Some Girls; My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

“Some Girls; My Life in a Harem” by Jillian Lauren

I borrowed this book from Mom (Cindy) and she has already reviewed it so I don’t feel as if I need to bore you with more about the storyline of the book as she has already described it.  This book fell into my “just ok” category.  I thought the storyline was interesting and something different however I did not click very well with the author’s style of writing.  She wrote well, it just wasn’t my style.  The details and points that she focused on left me wanting more/different information from her experience.  With that being said I believe that this book would be appealing to others and would be enjoyed by most.  It was a fairly quick read and if you are interested in a different storyline that may be about a new subject to you then I would recommend it.

"Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World" by Tom Doyle

This book is a collection of stories of how God is using dreams and visions in the world of Islam.  I had heard of these types of revelations but this book records many accounts of these fascinating and amazing experiences.  Tom Doyle is a missionary in the Middle East and Central Asia spreading the work and words of Jesus to the Muslims.  He tells of his first hand experiences with Muslims who first heard of Jesus through vivid dreams and powerful visions.  Of course turning from Islam and confessing Jesus is grounds for execution but they have found peace and hope that comes from knowing Jesus. 

I think you would find this book to be an eye-opener of how Jesus is working today in the lives of people who are not free to worship as they choose.  I recommended it without reservation!

288 pages

"Some Girls; My Life in a Harem" by Jillian Lauren

Interesting book!  I had only read a review but thought it sounded interesting and it was.  It is the true life story of the author and her experience in a harem and how she got there in the first place.  One of the early quotes she uses is from Talking Heads - "And you may ask yourself, well...how did I get here?"

Because I am so far behind in posting, I am just going to copy the review from Amazon.  I know - what a cheat I am!

"A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem, and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser

At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties."

Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Gelman

Oh boy has it been forever since I have posted!  I have 5 books to do, so maybe if I do one a day I will catch up! 
This book was a gift from A & K for Christmas and I loved it!  I read it before leaving for Abu Dhabi so it is still home and my review will be from memory (and Amazon).  If you want to borrow it, I believe it is on the breakfast bar!

The author and main character whose name is Rita finds herself on the verge of divorce.  She was livin' large in a fancy pants life style in LA but at the age of 48 she decides to take an opportunity to head to Mexico for some adventure and time away from her marriage.  Her children had gone off to college and she needed to "find herself".  In doing so, she began a lifetime of travel and exploration.  She is also a children's book author so could support herself and even get funding for her travels from some her clients. Rita never traveled with anything more than she could carry and usually went in search of remote destinations where she was the only guest or outsider in the village.  Her travels took her from Mexico to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Borneo, Bali (where she lived for years) and several other destinations.  From time to time she came home to reconnect with family and friends, but her marriage did not survive.  Her children became travelers as well and frequently spent months with her exploring new territory.  As far as I can tell, she is still traveling!  The book is more than just her travel journals however - she really wants to connect with the people and their cultures.  She learns to cook with the women over open fires all over the world, visits trance healers, studies black magic, and really just awakens your spirit of adventure and makes you say, "Let's go!"  (But I won't be divorcing Dad anytime soon to do it!)  It is well written and a pleasure to read.  Thank you A & K!

A Couple of Books

I haven't posted in a while, and in that time, I have finished two and a half audiobooks, a novel, and I have pulled the ripcord on a non-fiction book. Here's some brief summaries:

The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner (audiobook) - What is it that makes people happy? To find out, the author visited a series of countries, some of which rank high on happiness measures (Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Thailand, etc.), and some of which rank low (Moldova, England). Not to spoil anything, but there are lots of different reasons why people are happy, but fewer reasons why people are unhappy. This was a really interesting listen - very well written, with some interesting philosophical detours into what happiness really is. Made me want to travel more and see some of the places he talked about!

Red Shirts, by John Scalzi (audiobook) - great meta- sci-fi novel about a group of ensigns on the Universal Union spaceship Intrepid (modeled closely on the USS Enterprise) who notice that there's always a junior crew member on away team missions, and that's the guy who always dies. They set off to find out why. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say. This one gets weird quick, but it is a really great story that touches on fate, destiny, meaning-of-life kind of stuff. Even if you don't like sci-fi, I think you might find this one interesting. (To add to the meta, the audiobook is read by Wil Wheaton, who played Ensign Crusher on Star Trek The Next Generation. He does a great job!)

I got through half of "The World Without Us", by Alan Weisman. It's a thought experiment about what would happen to the planet if mankind suddenly disappeared, leaving behind all our buildings, chemicals, plastic, etc. It's an interesting book, but I got tired of the anti-human attitude that ran through the entire first half. I know we need to be good stewards of the world we have, but the assumption that the untamed wilds are preferable to a human-influenced landscape seems like a big assumption to me. In the first chapter, he talks about a project that is trying to recreate enclaves in Manhattan that restore pre-Dutch landscape and vegetation. It's interesting that he doesn't mention until the last sentence of the chapter that the Native Americans had settled Manhattan for thousands of years and significantly influenced both the flora and the fauna that the Dutch found when they got there. The assumption that European settlement is somehow less valuable than agrarian hunter-gatherer tended forest is just not an assumption I agree with.

Reamde, by Neal Stephenson - entertaining novel about a computer virus that gets out of hand. This novel starts out strong, gets (frankly) rather ridiculous in the middle, and finishes really strong. I mean, you've got Chinese hackers, Russian mafia, islamic terrorists, fundie survivalists, and everything. It's just nuts. But it's well written, and has done interesting things to say about international crime, computer security, and unintended consequences. Weighing in at something like 900 pages, it's an investment, but it pays off.  It's more of a techno-thriller than anything else, and with a good editor could make for an exciting movie.

I was going to write something about the book I just bailed on 25 pages on, but it's not worth it. On to the next book!

SEAL Team Six

Amazon link

Continuing in my current theme of military memoirs, I just finished "SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite SEAL Sniper". The title is pretty much what you get. It's well written, and it's an interesting look inside the training that goes into making a SEAL team member. The author was involved in the Battle of Mogadishu, which is also recounted in "Black Hawk Down". I was amazed at what these brave men endure in order to do what our country asks of them. One thing that stuck out to me was the absolute certainty that after making it through SEAL training, you are somehow more than human. I wonder what that does to your psyche over time? It certainly was interesting to see how the author reacted when faced with his own mortality.

This is a quick read, and written with the pacing of a good Clancy novel. Good for the beach or the plane.

Between Silk and Cyanide

To speed things up, here's a link to the Amazon summary.

I really enjoyed this book - it's the memoirs of the British code master for their commando units during WWII. At the beginning of the war, the Brits were using a simplistic code based on picking a set of words out of a poem they had memorized and coordinated ahead of time with home base. Leo Marks, the protagonist, realized how vulnerable the codes were to interception and decoding, and designed a set of codes that were significantly more secure. The conflict between the eggheads who were designing codes and the directors who were running the agents is fascinating, and it's kind of surprising that we don't all speak German at this point, given how much politics went into fighting the war.

As an egghead, it was also really neat to read about someone who made a difference and saved lives in the field, even from the home base.

This book is quite long (600 pages?) but it is very well written. I could hardly put it down - he even makes frequency analysis exciting! The author later went on to write screenplays. Well worth a read if you like WWII history or cryptography.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

About two weeks ago, I finished the audiobook version of "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy", by Eric Metaxas.  This was fantastic, and since I've done nothing but talk about it (apparently), I won't write much of a review.

Basically, if you thought the Nazis were bad, you should read/listen to this book.  The Nazis were horrible.  In particular, their deception and abuse of the Christian church in Germany teaches an important lesson the church needs to learn -- be serious and coherent about your theology!  Many pastors and congregations in Germany were led astray because they didn't listen carefully to what the Nazis were saying, and didn't know the Bible well enough to respond.  A lazy church is a weak church, and the Nazis exploited it as long as it served their purposes.

Anyway, this was a fascinating book, and I am even more interested to read some of Bonhoeffer's original works.  Highly recommended!

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

While I was waiting for M and M to finish their time on the "mountain" at Ski Dubai, I found myself without anything to read. So off I went to Borders and found this crazy book. I have heard a lot of controversy and fuss about this Mom, and I was very curious. It is a brutally honest memoir of her Chinese approach to parenting. The book is sometimes funny, sometimes outrageous as she describes how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.

It is an extreme parenting style that I would not embrace, but it certainly produces high achieving, disciplined kids! For example, here are 10 things the author's daughters were never allowed to do:

1. attend a sleepover 2. have a play-date 3. be in a school play 4. complain about being not being in a school play 5. watch TV or play computer games 6. choose their own extracurricular activities 7. get any grade less than an A 8. not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama 9. play any instrument other than the piano or violin 10. not play the piano or violin

The fact was, they spent so much time on homework and instrument practice, they had no time for any of the above. However, the girls were performing internationally by ages 10 and 12. The author says Western parents would complain about getting in 1/2 hour of music practice - she says it is hour 3 and 4 when it starts to get tough!

Here is a little blurb from some of her threats to her daughter:

"According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:
1. Oh my God, you're just getting worse and worse.
2. I'm going to count to three, then I want musicality.
3. If the next time's not PERFECT, I'm going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them!"

I think you will enjoy this short read - entertaining and thought provoking for sure. You will have to laugh at some of the absurdity of it as she writes with candor and humor. It left me shaking my head but at the same time recognizing all she wanted was the best for her children - like all mommas all over the world.