thoughts on books

Category: Non fiction

  • how to be a saint: an extremely weird and mildly sacrilegious history of the catholic church’s biggest names

    A very funny and informative book about obscure Catholic history. When I requested this ARC, I thought it would be 75% humor and 25% learning, but this was pretty well researched and had a lot of solid information portrayed in a humorous manner. Kate Sidley is a great writer, having made her career writing for television. Her voice reminds me of Tina Fey or Mindy Kaling, who also write for TV but their books have sharp observations and random quirkiness. If you are interested in history/anthropology/religion and are okay with not taking it too seriously, you would enjoy this book. There are many pictures of renaissance and earlier art of various Catholic saints, which adds to the narrative and inspires the author to humorous ideas about them. You can’t really study European history without studying the history of the Catholic Church.

    While the tone is light and silly, and overall does call out all of the ironies and hypocrises in the church, it somehow manages to be respectful if not deferential of the church. It makes the history accessible and funny. Like the subtitle says, it is sacrilegious, but only mildly so.

    I am pretty devout myself, but I think God has a good sense of humor.

    Thanks to @netgalley and @sourcebooks for the ARC. Book to be published August 19, 2025

  • the mother next door: medicine, deception and munchausen by proxy by andrea dunlop and mike weber

    This book is a bit uncomfortable, in a good way. It has big “podcast” energy, sort of like a large format “Did you hear THIS crazy story?” townie bar conversation.

    Andrea Dunlop is an author and podcaster, her sister was lost to her due to Munchausen by proxy. Because of her personal experience she created a podcast based on a famous case of MBP, Hope Ybarra, who pretended to have cancer 4 times and faked that her daughters had cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis. At first her family thought she was delusional. Then they discovered she was guilty of fraud, falsifying medical documentation.

    Mike Weber was the sheriff/law enforcement on the Hope Ybarra case, he has made his career on several child abuse cases to varying results.

    On one hand, this book is a good guidebook for those who want to know the patterns. On the other hand, it is also a good guidebook for how to work on this and pull it off. For me it felt like “eek this is none of my business” and I legitimately felt like a rubber necker… but I suppose there is a bit of that in all true crime genre.

    It was an eye opener. I learned a lot. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around MBP is both a mental illness and a crime.

    Thanks to Netgalley and St Martins Press for the ARC. Book to be published February 4, 2025