Format: Kindle/Audio
Rating *****(5 stars)

When I was a child my three favorite books were Matilda, Maniac Magee, and Bridge to Terabithia. Matilda is the precursor to the Harry Potter series. She is a young, brilliant, misunderstood child who overcomes adversity to become great. Although, in Matilda's case great just means getting away from her horrible parents and finding someone who understands and appreciates her. That right there is why this is such a brilliant book.

The writing is classic Rald Dahl - meaning it is well written and appropriate for young children. That being said it is a book that will appeal across the ages. Even J expressed interested in reading the book.


If you have not read this book - you should. I am a firm believer that this should be on everyone's bookshelf.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

Our Chemical Hearts
by Krystal Sutherland

Rating: **** (4 stars)
Book Length: 320 pages
Genre: Young Adult

It has been a while since I have over-identified with character's in a book. At first I found myself relating to the broken nature of Grace Town. Despite her obvious depression Henry was pursuing her. In a way it felt like there was hope for us all.

Except then I found myself identifying with Henry who was chasing after a girl who was really just stringing him along for her own needs. She wasn't into him as much as she was into the healing that he provided her. The whole book she blamed him for wanting a different version of Grace, yet she was the one using him to feel a different version of herself. After they separate Grace begins to heal. This is all to the credit of Henry. Yet, Henry is now broken relying on his friends to help him to heal past the relationship that was Grace Town.

It was a beautifully written book with characters that obviously grabbed me. I do completely disagree with the book's message on love. In principle I get that it was trying to help others to see that love is what we make of it. We have to work at love like we have to work at anything else. My issue is that no one actually worked at love in this book. They all divorced. They all left. Even his parents who were pretty solid dissolved their relationship once Henry learned that there is no such thing as true love. Yet there is such thing. The point is that true love is hard work. The chemical portion of love is just passion. That is not true love. True love is the work and dedication and the choice to stay with someone despite the hard times. Even biologically this book just talked about surface love. It told teenagers everywhere that when the passion ends you have the right to leave and find something else. I do not agree with the message of love that this book portrayed. It is not a value that I would want my children taking away.

As published on The book Recluse Review

Format: Hardcover
Rating ****1/2 (4 1/2 stars)

I loved this book! I really wanted to give it a five star rating, however there were two things that held me back. I will get to that in a bit. First, why do I love this book? Grain Brain combines all the research on the impact of gluten and carbs and presents it from a neurological perspective. While the main topic of the book seems to be about preventing dementia and Alzheimer's he also provides examples about Tourette's and ADHD. There is even a small section about autism and mood disorders (bipolar).

When I was in graduate school the general consensus was that there is no research to support the gluten free diet for children on the autism spectrum. While Dr. Perimutter provides anecdotal evidence from his neurology practice to support the claims he is making, he thankfully continues to back up his claims with peer reviewed journal articles. While the research specifically on autism spectrum disorders and the effects of gluten may be sparse, there is research showing the effects of gluten on the brain in general. Dr. Perimutter claims that everyone will be better served by adopting a low carb, gluten free diet. However, there are people who are unknowingly more susceptible to gluten, and many of these individuals have conditions such as diabetes, ASD, mood disorders, schizophrenia, or ADHD, to name a few.

The book also contains great information on the impact of fasting. He also explores how sleep, or the lack of sleep, effects our cognitive abilities. There are also a few easy recipes in the back of the book mostly geared towards individuals who have never eaten gluten free before.

Why did I take off half a star?

The first reason is that I do not think that Dr. Perimutter made his claim on the harm of sugar to the brain. He continually mentions the impact of sugar, lumping all sugar including fruit together. Then he shortly says well if you are going to eat sugar then fruit is a lot better then processed sugar. However, even then he does not really provide the evidence to back up his claims. From my own experience I completely agree with him - however, that is not much good without the evidence to back it up. Then when he creates his list of what to eat and what not to eat he never mentions the acceptability of honey and completely outlaws agave. I admit that agave is pretty controversial, specifically for individuals eating Paleo. What I want is evidence about why it is bad for you, or good for you. And why no honey but you are allowed to occasionally put cow's milk in your tea or coffee? That makes no sense to me.

Which brings me to the second problem that I had with the book. He turned it into a fad diet book. I would say that 80% of the book is evidence from a neurological perspective. Then in the last 10% he adds a pretty lamb and skimpy diet outline and points you to his website to buy supplements and tests. It is hard to ignore the sale out factor of this. My advice - ignore this section of the book and focus on everything that came before. After all combined it is really only worth a half a star drop in rating.

If you read no other non fiction book this year then make it Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers. It is a great way to start of your new year for a new you.

As posted on The Book Recluse Review

The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green

Rating: ***** (5 stars)
Book Length: 337 pages
Genre: Young Adult, Romance

I tend to stay away from young adult novels. When it is a young adult romance novel I really want to run far away. What do teenagers truly know about love? They think they know a lot. Yet, what I have learned in my age is that no one really knows anything about love.

This is my excuse for why it took me so long to read The Fault in Our Stars despite everyone talking about the book. Although, maybe everyone talking about the book is another reason that I stayed far away. I regret taking so long to read it.

This is a young adult novel. It is a romance. Yet it is not a traditional young adult romance novel. One reason is that the main characters are both dying. When you have already had to face your own mortality then you have a maturity that goes beyond traditional young adulthood. This is cliche because it is true.

What I love most about this book are the characters. They are quirky. They are obsessed about a book that has no ending written by a complete jerk. They intertwine cancer with teenage rebellion. Then they dash off to Austria and kiss in the house of Anne Frank.

The entire novel is a bit quirky. Yet the ending is heartbreaking. The story was powerfully told. I have come to respect John Green's writing and will continue to read his books, even though they continue to be young adult fiction.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

Rating *** 1/2 (3 1/2 stars)



Have you ever heard the saying "Meet a child with autism, and you have met ONE child with autism"? This book reminds me of that saying. It is ONE child's answers on autism. It is a rare book, because that one child was a child who was non verbal. Unlike myself, who grew up with Asperger's, who was expected to intuitively know the world around me, yet I did not.


The book is written in question and answer format. In between answers, occasionally, Higashida's short stories are thrown in. The absolutely most annoying aspect of this book to me, is that questions are asked multiple times with only minor variations. Even more annoying is when different answers are given.


If you are a parent who is grasping for any understanding of what your non verbal child must be thinking, then I think that you should read this book. However, I think you should remember that it was written by ONE thirteen year old boy. Everyone's experiences and explanations are going to be different. Also, like a typical thirteen year old it is written like the author is the final authority on everything. For example, Higashida writes about how children with autism are attracted to water because of some sub-primal connection. While being way over dramatic I also completely disagree with his answer. I think children with autism are attracted to water because of the way light shines off it - I know this is why I am attracted to water. I also think that swimming can be a great sensory experience, water pressing on all aspects of the individuals body. This, to me, is a much simpler and more realistic explanation for while children with autism are attracted to water.


It is not that I disagree with anything that Higashida says in his novel The Reason I jump, it is more that I think it was a bit too dramatic. It also relates individuals with autism with the divine, and gives individuals with autism too much of an above society label. Based on my experience, both personal and professional, this is not the case. Individuals with autism, are just individuals that do not always fit the mold that society presents. I would think that a book that Higashida wrote now that he is a young adult would be much different then the one that he wrote when he was thirteen. Yet, that is one of the interesting aspects of reading this book. There are not many books on the market written by an adolescent with autism.

As published on The Book Recluse Review

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks

Rating: **** (4 stars)
Book Lenght: 243 pages
Genre: Psychology, Nonfiction, Neuroscience

Sacks is a neuropsychologist who through his career has seen a number of interesting cases. Sacks started in his field when there was so much unknown about the brain. While there is still so much for us to learn, case studies, like those found in this book, have increased our understanding.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a classic of psychology literature. It is a collection of case studies that have inspired research and even featured films. Nearly every introductory psychology textbook will include information on the man who actually did mistake his wife for a hat. Although, I found most of that reading more interesting than the actual story in this book.

The case studies themselves are pretty succinct. They do not give you a whole sense of the person behind them. Each patient could have an entire book written about them. Many times I was left wishing that I knew more about the individuals.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L'Engle


Rating: ***** (5 stars)
Book Length: 211 pages
Genre: Children's Chapter, Fantasy

There is no way for me to review this book unbiasedly. If I was to name one book that was my most influential in my childhood it would be A Wrinkle in Time. I must have read this book over 100 times.

The main reason that I love this book is due to Meg. Meg is ordinary surrounded by extraordinary. She has two brothers that excel at the social world and a younger brother that is a genius. Meg does not completely fit into either world. She doesn't even get the gift of being average. She stands out and she doesn't know how to stand out.

Meg goes on a fantastic voyage and ultimately finds out that she is, in fact, extraordinary. She is extraordinary because she is exactly who she is. She didn't have to grow up or change, she only had to recognize who she is. I think this is why I fell in love with this book in my youth.

Reading it as an adult the book is still magical. It still resonates with me. It is still an amazingly well-written story.

I have loved a lot of books in my time, yet A Wrinkle in Time will always have a special place.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

Rating: ***** (5 stars)
Book Length: 370 pages
Genre: Science, Non-Fiction, Biography

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is almost three different stories that are highly interconnected until they are woven into one cohesive book.

The first story is almost a memoir of the author Rebecca Skloot. She is very much present in the book as most of the present day stories are narrated as her experiences. The experiences may be about her interactions with the Lacks' family but you will finish the book with a connection to the author as much as to the subject of the book.

The second story is the history of the HeLa cells that were harvested from Henrietta Lacks and were grown to finance an entire medical field. These cells have done more for medical history than perhaps anything else. The story is a record of that history. This record is written in a way that is gripping and understandable to individuals who do not have a medical background. Yet it is engaging and through enough to be of interest to even those who have worked directly with these cells.

The third story is a story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. This is a story of a rural African American female whose parents were slaves. It is the story of her daughter Deborah who lacked formal education yet educated herself of anything to do with her mother's cells. When she didn't understand something she would work until she at least had a concept of the idea. The story is about how her family was wronged by the medical community that made millions off her mother's cells yet left her family in poverty. It is the story of how she strived for better for the future Lacks children.

The first two stories were highly fascinating. It is the third story that left the biggest impression as I read this book. I have read about the civil rights movement and accounts of desegregation. No other book put the chronology as clearly in my mind. Rebecca Skloot, who was alive during the early 2000s was the granddaughter of slaves. Within her life she was denied basic human rights. Reading about this family put it into perspective for me better than memorizing dates from any history class had.

I wish this book was required reading for everyone.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
translated by Jay Rubin

Rating: ** (two stars)
Book Length: 607 pages
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Mystical Realism, Japanese Litterature

This book is a difficult review for me to write. This book is extremely well written (or translated since I did not read it in original Japanese) in terms of sentence structure and word flow. Yet the story did not flow well for me. I wonder how much of this has to do with me not reading a ton of Japanese Litterature. I wonder if it is my fault that I did not connect with this book in the slightest. I finally realized that every book I read is a link between the words the author puts down and my own experiences.

It may seem dramatic to say that I counted down the pages until this book was over. It wasn't torture reading the words. It was torture reading the story. There are subplots within subplots throughout the entire story. All contain a mystical theme. The theme itself didn't concern me, however how they were connected did. They weren't connected. They were fragments that seemed like they should all flow together yet never did.

I still do not get why there needed to be a Lieutenant Mamiya at all. The story would not have lost anything by cutting out his story completely. What is the point of May Kashara. Was she suppose to be some stand in while his wife was gone? If so why make her underage - so that they can never be? It seems that Creta Kano filled the same purpose and he had no problem walking away from her to look for his wife. Why have separate characters for Malta Kano and Nutmeg Akasaka. The all filled the same role. Why have one set of characters leave to introduce a new set? Is this suppose to represent his short term mystical connection? Would it have made any difference to have left Malta Kano and Creta Kano in these roles? Why is there such a strong sexual connotation in the beginning of the novel that is completely absent in the later part of the novel? Why not leave it out in the beginning or at least give it meaning in the later part of the book. As you can see the story just didn't add up to me. It was made unnecessarily confusing.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams

Rating: ***** (5 stars)
Length: 216 pages
Genre: Science Fiction, Humor

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been a favorite book of mine since I was in middle school. I once wrote an epic novel using the writing style of Adams as inspiration. Sadly I do not have that book any longer. Thankfully I do have this original book which I have read more times than I can count.

Douglas Adams first developed the idea for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while he was hitchhiking around Europe. He later made it into a radio show in England and eventually into a book.

This book should be on everyone's to be read list. The writing is whimsical and light but also possess a great depth to them. The main characters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are Arthur who is an Earthman who at the beginning of the novel is trying to save his house from being demolished for an expressway. Ironically enough, the Earth is also about to be demolished to make way for an expressway. Thankfully Arthur's friend, Ford Prefect, is actually an intergalactic hitchhiker and bums a ride on the ship that is destroying the Earth. This is just how the story begins. The plot becomes a lot more convoluted from there.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review