Lovejoy Reading Review from 2018

Must Read

The Body keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the healing of Trauma Bessel Van Der Kolk

The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clementine Wamariya

Good to Read

Educated by Tara Westover

Where the Past Begins by Amy Tan

Gospel of Trees by Apricot Irving*

You probably don’t need to read

Brain on Fire by Susannah Calahan

War on Peace by Ronan Farrow

I read seven books in 2018. I have ranked them here in a certain order to share with you. The book I think everyone should read if you are remotely interested in healing, therapy, medication, trauma, and liberation from adverse childhood experiences is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. This is a subject I have been studying, living, experiencing for 20 years and this is the best book I have read on the subject by a mile. Next, an incredible memoir that changed the way I think about immigrants, refugees, and international assistance is by a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide Clementine Wamariya called The Girl Who Smiled beads. This is also a must read.

After those two books, I jump to a new category which I call: Good to read. They all seem to be explorations of childhood. I really enjoyed Educated by Tara Westover. I think I loved it, especially the story of her childhood living completely off the grid with a crazy father because it reminds me of any well told story, I could relate. Not because I was a home-schooled Morman who never saw a doctor, but I think my experiences inside evangelical Christianity allow me to relate, I am sure they do. Amy Tan’s memoir of her childhood, growing up with her challenged mother is beautifully written but not as memorable as Educated or the Girl Who Smiled Beads for me. Maybe all there is, is the stories of our childhoods, these seem to be the most incredible and relate able of memoir. The Gospel of Trees very much fits this genre. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as it is written by a friend from college. It captured, like the Girl Who Smiled Beads, the dark side of missions and international development both written from a child’s perspective.

Finally, I put two books in the last category of “You probably don’t need to read,” Brain on Frire and War on Peace are totally different from the childhood memoir genre. Brain on Fire is a page turning look into one rare experience of a debilitating disease. I left that book feeling how unfair the world is towards people who have neither the health insurance she had nor the full time care givers who could be with her in the hospital as they figured out what was taking over her brain. War on Peace was sort of annoying, in the way any book might be that is written by someone covering an experience I had (working in Pakistan from 2006-2009) but who has the opposite bias as mine.