Welcome to Litsy!

Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days, but,according to the government,she didn't exist.She hadn't been registered for a birth certificate.She had no school records because she'd never set foot in a classroom,and no medical records because her father didn't believe in hospitals. At 16, Tara knew she had to leave home.

A friend recovering from surgery asked me to pick up some audiobooks from the library - my choice! I have read Educated and the Doerr (no idea if she has) - does anyone want to chime in support for the other two? I have Born a Crime on hold - which is my favorite audio of all time that I recommend. Photo to help me remember! (Otherwise, slim pickings.

Tackle the TBR 🤓📚 #boleybooks #educated #tarawestover #bookbeast #bookbuds #bookchat

An extremely compelling memoir of a young woman who is in pursuit of truth and education. However, she is fraught with parental abuse, religious abuse, and other traumas. Great memoir and I feel as if she got her point across. 4.5 ⭐️

Day 15 #Pencil #SchoolSpirit
This was an excellent book!

FINALLY read from my TBR shelf 👍🏼📖✏️

Excellent read

This is the best page I‘ve read in years! It‘s so inspiring and beautiful on how education (and societal transformation) could transform your being

Amazing book, filled with complex and trustworthy characters - the book growns into your heart

This was such a great read and so sad. The power of family and religion is such a unique experience. 10 out of 10

This was an extremely well-written and self-reflective memoir. It was truly heartbreaking to read about the level of abuse and neglect that Tara and her siblings experienced due to their survivalist, fundamentalist Mormon parents (one of whom seemed to have severe mental illness). This just missed being a 5 ⭐️ read for me due to a few inconsistencies. While the author very effectively describes her childhood in vibrant detail, 👇🏼 (cont‘d)

Book club today to discuss Tara Westover‘s excellent memoir, “Educated.” Book club day is always a good day. #FirstSaturdayReaders

Just finished and it will take me some time to process. Amazing memoir. Book club next weekend for discussion. #FirstSaturdayReaders

Current read and I am loving it. About 2/3 through. #FirstSaturdayReaders

In Tara Westover‘s memoir she reveals what it was like to grow up in a Morman-survivalist family in rural Idaho. Isolated from outsiders, Tara first stepped into the classroom at age 17. Beautiful & tragic, raw & powerful- speaks to the incredible importance of education & social life experiences. I was amazed at the author‘s ability to teach herself so many subjects on her own. I‘m not sure I‘d be able to do that. 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bailing at 56%. This is the type of memoir that is composed of one traumatic incident after another, relentlessly. I commend this author for surviving her shocking childhood and mentally ill, abusive family. I do not however have the voyeur‘s desire to rubberneck at the details.

Gut wrenching and eye opening memoir

Loved this book. The last sentence here seems to get more important every year since I first read this in 2020.
#TaraWestover #Educated #yourvoicematters #youarestrongerthanyouknow

Such a hard book to read but it was so good I couldn't put it down.

4/5 ⭐

Such an honest and interesting account of life. Really enjoyed.

So many to choose from! Got these for four bucks! #thelastromantics #educated

Wowwwwwowowoww there is no way Tara is real. Her degree of strength is inconceivable and I‘m so envious of her drive to do well in school without basically any education or money. I wish my life was this interesting but without the gaslighting and trauma…

Growing up I knew people from families like this… homeschooling, keeping off the “feds watchlist”, trusting that 100% of everything is God‘s plan, even injuries or fatalities. I know a lot of people think that many things in this book are sensationalized and maybe some of them are, but growing up around people like this, I tend to believe the author. I have a lot more to say about this book but@it will take more than 451 characters.

A tale of how complicated abuse is—especially when it happens within your own family. A case study of gaslighting, administered from all sides. Of how fragile memory is—what is memory, after all, but our personal history, and history is written post-factum by people. How trauma doesn‘t go away. And finally, it‘s a book about understanding and writing one‘s own history, and of overcoming oneself.

With education.

5/5

This book has been on my TBR for way too long and I am so mad that I waited so long to read this. This memoir is one of self discovery, the meaning of family, and a powerful story of loyalty. After everything Tara is put through by her family, she mourns their estrangement from each other. But she also recognizes that these relationships were holding her back from her own goals and life.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well dang, I don‘t know whether to call this book my last of 2022 or my first of 2023, kind of like Jamie being in two places at once in “A Walk to Remember”! 🤪

I resonated with so much of Tara‘s topsy turvey, sometimes very ass backwards journey to obtain her prestigious education.
I‘m still not done with college and often wonder if I really will make it across the stage someday.
Tara proves that against all odds it can be done.

What is a person to do, I asked, when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves?

The past was a ghost, insubstantial, unaffecting. Only the future had weight.

My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.

But God will provide either trials for growth or the means to succeed.

To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the courage to live in your own mind, and not in someone else‘s.

It was a long shot, but I was the queen of long shots.

I believed then—and part of me will always believe—that my father‘s words ought to be my own.

I understood that no future could hold them; no destiny could tolerate him and her. I would remain a child, in perpetuity, always, or I would lose him.

As a bipolar person and someone who often suffers from bipolar disorder, some of Educated was emotionally difficult to read.

The manipulation and toxicity in how her family communicates remind me of my childhood. And my current life at times. Bible verses followed by eerily calm, casual conversations then threats and aggression, later followed by love and guilt stirs up so much emotion it makes me nauseous.

Continued in comments

Well, that's one way to kick off #Roll100. I absolutely devoured this book. Just an incredible roller coaster of a story. @PuddleJumper

Excuse me while I go cry….

“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure…. I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”

“He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one‘s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.”

Pretty amazing what Tara went through to get where she is today. Tara‘s parents might not have fully supported her educational endeavors, but that wouldn‘t stop her from being accepted to a couple Ivy League schools and even Cambridge! And Julia Whelan is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators.

4⭐️
12/14/22

I‘ve been feeling feeling down and overwhelmed since my big move last year. I pulled away from Litsy and people in my life. So it was a big shock to get such a thoughtful surprise from @Sleepswithbooks

It feels really good that someone put in the time to check my tbr list and send me a book for Christmas. Thank you so much for bringing a smile to my face during such a hard time.

Choose the good.

I don‘t even know where to start with this one. I literally couldn‘t stop listening. I kept asking myself “how is this somebody‘s real life?” Tara Westover is a testament to the notion that it‘s never too late to become what you‘re meant to be and to overcoming a very unconventional/dangerous/crazy upbringing. This book will stay with me for a long time, I think.

There‘s a lot of really messed up stuff that started to unfold this month after I made a quick move that was supposed to open up a new and better chapter for me…

But a right move that my landlord/person I‘m currently living with made is asking me if I had read this book yet, and it‘s been on my TBR for literal and actual AGES!!

Now the question is, can I get it read and give it back to her by January when I‘m supposed to relocate again?!?

This was a difficult, and yet a fascinating read. The trauma, the perseverance, the healing. Lot to ponder.

Wow wow wow. What an excellent book. So very sad, but Westover‘s ability to escape it all was so inspiring. A must read if you liked The Glass Castle.