Sacred Rest: Recover your life, renew your energy, restore your sanity

Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Saundra Dalton-Smith
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I requested my library purchase it so I could read it. But...it is WAY too preachy, repetitive, and lacking in useful content. I enjoyed the brief scientific parts. I enjoyed some of the parts where she talked about her own struggles and those of her patients. However, I needed there to be much more science and much much less evangelism. I'm fully on board with the idea that rest is sacred, necessary, and as God intended. Stop quoting Bible verses at me, though, especially when they are taken out of context and irrelevant. I wanted to read the book to get tips/ideas for how to manage my life so that I feel more rested, present, joyful, and calm. In the end, I realized that reading the book was annoying me so much I was skimming it while rolling my eyes and muttering impolite responses, so when my checkout expired, I didn't bother to renew and finish the last few chapters. She wasn't saying anything new. In fact, the book might not have been too bad had an editor removed all the redundancies, nearly every Bible verse, and every attempt to convert the reader to her particular brand of evangelical Christianity.

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Grown-Up Marriage: What we know, wish we had known, and still need to know about being married

Grown Up Marriage: What We Know, Wish We Had Known, and Still Need to Know about Being Married by Judith Viorst
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Someone gave this to me for a bridal shower gift, I think, but it sat on my to-read shelves for the past 8 years until I picked it up almost at random last month. I'm actually pretty glad I didn't read it prior to getting married or even in the first few years of my marriage, as I found the tone of much of it quite dismal and depressing and focused on unhappy people.

On the bright side, I appreciate my own marriage and husband even more now that I've finished the book! Perhaps it's a generational thing, since Viorst is substantially older than I am, or maybe her intended audience is the generation younger than I, who might be getting married before they've figured out who they are and what they want? Really, though, there aren't a whole lot of earth-shattering revelations. Much of the book boils down to:
1) Choose your life partner very carefully (I personally recommend eHarmony!)
2) Communicate honestly, kindly, and frequently
3) Treat each other with respect
4) Don't cheat on your spouse and expect anyone to feel good about it
5) Really, just don't cheat on your spouse
6) Maintain your sex life (with your own spouse--see #5)
7) Have fun together because those memories will help sustain you through the rough patches
8) Everything will change all the time as you move through the stages of life, so expect continual adjustments and plan to do the hard work of making them in concert with your spouse.

I don't want to give the impression that I hated the book--it wasn't awful, it just wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. Clearly there are plenty of other reviewers for whom it clicked. Maybe they recognized themselves in some of the couples or situations, maybe they had some "Aha!" moments while reading one or more sections, or maybe they just read it at exactly the right moment in their lives. That's great! I will donate my copy to the Friends of the Library for a book sale so perhaps it'll make its way to someone who'll get that kind of benefit from it.

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Vox

Vox by Christina Dalcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this near-future dystopia, a right-wing, ultra-conservative preacher leads the "Pure" movement which controls the country to the point where women, girls, and even female babies are forced to wear counters on their wrists which limit them to 100 words per day and administer increasingly painful shocks for each word over that 100. Reading and writing are forbidden. Jobs, passports, and bank accounts, etc., are for men and boys only. Anyone who doesn't adhere to the "Pure" standards--such as adulterers, all LGBTQIA people, and those who protest the restrictions--are sent to "work camps" to do hard manual labor in utter silence. And worse.

Dr. Jean McClellan has been chafing for a year at the restrictions, ripped away from her work as a top neuroscientist days before from curing Wernicke's aphasia--an illness which strips language from its victims, making words jumbled and meaningless. Then the president's brother is stricken with the illness, and suddenly the Reverend Carl and an assortment of suited men in black SUVs show up at her door with an offer she ultimately cannot refuse: return to work long enough to finish the anti-aphasia serum. Touring her new tightly monitored lab with teammates Lorenzo and Lin confirms that all is not above-board, wreaking havoc with her plan to buy time (and unlimited words) for herself and her daughter by not revealing how close they already are to a cure. Question is, is it really a cure that those in power want?

Jean used to be apolitical, never imagining a fringe movement could gain such power. Now she's fighting for the lives of everyone she loves as part of an underground resistance network. Her tension, frustration, despair, rage, and fear are palpable. I could almost hear relentless, urgent music playing in the background as I read. It was particularly haunting to alternate reading this novel with listening to the third Maggie Hope mystery, set primarily in WWII Berlin. In the era of a Trump White House, this cautionary tale should inspire you to exercise your right to vote, speak up, and join protest movements...while you still can.

Do not read this at bedtime because you'll either try to sleep and fail, or keep reading through the night until you finish the book.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character and setting are secondary. There is quite a bit of profanity, some sex, and some violence.  There is a lot to discuss, so it's a good choice for book clubs.  Also suggest to fans of The Handmaid's Tale or Future Home of the Living God.

Many thanks to Bookbrowse.com and the publisher for the ARC I received in exchange for my honest review! I don't usually read dystopia, but this was excellent.

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Nilo and the Tortoise

Nilo and the Tortoise by Ted Lewin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story is pretty simple: Nilo is a young boy who gets left behind on a small island in the Galapagos Islands when he is playing ashore while his father's boat gets repaired. While Nilo's away from the beach, the rope tied to the anchor breaks, sweeping the boat out to sea. Nilo is remarkably calm about this and explores the island until his father can return to him the following day. In the meantime, he sees an angry bull sea lion, many different birds, the volcano's caldera, and a large tortoise, who lets Nilo sleep next to him.

In all honesty, the watercolor illustrations are so detailed and beautiful, I hardly noticed the words on the page. I was in such awe of the artwork!! I'm so glad we own a copy of this book, so I can sit and stare at the paintings as long as I want (or really, as long as my children will let me).

5+ stars for the artwork. 3.5 for the story (which is sweet but not "amazing"). The average is therefore 4.25...although I am tempted to round up to 5 anyway purely due to how much I love the watercolors.

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