New Mormon Books

… perhaps his most personal novel. …Reminded me of Stephen King even though the supernatural touches are very light, I wasn’t surprised to find out he wrote this after reading Pet Semetary and wanting a different ending. I may not like his political views, but he can be a wonderful writer, at his best when showing the cracks in a strong marriage between a husband and wife put under stress. A lot of the details were based on Card’s own life (he wrote for a computer magazine that had similar Machiavellian scheming) and makes this a winner.

Moar Book Reviews!: Lost Boys, by Orson Scott Card
By MacGuffin
Darth Ennui, 18th-Jul-2009
http://mac6uffin.livejournal.com/140077.html

… as Latoya Peterson pointed out in a piece for Double X … the current crop of pointy-toothed dramas continues the genre’s fascination with sexual violence and the idealization of the chaste woman. I can’t fault her for taking issue with eroticized depictions of abuse, often against women. But she’s wrong to equate the sexual politics of True Blood with those of the abstinent, repressed Twilight. These two are not the same animal.

Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does “True Blood” Tell Us About Women and Sexuality?
By James Brady Ryan, Nerve.com.
AlterNet.org, July 18, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/sex/141317/rough_sex_with_vampires:_what_does_%22true_blood%22_tell_us_about_women_and_sexuality/

In his book, “Juanita Brooks: Mormon Woman Historian,” Levi S. Peterson describes a woman who lived two distinct lives. In one, she was the Bunkerville, Nev., native one or two generations away from early-Mormon pioneer life, bred to be a farmer’s wife and live a life similar to her mother and grandmother. But there were life changes in store for Brooks (1898-1989), a remarkable individual who experienced most of the 20th century. Left a young widow with a baby, she entered academia. As middle age approached, she made another life change. She married a sheriff, Will Brooks, and quickly had four more babies. Had she stayed single, opines biographer Peterson, she likely would have had a distinguished academic career, editing and writing literary criticism. Instead, her return to a domestic life signaled the career of Mormonism’s most tenacious historian. Brooks’ achievements brought much-needed candor to Utah and Mormon history.

Political Surf on biography of Juanita Brooks, Utah historian
by Doug Gibson
Ogden UT Standard’s Political Surf Blog, Jul 17th, 2009.
http://blogs.standard.net/2009/07/17/political-surf-on-biography-of-juanita-brooks-utah-historian/

Every faith and denomination has an approach for balancing faith and reason. In Chapter Two of the book, Bushman briefly outlines the LDS approach. The context, of course, is how a faith or denomination defends its claim to have possession of religious truth or correct doctrine. If reason alone suffices, it’s not a religious approach. Faith or revelation alone might seem like the religious ideal, but faith or revelation always, at the very least, needs reason to make the system of doctrines hang together with a minimum of contradiction and to interpret the written texts. So what is the Mormon approach?

Reason and revelation in Mormonism
By Dave Banack
Mormon Inquiry on Beliefnet, July 17, 2009.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/mormoninquiry/2009/07/reason-and-revelation-in-mormo.html

It seemed to me that Strain was going for a Shannon Hale-esque cutesy chick-lit humor. But, while that generally doesn’t bother me, in this case it didn’t work. Not by a mile. The humor was grating (but then — as I’ve mentioned before — humor is such a fickle thing), as were all the “dear reader” asides. The dialogue was flat, and the vague Mormon-ness (it was published by a small LDS publisher) was awkward (either go all out, or don’t go there at all). But, what really bothered me was that Annabelle was shallow…

Previously Engaged
By Melissa
Book Nut, July 16, 2009
http://melissasbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/previously-engaged.html

…then the Harry Potter comparisons started rolling out. Media pundits everywhere declared Twilight the new Harry Potter. I wondered, flabbergasted, how any person could ever believe such a thing. Potter?! Really? What I saw onscreen was soap opera trash for the tween nation. It didn’t bear anywhere near the universal appeal of the Harry Potter series. But now I’m here, explaining how such a preposterous claim is less an arguable statement and more a joke, an unfunny one at that, like Will Ferrell trying to ice skate.

Do The Math: 8 Reasons Harry Potter Is Greater Than Twilight
By Tim Gomez
Cinema Blend.com, July 16, 2009
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Do-The-Math-8-Reasons-Harry-Potter-Is-Greater-Than-Twilight-13981.html

In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer interweaves this true-crime 1984 murder story with the fascinating history of the Church of Latter Day Saints, showing the undercurrent of violence and bloodshed prevalent in the religion since the early days, a legacy that endures in the Mormon fundamentalist sect which the Lafferty brothers wholeheartedly embraced.

Book Review: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
By Friend Mouse
Blogcritics Books, Jul 06, 2009.
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-under-the-banner-of1/

I’m about to make a very unpopular comparison, one that surely will have some fans trying to revoke my own Whedon fandom: Bella, Buffy, and the bloodsuckers from Twilight and Buffy aren’t all that different.

Girls on Film: Bella, Buffy, and Bloodsuckers
By Monika Bartyzel
Cinematical, Jul 6th 2009.
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/07/06/girls-on-film-bella-buffy-and-bloodsuckers/

It’s no surprise, then, that Stephenie Meyer hit the jackpot with her young adult vampire series, Twilight, which is now a major motion picture enterprise as well. … But as a child of the nineties, and quite possibly the biggest fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have to ask: what the hell happened to us?

Twilight
By Jessica Ferri, Kissing Dead Girls
Bookslut, July 2009
http://www.bookslut.com/kissing_dead_girls/2009_07_014759.php

I was exposed to Brian Evenson several years ago when someone, I forget who, pushed a copy of his novel The Open Curtain on me. I thought, “Cool. Crazy Mormon murder mystery. This looks tolerable.” That brilliant book ended up being so much more than that, and remains for me one of the sharpest, most gripping examples of how the possibilities of literature are far from spent (I swear I’m not overstating a thing. If anything, the opposite).

An Interview with Brian Evenson
By Drew Toal
Bookslut, July 2009
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2009_07_014753.php