Weekly Reader: All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones; Anthology is Filled With Memorable Slice of Life Stories and Characters

Weekly Reader: All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones; Anthology is Filled With Memorable Slice of Life Stories and Characters

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Edward P. Jones knows a lot about writing stories about African Americans in Washington DC. He grew up in D.C. and was familiar with the various ethnic groups and income levels of people who lived there. His book All Aunt Hagar's Children is an anthology filled with excellent stories about African Americans in the nation's capital. The title comes from an expression that his grandmother used to say that African Americans are the “children of Aunt Hagar” (the concubine of Abraham the biblical character.)

Even though it is set in D.C., the stories are free of politics. Civil rights receive some mention and some characters trace their lineage back to slavery.

The majority are slice of life tales involving relationships between lovers, parents and children, family members, and friends. They are filled with rich characters caught up in situations that cause them to question the world around them.

The stories are very well written but the ones that stand out are:


"In The Blink of God's Eye"- Aubrey and Ruth, a married couple in the early 20th century have problems in their marriage.
Aubrey suffers from the memories of his childhood when his philandering mother left his father. His wife, Ruth becomes attached to an abandoned baby that she cut down from a tree.Aubrey's past traumas with his mother make it very difficult for him to bond with the baby to the point that he isolates himself from Ruth.

"Old Boys, Old Girls"-The life of a convict during and after his imprisonment for second degree murder. Caesar, the protagonist, is never wholly unrepentant. He is portrayed as someone who has grown comfortable with the daily routines in prison and his rivalries with his fellow convicts but stumbles when his time out of the slammer is through.

Caesar's culture shock is felt as he tries to reconnect with estranged family members and an old flame who has her own issues. Caesar's reunion with his ex takes a very Gothic turn that causes him to isolate himself further.

"All Aunt Hagar's Children"- A Korean War vet investigates the murder of his cousin before he leaves for a new life in Alaska. The narrative is clever as it plays on hard boiled detective stories and gives a character who is dry, witty, and uses that dry wit to discern the truth.

When his aunt weeps how they killed her son, Ike, the narrator muses that Ike “was only one of sixty-six people who were murdered the year I was away.” The story not only plays on the detective genre but also reveals the changing nature of family ties as the Narrator interrogates various family members and is forced to reveal secrets about his cousin that they wished he hadn't.

"Root Worker"-While many of Robinson's stories are set in the real world, he takes a dip into fantasy and magical realism on occasion. “Root Worker” and the following two stories have a more fantastic bent but still retain Jones’s rich writing and excellent characterization offering people caught up in difficult situations with the people around them.

“Root Worker” is a strange metaphysical story about a young medical student caught between the worlds of modern medicine and voodoo. She studies medicine but still has a toe in the folk medicine of the past. The descriptions of the spiritual aspects are memorable as one patient feels like “witches are all over her.”

Jones neither condemns nor favors magic or science. Both paths are treated with respect and neither are any better or worse than the other. The medical student ultimately respects both paths as different means of achieving the same purpose.


"The Devil Swims Across the Anacostia River"-A dark comic tale is a modern day send up of the Faust tale.
A woman is tempted to sell her soul to someone who might be the Devil. This story offers a few clever twists to this old legend in which the Devil appears in a fancy suit, purple tie, and expensive shoes. He is less the Prince of Darkness and more like the CEO of Slightly Dim Lighting.
The Devil's dialogue with his victim is clever as he tries to verbally trick her into the contract but she outwits him.

"Tapestry"-Another Jones story about an unhappily married couple but with a more fantastic bent. The two are at an emotional crossroads and are contemplating separation.
While the two have real world issues, the story is filled with paragraphs that suggested an alternate fate for the characters suggesting that if they had gone one way instead of another, their lives would have been different. For example the female protagonist takes a train and the narration says if she missed the train, she would have met and married another man, gave birth to his children, and died after a long and happy marriage. Unfortunately, the narration then says she met a baggage handler on the train and the two entered an unhappy marriage. This is the perfect story for Readers who are obsessed with turning points in their lives and wondering how their lives would be different.

Even though his stories are short, Edward P. Jones give us some brilliant characters in brilliant situations whether real or fantasy as their lives and relationships change.

New Book Alert: Glossolalia: The Agents of the Nevermind Vol. 1 by Tantra Bensko ; Bizarre But Gripping Psychological Conspiracy Theory Thriller

New Book Alert: Glossolalia: The Agents of the Nevermind Vol. 1 by Tantra Bensko ; Bizarre But Gripping Psychological Conspiracy Theory Thriller


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Spoilers: Of the New Books I have read for this blog, I would say Tantra Bensko's novel, Glossolalia is certainly the most bizarre, most confusing but I will also say that it is the most engrossing and hardest to put down.

The plot is one third psychological thriller, one third conspiracy theory, and one part alternate universe with a lot of dark fantasy thrown in. It could be a mess with so many genres battling for dominance but it is the strange narrative that makes it so compelling. It would be interesting to see if the book takes off to become a movie or a series. It definitely has a dark Twilight Zone-early season X Files- Jason Bourne movies vibe and could do well alongside those and other well known titles.

The novel's universe exists in an Alternate United States where occultism is the preferred religion. Also there is a sinister organization called Agents of the Nevermind which seems to have its tentacles in just about every business and government organization from schools, to corporations, to reality television (explains a lot), to blockbuster Hollywood films, to the half time productions at the Super Bowl. They are in charge and the frightening thing about it is that while some may rebel, the majority of the populace are either in denial or are too terrified to do anything about them.

With good reason too. The Agents of the Nevermind are prone to using just about anything to achieve their goals and that includes brainwashing, drug therapy, subliminal messaging, and an odd cocktail combination of magic and science to create the perfect sleeper agents.
While the Agents of the Nevermind would make some Readers roll their eyes over their obvious evilness, there is an understated quality that makes the situations horrific and at the same time believable.

For example their plot to create subliminal messages during the halftime show of the Super Bowl to wake up sleeper agents on paper sounds like something that could come out of Pinky and the Brain. Thankfully, Bensko focuses on the psychological torture that the sleeper agents would go through under the circumstances particularly one of the football players who comes to a bad end because of the mental torture. Bensko gives us the results of such a situation that makes these potentially ludicrous situations more terrifying and somehow more real.

The effects of living in such a world is traumatic for all the characters particularly the lead. Our Protagonist, Nancy is in for quite a bit of trouble. She is a martial arts student and works for her greedy uncle's toxic chemical factory. One day she stumbles upon some of her uncle's employees illegally dumping chemicals. After a frightening car chase, Nancy plans to report the dumping to a concerned citizens environmental bureau only to discover that number gets rerouted to her uncle's office! (So in other words the guy who is in charge of cleaning up environmental disasters is also the one who makes them in the first place.)

Finding no help through legal channels, Nancy seeks help from outside sources to report her findings. She goes through the obligatory uncertainty over who to trust by confiding too much in people that she shouldn't and withdrawing from people who are legitimately trying to help but she pushed away because she is concerned for their safety. This journey feeds on her paranoia and damaged psyche and leaves her to lose herself in Jolly Wests, psychotropic addictive drugs that become key to her rediscovering answers to her identity.

Glossolalia takes some really bizarre turns particularly in the characters of Emily and Angela. Emily is a spiritual child prodigy who has an interest in Glossolalia, the strange language created by 16th century astrologer, John Dee. She is part of a highly influential cult (whose pastor is yes an Agent of the Nevermind.) and is either the inspiration or the actual lead character in a series of Harry Potteresque movies about an adventures of a young girl.

Angela is a hardened sexy Nevermind Agent who appears whenever dirty work needs to be done. She is often involved with seducing agents, providing drugs, and being a go-between with the agents and their higher ups. She is almost a stereotypical character in these type of novels but she is more than she appears, She has an almost metaphysical knowledge of situations in which she was not an eyewitness or personally involved. She later reveals that she, Emily, and Nancy have a unique bond that changes the course of the book once it is revealed.

Glossolalia is the first book in Tantra Bensko’s Agents of the Nevermind Series. If the first book is any indication, it should be a long strange trip but a completely unforgettable one.

Classics Corner: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; Allegedly Classic Romance Is Overrated with Irritating Characters

Classics Corner: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; Allegedly Classic Romance Is Overrated with Irritating Characters

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Jane Austen is practically an industry and her book, Pride and Prejudice is the flagship of that industry. It seems every year a new variation of Austen's works appears. I remember Austenmania in the ‘90’s when most if not all of her books were put on the screen and they haven't left since.

Modern day adaptations like Bridget Jones's Diary snd Clueless move the characters to modern day. Books and movies like Jane Austen Book Club feature people who use Austen's works as advice to the current lovelorn. Fanfiction and novels put Darcy, Elizabeth, Emma Wodehouse, the Dashwood Sisters and the rest in the heart of mysteries, thrillers, more realistic setting, and in front of zombies.


When something becomes that much a part of popular culture, you have to wonder if it's worth all the hype. While Pride and Prejudice has its fans in this case, I am going to have to say no.

Pride and Prejudice is a tremendously overrated book and part of the issue is in Austen's protagonists. Some consider Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy the Alpha Romantic Couple, the yardstick of which other romantic literary couples should be compared. Unfortunately, they are some of the more irritating characters ever written and their media overexposure makes them even more irritating.

I know. I know. They are supposed to be an argumentative couple, the type that ridicules and mocks each other but we the Reader's know they are nuts about each other. The problem is that Austen spends so much time portraying them as a feuding couple, she fails to give us a reason why they should be together in the first place. (Sorry “He's Darcy,” is not a reason.)

They have the pride and prejudice towards each other of the title but they spend so little time together doing anything but bicker so that every time I read it, I feel “Seriously, this is the couple I heard so much about?” When do they actually show anything resembling friendship or affection for each other?

They don't have a chance to develop into fully three-dimensional characters. Elizabeth has a few nice redeemable moments with her sisters but Darcy has barely any at all.

We know the drill. We are supposed to find out that his pride is just a shell and he really isn't that bad a guy after all. But is he really? In the rare occasion when he is alone, he comes across as snide and arrogant as he is with the Bennets. Austen gives us very little depth that goes into the character so through most of the book it appears that the surface opinions people have about him may actually be true.

So the book is less about two flawed individuals helping each other to smooth out their rough edges, than it becomes another tired cliche of the bad boy redeemed by the love of a good girl. (Though admittedly she gets smoothed out a bit too.)

While I don't find them as offensive as I do Wuthering Height's Catherine and Heathcliff which are the prototypes of every abusive and toxic relationship, I mostly find Elizabeth and Darcy one-dimensional and annoying. Unfortunately, they contributed to the romance genre so much that every couple since then has been compared to them and has recreated their courtship ever since creating later generations of one-dimensional and annoying couples.

I keep comparing them to Benedick and Beatrice from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, another argumentative couple destined to be together. While they also bicker constantly, their one-liners and repartee are clearly put-ons and they seem to enjoy the arguing almost as much as the romance. But most of all they are more than just a fighting couple. There are multiple scenes that show how deeply they care about their friends and there is never a point where the Reader feels that their comments are anything worse than a friendly rivalry.

There are hints that the book is meant to be something else perhaps a satire or parody of the genre. Austen herself never married, so she could be very well making fun of the genre in which she would later become the face. There are many moments particularly at the various dances where Elizabeth and Darcy play off each other like a dance where he takes a step then she does. There are quite a few times when characters call out the rigid rules of courtship such as when Elizabeth compliments the ball and she reminds Darcy that he is supposed to comment on the size of the room or the amount of couples as though there was some preapproved conversation list that they were supposed to follow.

Also Austen seems fully aware of the consequences of a romance based on passion and nothing else. Elizabeth's younger sister, Lydia runs off with a known rake, Wickham. Other books have done this subplot better most notably David Copperfield with David's childhood friend, Little Em'ly running off with his vain schoolmate, Steerforth. That it is in Pride and Prejudice at all shows it to be almost a counterpoint to the other romantic couplings that are going on.

Another counterpoint in Pride and Prejudice is provided by Mary, the plain younger sister. In a book that is so entranced with pairings, that Austen chose not to pair one of the sisters at all is an interesting choice. Mary instead is the introverted bookworm who comments on her other sister's foolishness and vapidity. Perhaps Mary is meant to be a stand-in for Austen herself silently and gently mocking romance while still being a part of it.

Pride and Prejudice did not invent the romance genre but many that follow look to it as the blueprint. It is incredibly flawed, but if you look at it deeper and see the potential for comedy and satire, it might stand to be one of the best put ons of all time.

However as far as literary heroes go, you can keep Mr. Darcy. I'd rather have Sherlock Holmes

Classics Corner: Jazz by Toni Morrison; A Book That Sounds As Good As It Reads

Classics Corner: Jazz by Toni Morrison; A Book That Sounds As Good As It Reads




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: If ever a book needed a soundtrack, it would be Toni Morrison's Jazz.

The book not only pays tribute to the freestyle music in the title but in the narrative as well. Characters call and respond to each other by telling the same events from different points of view, repeat phrases like a chorus, and the paragraphs read almost like a musical vibe. For example:

“Crumpled over, shoulders shaking Violet thought about how she must have looked at the funeral at what her mission was. The sight of herself trying to do something bluesy, something hep, fumbling the knife too late away…She laughed til she coughed and Alice had to make them both a cup of setting tea.

Committed as Violet was to hip development even she couldn't drink the remaining malt- watery, warm, and flat tasting. She buttoned her coat and left the drugstore unnoticed at the same moment as that Violet did, that it was spring. In the City.”

You can just hear the accompanying saxophone, guitar, and drums in the background. Feel free to snap your fingers and tap your toes if you like.

The book's narration is excellent but so is the rest of the book. In many of Morrison's other works like Sula and my favorite of her novels, Beloved, she gives us memorable characters caught up in the social issues of their day like slavery, racism, violence, and frictions within friends and family. Morrison does the same with Jazz.

Morrison provides the book with three characters, three sides of a love triangle that are caught in the struggles of unhappy marriages and the power plays between men and women in a relationship.
The three characters: hair stylist, Violet Trace, her husband, Joe, a cosmetics salesman, and his 18-year-old mistress, Dorcas are compelling as they navigate their relationship with each other during the affair and the violent end in which Joe not only shoots and kills Dorcas, but Violet disfigures her at her funeral.

It's a bizarre triangle with an even stranger resolution but none of the three characters are portrayed as long-suffering victims or a negative stereotypes. Instead they are fully developed. They may be self-centered and even violent and dangerous at times, but the reasons for their behaviors are clear. Like a good jazz song, the second verses explain their pasts and contribute to the first verse about the affair and it's graphic end.

Violet is probably the one who gets the Reader’s sympathy the most but even she has her issues. She is a 50ish married woman who settled into City life with a husband with whom she constantly argues and maintains a silent existence. She is capable of great compassion such as caring for her pet birds including one that says, “ I love you” and she bonds with many of her clients including developing a friendship peculiarly enough with Dorcas's aunt after her death.

However Violet also has difficulties in her past such as her mother's suicide and a troubled relationship with her grandmother whose stories of caring for her former white mistress and her mixed race son seek only to confuse Violet rather than uplift her.

Violet is deeply troubled and at times seems to verge on the edge of sanity.

The possibilities of mental illness comes into focus into Violet's adult life when she suffers three miscarriages and exhibits odd behavior like sitting in the street for hours on end, growing attached to her birds, and at one point contemplating kidnapping a child. Knowing about her past and her emerging psychological issues allows the Reader realize that her behavior was a long time coming and to learn that it was a matter of when not if she would attack and earn her nickname, “Violent.”

Joe's story is just as traumatic and just as understandable as his wife's. We learn that he was abandoned by his parents at a young age and he chose his surname Trace because his adopted parents told him that his birth parents disappeared “without a trace”. He figures that he was the “trace (his) parents left without.” When he finally meets the woman that he suspects may have given birth to him, this meeting provides neither comfort nor resolution as she is a disheveled mentally unstable recluse nicknamed “Wild.”

Joe spends most of his life feeling rootless and while he settles into married life with Violet, it is still fraught with problems. Besides the aforementioned miscarriages and years of silence, the two frequently moved until they were drawn to the allure of the City. (Never named but implied to be Harlem.)

The confusion and aimlessness of Joe's early life and continues into his adult life to the point where one of the first things that he does after meeting Dorcas is compare notes about their parentless past suggesting that Joe wasn't just looking for a lover, he was looking for a kindred spirit.

Dorcas is also brilliantly realized according to Morrison's excellent writing. She is the character who is most influenced by the music of the title and it shows. She begins as an innocent quiet daughter of two parents who were killed in a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois.

When she moves in with her Puritanical aunt, Alice, Dorcas longs to break free from her aunt's rigidity and gain some independence in her life. She and her new friend, Felice then sneak out to jazz clubs and enjoy the flapper lifestyle. It is at one of these clubs, where Dorcas meets Joe and their affair begins. Dorcas finds Joe's casual demeanor a sharp contrast to her excitable nature as a man who is smooth, kind, and can calm her down.

Dorcas is like many other young people in literature and culture and real life. She wants to experience a life of her own and all that comes with it. Her relationship with Joe brings her excitement but even she knows it won't last. (Hence why she gets involved with another man, Acton, before her death.)

Violet, Joe, and Dorcas's story is like many a sad song about love gone awry. Their paths seemed fated, the lives hard, and the end inevitable. But it is Toni Morrison's ability to capture her tritagonists that make this a song worth hearing again and again.

Lit List: Life-Enhancing Ideas Website Non-Fiction

Lit List: Life-Enhancing Ideas Website Non-Fiction

By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews

This is to show all of you dear Readers that I have not been neglecting the blog or reading. On the contrary, I have diversified my reading and reviewing abilities to spread throughout the Internet. I am showing pages of many of the reviews that I have been working on for other sources. Most of them are smaller reviews or reviews that belong to the other site, but I am permitted to share links. If you have any books that you would like me to read and review on these sources then I would love to hear about them.

These reviews are for the blog Life-Enhancing Ideas which feature articles on education, psychology, and other means of self-improvement. The books I have and will review for this blog are non-fiction and cover education, psychology, gender studies, race relations, and business. I would like to extend a big thank you for the blog administrator Ernst Marc for giving me the chance to review these books for his blog.

1. A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia by Sandy Allen-A moving and heartbreaking story about Allen's uncle Bob who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia from the time he was a teenager. The book is effective in writing about Bob giving us a full picture of the man as well as the illness. It also covers the difficulties that family members have in understanding such a condition.

2. Sharp: The Women Who Made An Art of Having An Opinion by Michelle Dean-A witty and memorable collection of biographies about female writers who stunned the world with their opinions, writing, and witty repartee. Dean focuses on such noted authors as Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Nora Ephron and others who not only sought to change the world and get people's attention, but made sure that they always had the last word.

3. The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway- A sharp and biting look at the tech companies that have shaped our lives: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Galloway reveals the corporate strategies that the companies used to take over the tech industry and become a huge part of our lives. He also shows how we can adapt to their presence.

4. The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre-A brilliant and insightful biography of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the women who created it. Emre neither praises nor condemns the test nor its creators, mother and daughter Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Instead she takes a middle ground revealing its uses for career placement and relationships but also the difficulties people have of fitting themselves into tiny boxes.

Exuberance: The Passion of Life by Kay Redfield Jamison-
A fascinating look on the emotion exuberance and the people who have it. Jamison discusses various people whose exuberance led them to achieve great things like Teddy Roosevelt's commitment to conservation, Wilson Bentley who studied snowflakes, and Humphrey Davy whose love of science was only surpassed by his love of teaching. She also explores people whose sense of exuberance led them to foolish even dangerous things such as tulipmania in the 17th century and the authors F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Louis Stevenson who battled with alcoholism and mental illness respectively.

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots by Thulani Davis
A fascinating biography of Thulani Davis's family. She relates her grandmother's mixed race heritage as the daughter of Chloe Tarrant Curry, the daughter of African-American former slaves and Will Campbell, a Scottish American man whose family founded Springfield, Missouri. Davis covers the couple who had a very unconventional romance for their day as well as their family members who ran the gamut from authors, to farmers, to politicians and were involved in changing the post-Civil War American South.

New Book Alert: The Fading of Kimberly by Kit Crumpton; Interesting Look at Early 20th Century Mental Health Care is Marred By Uneven Writing

Spoilers: Kit Crumpton's book The Fading of Kimberly works as an interesting look at mental health treatment in the early 20th century. It gives the Reader a strong sense of the world of psychiatric hospitals in which the slightly oddest behavior could have someone share the same hospital as a sadistic killer. A world where psychiatrists are not as fond of treating the mentally ill as they are of shocking them or cutting them open.


Unfortunately The Fading of Kimberly is marred by uneven writing in which character's motivations are unclear and plot threads are left dangling. These glaring flaws keep this from being a perfect book instead it is a good one which needs some tweaking.





Kimberly Weatherspoon is the spoiled pampered only daughter of Warren Weatgerspoon, a wealthy widower. She is a perfect example of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She is overly concerned with her appearance and receiving attention from others. Kimberly arranges parties and other events so she can be the center of attention. She also seeks romance from the most handsome and wealthiest men so they can laud praise and bestow gifts to her.





With that narcissism also comes an immaturity suggesting Borderline Personality Disorder. Kimberly has a hard time living with rejection as her fiancé, Edwin, learns the hard way. She catches him in an embrace with her father's secretary, Laverne, and shoots them both dead. The subsequent verdict has her declared guilty but her father's connections manage to have her declared legally insane and she is committed to a sanitarium.





Unfortunately, she is not alone during her time in Elgin State Hospital. Among the other patients is one Riley Nacht, a former astronomer with a connection to Kimberly. When Kimberly attended boarding school, Riley taught a session on star gazing to her class. During a field trip, Riley got a moment alone with Dorothy, one of Kimberly's classmates and murdered the young girl. Like Kimberly he too was declared legally insane and institutionalized.





The book is effective in describing people with mental illness and psychiatric disorders and the treatment towards them which pretty much amounted to little to no treatment at all. One thing the book shows is how difficult it is for people to live with such disorders and how difficult it is for the people around them. Kimberly is extremely self-involved to the point of being irritating to the other characters and the Reader, it is only until later that we learn that she had a childhood with a father who adored her but preferred to throw money and possessions at her rather than commit to any real parenting.





Kimberly grew with a strong sense of entitlement and very little self-control. This is shown prominently during her school years when she bribes classmates with gifts in lieu of friendships and is unable to form real attachments with them. Even after Dorothy is murdered and Kimberly is an eyewitness to the crime, she blocks out the murder and retreats further into herself and her own little world as if avoiding acknowledging the murder itself.





Kimberly's narcissism makes her a difficult person to live with as her engagement to Edwin shows. Edwin is certainly a fortune hunter that when Warren bribes him with money to leave his little girl and run, Edwin does not have much internal struggle as he goes for the long green and runs. However, Kimberly's demands and constant craves for attention wears on him, as well as her lack of concern about anything that isn't about her.

Kimberly's time in the Elvin State Hospital is the most interesting part as we are shown various treatments like cold bath and shock therapy that harm more than cure.

There are also psychologists who  use guess work in diagnosing patients such as giving ones like Riley free reign to see how he works. This proves to be a big problem as one of the orderlies, himself troubled, befriends Riley to the point where he uses his advice to molest female patients in their sleep. One character is given a lobotomy and is heartbreakingly reduced to a shell of their former self.

Crumpton clearly knows a lot about the early years of the mental health profession since she researched it for a non-fiction book, The Fading of Lloyd about her great uncle who died in a psychiatric hospital. But her fiction writing needs work.

The opening in which it is suggested that Kimberly might be the reincarnation of Anne Boleyn is interesting but out of place in a book that doesn't deal with the supernatural in the rest of the book.  It is out of place and is more filler than anything else.

While Kimberly's back story helps us understand her, its placement in the middle of the book is a detriment. The Reader is subjected to several chapters of her acting spoiled and irritating so that by the time they learn about why she is the way she is, they may not care. It would be better to tell the story chronologically to give us the girl before the narcissist.

There are some odd things towards the end. The final moments between Riley, his orderly, and Kimberly is anticlimactic and involves circumstances that don't even directly involve them. Some revelations between Warren and his butler are thrown in at the last minute that should have been revealed earlier (and certainly would have spared this Reader from thinking entirely different.)

As a book about mental health, The Fading of Kimberly stands out. As a novel, it kind of fades away.

Weekly Reader: You Got To Read This Book: 55 People Tell The Story Of The Book That Changed Their Life Edited by Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks; Beautiful Affirmative Stories About The Importance of Reading

Weekly Reader: You Got To Read This Book: 55 People Tell The Story of The Book That Changed Their Life Edited By Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks; Beautiful Affirmative Storied About The Importance of Reading





By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Here at the Bookworm Reviews, I believe that the right person could be matched to the right book. Sometimes you are going along with your day. You have a question about your life or are so stressed that you need escape. You pick up a book and BOOM! You find parallels to your situation. You find characters that are struggling with situations similar to yours. You may even find a truth that fits and that you can use in your daily life. You consider it a favorite book that you keep coming back to again and again and find something new every time you read as well as a friend who always has your back. (The book that fits that in my life is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll which I reviewed in my inaugural review for this blog.)





Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup books and Gay Hendricks, president of the Hendricks Institute and author of several self-help books understood that power that books have to transform lives. They gathered many of the best writers, spokespersons, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders to describe the books that changed their lives, helped them look at their world differently, and gave them solutions to their problems in their book You Got To Read This Book.





Many of these authors found fictional characters that related to them. Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of Deep End of the Ocean found herself in Francie Nolan, the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Both came from impoverished backgrounds, had troubled childhoods, and had imaginative spirits that allowed them to become writers. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captivated Mitchard so much that she reads it before she begins working on a new novel and when she adopted a daughter, she named her Francie Nolan.





Another person who found an answer through a fictional character was fifth grade teacher, Rafe Esquith. After Esquith won the Walt Disney Company's 1992 Teacher of the Year award, he felt like a failure because many of his students got involved in drugs and gang violence in middle and high school. Reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee helped Esquith understand through Atticus Finch what it means to be a good leader and role model for children. That he has to do what is right even if he doesn't see the positive results right away.





Self-help books are some of the books that are cited most often that helped people. Motivational speaker, Lisa Nichols found assistance reading Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey's book particularly the haunting “Begin With The Ending” exercise (where Covey invited the Reader to imagine they are at their own funeral) moved Nichols so much that she strove to change her life. She withdrew from habits that she didn't want to be remembered for (like hosting lingerie parties and writing steamy romance novels), cut abusive men from her life, and started a career that appealed to her talents for speaking.





In a true case of “physician heal thyself”, Covey himself has a chapter in which he cites two books: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher. Both books gave Covey the vision to choose how he dealt with life. Frankl's book was about his time in a concentration camp and how he chose to seek happiness even in the worst circumstances such as when the Nazis burned his manuscript, Frankl just decided to “rewrite it: make it better.” This attitude was the framework for Covey's 7 Habits in which the book explores how we react when things upset or detain us.





Of course these books don't offer quick solutions and many of the authors describe that the book was simply the catalyst and the first step to a life of self-improvement. Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming, acknowledges a biography of Mahatma Gandhi that inspired him to become more spiritual. He even later took a trip to India to see Gandhi's memorial and vow to change his life to fit his. However, McCourt did not live a subsequent exemplary life. Instead it was one of alcoholism, divorce, and self-loathing to the point where a doctor gave him a prescription to change his life or else. While McCourt reveals that his transformation was a long time, the biography of Gandhi was the inspiration that began this chain of events.





Some chapters recount not how much the person loved the book but how much they hated it and disagreed with the message. Holocaust survivor, Max Edelman selects surprisingly Mein Kampf for his chapter. He selected it because of how much it changed Germany and the world. Edelman analyzes Hitler's anti-Semitism argument by saying that he used one specific point to unite the Germans. Besides taking an analytic approach to Hitler's arguments, Edelman vowed to live a life of forgiveness and love especially in the face of his enemies such as Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Edelman said that Mein Kampf gave him the strength to become a counter example to Hitler's hateful words.





The most important thing that this book teaches the Reader is that the books don't change the person, the person does. This is particularly evident with Dr. Bernie Siegel, retired pediatrician and general surgeon who selected William Saroyan's The Human Comedy. He begins his chapter with “I don't believe that any book can change your life only you can. Look two people read the same book. One is inspired while the other is bored. It's the person-not the book-that creates the transformation. That power lies within each of us. That said I do believe that an author's insights when combined with the reader's inspiration and desire to change can lead to a new life for the reader.”





So in effect, it's not the book but it is the Readers that changed their lives.

Valentine's Day Classics Corner: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte; The Realistic Counterpoint to the More Romantic Bronte Sisters

Valentine's Day Classics Corner: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte; The Realistic Counterpoint to The More Romantic Bronte Sisters 

Spoilers: Each month I plan to review at least one classic novel from the 19th early 20th century. These books are some of my favorites and I feel in a blog of book reviews, that it is important to remember the OG classics.

This is the first of two Valentine's Day Classics that I will review this month
Though Anne Bronte isn't near as well known as her sisters, Charlotte and Emily, her book, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall deserves to stand out as a classic alongside Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Personally, I liked Jane Eyre better, but found Tenant of Wildfell Hall a much better book than Wuthering Heights (which as many Readers will recall I read last year to much dislike ). I found Tenant's lead character a stronger protagonist and it made an interesting commentary to Bronte's sister's books.

Helen Graham-Huntington arrives in a village becoming the target of gossip and scandal among the locals. She also becomes the object of local landowner Gilbert Markham's affections. At first, he is enamored and jealous of the woman even attacking a man that he mistakes to be her lover. But then he learns of her story and becomes a better character defending her against attacks.

The middle half of the book which recounts Helen's story is better than the beginning. Here we find Helen, a passionate young woman determined to marry for love. What she gets instead is Arthur Huntington, a charismatic and brutal man who devolves into an abusive alcoholic. 

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has a very strong female lead with Helen. While she is in an impossible situation, she never allows herself to lose her resolve. She saves money and paints on the side to earn a living to leave. She lectures and protects her young son, hoping for him not to end up like his father. She also does what many women of her day would not do: she leaves him to start a new life. She is a much better character than either of her suitors, the abusive, Arthur and brash, Markham.

The other point of interest with Tenant is how it stands in relation to Anne's sister's works. While Charlotte and Emily Bronte's works are more Romantic and passionate in nature, Anne's appears to be more Realistic. In her writing Anne Bronte's characters live in dark creepy mansions in the country and have forbidden secrets but they still deal with real world problems, such as alcoholism, infidelity, divorce.It's almost as though Anne were saying "This is what really would happen if Cathy had married Heathcliff and lived all her life in isolation. It's not pretty is it?"

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall could stand to be a commentary on Anne's sister's books the Realism that contrasts with the Romance making a complete picture of the sisters' works and lives.