Muddy: Where Faith and Polygamy Collide by Dean Hughes
A look at a family who was called by Brigham Young to settle the Muddy River Valley (south of St. George) and their experiences.
I liked how the author showed different responses to the same problem. These were some tough people who were trying to settle a tough land in tough circumstances.
I would recommend this book.
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
On an island, the people are forgetting things, and it’s all the governments’ doing. On occasion, things vanish, and so does the memory of those things. Birds, Ribbon, Candy, Roses, Ferries, Harmonicas… The people wake up and those things are “vanished”. The main character, who is unnamed, accepts this fact of life, as does everyone else. There’s no known reason, and they know things vanish, but there’s not anything to be done about it. And on the occasion that someone DOES remember things that have been vanished, the memory police take them away. The memory police show up to houses, trash the place looking for items that should have been destroyed, and destroy anything they find. And if the person puts up a fight, they are taken away by the police.
Some people, though, can’t forget. And the memory police are rounding them up…
There are whispers of safe houses, and protecting someone is as dangerous as being in hiding. The main character decides she needs to protect her friend, even as her memories are disappearing all the time.
This was a very
interesting read, and a dystopian tale about totalitarian surveillance, and
holding on to the things that matter to you. It was nice to have a story where
the main character wasn’t the hero who was going to save the day and overthrow
the government. She was an everyday woman, dealing with the issues that
everyone was dealing with.
This book was thought-provoking, with the “what if” being more important than the “why.” It starts out with random objects being vanished, as they have been for many years, but the vanished things get less concrete as the story unfolds. The reasoning isn’t made clear either. Some objects get vanished, and life goes on.
There was some Orwellian themes here, as well as some parallels to Nazi Germany with the safe houses and the risks people took to protect other people who were persecuted.
Overall, it was a story that made me think about the themes more than the story, and in this case, I enjoyed that aspect more than finding out how and why things were the way they were.
The Anatomy of Peace by: The Arbinger Institute
A book that inspires hope and reconciliation through a moving story of parents who are struggling with their own children and with problems that have come to consume their lives, we learn from once bitter enemies, Yusaf al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each lost his father at the hands of the other's ethnic cousins, the way to transform personal, professional, and global conflicts, even when war is upon us.
I listened to this book on Overdrive, but wish I had my own copy to see the diagrams they drew and write notes in the margin. At first I thought it was going to be a book about the troubled children, but is was actually a lesson for the parents on a way to turn their heart of war to a heart of peace. I hope to put the things I learned into practice in my own life.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
A clever satire from Nigeria, a dark and funny story about a woman in love with a man whose in love with her sister. A bizarre story that explores relationships and the strength of sisterhood.
The oldest sister, Korede, a dependable, dedicated, and slightly anti-social nurse, and the youngest sister, Ayoola, a beautiful, social, and charming psychopath. This story takes a light hearted view between murder and cover-ups and looks at the special bonds shared by sisters, even when one of them has a little problem of killing her boyfriends.
I liked this book, it read quickly, and the ending was somewhat surprising. You can find this book in the adult fiction section of the library or as an audiobook on the Beehive Library Consortium.
