Virgin: The Untouched History

This book traces the various cultural meanings behind virginity through the ages. I learned about how virgins have been thought to be almost invincible and magical. Virgins could even tame unicorns. I believe a lot of this actually provides the underpinning for the fact that virgins always live during teen horror movies...until they "lose it," after which time they are immediately killed. She discusses famous virgins (some of whom were likely not virgins), including the Virgin Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and that British lesbian who sold her hetero virginity a few years ago. This book also talks about current abstinence based sex ed, which ironically never includes the word "virgin," even though that is the premise of the program.

This book was really interesting. She has another book out about heterosexuality, and I hope to read that soon.

Sybil Exposed

This book is fascinating! Almost everyone is aware of the Sybil story (the woman with 16 personalities), but what few people know is that the story was manufactured. This book tells the story of the three women who made this hoax possible: Dr. Connie Wilbur (the psychiatrist), Shirley Mason ("Sybil"), and Flora Schreiber (the author of Sybil). Here's the lowdown...

• Shirley had pernicious anemia. Symptoms of pernicious anemia include fatigue, rapid heart rate, depression, mild cognitive impairment, and pins and needles sensations in the fingers and toes.
• Pernicious anemia was not understood when Shirley was coming of age, so her symptoms were misunderstood as being psychological in nature.
• Shirley thus sought help from Dr. Wilbur.
• Dr. Wilbur was very career driven and fascinated by the idea of multiple personality disorder (MPD; as it came to be known, before it was known as DID).
• Dr. Wilbur arrived at the decision that Shirley had MPD, and she informed Shirley of this diagnosis. She then proceeded to prescribe and administer numerous addictive and potentially dangerous drugs, to which Shirley became addicted. They agreed that they would write a book about Shirley to make them rich.
• Shirley was eager to please Dr. Wilbur, so she manufactured personality after personality to gain her attention.
• Dr. Wilbur and Shirley engaged in a very inappropriate relationship, which involved going on vacations together, Shirley working for Dr. Wilbur, and them even living together for a period of time. Some individuals believe they were engaged in a romantic relationship.
• They later met Flora, who was interested in the big scoop. At first, she was clueless about the fact that it was a fraud, but she realized along the way that everything was whack. However, she didn't want to lose face (or money), so she decided to write the book anyway, making up more details along the way.
• They all then willingly broadcast their fraud to the world. Dr. Wilbur and Flora became rich and famous, but Shirley got outed repeatedly due to the fact that Flora barely covered Shirley's identity. Shirley essentially lived the rest of her life in hiding.

I was blown away by all of this. I also found it very educational. I learned a lot about Seventh Day Adventism (Shirley's religion) and several aspects of mental health history. I would encourage anyone to read this book. I guarantee you will learn something.

The Lacuna

This is the third Barbara Kingsolver book I have read. I didn't really like the last one that much (Prodigal Summer), but a friend recommended this one, and I gave it a shot. I was talking with some friends at lunch today about how to classify this book. We settled on "historical fiction." This is a fictional book in which a fictional character interacts with real people (e.g., Frieda Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Trotsky) and is shaped by real historical events, especially including the US War on Communism (McCarthyism). I had a hard time getting into the book at first because it is comprised of many different segments, including a polished chapter 1, fictional diary entries, fictional correspondence, actual New York Times articles, etc. Once I got used to the format, I really liked it. I don't know a lot about the historical events included in the book, and reading the book made me more interested in learning the truth. I just read a little bit about Trotsky, and it seems that much of the information in The Lacuna is legit. 

If you want to learn a little about Mexican/American/Russian history and read something quirky and different, you might want to give this a shot.

Firefly Lane

This book is much farther into the Chick Lit genre than what I typically read. I see this book as basically a love story, although it focuses on friendship love rather than romantic love. This tracks the friendship of two very different women over the course of 30 years. It's nice to be able to read a story that confirms what I have experienced and what I have witnessed with friends and clients--the line between friendship love and romantic love is not as distinct as you might imagine. What I mean by that is that the betrayal of a friend can break your heart in almost the exact same way as the betrayal of a lover. Likewise, the love of a friend can fill your soul in a very similar way to the love of a partner. Many times I've had clients sit in my office crying over the loss of a close friendship, and their pain is intensified because they believe that they "shouldn't" feel so strongly because it was "just" a friend. Well, friendship can be a very powerful thing.

So, this book was good and sad. I didn't love it, but I liked it. For Misty I'll say: there's trauma, but relatively little since it's a long book and only a few pages are about trauma. As far as closure, I think it was decent, but you'd still probably want more.  :)

The Kite Runner

My reactions to this book are complex. First of all, it made me realize how little I know about Afganistan (and many other areas of the world). This book is rooted in decades of unrest and war and reminds us that Afganis are just people like us. (I know it sounds obvious, but just hearing about these conflicts on TV just paints them as the "other.") Second of all, the story is very moving and heart wrenching. Misty would love the traumatic parts but HATE the ending. This is a powerful story about family, a broken society, upheaval, and the ways that it shapes lives. I would like to read a follow up story, although I don't think it exists.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

I finally read the last book of the trilogy, although it has been quite awhile since I read the first two. I watched the Swedish version of the movies to refresh my memory before I embarked on this 563 page tome. (As a side note, I thought the movies were good--gritty but good.) I enjoyed this book, but I found it more daunting than the previous two. I think that might be because of the sheer number of Swedish characters that I had to keep track of during the book (e.g., Niedermann vs. Nieminen, Edklinth vs. Ekstrom). Additionally, a number of characters are alternately referred to by their first and last names. The cast of characters in this book is enormous. I think I would have been well-served by several pages listing succinct descriptions of each character. This distracted me for the first half of the book and slowed me down throughout the book. All of that aside, Larsson managed to write a book that was good enough to round out the trilogy. I plan to watch this Swedish movie soon. I'm sure I'll catch the American The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sometime after it's out of the theaters. After watching the Swedish version I realized that Lizzy will hate the movie, so I'll have to watch it when she's not around.

When Men Become Gods

This history of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) was fascinating. I haven't been reading a lot of nonfiction lately, but I got this one for free, so I decided to give it a shot. It was well worth the read. This book has plenty of scandal and intrigue, plus evasion and spy stuff. I learned that the show Big Love is much closer to reality than I ever dreamed. The show's depiction of the old-fashioned closed FLDS community, which is ruled by a tyrannical man and his son, could be a made-for-tv-movie-based-on-a-true-story version of Rulon and Warren Jeffs at The Crick. The author provides a brief history of the entire Mormon church and then chronicles the development of the corruption, greed, and child abuse. This account is fascinating, and I  highly recommend it!