Tag: Nonfiction

Marriage Confidential: The Post Romantic Age by Pamela Haag

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 14 Comments
Marriage Confidential by Pamela Haag
Publisher: Harper 
Publication Date: May 2011
Categories: Nonfiction, Marriage
Source: Library
Description:

Marriage Confidential tackles this question with bracing candor, taking us inside a world where romantic ideas have given way to a “post-romantic” mood and a fair number of marriages end up “semi-happy.” It’s a world where the husbands of “workhorse wives” pursue the Having It All dream that married women have abandoned; where children have migrated from the children’s table to the centerpiece; and where technology, demography, and economy place unprecedented stresses on marital fidelity. Among other examples of marriage trailblazers, Haag even presents a case for how updated ideas of non-monogamy might be an option for the future.

Uniquely weaving together cultural commentary, memoir, storytelling, history, and research, Marriage Confidential gives us a riveting glimpse of what the future of marriage might look like.

My Thoughts:

Marriage Confidential reads as a long opinion piece. It was quite dry in spots and it wasn’t what I would call cohesive. Although I wasn’t a big fan of this book there were a lot of sections that made me think. And that, my friends, is one of my favorite things about reading.

Some of the things that made my mind start a’spinnin and a’thinkin:

The trend of voluntary austerity. 
I’ve often wanted to sell everything I own and move to the woods. No, I’m not outdoorsy. I am, however, sick of stuff.

The popularity of running, bigger bathrooms, and people who don’t mind long commutes. 
This all speaks to the fact that people are longing for ALONE TIME. I wouldn’t mind an hour commute myself. I’m a stay at home, homeschooling mom. My commute is from the coffee pot to the computer.

The way couples are redefining marriage to make it work for them.
Nonmonogomy is on the rise. Couples divorce but continue to live together. Polyamory is becoming more popular. Don’t ask, Don’t tell is more than an outdated military policy.

People find ways to make marriage more manageable in our modern times. They don’t all sound normal (whatever that is) but who are we to make sweeping judgments about how people decide to run their lives?

Vive la différence!


Reactions to Recent Reads

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 16 Comments

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Publication Date: July 2012
Categories: Contemporary Women, Humorous, Family Life
Source: Library
Description:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
Funny, funny and more funny! Delightful read
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A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France By Caroline Moorehead

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: November 2011
Categories: Historical, WWII
Source: Library
Description:
They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled “V” for victory on the walls of her lycÉe; the eldest, a farmer’s wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.

Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.

In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.
A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

All sorts of sad 😦
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The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: January 2012
Categories: Dystopian, Literary
Source: Library
Description:
In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.
 
The sound of children’s speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn’t so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a foreign world to try to save his family.


Wtf? Yup, that was my reaction too.