My book group of men discussed Tara Westover's book, Educated. It is about being home-schooled since for religious reasons, public schooling was considered a threat. Tara Westover eventually attended Brigham Young University and earned a PhD in history from Cambridge University in Britain. Dr. Westover has a web site
She is currently a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. Her book, Educated, has been on Amazon's best seller lists for 154 weeks, or roughly
three years.
Much of our book discussion was about rigorously held beliefs and holding onto them tenaciously. If I believe I have been directed by God to lead an army against others and you believe I have not been, you may well feel that I have been misled by pain or fear or ego or head injury. Questions of what to believe can be considered separately from questions about what parents should do for their children and their future. Of course, family politics and family relations are likely to figure largely in questions of love, loyalty, affection, friendliness and life plans.
Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck, Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah and other books by women authors are often partially reports of parent-child relations as well as relating to morality, mortality and the future. Robert Johnson's He and his book She are helpful for emphasizing typical differences in life plans and experiences between men and sons as opposed to women and daughters. I learned that today is the birthday of Judy Blume, author of many books, among them Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. My wife was an elementary school librarian, a librarian for high school and a professor of library studies. She said today that she has experienced ardent objection to books where the objector has not read the book. Because of issues mentioned here, I read a third of Are You There, God and have not found much about religion. So far, more of it is about anxiety of a 6th grade girl worrying about developing the body shape she wants and making friends in a new school.
