Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you enjoy nonfiction, you HAVE to read this book.

If nonfiction isn’t really your thing, you and I should be friends because it’s not my thing either. But this book was so darn good that I might have just turned a corner on my feelings about nonfiction.

This story is unbelievable. No, seriously. There were times when I could not believe somebody could have gone through so much in life and persevered through it all. It is truly something special to read this book and gain perspective on how some children are raised, and the obstacles they have to overcome in life that many of us take for granted.

Educated is a memoir written by author Tara Westover about her life growing up in a devout Mormon family. Her father is somewhat of a survivalist (with a touch of bipolar). Her mother is a midwife and naturalist. They believe in modesty and traditional gender roles. She is the youngest of seven children. And Tara never stepped foot in a classroom. That is, until she turned 17 years old.

This book is about Tara’s journey of self-discovery through education. The juxtaposition of what she learned via her family’s teachings about morality and religion with the formal education she received in college was so interesting. I could not believe some of the things she had to learn at such an advanced age in relation to your typical school age child…. how to use a scan-tron, that you actually had to read the textbook instead of just looking at the pictures, and the definition of the Holocaust. Things most people would consider common knowledge were foreign concepts to a young girl living a sheltered life.

I honestly could not listen to this audiobook fast enough. The first half of the book was somewhat slow moving and I wasn’t quite sure how all of the small stories told along the way tied in together. But by the second half of the book, I was fully on board and was able to see how every story was a piece of a larger puzzle that shaped Tara’s journey.

Cannot recommend this one enough. It is so interesting and inspiring. Looking at the obstacles that Tara was able to overcome and the many accomplishments she achieved along the way, I can confidently say that this book exemplifies that age old saying, “You can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

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