Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss by Jenna Bush Hager

 

Do you enjoy memoirs?  What is your favorite memoir?

I love reading memoirs and autobiographies of first ladies and presidents.  I especially love reading about the first ladies and their families. I feel like you really get a different side of a president from their family.  I read and enjoyed Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush ten years ago or so.  I was happy to read her daughter Jenna’s memoir Everything Beautiful in its Time.  In particular, I found it interesting to read the perspective of a granddaughter and daughter of a president.

Everything Beautiful in Its Time is a love letter from Jenna Bush Hager to her grandparents.  She lost three of her four grandparents in a little over a year’s time.  This memoir is her reflections on the lives her grandparents and the end of their lives.  I found the book to be very relatable as Hager struggles to balance everything as a working mother and also work through her grief.  It also gave me an inner look at the Bush family.  In a time when politics has become very enflamed, it was nice to read about a family trying to do their best for each other and for their country.  This was a touching story of a family filled with humor and love.  Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down and read through it quickly.  I wanted more.  I need to check out Jenna Bush Hager’s other novels.

Favorite Quotes:

“Loving our neighbor should not be a controversial political stance.”

“It isn’t courageous to do the right things.”

Overall, Everything Beautiful in Its Time is a touching book that celebrates family and what is really important in life.

Book Source:  A Review Copy from William Morrow.  Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World by Fredrik Backman

Title: Things My Son Needs to Know About the World

Author: Fredrik Backman

Read by:  Santino Fontana

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Length: Approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.  Thank-you!

Fredrik Backman, author of such novel’s as A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Tells Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, has put together a sort collection of essays on things he would like his so to know about the world.  The book was an often-hilarious look into life as a father.

I enjoyed that Backman must be around my age so I loved all of his cultural references.  As a parent myself, I found myself laughing and nodding along with his musings.  I liked the insight into his life.  Even though Backman is a famous author, his life seems very low key and familiar. I also sensed the love he has for his wife and his son.

I’ll admit that I was annoyed when the book went into a detailed monologue about pro wrestling which I cared nothing for.  The book bounced around at times.  It seemed pretty random.  I was amused by different segments, but a lot of other segments seemed to be complaints about his son or how hard it is to be a father/husband.  That didn’t seem like “Things My Son Needs to Know About the World.”

Santino Fontana was a good narrator of the audiobook and this short audiobook didn’t take long to listen to on my daily commute.

Overall, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World has some funny moments, but overall it was an inconsistent collection of vignettes about fatherhood.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson

Title: 12 Rules for Life:  An Antidote to Chaos

Author: Jordan B. Peterson

Read by:  Overture read by Norman Doidge, Book read by the Author

Publisher: Random House

Length: Approximately 15 hours and 40 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com (and hard cover copy from the library)

12 Rules for Life is apparently a very popular book, but it was a “did not complete” book for me.  I tried reading the book itself first and then switched to audiobook.  It read so much like a textbook to me that I had to force myself to read. The audiobook was better with it coming across more as a lecture delivered by the author. This was a January selection for the Kewaunee Library Book Club. It prompted a good discussion at book club. 

The 12 Rules for Life were as follows.

Rule 1.  Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Rule 2.  Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

Rule 3.  Make friends with people who want the best for you.

Rule 4.  Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

Rule 5.  Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

Rule 6.  Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

Rule 7.  Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

Rule 8.  Tell the truth – or at least, don’t lie.

Rule 9.  Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.

Rule 10. Be precise in your speech.

Rule 11.  Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

Rule 12.  Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

I made it through the first six rules before book club and chose not to complete it after book club.  The rules themselves are good common-sense rules, but the author has a lot of filler and can’t get to the point.  The author also seems to dislike women and it seemed like it was because he had a hard time getting a girlfriend as a teen.  Therefore, women are “too picky” and only looking for the biggest, strongest man.  That was too simplified for the complications of human relationships.  I was surprised to find out he was married.

Self-help is admittedly not my favorite genre.  I never took psychology in high school or college.  I have no interest in it, I am a hard science type of person.

I did notice at book club that those that watched the YouTube videos of the author seemed to like them and have a more favorable view.  I had not watched the videos myself.    A few people did read the entire book, but it appeared that the majority did not.  I felt bad as I usually always read an entire book for book club in order to have a good discussion, but this one did not work for me.

I did think it was ironic that one rule was about not judging people, but in the rule before about raising children, the author was very judgmental about other parents.  He had some good advice, but also a lot of weirdness about his thoughts on child rearing. This led book club to criticize “parents these days.” Sad sigh.  I am the youngest person currently in book club with everyone a generation ahead of me.  I pointed about that George Eliot had a section about how terrible “kids these days are” in Silas Mariner one hundred and fifty years ago.  Luckily that got book club off of that topic.

Favorite Quotes:

“The things you can see, with even a single open eye.  It’s no wonder that people want to stay blind.”

“A child who pays attention, instead of drifting, and can play, and does not whine, and is comical, but not annoying, and is trustworthy – that child will have friends wherever he goes.”

Overall, I am not sure why The 12 Rules for Life is such a popular book.  It needs an editor to have the arguments for the Rules much more concise and readable.

How to Raise a Smart Ass: Parenting that Should Not Be Tried At Home by Lucia Walinchus

Work has been extremely stressful the past couple of months. How to Raise a Smart Ass has been a perfect book to curl up to at night and get a good laugh.  Lucia tells her personal story of raising two young daughters with a new brother on the way.   Lucia is a professional taking the bar exam in many states as their young family moves from southern California to New York to Virginia and finally Oklahoma.  As a working mother myself, I identified strongly with Lucia trying to balance both life and raising a child.  I also worked from home the first six years of my oldest son’s life, so I particularly identified with the chapter “working parent.”

I loved that How to Raise a Smart Ass is told in short vignettes that are perfect for e-book reading and for giving me a quick laugh before passing out in exhaustion each night.  As a mother, I loved that Walinchus told everything with no holds barred, from the excitement of being pregnant and realizing that you can eat whatever you want for nine months to just how much time you spend breast feeding when you breast feed your baby.  

There were so many excellent stories and quotes in this book, but I’ve picked out a few of my favorites to share:

“We moved into a house that a 90-year old woman had just moved out of because we thought the optimal design aesthetic should be ‘What would Michael Jackson do?’”

“I drove to Roanoke, Virginia, to take the bar, because why have a bar exam in the most populated part of the state when you can inconvenience everyone with a fun road trip to nowhere?”

“At first you have children for high and lofty reasons.  You get to sculpt a part of the teach generation.  You get to teach a child what it means to be a responsible, honorable, industrious person in society.

You probably also have the equally laudable goal of producing a new cadre of helpers for your house.  Imagine, tiny things that you can create who will bring you a beer.  Dishwashers!  Oh, the possibilities.

But then they actually come out and you stop imagining what your child could do for others, and wonder if they will do things for themselves.  Maybe, just maybe, you tell yourself . . . I can get my kid to wipe her own ass.”

“Like any good middle-class American parent, I have high hopes of my kid going to college someday.  Which is why I put them in sports early.  How else will we afford it?”

“As a kid, I thought, the Christmas season is SO long.  How will I ever wait until Christmas?  As an adult I think, the Christmas season is SO short.  How will I ever get all this crap done before Christmas?”

Overall, How to Raise a Smart Ass is a witty, funny, book that any parent will relate to and enjoy.  I highly recommend it!