Book Review

Wall Carolyn, Sweeping up Glass. New York : Random House, 2009.

Olivia Harker Cross lives in the mountains of Kentucky during the time of the great depression with her elderly and insane mother and her young grandson, abandoned by a mother with dreams of “making it” in California. Olivia has not had an easy life. She lost her beloved Pap at an early age and has been left with her mother Ida who is crazy and abusive. Furthermore her life has been marred by extreme poverty especially since the impoverished residents of her community have not been able to pay for items from the store she runs nor for the “doctoring services” provided by her Pap to local animals. Olivia also has dangerous enemies who are making life treacherous for her and now her enemies are killing her beloved wolves.

Carolyn Wall writes Olivia's story in a fast paced and engaging way which is tinged with mystery. Her style is reminiscent of other Southern writers such as Harper Lee and Dorothy Allison. This book was an engaging read and I would highly recommend it.

Book Review

Hopgood, Mei Ling. Lucky Girl: a Memoir. Chapel Hill, Algonquin Books, 2009.

In 1974 Mei Ling Hopgood was adopted from Taiwan by Rollie and Chris Hopgood in what was to be one of the first international adoptions. After about seven months of bureaucratic red tape, Mei Ling was finally able to join her American family. Growing up in Taylor Michigan ( a suburb of Detroit) with parents whom she loved and who loved her dearly and with two younger brothers who were adopted from Korea, Mei Ling lived an all American girlhood and barely gave a though to the family who gave her up. But her birth family showed up out of the blue wanting to meet her and would not take no for an answer.

Her birth family turned out to be a middle class family of Chinese ancestry living in Taipei, defying Mei Lings expectations of a poor peasant family living in the country. Along the way she also met her sister Irene Hoffmann, also given up at birth by their birth parents to a couple from Switzerland.

Mei Lings memoir deals sensitively with the conflicting emotions she has felt about meeting a family who is so different culturally from her in ways she can't ignore. She also deals with how she felt growing up in the seventies near Detroit as one of the few people of Asian descent and facing barely disguised anti Asian discrimination while at the same time considering herself to be fully American.

This was a wonderful book which was hard to put down. I would highly recommend it.

Book Review

Mintle, Linda Dr. Press Pause Before You Eat. Howard Books : New York, 2009.

I will begin by saying that Dr. Mintle is a well known author of Christian self help books. I did not know this before reading the book and mention it only because this book will not speak as well to a non-Christian audience. Indeed many Librarything reviewers were suspicious of this book because it was Christian.

That being said, the topic of this book (mindless eating) is a timely one which affects so many of us. Her book is very conversational and includes many anecdotes from her personal life and from the lives of her friends and the patients she encountered in her years as an eating disorders specialist. Dr. Mintle is very knowledgeable and her suggestions are very sound. Her book was very easy to read because of her conversational tone. I have struggled a lot myself with mindless and emotional eating and I definitely recognized myself in many of her stories. I also learned some tricks that might help me in my own struggles with weight. I also found her use of scripture to be very insightful and inspiring and not at all heavy handed.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a Christian perspective on overcoming struggles with emotional and mindless overeating.