So I'm not interested in getting all political here...
and I know I have been writing about books mainly so far, but I just read Michelle Obama's speech to the DNC, and I was really blown away by the rhetoric of that speech. (And I'm using rhetoric in the correct, neutral, Aristotelian definition.)
As many writers have acknowledged, she probably did the most "damage" to Trump--and she never once uttered his name. Such was the craft with which the speech was written.
However, I'm not interested in the Trumpiness of it, but rather I wanted to share some of my favorite lines, lines that I think speak not to democrats or republicans, but to our national character and what we hope for. For example, when she explained how she and her husband tried to explain how to handle insults, she said, "that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you
don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go
high." In it's simplicity, in it's parallelism, people get the picture.
She framed the election as a question of role models, and again used repetition, parallelism, and the logic of elimination to make her point:
"And make no mistake about it, this November when we go to the polls that
is what we’re deciding, not Democrat or Republican, not left or right.
No, in this election and every election is about who will have the power
to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives."
And when she said,
"I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this
country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our
Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal,
each a beloved part of the great American story."
it was hard not to think about all the "glass ceilings" that would be shattered, but in a positive, warm tone.
I haven't watched it (I have trouble sitting through applause), but I think you should definitely read it.
Goodreads recommended this, and the title sounded very interesting...
But I was expecting something else. I had heard an interview with the author on the radio, and it sounded interesting. Honestly, with a title like Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, I was expecting some really interesting drunk stories. What I learned was that drunk stories really aren't all that interesting, and that was exactly what the author's message was.
That isn't to say that this was a boring book--rather, it was a memoir about recovery, not about the glory of drinking. And, in fact, the author explicitly addresses what a problem it is that our culture glorifies drinking, especially as a way to "free" or empower women. Rather than simply detailing the many times she reached the bottom of a wine bottle, the author gets to the bottom of this complicated relationship between American culture and alcohol.
And this worked, as I was hoping to find a book that clearly connected to the school's Health, Wellness, Fitness, and Sports theme for summer reading, and this definitely fit the bill for health and wellness...in that this memoir detailed how not well the author was and what it took to make her both physically and mentally healthy again.
In fact, I found the scientific explanations she gave for things to be some of the most interesting parts of the book. She spoke to Aaron White, an expert on blackouts, and learned that "it's not the type of drink you put to your lips, it's the amount of alcohol in the blood and how quickly you get to that level. Fragmentary blackouts start at a blood-alcohol content around .20, while en bloc blackouts start around .30." And because women are smaller and metabolize alcohol more slowly, it takes less to put them in the dangerously drunk zone. Oh, and when people black out, it's because their brain is essentially being poisoned to the point that it can't work to form memories, which apparently is why drunk people sound like a broken record, since they can't remember what they told you 5 minutes ago. So, I liked how this book dispelled the myths about how "awesome" it is to be drunk--without it sounding preachy. After all, this woman lived that scene for decades.
I found the introduction "Women Who Drink," to speak to the conflict that many modern young women face when presented with the choice to drink--or the choice to do much of anything.
I drank to drown those voices [...] I wanted the same freedom from internal conflict that my male friends seemed to enjoy. So I drank myself to a place where I didn't care, but I woke up a person who cared enormously.
I think this speaks to many women and girls, who want to "Let it go" and shed their inhibitions, but think that they cannot do it without a chemical fix. However, there is a notion that alcohol excuses actions or consequences, and Hepola does a great job showing that those consequences are rarely really ignored, and that they do add up, especially in regards to sex. (Yes, there is sex in the book...and curse words. I'd argue the minimal details about sex help further the author's point about the problems with judgment when drinking--and the reasons many women drink. I can't defend the cursing except to say its the author's chosen voice.)
This was also an interesting "writer" story, as Hepola explored the difficulties of writing and the literary "tradition" of alcohol abuse: "I became, as Irish author Brendan Behan once said, 'a drinker with a writing problem.'" The fear of judgment that is inherent in writing is shown through the lens of someone who wrote a great deal for online content, where the comments section empowers "any random dude with a Tumblr account" to take people down.
What I liked about the book, aside from the author's straightforward style, the messages about female empowerment, and the unsentimental way she wrote, was the theme: health comes from being unafraid to be yourself. So many of her bad choices tied back to fear, and so, perhaps, in telling her story, more women and men can learn to be brave--and healthy.
Binge reading! The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
Even the title sounds cool, right? When I saw this as a $2 Kindle book deal, I knew I had to read it. I had been binging on books (hence the quick succession of blog posts), and I thought I would take a chance on something I wouldn't normally read. (And, as seems to fit a developing theme in the books I've chosen this summer, I learned after reading that there is a PBS documentary about this event, inspired in large part by the book.)
The subject of Timothy Egan's book is the Big Burn, also known as the Great Fire of 1910, which burned a swath of forest the size of my home state of Connecticut out west in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. It is said to be the largest wildfire in US history. However, the subject was really also the events that led to the creation of and "saving" of the national forests and US forest service. Ironically, the fire that destroyed so much national land was what rescued the conservation movement in America from a quick death because of special interests cutting funding and using loopholes in the law to log, mine, and otherwise pillage the land for profit.
So as interesting as the details of the fire and the people who both lived through it and tried to fight it
are, it is just as interesting to hear about the politics behind the event and the creation of the National Forests. I'm not a political buff, so I wasn't sure how I would like this book, but I was stunned by how much 1910 sounded like 2016. Reading about the games that the senators were playing, the big money of big energy buying off politicians, and the way rich men ran the nation (even if they seemed well-intentioned, as the author paints Teddy Roosevelt), I couldn't help but think about how little politics seems to have changed...well, except that our congress "acts" by not acting.
There were details Egan pulls together that stirred my conscience. For example, when Ed Pulaski, one of the forest rangers who saved many men--who was being denied pay because Congress was refusing to release money--asked for compensation because of the extent of the burns he suffered fighting the fire as ordered, I wanted to jump through the page and slap some of those men in power. Egan definitely rooted for the "little guys" in this, which was funny, as many of these little guys had grown up privileged and attended Yale. But anyway, the injustices that abounded before and after this event are not sugar-coated, and this makes the book both infuriating and satisfying.
Another notable detail that I enjoyed was the unit of "Buffalo Soldiers" who served more than honorably to save citizens and fight the fire. In the accounts Egan digs up, the reader hears about the prejudice these men face and how honorably they serve despite it all. Given that many of the white people living on the "frontier" at that point had not really seen black people, they only had prejudice to guide them. Satisfyingly, in the accounts following the fire, the white citizens acknowledge their bravery and their sacrifice. I really appreciated the inclusion of their story--and their heroism.
I only wish this book had a bit more to say about the negative side of Roosevelt. Its not to say I don't like the man--in fact, I knew so little about him that this book was a treat in that respect--but given the well-rounded portrait Egan paints of most of the men in the book, I felt the absence of "skeletons" in Teddy's closet to be notable. Likely it was simply beyond the scope of the book, but these missing details made it feel a bit one-sided.
I think the author did a nice job balancing the politics with the action; nonfiction can easily become as dry as the forests of the book if put in the wrong hands, but Egan was able to balance the banal with the unique and the sentimental. If someone is interested in learning about how wildfires work (and how to fight a fire), how the forest service started, how Teddy Roosevelt rose to power, or even how many people in power back in the day thought they could speak to ghosts, this book is for you. This is one of those books that you don't know you are interested in until you give it a shot, and I recommend you do just that.
time for Inferno by Dan Brown. Yeah, that Davinci Code guy. I hadn't thought about him in a while, but then when watching a Youtube video, I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie.
And, since I hadn't read a good popcorn book in a while, I thought it only right to see if this was on the shelf of my local library.
This is another in the Robert Langdon series (Angels and Demons, The Davinci Code), and so I assumed that old Professor Langdon would be receiving phone call in Chapter 2 asking him to come to such and such place in Italy to solve a mystery about art and religion. (And really, don't all college professors receive random phone calls to take all-expense paid trips to foreign countries to run for their lives?)
However, I was pleasantly surprised when the book began with Robert Langdon awaking in a hospital, unsure of how he arrived there. While the amnesia conceit is a favorite of soap operas, in this case it provided a fun "double dose" of mystery, as Langdon was not only trying to solve the mystery of who he could trust and what this map in his possession was all about, but also the mystery of what happened to him (and how did he end up in Italy?). So, while the running for life/art mystery/conspiracy/beautiful woman sidekick/Italian setting stayed true to the pattern of these books, there were other aspects that, to my delight, broke the pattern.
At first, it seems like the Consortium is the big conspiracy bad guy here, but as you read, you inevitably question whether the WHO, American government, or some other unknown group is behind all the trouble. This is a slight, albeit important departure from his other books where the conspiracy is evident early on (although who is the real bad guy is always open to question). I also liked that while much of the book was about art, one of the main influences was Dante's Inferno, telling the tale of Dante's descent into hell (and subsequent ascent).
Actually, the book covers both the book and a painting of Dante's circles of hell, which I hadn't seen (and which, to my chagrin, the book doesn't show). Seeing this helps show how the different sinners suffer in the different circles, and moreover, I appreciate how each person is literally "stripped" of their trappings. Perhaps this is purposeful symbolism on Brown's part, since in this story Langdon is "stripped" of his memory, his possessions, and even his sense of who to trust, or maybe this is just coincidence. Either way, it's interesting.
Anyway, I won't spoil this mystery/thriller, but I can say that I was not expecting the ending or the rationale behind the evil that the "villain" planned to unleash. Given this ending, I'm very interested to see how the filmmakers will handle the plot (and how audiences will receive it).
Perhaps it was because I wasn't expecting much from this book that I liked it so much. Critics have some negative things to say about it, and while I can't disagree in retrospect, in the moment, it was a fun read. I'm terrible about mysteries (I can usually see what is coming), so I appreciated the twists in this story and the unique scientific aspect to it (as opposed to the religious bent of his first two novels). In fact, its made me curious enough that I might pick up The Lost Symbol, which I heard was a stinker, but I might give it a chance in case the critics have tried to make a good popcorn novel live up to more than it is.
If you like a good mystery, if you worry about how the world might end, or if you have a lot of time to spend sitting in a beach chair, then I recommend this book for you!
So, when I saw a note for 80% off select Kindle books, I had to take advantage of it. I saw Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, and the "book jacket" description sounded like it appealed to my interest in historical fiction:
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in
Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when
she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to
live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old
photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer,
the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.
Driven by the guilt of her
heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating
the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of
her mother's life.
What I didn't realize was just how "real" this book would be. In the first few pages, the reader meets Anna and Trudy at Jack's funeral, and all that is clear is that theirs is a house filled with silence. Then, the book flashes back to Weimar in 1939, as Anna begins seeing Max, a Jewish doctor who helped her save her Nazi father's dog. We learn how Anna falls in love with Max and the lengths she goes to in order to try to save him...and her unborn child.
But when Max is taken to Buchenwald, Anna must balance her desire to save her love and the other innocent men in the prison camp from her need to protect her child. For a while, she makes a "noble" choice, giving up her home to live a life serving the resistance and raising her "tainted" child, but soon the horrors of Buchenwald spill out of the camp...
I'd read a bit about Buchenwald because this was the final stop for Elie Wiesel, whose memoir Night is the subject of study in one of my classes. In many ways, it was a "typical" concentration camp, with forced labor, arbitrary executions, and terrible conditions. However, the book shared these facts (and the fact that this was
one of the sites for Nazi medical experimentation) in a manner that showed just how "everyday" this was for the people who lived around the camp. It was an interesting historical fiction perspective. In the midst of Anna's story (revealed through flashbacks to the past interrupted by Trudy's story in the present), the reader sees not only those who try to help the men in the camps, but also those who perpetrate the atrocities...and those who lived around the camps. When Anna has to choose between death and the advances of the Obersturmfuhrer, the reader sympathizes with her choice.
However, the rest of the town knows little about Anna's choices outside of what they see in public, and Trudy knows nothing about that time except what she remembers in little flashbacks and nightmares about her childhood. When Trudy helps another professor with an interview project hearing from survivors of the war in Germany, we also see how complicated that time was for "everyday" citizens.
What struck me was that while this book was billed as a sort of tragic romance, I found it to be just plain tragic. The details are graphic, and while this is likely authentic, it makes parts of the book hard to stomach. When rape comes up, it is explicitly described, and while this shows how sadistic some people were and how helpless others were, it isn't easy to read. (So be warned--adult content is very much a part of this book!) In a non-spoiler, I appreciated how the author detailed what happened
after the camp was liberated and the residents of Wiemar were made to go
through the camp. This is a detail that
is often left out of history books, and while it seemed just to make
people face up to what they did (or didn't do), the author presented this in such a way as to create sympathy for bystanders like Anna.
I don't want to spoil the ending, but I will say that the author does a good job of dangling the promise of a happy ending in front of the reader, and the need to know if and how the realities of Anna's past would be revealed to Trudy kept me going through the tough stuff.
Not exactly light summer fare, but an interesting historical fiction.
