Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Educated, Tara Westover


Educated: A memoir by Tara Westover is a must read book for 2019.  In addition this book was on Barack Obama's summer reading list for 2018.

Started: 10/12/2019
Completed: 10/15/2019
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  The New York Times

Words for which I sought help:

fictive -- creating or created by imagination.

polyphony -- the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other.

shibboleth -- a custom, principal, or belief distinguishing a particular call or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.

Review:

I was interested in the Illuminati for a little while, but it never took over my life.  Ms. Westover was dominated by this kind of conspiracy theory for her childhood.  It was amazing to hear how completely indoctrination can dominate a child's life.  Of course, it makes sense, that this would happen to a child, but it is hard to hear about.

Preparing for Y2K, Tara's father says, "When the hour of need arises, the time of preparation has past."  I really like this quotation (though it is oddly displaced in the imagined dystopia that surrounds the Westover clan).

I love this description:  "terms...were dotted around the page like black holes sucking all of the other words into them."  There were several more clever descriptions that revolved around reading and math that I enjoyed.

The story of how Ms. Westover overcomes the machinations and twisted rewritten histories of her family is compelling.  It seems to me, however, that she wrote her story too early.  There is so much more to tell.  I think that the subtitle should be, "an introduction."

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