A Few Quick Book Notes

A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer - This the third book in an autobiographical trilogy by a child abuse survivor (It follows "A Child Called It" and "The Lost Boy".). The abuse was horrible, but the meat of it is understanding how he survived psychologically and how others unraveled the lies and eventually rescued him from his abusive mother. This third book focuses on his adult life and how his past affected him and his loved ones. I also found his attempts to understand his mother and the culture she grew up in to be quite fascinating. A harrowing and engaging book, though you can feel the uncomfortableness of the author sharing his own story. Definitely worth a read, but best read in the context of the series, I think.

 

 

Patriotic Grace: What it is and Why We Need It Now by Peggy Noonan - This was an interesting, thoughtful, quick read. I'm not so sure about her predictions of a large-scale catastrophe in the U.S. (in terms of an attack on the electric grid, or something like that), nor all of her solutions, but I really liked her points about the need to change the tenor of our political discourse, including: we have to be careful that politics doesn't become our religion! Amen to that!