Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother -- #22

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua
Rating: 3 stars

I have very conflicting feelings about this book. I tried to let it stew over night so I would be more prepared to write this review today, but it only helped marginally. Ah. Where to even begin?

Amy Chua is the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrant parents. She wrote this book as a way of trying to explain what it is to be what she calls 'a Chinese mother,' though she readily admits that there are mothers (and fathers) of all ethnicities that have the qualities she is labeling Chinese. It's just that Chinese mothers are way better at it. And possibly were the first to ever act like that. Or something. Just look at all the Chinese kids who are super musical prodigies and ridiculously smart at such young ages! See?!

OK, joking aside, I completely acknowledge that there are TONS of extremely gifted and talented and hardworking Chinese youth. I will also acknowledge that it is very obvious that these youth, wherever they are raised, have different childhoods than what I'd call a typical Western childhood. I imagine that Chua's depiction of Chinese motherhood is accurate and that Chinese mothers really are the driving force behind much of the successes enjoyed by these prodigies. (I hope that the majority of these children are at least mostly enjoying the ride, and I hope that they are able to look back on their childhood and feel good.)

None of that is what I have a problem with.

My problem lies in Chua's attitude throughout this book. She is alternately a martyr and a saint, whimpering about how her life is so hard because it has to be that way, because she must be a "Chinese mother" and so she doesn't get to just have fun with her daughters like Western mothers. She must endure them hating her so that they will have a better future. She must have shouting and screaming and death threat matches with her second daughter who refuses to practice the violin... for six hours straight. She must literally call her daughter 'garbage' for being disrespectful, because that is what her father did to her and look how she turned out. Right?

Further, she is completely and unabashedly ethnocentric. She pulls no punches with this-- she thinks the Western style of parenting is lousy and creates lazy and ignorant adults. I think it's fine and well and good to think that the way you were raised is awesome, but when you let that bleed over into thinking that other parents are bad parents because they have play dates? Um, it's time to reevaluate. How about recognizing that different is not always worse? Sometimes it's just different.

Third. She claims repeatedly that she does everything she does for her daughters-- not a bit of it for herself. But I just don't buy it. Two examples stand out to me. The first is when her second daughter is slowly starting to rebel against the craziness of her Chinese mother. Lulu happens to play the violin, an instrument Amy selected herself and forced upon Lulu at a very young age, and one that Lulu happens to excel at. But by the time Lulu is 12 and 13, she is really starting to strain against her mom's method of parenting. She wants to be able to make her own decisions some of the time. And it is also at this time that Amy decides, of course, the next thing to do is force Lulu to audition for Juilliard's pre-college program-- a super exclusive and hard-to-get-into program for young musicians. Lulu isn't planning to become a professional violinist. She isn't planning to go to Juilliard. She is having a hard time even maintaining the drive to continue in her youth orchestra. Amy doesn't want any of those things for her either, but Amy presses onward, even though Lulu's private music tutors don't think she is ready. When people ask Amy why she is doing this, why she even wants Lulu to audition for the program, Amy has no answer. She doesn't know why she is forcing this upon her daughter. Huh?

The next scenario happened roughly around the same time, when the family took a vacation to Russia. There they are, the first afternoon, sitting in a cafe in Red Square. When Amy and her husband Jed decide to order caviar, Lulu says she doesn't want any. She's 13. That seems like a reasonable response, right? But Amy flips. She orders Lulu to eat it. She threatens Lulu. She tells her she is a horrible daughter. FOR NOT EATING ANY CAVIAR. Amy pushes Lulu so hard that Lulu breaks. She yells and throws glasses. She has had it. And then Amy gets up and runs away. Runs away, across Red Square. Because she was unable to force her daughter to eat a piece of caviar, and so she has failed at motherhood.

By this time, I am convinced that Amy is convinced that being able to control your children is what it means to be a good parent. And so she is continuously making decisions for her girls and just expecting them to do whatever she wants. Even eat some random caviar in the middle of Russia. That has nothing to do with her daughter's futures or how talented they are, yet Amy cannot handle them saying no to her. There is story after story where Amy just decides what Lulu is going to do, so many small things that wouldn't affect anything if she just let Lulu have her way, but she can't back down.

The good news is that by the end of the book, Amy has figured out that the Chinese mother method of parenting is not a good fit for Lulu. Her older daughter, Sophia, has no problem with it. She has always done as Amy asked and she has the honors to show for it. She has the personality for it. Lulu does not. And so Amy is finally able to transition into a slightly different style of mothering for Lulu. She even lets Lulu cut down on her violin studies so that she can pursue tennis, something she has chosen for herself. It is a pretty satisfying transition to watch (read), even if the journey is harrowing.

My main question after finishing this book is, what are Chinese mothers in China like? I know not all of them can be like Chua describes here. Is this mainly a Chinese-American way of mothering? It kind of seems that way. Is it because they feel like they have something to prove? At points in the book it seemed like Chua was leaning towards that idea, but she never comes out with it. So I don't know.

I thought the book was fascinating, even if it was infuriating at times. I think my jaw dropped more than a few times, reading about how Chua regularly treats her daughters. I have to give her credit for laying her life bare like she did. That can't have been too easy. She knew she would come under intense criticism when this book hit the shelves. The Western way of parenting is just so radically different-- honestly, I think a lot of Western parents (and children) would label abusive much of what Chua labels good parenting. Me? Well, I don't think Western parenting is perfect by any means. I certainly don't think Chua's method of parenting, whether you call it Chinese or not, is perfect by a long shot. As usual, the truth/ideal is somewhere in the middle.

I agree with Chua that most children don't/won't want to do something unless they are good at it, and they will not get good at it unless they work at it, and they don't/won't want to work unless they are good at it. It's a downward spiral. So, if you really want your child to excel at something, at least at the beginning you are going to have to be the driving force behind their practicing. I see the logic in that.

I don't, however, see the truth in the belief that if your child is not playing at Carnegie Hall by the age of 14, she hasn't succeeded. Or that if your child ever gets an A- she has dishonored her family. I'm just not going down that road. And I think Vivian is going to turn out fine. Play dates and all.

3 stars-- I liked it. Read it someday.

The Center of Everything -- #21

Author: Laura Moriarty
Rating: 5 stars

10-year-old Evelyn Bucknow lives in the center of Kansas, in the center of the United States, in the center of the world map that hangs on the wall of her 4th grade classroom. Growing up in a cheap apartment next to the highway with her single mother (who is hardly more than a child herself, at times), Evelyn must learn to navigate life and love, birth and death, religion and science, right and wrong, truth and lies...pretty much by herself, and figure out who she really is in the process.

This is a coming of age novel by a first-time writer with an awesome name, (Laura Moriarty. How cool is that?) and it is an incredible debut. Her writing is wonderful-- I could see the scenes-- the people, the places-- in my mind. It was so easy to visualize everything. I love that.

Evelyn is such a fun protagonist. Her internal monologues are great. She is so naive at times, so innocent, so earnestly wanting to do and be good... and so sadly ignorant at other times. She has many influences pulling her every which way, and no solid person to look to who can really help her figure out which way is the right way. Her mother had her in high school and it seems never really grew up. Affairs with married men don't help things. Evelyn's grandmother could be that solid person, but her answer to everything is God and/or the Bible, and Evelyn quickly learns that religion is not all there is to life.

I love how this book goes from Evelyn as a 10-year-old all the way through high school. I love seeing characters and even a place as time passes. I love how I was so frustrated with Evelyn's mom at the beginning of the book, but by the end she had grown and developed, and I was so impressed with some of the things she did. I love the lessons Evelyn learns, and the way she figures things out. There were a few times when it seemed like Evelyn was ignorant of things she surely would have known by that age, but I had to remind myself of just how sheltered her life had been.

One critic on the back of the book likened this novel to an updated version of To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but the first person narration coming from a young girl does remind me of TKAM. (Nothing will ever approach TKAM for me, though, so my differing opinion isn't too surprising.)

Basically, I loved this book and I want to own it. Be warned, there is some language. I'd estimate 5-10 F-words scattered throughout the book. I didn't find it gratuitous at all. It was just plain good.

Everything Is Fine.

#20: Everything Is Fine by Ann Dee Ellis

Turns out this book is another super quick read, and I liked this one even more than TIWID. A solid four stars.

In a style choice similar to that of TIWID, Ellis sets up this story with a young adolescent protagonist (Mazeline aka Mazzy) who is slogging through the aftermath of a traumatic event. This time, however, The Event is not as shrouded in mystery, and you don't have to go very many pages in before you can surmise that Mazzy had a younger sister, Olivia, who recently died. While the specific details surrounding her death aren't given until closer to the end, I quite liked that there wasn't a Huge Mystery looming over me the entire time. I could understand more of the behaviors of the central characters instead of just thinking they were lazy and neglectful individuals.

Mazzy has a lot of quirks and just plain odd behaviors, but she still seemed authentic to me. The book doesn't give her an exact age, but my guess is around 13. I can definitely see a 13-year-old, particularly one who has been dealing with the things Mazzy has been dealing with, acting like she does.

If you are looking for a quick read, pick this one up. I'd recommend it over TIWID, though I know other readers would say the opposite. I think the most common criticism I'v seen about this book is that it's not realistic, but I disagree. Things can get a little crazy when a family faces a tragedy like the one at the center of this book. Grief can turn a world upside down. There isn't always an easy solution. There is not always a hero who comes in and saves the day. People, even parents who are supposed to be responsible and capable, make poor choices. Sometimes they let themselves slip away from the people they love and the children they should be watching over. Sometimes even friends and neighbors drop the ball.

And with this, I'm finally kind of caught up on my reading. In order to stay caught up, I'll have to read another book before Saturday... which isn't likely. But I'll enjoy the moment.

Lotsa books . . .

So I've read several books since last posting. I haven't done great reviewing them as I read them, so anyway here goes.

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas
Read this number for book club. It's an odd little book, part horticultural thriller (no, seriously) and part political intrique and part love story. I believe it's Dumas' last book and it's definitely not the swashbuckling tale of derring-do on par with The Three Musketeers. I enjoyed it and it's a free Kindle book, so that was a bonus. Some good guys die, another good guy is wrongly accused, the bad guy ultimately gets his just deserts, and the lovers end up together. Three stars.

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Martin
After watching the boob-riddled HBO series, I was eager to read the book (which has significantly fewer boobs). It's better than the series (shocker), though the TV series more or less follows the book blow by blow. It's written from a variety of perspectives a la Faulkner As I Lay Dying, and it's remarkably effective. I dare you not to love Arya. I double dare you not to hate Joffrey. I'm reading the second right now. The books are gigantic, so it's taking some time. Four stars.

Dispirited by Luisa Perkins
I read this because it was reviewed by a blogger I follow. I doubt I would have stumbled across it otherwise, but I'm glad I did. It's a surprisingly well-written book of speculative fiction. Dispirited is written by an LDS author and that will likely be obvious to anybody familiar with our theology—she draws some aspects of the fictitious world directly from LDS concepts of heaven and hell.

Like the review I read, I'm impressed with how well the author is able to write from the perspective of teenagers and children without them coming across as precious or annoyingly precocious. The main character is a fairly typical teenager but she's clever and well-read and resourceful and I like her. Anyway, it's a quick read and deliciously creepy if you're into that kind of thing. Four stars.

#19... or the quickest read ever.

This Is What I Did by Ann Dee Ellis

I'll tell you right off the bat, this book is one of those young adult novels where Something Traumatic happened in the past of the protagonist but you, the reader, don't know what It is. The story skirts around It, but frequently hints at It, giving you bits and pieces until finally It's explained towards the end.

Sometimes I find that style choice annoying. This time I think it worked.

This book is very short. I checked it out from the library this morning and read it while watching Vivian run around the living room. A great read if you want something quick and easy but that still gives you some substance. I also checked out Everything Is Fine by the same author, which looks to be about the same size, so you will likely be hearing from me about it in the near future.

Please excuse the brevity of this review-- I only had a spare few minutes but I wanted to get this up.

3.5 stars

Oh, it also happens to have one of the coolest covers I've seen in a while:

Move over paranormal romance, make way for post-apocalyptic love triangles...

My 18th read of 2012 was The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I give it one star. And I'll tell you why.

OK, so as most of you probably know, I'm not enamored with the paranormal romance genre. I kind of shudder when I walk past that section at B&N, wishing it didn't exist. I just don't dig it. No offense if it is your thang. This book keeps the romance part-- letting us experience another super awesome love triangle-- but branches off down post-apocalyptic lane into zombie territory.

The protagonist is a girl named Mary whom I found always fickle but only mostly ridiculous. She was born and has grown up in a small village in the middle (maybe?) of a forest known as the Forest of Hands and Teeth because of the zombie population that inhabits it. The village is kind of run by the Guardians who are really the puppets of the Sisterhood-- which I gathered were a group of women kind of like nuns who control everyone and everything, making sure everyone follows the rules but also keeping the people fed and clothed and sheltered. The only Sister you really get to know is the big kahuna, Sister Tabitha.

Sidenote: I kind of thought of M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "The Village," as I read this, if that rings any bells for anyone.

OK, so back to Mary. She is caught in a love triangle when a childhood friend, Harry, whom she is apparently not interested in at all, begins to show interest. Before anything can happen, though, Mary's mother (stricken by grief b/c her husband is gone) gets too close to the fence surrounding the village (probably because she was searching for her husband among the zombies), is presumably bitten by one of the Unconsecrated (aka zombies) and becomes Infected.

Oh, and turns out, in this world, a zombie bite eventually causes death followed by a coming back to life, whereupon one is a zombie, or Unconsecrated, as the village calls it. A zombie bite can work quickly or slowly, depending on the severity. If there is time, the Infected one can choose death so as to never experience the change, or they can ask to be allowed to become Unconsecrated and released into the Forest. Mary's mother chooses the latter, presumably because she hopes to find her husband out there and live a zombie life together. I can't even believe I'm typing this.

Mary watches this process happen to her mother, and is then released into the hands of the Sisterhood so she can take time to mentally recover.

And that is only the first two short chapters.

What follows this is even more emotionally and mentally exhausting. You meet Travis, Harry's younger brother and the object of Mary's affections. You meet Cass, Mary's BFF and the one who is engaged to Travis but loves Harry. Huh? Oh, you also meet Jed, Mary's brother, and his wife Beth who is Harry's and Travis's sister.

This group, along with an orphan boy, venture out of the village along fenced-in pathways that, for reasons unknown to me (and everyone else), no one in the village has ever gone down, after their village's fences are breached and the Unconsecrated come flooding in.

There is a lot of zombie killing. There is a lot of confusion and sighing and crying and softly touching one another's faces...in the rain.

Mary's main motivation throughout all of this is to see the ocean, which she isn't sure actually exists but which her mother used to tell her stories/legends about. There even comes a point when she explicitly says she wants to see the ocean more than she wants Travis, who is supposed to be the love of her life. Um...

I don't know what else to say about this book. It has an intriguing premise, but I found it poorly executed. I got so sick of Mary's internal dialog about being surrounded by death, and hopelessness, but the ocean!, and on and on. I felt like the whole book was one adolescent emotional breakdown after another. Too much for me.

I guess there are more books to come, though I don't know if it's a continuation or not because the little excerpt included at the end of the book seemed to have different characters. Either way, I will not be reading any more of this tale.

17: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

My first venture into the writing of Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker is a great novel. I love Sanderson's writing style, and I will definitely be reading more of his work in the future. I can see why he was chosen to continue Robert Jordan's unfinished series. Speaking of, for any Wheel of Time readers out there who have yet to reach his contribution to the series, I give a full vote of confidence that it's going to be awesome. For the WoT readers who have read his addition, feel free to let me know in the comments what you thought. I need to finish that series one of these days...

But back to the book. Sanderson created a completely new world in this novel, which isn't the easiest thing to do if you've read much fantasy. Sanderson nails it. When I first read the description of this book, I admit I was a bit hesitant. It just sounded kind of weird and a little too far-fetched. I mean, yeah, most fantasy worlds are going to be far-fetched, but this one seemed pretty out there. Fortunately, Sanderson is amazing and pulled it off.

Here is a brief sneak peak, from Goodreads:

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breaththat can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker. 

Right? Yeah. The description didn't immediately grab me. But once I started reading, it didn't take long at all for me to get sucked in. The chapters rotate perspectives and I think I was most engaged in Siri's life, though Lightsong comes in a close second. Once you near the end and get close to the resolution of everything, it really gets exciting. I don't want to say too much. Just read it. A resounding four stars.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone-- Laini Taylor

After the review and recommendation of Kristen Shill, I added Daughter of Smoke and Bone to my to-read list on Goodreads. I am so glad I did. I needed a little YA action in my life, and this was a great read. It wasn't at all what I expected, and it actually took me a good bit to really get into the story. But once I did, I was in. Laini Taylor has crafted quite an interesting world, and I can't wait to see what happens in the next book. What is Karou going to do next?! Is Brimstone (and the other chimaera) really dead?! Etc.

Note: While I can call this a YA novel without reservations, I would recommend it for the older side of YA. It's a bit darker and a bit more mature than some of the YA I've read recently.

This was my 16th read of 2012. I give it four stars.

Ellie's Book #8: The Woman in White

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

****

This was a re-read for my book club, but it's a book I love. The first time I read this book, I was reading it online on Project Gutenberg during my breaks at work. My husband and I were getting ready to move around this same time, and the move date (when we'd be without internet for a couple of days) coincided with my reaching the part where Things Start to Get Really Good. I was also going to be taking a couple of days off work for both the move and my little sister's wedding (yeah, I know, we have *great* timing), and I could not bear the thought of waiting that long to find out what happened, so I ended up taking time out from packing to run to three bookstores to find a copy because the first two were out. 

And I'm glad I did. I think this was my fifth read of this book (yeah, I re-read a lot. I'll discuss that in another post sometime) and the first time reading it with the specific plan of discussing it with other people, so it was fun to see what themes I picked up on this time that I had missed before or forgotten about. 

This book is an early mystery novel of sorts, involving a strange woman in white, two half-sisters, a drawing teacher, a brutish baronet, an invalid uncle, assorted old ladies and a sinister count. Add mistaken identities, lunatic asylums, trained white mice, kidnapping, doomed love, sea voyages, attempted murder, arson, forgery, slander, scandal, and opera-loving Italians of all shapes and sizes to the mix and you have the makings of 400-ish pages of a whole lot of fun.

What can I say? I can't really sum up the plot of this book succinctly, partly because Collins is anything but succinct. It's told as a series of first-person narratives, ostensibly so that no part of the story is given second- or third-hand; each part of the story is related by an individual who was actually there to see it or take part. This is great but it means that when Walter is telling the story we have to listen to a lot of extraneous matter about how wonderful and beautiful and perfect Laura is, and when Marian is telling the story we have to listen to a lot of (unconvincing) regrets about how she can't do anything to save them because she is only a weak woman.

Let me take a break here to say the lady doth protest too much. Wilkie Collins, in Marian Halcombe, appears to have created a character he didn't quite know what to do with or how to control. She's smart, she's sassy, she's resourceful, she's basically awesome, but he needed Walter to be in love with Laura instead, you know, for plot reasons, so it feels like he had to keep artificially hobbling Marian to keep her from becoming the main love interest. To do this he specifies that she is ugly (yes, he even goes so far as to give her a bit of a mustache) and keeps having her remind us all that she is only a woman, and what can women do? A heck of a lot, Marian, as you keep showing at every turn. Seriously, Laura's great and all, but you're the heroine of this story in my book and only the VILLAIN has the sense to see it. Yeah, you read that right, the hero is in love with bland and actually-helpless and feminine to the core Laura, while the villain has the good sense to fall madly in love with spunky Marian.  (Actually, in the not-really-faithful-at-all 1930's movie adaptation, the filmmakers DID make Marian the main love interest, kind of the same way that people can't help but tinker with Fanny Price. This was possible because in the movie Marian did not have a mustache.) 

Wilkie, your character was too good for you, and I hope you realize it. (I think you do, because you do have Walter, in his brief pauses between rhapsodizing on Laura's perfections, mention how amazing a person and what a staunch ally and good friend Marian is. And hey, she's the one he takes into his confidence when plotting! Seriously, the only thing keeping this woman from taking over the show is that tacked-on mustache. In my mind I see it kind of like a Mr. Potato Head accessory; just shoved on there as an afterthought once the author realized that he'd painted himself into the corner where his reader was naturally going to be rooting for the hero to get with the wrong girl.)

But even with these flaws, I still really enjoy this book. It's long; it's an investment and fun to curl up with knowing that you'll be taking a long journey together. And the good news is that (other than the aforementioned rhapsodizing and self-deprecation from our respective main characters), there isn't much wasted space (okay, okay, so a few of the landscape descriptions could also have been dropped). What I mean is, all the PLOT elements come back together; even what seem like throw-away bits end up being important to the story later. 

If you can get past some Victorian stereotypes, can tolerate unnecessary facial hair, and like fun mystery-type stories, I recommend The Woman in White. It's worth it, I promise. (Seriously. Just wait till you meet Fosco. He must be seen to be believed.) Four stars.