Week in Review - Books Reviews - Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training; Adam Stern - The People We Keep; Allison Larkin and Morningside Heights ; Joshua Henkin

Thank You Deb@ Reader Buzz

How was your week everyone?  Last weekend was enjoyable and we were able to change our walks up a bit and get in some nice views along the way.

The rest of the week was rather humid with some thunderstorms. I didn't even go to yoga this week but, I won't bore you with my swollen knee and icing saga.  Today our devices are powered up as Hurricane Henri is set to wreck havoc with the New England coast. Our last significant here was Hurricane Bob in 1991 (30 years ago.) This one is supposed to be slower moving but longer lasting winds and rain beginning Sunday. i'm hoping no trees come down and if power is lost it will be brief.

READING

This was a good reading week with lots of variety: I reviewed some children's books on Monday, finished a non fiction, and listened to some good fiction on audio (well except for the Harold Robbins one).

Here's what I finished this week:

1. North and South: The Tale of Two Hemispheres;  Sandra Morris - 5/5 
2. Picturing a Nation: The Great Depression's Finest Photographers Introduce America to Itself; Martin Sandler - 5/5
3. Dreams Die First; Harold Robbins - 1.5/5 - Setting: CA and LasVegas, NV
4. Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training; Adam Stern - NF -  4/5
5. The People We Keep; Allison Larkin - 3.5/5 Setting: Upstate New York
6. Morningside Heights ; Joshua Henkin - 4.5/5 Setting: New York City

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training; Adam Stern

Mariner Books - 2021

eGalley provided at no cost by Marriner Books and Edelweiss

Rating - 4/5 stars

My Thoughts - Adam Stern's memoir gives reader insight into his four years as a psychiatry resident at Harvard in 2010. He was one of fifteen residents in the program which was referred to by the faculty as "The Golden Class. "  

I thought it was interesting how a young man who had achieved so much, at times he felt like he never measured up. The memoir also provided a look at the challenges he and other residents faced and the unique issues that were not something one would learn from a medical text book.  My favorite part about the memoir were the aspects in which he shared some stories about troubled individuals who were hoping someone could relieve their mental anguish and make their life more bearable. 

I thought the memoir was very well-written and a worthwhile read.even though It wasn't exactly what I was expecting as I thought it would feature more in-depth case studies similar to those found in books like Maybe You Should Talk to Someone; Gottlieb and Good Morning, Monster; Gildiner and Burgess. 

The People We Keep; Allison Larkin

Simon & Schuster Audio - 2021

Narrator: Julia Whelan (very good)

audio download provided at no cost by Simon & Schuster Audio

Rating - 3.5/5 stars

My Thoughts: Sixteen year old April Sawicki hasn't had a happy childhood but music has always been important to her. Her mother took off leaving her with her uncaring and sometimes abusive father. They lived in a motor-less motor home he won in a poker game. April has been pretty much raised by her father's girlfriend.  One day after a fight with her father she decides she's had enough of Little River and heads for Ithaca where she hopes to find work and somehow survive and start a new life. It's at a local coffee shop that she meets some people who are kind to her and make her feel that she fits in. However, when people have disappointed you all of your life, it's difficult to learn to trust when fleeing seems what sometimes feel best. Will April ever find what she longs for?

This is a story that got off to a very slow start for me. It took me a while to connect with April who was so used to keeping people at a distance because of what she had endured. She makes some bad choices along the way but once she begins to see that there are people who really do care about her, perhaps she will get a chance for a happy life. 

Morningside Heights; Joshua Henkin

Random House Audio - 2021

Narrator: Kathe Mazur and Shane Baker (very good)

audio download from my public library

Rating - 4.5/5 stars

My Thoughts: Spence Robbins was a well-respected English professor at Columbia University. It's where he met wife Pru Steiner when she was one of his students, Pru and Spence have a daughter together who is a med student in California. Spence also has an adult son named Arlo with Linda one of his former students. Linda was about of a free spirit moving from place to place so except for two years that Arlo lived with Spence when he was a teen, the two never had much of a father-son relationship.

When Pru is 51 and Spence is 57 he is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.  This is a story of how life can change, sometimes in the blink of an eye and how loved ones act, react and move forward. I loved this story and all of the characters from Pru and Spence to Arlo and Sarah and even the the wonderful caregiver who eventually was hired to help care for Spence. This is a story that makes readers realize that rich or poor, intelligent or average, everyone at some point has the struggles and disappointments.  The tender storyline was so well crafted. I was quite moved by both the story and the wonderful audio narration as well.  Don't miss it!

Current Reads

( good info & well organized)

                                                                                                                                            (just okay so far)

  Review coming on Monday

(this one is well-written but sad)

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training; Adam Stern, MD

Welcome to First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews. 

Each week readers post the first paragraph (or 2) of a book we are reading or plan to read.  

                             Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training; Adam Stern, MD

                                                           Mariner Books - July 2021

Prologue

"I have a recurring dream in which I look down and notice for the first time that I'm soaring above the earth. I'm exhilarated but also filled with fear.  I don't know how I made it off the ground, and the act of looking down seems to cause me to lose whatever momentum it was that propelled my upward.  I need to figure out how to keep moving before gravity pulls me back to earth, ending in a terrible crash.  Sometimes I awaken just as I begin to fall, and other times the dream ends with my discovery of an unexpected solution.  The version that gives me the most comfort is when I look to one side or the other and notice that I'm not alone.  In those moments, when I see someone floating right next to me, my fear still exists, but its more surmountable.  Maybe we can figure this out together.

After reading far too many thrillers, I felt like I needed to try something different so I chose this memoir.  What do you think - read more or pass? 

Pachinko; Min Jin Lee and What We Owe. G Hashemzadeh Bonde

TITLE: Pachinko
AUTHOR:  Min Jin Lee

PUBLISHER:  Hachette Audio

PUB. YEAR: 2017

SETTING:  Korea and Japan
FORMAT:  - audio - library Playaway (18+ hours)
RATING: 4.5/5


Pachinko is a sprawling family saga that spans 5 generations from 1910 through 1989.

Sunja is the only daughter of a widow who runs a boarding house in a small fishing village in Korea. Still a teen, Sunja learns she is pregnant by Kohhansu, a successful business man. What she didn't realize was that he was a married man with a wife and children back in Japan.  He tells her he cannot marry her but is willing to care for her and the child. Angry that about his lies, she refuses his help, fully aware of the shame she will face as an unwed mother. When a kind, but ill, pastor asks her to marry him, she moves to Japan to begin a new chapter of her life.

This story is large in scope with a fairly large number of characters as well but, the story is told in a way that really drew me in from the very start and held my interest throughout. Beautifully written, very human characters and with themes such as: discrimination, poverty, sacrifice and the consequences of war, I really loved this one. The many characters required concentration while listening to this story. 

Allison Hirto did an excellent job narrating this audio. This would make a fabulous book club choice as there is plenty to discuss.Highly recommended.

TITLE: What We Owe
AUTHOR:  Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde

PUBLISHER:  Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

PUB. YEAR: 2018

SETTING:  Iran and Sweden
FORMAT:  - ARC/print -  (200 pp)
RATING: 3.5/5

I started this short book late in 2018 but I found it too sad at the time so I never finished it. I remembered that writing was very good and it was only (200 pp) and, since I did commit to reading it I gave it another go last weekend. 

Nahid is a very angry 50 year old woman diagnosed with stage 4, ovarian cancer; she's been given less than 6 months to live.  As she looks back on her life growing up in Iran, it's clear she has reasons to be angry. She was married off at age 9, pregnant at age 12, and the mother of 7 by age 37. She was an activist, a revolutionary and later was a refugee living in Sweden.

The story opens with Aram, Nahid's daughter, pregnant with her first child and dealing with the loss of her father, the man who Nahid was divorced from.  Unfortunately, Aram is the recipient of much of her mother's often misplaced anger.

I wanted to feel for Nahid given all that she had been through but found it hard to do so even though as I read I began to understand her regrets and why she was the way she was. This was just a tough novel for me and I think I couldn't appreciate the story more because it was so sad.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - What We Owe; Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde

Each Tuesday, Vicki, from I’d Rather Be At The Beach hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where  readers post the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book that they are reading or plan to read.

What We Owe; Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde

Mariner Books - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2018

"I'VE ALWAYS CARRIED MY DEATH WITH ME. Perhaps saying so is trite, an observation the dying always make.  But I'm not like other people, in this as in everything else, or so I like to believe.  And, I do believe it, truly. I said as much when Masood died.  Our time was always borrowed. We weren't suppose to be alive.  We should have died in the revolution.  In its aftermath. In the war. But I was given thirty more years.  More than half my life.  It's a considerable length of time, something to be grateful for.  The same length of time, something to be grateful for.  The same length as my daughter's life. Yes, that's one way to see it.  I was allowed to create her.  But she didn't need me this long.  No one did. You think because you are a parent, you're needed.  It's not true.  People find a way to get by.  Who says I was worth more than the trouble I caused?  I don't believe it.  I'm not the type who gives more than I take.  I should be.  I'm a mother, after all.  It's my job to bear the weight, bear it for others. But I never have, not for anyone."

What do you think?  It's a translated work but, I decided to try this one after reading several favorable reviews. I'll be starting it this week.

If You Left; Ashley Prentice Norton

If You Left; Ashley Prentice Norton

Mariner Books - 2016

If You Left is the story of a marriage, a marriage that begins with promise until mental illness surfaces.  Oliver and Althea Willows seem to have a good marriage, at least to some outsiders. They live in Manhattan and have a summer home at the beach but, Althea has suffered from mental illness, bipolar disorder, for most of their marriage.  Throughout each suicide attempt, and hospitalization, her husband has been her rock.  Despite her illness, Oliver wants to have a child but, Althea's daily cocktail of mood meds would likely affect a fetus.  Although Althea isn't sure she could handle motherhood, she wants to please her husband so they decide to adopt a child.

Clem (Clementine) enters their lives and as Althea suspected, mothering does not come naturally to her and she finds the role extremely difficult. Oliver thinks she needs to bond with their daughter so suggests that the two of them spend the summer at their beach house.  Things don't go exactly as planned as Clem has already learned to amuse herself.   Mother and daughter's relationship remains strained, causing more difficulties in an already shaky marriage.

Without saying too much more, I'll just say that at times both of these adults made me mad. I felt sorry for the daughter they adopted.  The author did a great job revealing what living with manic depression might be like and the toll it takes on a relationship.  I must say I wasn't a fan of the writing style, First, there weren't any chapters and the story sometimes felt like one long conversation, yet quotation marks weren't used. In addition, the POV changed quiet a bit.

Overall, I think this story had a lot of potential but, left me a bit disappointed.

3.5/5 starts

(review copy)

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - If You Left; Ashley Prentice Norton

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where I share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book that I'm reading or plan to read soon.  

If You Left; Ashley Prentice Norton

Mariner Books - 2016

Intro

"IT MUST HAVE been the first or second week of October by then, or maybe even the third, she didn't know and hadn't really cared.  But on that day, time --or, rather, timing--suddenly mattered.  Oliver had left only ten minutes earlier to drop Clem at school, but not before kissing Althea on the head and gently pulling the bedroom door closed, thinking she was still asleep.  Afterward, he was going to a breakfast meeting at the W Hotel for Spectacle, the company he had started right out of graduate school and that now made millions selling eight-hundred-dollar sunglasses.  But Oliver often forgot something and he could easily return to the loft and catch her.  She decided to wait another five minutes, which, for her, was an eternity."

What do you think -- keep reading or pass? 
(Feel free to join in this week by posting your intro below?

A Few New Books

A few new books arrived last week which sound really good to me. I'm particularly interested in Never a Dull Moment 1971: The Year that Rock Exploded (Henry Holt & Co), since I do know a thing or two about that time period - it's the year I graduated from high school (and didn't we think we knew it all when we were teens?)

The other two which I am also anxious to try are:

• If You Left; Ashley Prentice Norton (Mariner Books)
• The Memory of Lemon; Judith Fertig (Berkley)

Have you tried any of these yet?

New Books

Yup, another week of new books. Just when I donate a bag of books more seem to find their way back inside.  The top picture are ones that arrived by mail, and the bottom picture is $3.50 worth from a library booksale yesterday~~ how could I resist?

• The Santa Claus Murder; Mavis Doriel Hay - Poison Pen Press (sent by publisher)
• Small Blessings; Martha Woodroof - St. Martin's Press (sent by publisher)
• An Accident in August; Lawrence Cosse - Europa Edition (purchase)
• Off Shore; Penelope Fitzgerald - booksale - Mariner Books
• The Tooth Fairy; Graham Joyce - booksale - Tor Books
• Indigo; Graham Joyce - booksale - Washington Square Press
• Red Leaves; Paulina Simons - booksale - St. Martin's Press

Have you read any of these titles or authors?