on his training in medicine and literature, and how those two fields informed his approach to his disease, and, ultimately to his death.

A few years ago, I read a short piece by Kalanthi published in The New York Times. If you've read this blog for a long time, you probably know that I love literature about medicine, and this piece, and this story, really hit home for me, because, like Ed and I a few years earlier, Kalanthi was poised at the beginning of a life he'd spent half a lifetime preparing for. It felt so unfair, and I really admired the poetry of his language and the pathos I felt while reading. When Breath Becomes Air manages to retain the beauty in the language of that shorter piece, while providing a more extended meditation of life. This is a fabulous book for any reader, whether confronting your mortality or not.

Book Review: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

Title: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Author: Jenny Lawson
Enjoyment Rating: **
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: frank conversations about mental health

In Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, writes frankly about her mental health challenges, which include anxiety, depression, and a host of related issues.

Okay, okay, I know I'm going to draw some ire here, so I'm taking a deep breath and forging ahead. I'm not a regular reader of Lawson's blog. I never read her first memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened. I have never had some of the mental health problems that Lawson has had. So I'm not her target audience. But this book kept coming up in every "Recommended for You" feed, and I bought it. I was reading Brene Brown's Daring Greatly at the same time, and in that book, Brown talks about vulnerability and about how sharing too much too soon with people whose trust you haven't earned can backfire. And that's exactly what this book was for me. I think that for some people, those with whom Lawson has established a rapport over years, this book would be fabulous, but for me, it felt like too much, too soon. The details of all of her fights with her husband, Victor, the incredibly detailed conversations she had with herself, which are things her regular readers would probably love, just annoyed me. So this book would be fabulous in the right hands, but her willingness to put everything out on the table was too much too soon for this reader.

Book Review: Styled by Emily Henderson

Title: Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms, from Tabletops to Bookshelves
Author: Emily Henderson
Enjoyment Rating: **** (3.5)
Source: Hard Copy

Like many of you, my Instagram feed is full of lives that look much prettier than mine. They eat better food, their counters never have any crumbs on them, and there's no clutter anywhere in their homes. For the most part, these are people who make their careers in social media, so most of the time, I'm able to remember that the rest of their house probably doesn't look perfect, and I'm able not to hate them. One of the people I follow most eagerly is stylist/interior designer Emily Henderson, whose rooms always look effortlessly cool. So when I discovered that she had a new book coming out, Styled, I bought it right away.  In Styled Henderson focuses not so much on the big pieces in a room, but more about how to accessorize a room. It reminds me a lot, actually, of a clothing stylist picking out jewelry. And while I'm not much of a jewelry kind of girl, now that Rose and Eli aren't in danger of breaking any accessory in the house, I figured it might be time to get some advice on how to move away from minimalism.

There are some parts of the book (like the "what's your style" quiz) that seemed kind of pointless, but the book was mostly useful. There are lots of pictures of Henderson's own home (which I love, from a purely voyeuristic point of view) as well as photos of projects she's worked on, and she talks about how to decorate shelves and tabletops so they reflect your own personal style. After reading the book, I took about 600 books to Savers and cleared out enough shelf space to do some styling of my own. It was a pretty fun experience, and I feel like the pointers she gave are good, if you are eager to increase your knicknack count.

Book Review: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Title: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Author: Brene Brown
Enjoyment Rating: **
Source: Audible
Content Alert: some mild language

I absolutely adored Brene Brown's Rising Strong when I read it a few months ago. Even though Rising Strong works well as a stand-alone book, I still got the sense that I was missing part of the story because I hadn't read Daring Greatly (because you have to dare greatly before you can rise strong). I had loved listening to Rising Strong so much, mostly because Brene Brown narrated it perfectly. She was telling her own story and I could hear the vulnerability in her voice when she wanted to show vulnerability, I laughed along with her jokes, and felt kind of like a girlfriend by the time I got to the end of that book. I was SO disappointed to discover that Brown did not narrate Daring Greatly. And to make matters worse, the narrator's voice was so flat. She sounded bored the entire time. A really great audiobook can greatly enhance the word on the printed page. A really bad audiobook can ruin it. And unfortunately, the narration ruined Daring Greatly for me. I knew the information was important for me personally as a parent, a leader, and just a good adult, but I never wanted to listen to this book. I gritted my teeth and got through it, but the things that would have seemed a little endearing had Brown narrated the book herself (like the way she constantly refers to her earlier works) annoyed me in this version. I feel that the book is at least a solid 3-star book on the printed page, but I can't give the audiobook more than two stars.

Book Review: Missoula by Jon Krakauer

Title: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Author: Jon Krakauer
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Hard copy
Content Alert: Language, sex, sexual abuse, violence

Remember when I said that Jonathan Franzen's Purity was too deep and depressing to be good beach reading? Instead, on the advice of my husband who had just plowed through this entire book in two days of kiddie pool duty, I picked up Jon Krakauer's Missoula, which is, as the subtitle suggests, about a series of date rape cases that took place on or near the University of Montana campus between 2008 and 2012. Krakauer lays out the stats that at least 110,000 women are raped in the United States each year, most by acquaintances, and most of the time, when victims actually do report the crimes, they, and not the perpetrators, become the object of suspicion. This is definitely true in the cases Krakauer profiles, none of which has a clear or wholly satisfying conclusion for the alleged victims.

I went to college in a place where I honestly never saw drinking. I also never knew anyone who admitted to having premarital sex. I know that doesn't mean that it didn't happen at BYU, but I think it does mean that cases like the ones Krakauer profiles in Missoula were both less frequent (alcohol played a role in all of the cases he examines) and less likely to be openly discussed. So this book was shocking in a lot of ways. As I prepare to send my kids off to college, I think this is a book that all of them (boys and girls) should read.

Book Review: Home is Burning by Dan Marshall

Title: Home is Burning: A Memoir
Author: Dan Marshall
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: So. Much. Swearing. Some sex. Some illegal drug use. And a sad, slow decline ending in the death of the author's father.

Dan Marshall was a twenty-five-year-old Berkeley grad, living in LA, with a sweet job and a hot girlfriend when his father, Bob, a marathon runner who had never been sick a day in his life, was diagnosed with ALS. To complicate matters, Dan's mom, Debi, had been living with stage-four lung cancer for more than a dozen years, and she'd had a relapse and needed more chemo. So Dan and his brother Greg moved back home to take care of their parents. Home is Burning is the account of Dan's year living at home in Salt Lake City, taking care of his parents.

I would imagine that if I lived in New York or Los Angeles, seeing my city through the eyes of authors and filmmakers would become commonplace. But Salt Lake City is not a popular setting for books and movies. And when it does appear in film (like in High School Musical, it's often masquerading as someplace else). For me, the fact that Home is Burning takes place in Salt Lake made it so much more enjoyable. I could not, in good conscience, give this book a higher rating, because it seemed to operate only on the emotional levels of shock and sadness, but I really enjoyed reading it. The high school Marshall attended is Olympus, my kids' rival high school. They walk in the same canyon where I run trails, and they even stop and get drinks at Shivers, where I'm a frequent visitor at the drive-thru. At one point, Marshall named his street, and you'd better believe I opened Google Maps on my phone and, like a true creeper, found out where the street was. Turns out I run within half a block of his house at least three times a week. So the fact that the book takes place in my backyard was novel and thoroughly enjoyable. Not quite as enjoyable was the fact that Marshall is constantly referring to the damn Mormons or the f&^%ing Mormons. I know that part of his bravado was intended to show his fallibility as a character, but the fact that Marshall and his family seemed to hate the Mormons so much for I'm not sure what other than being squeaky clean Mormons got at the heart of one of the biggest tensions here in our city. I think that also made this book more important and significant as a local reader, even if it was less easy to brush off the comments because I recognize how it plays out in our city from day to day.

Book Review: Humans of New York Stories by Brandon Stanton

Title: Humans of New York: Stories
Author: Brandon Stanton
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Hard Copy
Content Alert: a pretty clean read, but the stories really run the spectrum

Remember back in the day before smartphones when people used to keep a stack of magazines in the bathroom for a little toilet reading? In my house we even had a book called The Bathroom Book, with bite-sized little tidbits, short enough for a potty break. It's kind of ironic that Brandon Stanton's The Humans of New York phenomenon started on Instagram (which has definitively won the bathroom reading battle, if there was one), because Humans of New York: Stories, would be the best back of the toilet book ever.

Stanton's book is his Instagram account in published form. My sense is that Stanton walks around New York and asks people if he can take their picture, then asks them a few questions, and picks a snippet from that short interview to post along with the picture. With 4.7 million followers, the account is insanely popular (and whoa, all the judgy jerks on the internet who used to hang out on message boards now comment on HONY), and I'm always impressed with the way Stanton manages to get something interesting and profound of the people he talks with. There seems to be a light attempt at some thematic arrangements in the book, but mostly, the pictures and stories speak for themselves. Even though I'd read most of the stories individually when they came out on Instagram, there was a power to reading them together in the book.

Book Review: Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Title: Year of Yes:  How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person
Author: Shonda Rhimes
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Acknowledgement of sex, swearing

Shonda Rhimes is one of my guilty pleasures. I watched Grey's Anatomy with an almost religious fervor when my kids were little, and I still tune in to TGIT for Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. Heck, I even watched every episode of Off the Map. And as much as I may mock the Shonda Rhimes dramatic monologue, you know I'm a secret fan.

And it's a good thing, because Year of Yes is basically one extended Shonda Rhimes dramatic monologue. The story starts when Rhimes's sister says to her, one Thanksgiving, "You never say yes to anything," and Rhimes decides that for a year, she's going to get out of her comfort zone and say yes to opportunities for growth in her path. These range from giving commencement addresses and losing half her body weight to playing with her children and having the courage to end relationships. There's a lot to be learned here about the ruts we tend to let ourselves fall into, and how to get out of them. I have talked with lots of friends about how much I love her chapter on "doing it all." Rhimes contends that there's no way we can do it all, and her nanny is the only way she's even able to pretend, but even then, when she's succeeding in one aspect of her life, she's letting other areas slide. That was so refreshing for me to hear (trying to write, right now, with a child actually sitting on my lap watching YouTube). I also really loved her insights into her characters, and how ambitious, arrogant intern Christina Yang (from Grey's Anatomy) represented who she was early in her career and powerful, isolated, morally ambiguous Olivia Pope (from Scandal) represents some of how she has felt as she's achieved more success. This is a really fun read, whether or not you're a fan of Shondaland like I am.

Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Title: Alexander Hamilton
Author: Ron Chernow
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible

Just like everyone else on the planet, I've been swept up in the fervor over Alexander Hamilton. I was "this close" to making our entire family detour to NYC during our summer vacation so I could go see the play (by myself, because tickets for eight would cost bank). I was so captivated by Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical (and cultural phenomenon) that I finally cracked the book that has been sitting on our shelf for more than a decade, Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm not an avid reader of biographies. In fact, I had to create a tag for biographies when I was reviewing this book. But my friend Michelle told me that if I listened to this one, I wouldn't be disappointed. She was absolutely right. While Alexander Hamilton's included the jubilant highs and devastating lows of high drama, the story is putty in Chernow's able hands. He makes the villains (Burr, Adams, Jefferson) and the heroes (Washington, Lafayette) come to life, and Hamilton shines as someone who's as complicated as any central figure in a Shakespearean tragedy. When I started listening the 30+ hour audio version, I was really skeptical, but it took me about a week to power through the story. It's definitely worth a listen, and fans of the musical might just find themselves singing along.

Book Review: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Title: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: maybe some language?

Have you ever wanted to live creatively but felt mired in the everyday miasma of living? I do. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about steps to take to live a creative life. She talks a lot about the spirituality of creative inspiration, which I really love about the book. And yes, it's a motivational rah rah sort of book, and that's just what I need right now. You see, I don't just read books and review books. I've always wanted to write books. Right now, I'm about 50 pages into the first draft of a novel. It's an idea that I've had percolating for a while (if you have an hour I'd be happy to tell you all about it), and I gave myself a deadline-- by the end of this school year, I want to have a complete draft. But finding time to write with six kids and a job and editing Segullah and being primary president isn't easy. So I need the motivational speeches.

I wrote a post about this book the other day at Segullah, and how it both inspires and scares me. This book could change your life, but probably not if you listen to the audiobook. I felt similar to how I felt when I listened to Brene Brown's Rising Strong-- that when you listen to an audiobook, it's hard to stop and think and take notes (I usually listen when I'm running or folding laundry or driving), so a lot of the stuff I want to remember gets missed. And it's probably better to mete out the motivation bit by bit. When I was a senior in high school, I spent the whole year collecting quotes, which I printed out on my word processor and then cut into tiny hearts and pinned to the bulletin board in my freshman dorm room. I feel like I could pin a whole board of quotes from this book that would be useful to me as a writer, but now I've forgotten all of them. Never fear, though, Gilbert has a podcast that serves as a companion to the book, and I'm waiting to listen to the first episode when I need an extra dash of motivation.

Book Review: This is Water by David Foster Wallace

Title: This is Water
Author: David Foster Wallace
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: language

So This is Water isn't really a book; it's really the transcript of a graduation speech Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. My husband is a huge fan of David Foster Wallace, and although he has never tackled Invisible Jest, I think that he wanted to complete the body of Wallace's nonfiction and bought this. The main jist of the speech is that we should not be selfish as adults, and that compassion is more important than the conventional markers for success. We made our older kids sit down and read this with us. One of the hard things is that he talks about suicide at length in This is Water, which was given just three years before his own suicide.

Book Review: Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson

Title: Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
Author: Robert Kurson
Enjoyment Rating:
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Maybe some swearing. A pretty clean read.

John Chatterton is a world famous diver. John Mattera, a New Jersey tough guy with connections to the mob and a mind for history. Together, they decided to find The Golden Fleece, the famed ship captained by the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. They narrow their search to a bay off the coast of the Dominican Republic, but can they find the ship before the Dominican government revokes their rights to search? Robert Kurson's Pirate Hunters follows their quest.

I've never been a huge fan of pirates or scuba diving, so this book wasn't a natural fit for me. However, it came highly recommended from a number of sources, so I picked it up. I found it a bit of a struggle at first. The guys went to one place, then another then another, where they dived around a bit. They met some bad guys, they talked to some historians, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then, a little more than halfway through, Kurson spent time giving the reader background on Chatterton and Mattera, and now that I could connect with them as individuals, I was hooked. The story started to pick up quite a bit too, and I found the second half of Pirate Hunters pretty great.

Book Review: Rising Strong by Brene Brown

Title: Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.
Author: Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A little bit of swearing

I had never heard of Brene Brown until a few weeks ago, when shout-outs for her new book Rising Strong started showing up in my Instagram feed. Without knowing anything about her or what the book was about, I decided to use my September Audible credits to buy it. I trusted those friends that much. It turns out that Rising Strong is the companion book to Daring Greatly. In Daring Greatly, Brown encourages people to take risks and be vulnerable, and in Rising Strong, Brown talks about how to emerge from the inevitable failures of life.

I'm a little torn on the audio version of Daring Greatly. On the one hand, I think there's so much to be gained to hearing this book in Brown's voice, because her enthusiasm is infectious. On the other hand, I wish I had a hard copy of this book to mark the heck out of. I wanted to underline things so I could come back to them easily. So I would recommend and old-fashioned paper copy of this girl. I love the way that Brown practices what she preaches here and examines her own failures. She looks into the failures in her life (and in the lives of people around her) and shows how we grow when we're willing to admit when we're wrong and take the consequences for it. I've already ordered Rising Strong and I'm eager to immerse myself in that one as well.

Book Review: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

Title: The Light of the World
Author: Elizabeth Alexander
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: This book digs deeply into grief and loss

Poet and Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander expected April 4, 2012 to be a regular evening, juggling work and child care of her two boys, Solomon and Simon, with her husband, Ficre. Then, the bottom dropped out of their lives when Ficre, so healthy and full of life, suddenly died of a heart attack while exercising on the treadmill. The Light of the World is an elegy in prose, in which Alexander shows how Ficre, an Ethiopian painter and chef, brought color and spice to her life, and how she and her boys mourned and lived in the time just after his death.

I listened to The Light of the World in less than a day, and I would have listened to Alexander talk about Ficre and her love for him for ten times as long if she had written more. This isn't a whitewashed love story-- she's open and honest and raw about the imperfections of their life together, but that doesn't diminish the story-- it endeared me to them. I loved the inside view Alexander gave us into her life-- it takes a brave author to be willing to expose the private aspects of life, especially and love and grief and raising teenagers, and Alexander shows herself both wise and brave in The Light of the World.

Book Review: Do No Harm by Henry Marsh

Title: Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
Author: Henry Marsh
Enjoyment Rating; ****
Source: Hardback Copy
Content Alert: Possibly some swearing

Henry Marsh is an eminent London brain surgeon who writes about his experiences in Do No Harm. Marsh delves into individual cases, devoting a chapter to each, and talks about what he's learned, both in the operating theater and in life, from each one.

If Derek Shepherd is your idea of a brain surgeon, get ready for those assumptions to be tested by Henry Marsh. While I do think someone has to have a certain amount of self-confidence in order to cut into someone's head and take out pieces of their brain (especially when that person is alive), and Marsh does occasionally come off as self-important, he tends to focus a lot more on his failures here-- the cases that went wrong, the people that he tried to fix but couldn't, the cases he shouldn't have taken. Do No Harm feels a lot like a catalogue of regrets, and I think it takes a certain amount of self-awareness and humility to be able to write about your failures. This book was illuminating in illustrating some of the downfalls of the NHS in Great Britain, and the behind-the-scenes look at surgical protocols. It was also very humanizing to see Marsh talk about his relationships with patients and their families, especially when things did not go as planned.

Book Review: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Title: Modern Romance
Author: Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Holy cow, I must be getting old, because it seemed like every other word in this book was the f-word. And if the title didn't clue you in, this book is basically all about sex.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg look at the ways that dating and falling in love have changed in the modern era, focusing a lot on how technology (texting, online dating, tinder, and the like) and a prolonged period of early adulthood have changed relationships. Much of the research for this book was collected during Ansari's standup routines over the last few years.

First of all, the content of the book is fascinating. I met my husband in 1993, when we were both freshmen in college, and we got married in 1997, about a week before I got my first cell phone. It's amazing to me that although I'm not all that much older than Ansari, my dating experience could not have been more different. Ed and I met when we were eighteen, decided we liked each other, and the rest was history. According to Ansari, dating is a lot more complicated than that now, and social media and online dating muddy the waters and add some anxiety to what is, for many, an already anxious process. Ansari actually had members of the audience come up on stage and read their texts from potential romantic partners to the audience so everyone could give them feedback on subtle messages and subtext. Brilliant, right?

I've spent the summer watching Parks and Recreation, at the request of my teenage daughter. Unlike Annie, who is on her third watch of the show and can bust through an entire season in a weekend, I'm a little slower. I'm halfway through season four, and I go through phases where I adore Tom Haverford and where I loathe Tom Haverford, played by Aziz Ansari. I know that Tom Haverford and Aziz Ansari are not the same person, but in Modern Romance, I got the sense that Aziz Ansari is someone Tom Haverford would like to become, if he could get out of Pawnee, Indiana and into standup comedy clubs all over the world. I guess what I'm saying here is that I think I would have liked Modern Romance better if it had a little less Tom Haverford in it. A little less smooth music, a little less jokeyness, a little less f-bomb. The dating stuff? Fascinating. But Ansari plays the audiobook with a very heavy hand.

Book Review: Real Moms by Lisa Valentine Clark

Title: Real Moms: Making It Up As We Go
Author: Lisa Valentine Clark
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

Back when I was an English major at BYU, there was a girl in a lot of my classes who was all the things I wished I was-- she was beautiful, confident, smart, and hilarious. I know this because she commented frequently in class and because I also knew she was in the "The Garrens," a comedy troupe on campus. So when I saw that she'd written a book, I thought, "why not?"

Twenty years later, Lisa is still adorable, smart, and funny. The things she has to say in Real Moms about parenting five kids are not putting herself in the position of a parenting expert, but as someone trying to draw lessons from real life. It was a fine, fun read, as long as the reader isn't expecting to be more than entertained. The book is pretty short and I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but several weeks later, I barely remember anything other than that there are plenty of ways to be a good mom, that motherhood requires improvisation, that moms shouldn't lose themselves to their kids, and that hard work is more important than natural smarts.

Book Review: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn

Title: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Paperback Copy
Content Alert: Perhaps some mild swearing

American Kathleen Flinn was in her thirties and living the dream of working as an executive in London when she was laid off from her job. In the ultimate case of turning lemons into lemonade, Flinn decided to take the opportunity to change her life and finally move in with the guy she was dating long-distance, while indulging in her lifelong dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu, the world-famous cooking school in Paris. Then she wrote all about it in The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.

While chef training is notoriously challenging and hazing is seen as part of the experience, Flinn's experience at Le Cordon Bleu is mostly positive, focusing on Paris, friends, and her blossoming romance. Sure, some of the recipes are weird or disgusting, the chefs can be unforgiving and uncompromising, but that's to be expected. This book is more of a love story than a war story. It's definitely one that made me want to get in the kitchen, go to Paris, and nurture love and friendships.

Book Review: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Title: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Author: Atul Gawande
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Hardback Copy
Content Alert: A clean read

I don't have much up-close and personal experience with death. I can count the number of dead people I've seen on a couple of fingers and I've never been with someone as their spirit passed from this life. Because of Ed's profession, and after watching several of our grandparents undergo a slow decline in quality of life, I do have a fairly clear picture of how I do and don't want the end of my life to look. According to Atul Gawande's important book, Being Mortal, the process of aging and dying has become so separated from most of our daily lives and so messed up by the idea that doctors should prolong life as long as possible, that the end of many people's lives is much more difficult than it may have been in the past.

Gawande delves into personal experience (sharing stories about the deaths of his grandfather, his wife's grandmother and his own father), as well as a wealth of other stories about people in all different kinds of end-of-life care, ranging from hospitals to hospice to living with family to assisted living and nursing homes (or a combination of several of the above). Gawande's mission is to preserve quality of life for people at the end of their lives and to help their families have the support they need to make this happen. The book is engagingly-written and important, and will definitely help readers know about what the options are for end of life care and how they can integrate them into their lives and the lives of people they love.