Book Brief: Happiness for Beginners

Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

cute story, somewhat. Not my usual fare, but it was okay. Completely predicable, but that didn't matter so much in the end.

Review 30: The Ash Family

The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How much would you sacrifice for what you believed in?

Berie knew college wasn't for her, but her mother and ex-boyfriend thought she needed to go. At the airport, after Berie's mother drops her off, she walks away, spends her last dollar taking a bus leaving. Berie doesn't know what she wants or where to go, only that she wants to help heal the dying environment. It is fate that Bay chose her to go with him, to live with the Ash Family. To live for the new earth that will come. When Berie gets into Bay's car she goes with nothing, her clothes and suitcases left on the bus, and no one knows where in the Appalachian woods they end up.

I wanted to like this book, well, I did, somewhat, but I didn't love it. Berie is told, like all newcomers, you can stay for three days or the rest of your life. Berie is renamed Harmony. Everyone in the Ash Family leaves their fake-world names behind.

The Ash Family is like a cult, but instead of religion you have fervent belief in the dying earth and desire to save it for humans; to become something else, a hive, interconnected. The leader Dice says he doesn't make the rules, and you don't have to do anything you don't want to, but people do what he says. They even believe Dice, the father, leader, can make miracles such as changing the weather. Like all cults there are strict rules, and usually they don't apply to Dice, such as not using fake-world soap and infrequent washings.

Dice picks little bits about the world that doesn't work, that is so out of whack with nature, that it is easy to believe him. The family is learning a new way to live with the earth, and it looks very similar to how we lived in the past, with farming and planting on small scales, to sustain the 20-odd people.

Harmony easily lets the three days go by, so she assumes that she will stay the rest of her life. But throughout the book she questions staying, or leaving, and alternates towards being certain this is the place for her. It is confusing. Berie/Harmony is a confusing character. We know she cares about the environment, was a vegetarian upon arrival, yet eats a slice of meat the first time it is offered to her without even saying anything. She is not in harmony, she is uncertain about everything. And there is part of the problem with the book. We want to like the narrator but I didn't. I couldn't understand her motives, why she would stay or want to go. And the ending was unresolved, not a strong ending at all.

Overall the book is okay, but ultimately disappointing to me. Did Berie learn, grow, become her own person? I'm not sure.


Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 29: The Parade

The Parade by Dave Eggers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like Dave Eggers books. Each one I've read has stuck with me and I expect this short book will as well. It's perhaps a parable. I didn't know the premise of the story, I just knew it was Eggers and read the book.

It starts with two men meeting for the first time in a foreign country, no passports and no names, for safety concerns. It sounded to me like a set-up for CIA or co-ops type of operation, but it turns out they are about to pave a road on a war-torn country that just ended decades of civil war. This new road is bridging the North and South to a new prosperity, to the new century.

The two men are numbers, Four is the experienced and regimented man, wanting to get the job done quickly and get out. Nine is the adventurous, his first time doing this type of job. He has his hair cut in a "ridiculous" way in which it is always falling into his face and having to be brushed aside. They could not be more different.

The place is unnamed and no one has a real name. But the story has a purpose. At times it can be laughable at these two and their differences and then it gets serious.

I read this in a day. It is short, but it still surprised me. And happily Eggers hasn't disappointed me yet. I will definitely read more of his works, and there are several I have not yet read.


Previously read Dave Eggers books:
What is the What (fiction) - August.2008
Zeitoun (non-fiction) - January.2017

Review 28: The Devoted

The Devoted by Blair Hurley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While overall I enjoyed this book, there were some problems with it as well. A major one being that I constantly felt like I didn't know the main character. Perhaps that was the point, as Nicole did not know herself, or at least her essence and what was driving her.

Nicole grew up in Boston in a very Catholic household, and at first desired to be a nun. As she grew older she read and studied Buddhism and at 17 ran away on a quest to Colorado to seek out the second leader under the Dalai Lama. Nicole didn't run away alone, she went with her boyfriend Jules and another friend. They left with barely a word to the family.

Part of this book is discovering what happened during the time Nicole was gone, away from the family. Another part of the book is about Nicole trying to leave her life with her Zen Master. Nicole had become too attached, or was he, as the master kept demanding the student-teacher relationship was not to be broken. And can Nicole define her life other than being a teenage runaway?

Nicole's family meanwhile hardly accepts her conversion to Buddhism and despite her running away and over a decade or more of practicing Buddhism, they are still trying to reign her into the Catholic church. And one wonders if Nicole may since she takes up with a guy, also a Catholic from Boston.

As this summary is stating, religion plays a very important part of this book. The fall from disgrace with the scandals in the Catholic faith is covered, as well as digressions with Buddhism, and women's roles, acceptance. Yet these aspects fall short, and if they dove deeper it would have lent for a more powerful book.

Book rating: 3.75 stars

Review 27: The Sun Is a Compass

The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds by Caroline Van Hemert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a well written book. The imagery is vital in an adventure book like this. Caroline and her husband Pat decide to traverse across mountains, rivers, oceans and glaciers using their own muscles. They hike, row or paddle into the arctic and back.

For me this is what arm chair travel is about. While I would love to be out in the wild, not that far north. It's way too cold and or rainy, very wet. Their time on the river with mosquitoes so thick you can't even eat, ummm, no thank you.

Caroline Van Hemert grew up in Alaska so it's not odd for her to take this long wilderness adventure in her own backyard. She is a biologist, or more accurately an ornithologist. One aspect I loved in this book is her descriptions of the birds they see and hear. It even made me more aware of the birds that are around me in my daily life.

It's crazy what humans will put themselves through. For these two it was worth the physical sacrifice and danger, and certainly won't be their last trip into the wild. This was an amazing adventure, and I enjoyed reading about it.


Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.