The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (Books & Banter book club)
Belle da Costa Greene is working in the library at Princeton University when she is recommended for the position of Personal Librarian to J.P. Morgan and his library of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork. When she gets the position she is thrilled. But, Belle has a big secret. She is African-American and her family has been "passing" for White. If this secret were exposed the ramifications would be huge, but in her role as Morgan's personal librarian she is much more in the public eye than she could have ever imagined. As she rises higher in New York society, Belle is more and more conflicted about her success and her true identity.
Even though I am a librarian, I wasn't familiar with Greene's story before reading this book. I have also found that I do not ever enjoy books about libraries whether fiction or non-fiction. My book club read a previous book by Marie Benedict, Lady Clementine and while I didn't love that one I absolutely HATED this one. Here are my main problems:
1) I just did NOT like Belle. For someone who has so much at stake with trying to "pass" as white she definitely didn't mind being in the spotlight and putting on a show. To her (and the authors) credit, this book may not reflect what her personality was really like. And she could have put on more of a show as part of "acting" like a white woman in her position. I hated the character and how she was portrayed in the book. She was just not likeable or realistic in my opinion.
2) Her ridiculous affair with Bernard Berenson. Again, for someone with such a big secret that is a dumb thing to do. Also, when she finds out she's pregnant and they are both like "oh, I thought you were taking care of birth control." WHAT birth control?! It's 1910. Other than pulling out and douching there weren't many/any other options. And when his wife begs her to get back together with him - absolutely ridiculous. Then of course he betrays her again in the end. What an idiot.
3) I also hated that she tried or sort of tried/wanted to have an affair with J.P. Morgan. Why? All along she kept viewing him as a fatherly figure, so why try to do that toward the end. It was weird and didn't need to be added to the storyline.
4) This may be a product of the time period, but I hated all the cattiness and back biting/petty arguments with other women. I had the same issue with Lady Clementine too. It just reiterates the stereotype of catty women.
Overall, I did NOT like this one. If it weren't for one of my book clubs selecting this one I wouldn't have read it or I would have quit a few chapters in. I'll be curious what the rest of my book club members will think.
Survival Guide for the Soul by Ken Shigematsu
I started reading this one as part of a small group study at the church we've been visiting for the past few months. While the premise is good, I didn't really like it. What I did like was the was the focus on spiritual habits that will help strengthen your relationship with God. Shigematsu talks about the following spiritual practices - meditation, sabbath, gratitude, simple abundance/minimalism, servanthood, friendship, and vocation. All of these are great practices for your spiritual life and relationship with God. What I didn't like was the tone and how the book was written. I feel like the tone of the book was somewhat dumbed down. There were a LOT of really obvious or hokey examples throughout the book. I feel like unfortunately this is fairly common with Christian living books - they feel somewhat juvenile or like the reader is pretty ignorant so the examples have to be something a child would understand. I don't want to rip on this book as there are good practices and ideas, but I really didn't like the tone and how dumbed-down it felt. I personally would recommend some of the same spiritual practices but not this book.
Holy Unhappiness by Amanda Held Opelt
Most Christians are familiar with the prosperity gospel - the false theology that says if you're giving and doing all the right things God will bless you financially, physically, etc. While that is mostly known as a false theology, Opelt makes the case that many American Christians still believe in what she calls the "emotional prosperity gospel." This basic premise is that once you're a Christian you'll be happy all the time and won't struggle emotionally or mentally. Opelt argues that this is equally a false theology or worldview. She discusses 9 areas of life that we often apply the "emotional prosperity gospel" to in our lives and how we can reimagine these areas through a more correct godly lens. The nine areas are - work, marriage, parenthood, calling, community, body, sanctuary, suffering, and sanctification. Opelt does a great job of exploring the unfortunately common Christian viewpoint that if you're struggling in your life you aren't right with God and just how damaging that view can be. I also didn't realize until I was almost halfway through the book that Opelt is the sister of Rachel Held Evans. I was already interested in this book, but that made me even more interested in what she had to say. This book was really well done and an important read for any Christian.
Some quotes I liked:
"God plants the garden, and humankind tends and keeps the garden. This was his plan from the beginning and part of the goodness of creation. Gardening is an occupation fit for God himself and is given as an honorable inheritance for his children. Work was never meant to be a curse, punishment, or the drudgery of the lowly. Work is a holy responsibility." (p. 5)
"Work was becoming a means to a material end, not simply a means of survival or the demand of a king or lord. Eighteenth-century economist James Steuart noted that in former times, 'men were...forced to labour because they were slaves to others; men are now forced to labour because they are slaves to their own wants.'" (p. 8)
"To work is to be human in the Garden of Eden. To be frustrated by work is to be human in the aftermath of the fall." (p. 21)
"[Katelyn] Beaty observes that the evangelical church's teaching on sexuality and purity has created many false expectations for young people. Christian teenagers growing up in the '90s like me were inundated with the True Love Waits movement, which urged kids to remain sexually pure until their wedding night. This movement, Beaty posits, 'holds that God will reward premarital chastity with a good Christian spouse, great sex, and perpetual marital fulfillment,' Beaty calls this 'the sexual prosperity gospel.'" (p. 32)
"The notion that a woman's greatest calling was to bear children has been around since long before the days of Martin Luther, but the concept has experienced a strong revival in the Church in the wake of the feminist movement of the 1950s and '60s. The emerging secular culture was telling women that they should shake off the shackles of motherhood and housekeeping and pursue their real potential by climbing the corporate ladder and chasing their professional dreams. In response, faith leaders set out to convince women that there was, in fact, dignity in diaper changing. We were to glory in our role as reproducers. To serve as a mother was to be faithful to God's unique design. It was the highest feminine aspiration, the surest path to true happiness." (p. 46)
"And the good Christian wife is one who stays home with her children. If she was uninterested in the tasks of homemaking, then it was a sign that she lacked humility and servanthood. If she was drawn to work outside the home, then she was a usurper, hungry for power or money or recognition. Staying home with children may very well be a good and wise choice for many women. But the idea that godly womanhood is inextricably linked to domesticity is more of a middle-class, Victorian-era construct than a biblical mandate. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the home was the center of industry for both men and women." (p. 51-52)
"My fear is that the nature of the Christian subculture has conditioned Jesus followers like me to believe one of the most subtle and insidious lies of the emotional prosperity gospel: the tacit belief that Christianity is above all safe, entertaining, and comfortable. It is the perception of Christian community as politically advantageous, socially beneficial, and personally profitable. The complicated truth is that Christianity has made some people very, very wealthy and very, very powerful. And that wealth and power are often seen as assets rather than liabilities." (p. 104)
All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore
I grew up in the Christian Church so I knew who Beth Moore was, but I wasn't in Southern Baptist churches and never did any of her Bible studies. I really got interested in Moore after the whole John MacArthur rant in 2019 where he said Beth Moore should "go home" instead of being a Christian leader and speaker. I knew a woman who had the complementarians in that much of an uproar was someone I needed to know more about. She was also one of the few Christian leaders to call out the Christian Right's support of Donald Trump after the "grab 'em by the pussy" audio was leaked.
The majority of the book is not about any of that. It's a straight up memoir of her early life (which was rough), her marriage, and how she got into ministry. She did cover the backlash of her Twitter comments about Donald Trump in 2016 and the backlash from the 2019 exposure of the Southern Baptist Convention's sexual abuse cover up and her subsequent decision to leave her lifelong denomination because of that. But the book is just about who she is and how she got to where she is now. Like other reviews I read, I had a lot of unanswered questions. She was sexually abused by her father but continued to have a relationship with him until his death - she never talks about whether he molested any of her other siblings and I assume she never left her daughters alone with him but she doesn't really talk about how that impacted her adult-life with her family of origin. She also shares a lot about her marriage both the struggles (her husband has PTSD and is Bipolar) and the great parts (he very much encouraged her ministry and speaking career in a time when most Christian men would not have).
She is also very funny and an obviously gifted writer. I laughed out loud several times while reading the book and she also brought me close to tears a few times. It's clear that Beth Moore is called to do what she's doing and God is using her in powerful ways - both through her Bible studies and speaking events and also through this memoir as well. This is reading time well spent.
Some quotes I liked:
"Mom didn't leave Dad then, nor would she leave him later when she learned of more grievous transgressions...My mother didn't see leaving as a viable option. She never once brought it up, to my knowledge. In her reality - whether actual or perceived - where was she to go and what, exactly, was she to do to support herself? She had a high school education, checks bouncing like rubber balls, an elderly mother, one kid in college and two more kids to go, and all without a whit of confidence in herself...No, Mom did what many women of her era did. She stayed, despite a dozen valid reasons to go. She considered dying, but never leaving." (p. 82)
"Women speakers in the conservative church world were only slightly scarcer than unicorns." (p. 157)
"These were not uncomplicated dynamics for some of us, but a family can go a long way on denial. The maddening complexity is, denial could, on occasion, offer a little relief. It makes for a poor lifestyle but a pleasant lunch." (p. 168)
"Novices don't know that every Mexican restaurant can be judged by its salsa. If it's poor, don't order. Simply leave a tip for the waiter's trouble and proceed directly to your car and put on your sunglasses so no one will see you crying. Pappasito's can make salsa like wizards stirring up magic potions, and their confidence in their enchantments is displayed in liberality. Each person at the table gets his or her own little bowl. This is as it should be. Stay out of my salsa and I'll stay out of yours. This is key to long-lasting relationships in Texas." (p. 198)
[On often being the only woman speaker at SBC conferences] "At some point in the conference, disapproval would almost inevitably take the form of ridicule. I've lost count of the times a fellow plenary speaker would ignore me in the hospitality room but bring me up in the introduction of his message. It might go something like this: 'We're just glad we get to be on the same platform as Beth Moore. Sure hope we get some of that anointing.' Uproarious laughter would follow. Sometimes the guy would do a little imitation of me speaking, going heavy on the drawl and big with the mannerisms...I was supposed to take these things like a good sport, and I tried to. I recognized good-spirited humor. But if the guy hadn't said a word to me when we were three feet apart for half and hour backstage, I had a hard time thinking these things were meant well. The biggest offense I brought into these environments was my gender, but my personality and lack of academic training were also factors." (p. 221) [This was INFURIATING to read. I cannot imagine a pastor or Christian leader mocking a female Christian leader and thinking that is what God would want him to do. This is obviously straight up jealousy that she had a bigger following and more of an impact as an "uneducated" woman.]
[On the Donald Trump audio tape being leaked] "By the time I got home and crawled into bed that night, I'd not only read the full transcript of Donald Trump's off-the-air comments. I'd also read the rationalizations of multiple evangelical leaders who'd been fawning over him like he was God's gift to American Christianity...Sexual immorality is one thing. I'm not naive about such things. This kind of thing was different. This kind of thing moved into the realm of sexual criminality...A few voiced disgust, and I was grateful for those, but most either remained silent or actually offered excuses. Their support for Trump's candidacy didn't appear to waver. My own brothers in the faith, who'd been easily scandalized by others, had developed a sudden and protracted case of uncharacteristic tolerance." (p. 239-40)
"All this time, I'd accepted the rampant sexism because I thought it was about Scripture. What I was watching in the wake of the Access Hollywood report, however, did not appear to be a whit about Scripture, nor did it evidence fruit of the Holy Spirit, as far as I could discern. In my estimation, this thing playing out in front of the world was about power. This was about control. This was about the boys' club. You lied. I bit those two words on my tongue until it nearly bled. I believed you and you lied. I thought this was all about Scripture. All about pleasing God. This does not look God-pleasing to me. I couldn't get these thoughts out of my head. I became increasingly vocal about it, until the words I'd bitten down were finally blatantly spoken." (p. 244-45)
"Three months after the news broke on the biggest sexual abuse crisis in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, there was a new crisis. After my ill-advised tweet about speaking in my church on Mother's Day, suddenly, the biggest threat to the denomination was publicly portrayed as women trying to get to the pulpit and supplant their pastors...All that time I'd obsessed over having a male covering, a mind-boggling number of male leaders were providing a covering, all right. They were covering up sexual abuse. But because I'd been so outspoken and had already annoyed them, a horde of Southern Baptist brethren came for me like I'd burned down churches." (p. 246-47)
The Farmer's Wife by Helen Rebanks
I thought this book sounded interesting before I realized that her husband was James Rebanks. I tried to read his book Pastoral Song and just could NOT get into it so I didn't read it. When I got this book in and realized it was by his wife I wasn't sure I would like it. But I started reading this one and liked her tone and style. I liked the beginning of the book better and actually disliked it more as I kept going. Her family history, time in college, and falling in love with James was interesting. But once they were married and having children the book became a laundry list of everything that Helen was doing, how overwhelmed she was, how little James helped with the children, how tight money was, etc. Helen really wanted children and to be a mother, but by the end of the book she wasn't helping convince anyone to be a parent or a farmer. She includes lots of recipes throughout the book and she obviously enjoys cooking and understands the importance of high-quality, regeneratively farmed food. There were a few spots where she talked briefly about how they farmed and why it's important but honestly it was lost in the laundry list of chores that filled the last 2/3 of the book. I also feel like the book would have flowed better if the recipes were included at the end of each chapter/section instead of just stuck in randomly. Often the recipes interrupted the flow of the text in a weird way. The recipes look good and I just think it would be easier to use/read if the recipes were all together either at the end of the book or included at the end of each section. I think Helen is a good writer and I liked her style but I just didn't love the majority of the content. Overall unless you're a HUGE fan of the Rebanks or are also an overwhelmed mother who wants to feel seen this might not be the book for you. I would give this one 2.5 stars but I'm rounding up to 3 because of the recipes.
Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes
Sam Kemp and Nisha Cantor are two very different women. Sam is a working mother struggling with her home life - her husband has been out of work and is deeply depressed so all the financial and household burdens are on Sam's shoulders. Plus, she has a new boss who seems to have it in for her so work has become a nightmare as well. Nisha is an extremely wealthy American following her globetrotting businessman husband all around the world. They are currently in London where he unceremoniously asks for a divorce and kicks her out with none of her belongings and blocks all her bank accounts and credit cards. These two women's lives intersect when Sam accidentally takes Nisha's bag instead of her own at the gym. Inside this bag are a pair of custom made Louboutin shoes. These shoes become the focal point of the book and both women are deeply impacted by the shoes. When these women meet they also both start to realize just how much their lives have gone off track and just how important female friends are in their lives.
I don't think I've ever given a Jojo Moyes book I read less than 5 stars, but this one was just not as good as many of her other books. Initially I didn't like either main character (for different reasons), but I did want to know how they met up and what happened with the shoes. I agree with some of the other reviews I read that said the beginning and the end were good and the middle wasn't as good. My main complaints were 1) such unlikable characters - I don't mind an unlikeable character but it seemed like she went overboard to make Sam and Nisha SUPER clichéd and over-the-top. 2) there were SO MANY unrealistic (even for fiction) situations - Nisha working as a maid, Jasmine being so kind and taking her in so quickly, Sam's daughter giving away the shoes, the whole ridiculous caper to get the shoes back, etc. I did like the ending and while it was predictable and neatly wrapped up all the storylines, I do think both main characters had a lot of growth and development by the end. I also really liked how Moyes allowed both characters to really get back at the evil men in their lives at the very end - that was well done. But, I'm only giving it 3 stars because if I had never read Jojo Moyes before and picked this one up I don't know that I would have even finished it. I did like it by the end, but in my opinion it's not her best work.
