Five End of Summer Reading Recommendations

Maybe I'm just a book nerd, but over the years I've noticed a pattern in my reading habits. During the school year, I tend to read very light "chick lit" types of books that I can just pick up and set down without getting too sucked in. When summer starts, I'll move to more engaging romance or fiction novels that usually keep me up at night. But as summer winds down and I start getting antsy for school to start again, I start looking for slightly deeper, "educational" type books, such as historical fiction and memoirs. I still like to be entertained, so I rarely make it all the way to straight nonfiction or the like, but I definitely go out of my way to find books that will teach me something about another culture, time period, or lifestyle. I found all of these books as digital borrows through the local library. Here are five books that I read recently and highly recommend:

The Midwife of Hope River: A Novel of an American Midwife
by Patricia Harman
Review: Set in the beginning of the Depression era, this novel follows a young, liberal  midwife in Appalachia with a shrouded past. Written by a longtime midwife, this book is excellent for anyone who wants to learn more about the art of childbirth (and you'll find it CAN be an art) and/or life of the everyman during the onslaught of the Depression. It also discusses the anarchist trends of the 1920s, which isn't much discussed in the history books. Perhaps it is geared more towards women, but it is primarily written as a historical novel, not as romance, despite the presence of a story arc involving romance. The mysterious past subplot bears little impact on the story, but it doesn't necessarily detract from it either, and provides an interesting element. Overall, the book is enjoyable and not a time waster. It is a little slow to start, but once I got about a third of the way through, I was hooked.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
Review: This book is a semi-autobiographical novel based on Alexie's upbringing on the Spokane Indian Reservation. As a disclaimer, I am from the Spokane area and am Native, so I'm familiar with the Spokane rez. This was nevertheless a fascinating book for me because it is so blunt about Native struggles, such as alcoholism, poverty, and poor education on Indian reservations. It follows a high school boy who decides to transfer from his dead end high school on the rez to a high school in a nearby white town, which makes him a pariah on the rez, but ultimately opens the way to a better life than what his parents have. It is supposedly written for youth ages, but I enjoyed it and I recommend it for everyone, Native or not.

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
By Jenna Miscavige-Hill
Review: For those who are curious about the Scientology religion/cult/group, this is an excellent book to scare you away from it. It was written by the niece of the current leader of scientology, but it is most interesting because she was raised in Scientology from birth. It is alarming to learn about these secret and hidden Scientology lifestyles because they are so contrary with what "normal" life is to most of us. For instance, at age 6, Jenna was sent to a special camp/compound with other children of Scientology leaders to essentially be raised as a miniature adult and manual laborer. Her entire worldview was based on the beliefs taught by L. Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction writer, and it wasn't until she was an adult in a forbidden relationship that she began to truly question the oddness of her life. She is now an outspoken opponent of Scientology, and most of her family members have left the religion as well. A fascinating book for anyone who wants to know more about life inside Scientology.

Dreams of Joy
by Lisa See
Review: A next-generation sequel to See's novel Shanghai Girls, it is a standalone book featuring a young woman (daughter of one of the sisters in Shanghai Girls) who leaves her life in Chinatown, Los Angeles, to newly Communist China in an effort to find her biological father. Her mother follows her to China and experiences her own rebirth in her home country while trying to find her daughter and bring her home. Covering a three-year period, the point of view shifts between mother in Shanghai and daughter in one of the countryside communes during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, an ill-designed economic expansion attempt that led to the largest famine in history. It is engaging and well-researched by an author known for her novels set in Chinese culture. If you are a stickler for continuity, you might want to start with Shanghai Girls, but I was most interested in the perspective of life in Communist China, so Dreams of Joy was my start point.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
Review: The most nonfiction book of any in this list, journalist Barbara Demick interviewed and shared their stories of six North Koreans who grew up and lived in the most closed-off country in the world. She tells the stories within a chronological format, shifting between subjects as necessary to tell the everyday experiences of North Koreans during the dictatorship's rise to power and shifts in control. It can be a little slow at times, particularly when Demick diverges to convey historical context before starting into a subject's story, but ultimately it is an eye-opening glimpse of life from the perspective of former North Koreans who have since defected and left the country. I also recommend watching National Geographic: Inside North Korea, a documentary (currently on Netflix Instant) that features secret footage taken by a journalist crew posing as assistants for an eye surgeon volunteering his time to perform eye surgeries on a thousand people in ten days. One thing is for sure, there's nothing communal about North Korea's political structure except the exaggerated difference between the haves and the have-nots.