Educated: A Memoir - Hardcover by Westover Unknown Binding
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Educated: A Memoir - Hardcover by Westover Unknown Binding

4.2/5
Product ID: 549620263
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Reviews

4.2

All from verified purchases

D**E

Great

Good sturdy book fast delivery

A**R

Favorite book

Amazing book, fast delivery

M**L

So Good!

I read this book in 2 days. Could not put it down!

L**S

This book is an education

This book not only addresses abuse, but also some mental health issues. They seem unreal, or made up, but Obviously someone who has not experienced these two social concerns is not going to understand and might even claim it is untrue. Having experienced both abuse and a relationship with someone who had a Psychic break, I feel it was well written and addressed a very real problem in society!

M**L

Story does not ring true. Book wildly overrated

I bought this book on iBooks (I buy half Kindle, half iBooks). I read the book carefully, as I'm interested in memoirs. Tara clearly wanted to write a big book and studued memoirs, as she admits in interviews. She succeeded spectacularly, given the sales. Yet the book has serious problems.I immediately knew James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces was a fraud, and it turned out I was right. So I have a good nose for sniffing out bullshit.The book does not ring true and doesn't pass a basic common sense test. She says she worked in a junkyard with her father and had horrific scars and injuries. She was also in a terrible wreck with scars and injuries. Where are these? Who has seen them? Zero evidence.Her accounts are wildly at odds with her family's. Her mother even wrote a book contradicting her account. Her brother wrote a series of long blogposts, which have since been taken down but can be read on the WayBack Machine. She's entitled to her views, but the sharp disagreement should lead to questions, not unquestioning adulation.She makes much of the fact that her home was ignorant and backwards, yet three of the siblings got PhDs. That on its face seems to contradict the idea that they grew up in a backward, uneducated household. She also makes much of the fact that she hadn't heard of the Holocaust before going to BYU, yet it is everywhere in pop culture and if she read encylopedias as she says she did, there are countless entries on the Holocaust and Holocaust related material.Her accounts of her time a Cambridge are unintentionally hilarious to anyone who has studied at Cambridge or Oxford. They don't ring remotely true. (Full disclosure, I'm an American who went Oxford, and most of my friends went to Oxford or Cambridge. Like her, I also have a degree in history.)First, Oxbridge milk American and foreign students for cash as "exchange" students. They may get to interact with young dons and postgraduate students, but no full professor would spend and hour of their day with an exchange student. (Professor is far more prestigious and rarer in Oxbridge than in US universities.)Secondly, she completely misunderstands the British and puts words in the mouth of characters that no British person would ever say. No British person would ever or has ever told an American student that they are "pure gold." That is for sentimental TV shows. American professors praise their students endlessly. A British don or professor gives out praise very sparingly, even when the student is exceptional.So why has her book done so well? It is probably wish fulfilment on the part of some readers. Obama talked about Americans who cling to guns and God. Tara is cagey about her religion, and elides Mormonism with mainstream Christianity. This allows her to be a stand-in for people leaving closed minded Christianity. Secondly, most people don't do any due diligence, and they don't want to let facts get in the way of a good story.Finally, the book is competently written, but is hardly a great memoir. It pales miserably in comparison with Albert Camus's The First Man, Christopher Hitchens' Hitch 22, Patrimony by Philip Roth, and so many other great books. I struggled to read many chapters out of loss of interest in the writing and subject, even putting aside the questions of authenticity.

C**R

Unexpected

A story you haven’t read. But will be glad you did.

A**I

Hart to Put Down

This is a fascinating book, from the first to the last page; a book I come back to and re-read it with the same pleasure, a book that makes for a great gift too.

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