The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Omar Khayyám

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Omar Khayyám
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a beautiful copy of this book with Edward FitzGerald's first and fifth edition and beautiful illustrations. I liked the irreverent poems especially the ones about wine. I liked some of the poems skeptical of religion - one even seemed to reference a sort of Buddhist conception of a lack of self - but they got a little tired after a while. FitzGerald's translation rhymes but I would have gladly sacrificed that for more ease in reading. My eyes kept glazing over and I had to read some of the poems repeatedly.

Favorite, #37 in the first edition:
Ah, fill the Cup:-- what boots it to repeat
How Time is underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-Morrow, and dead Yesterday.
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!

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Shattered by Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though I witnessed most of these events- I was an election junkie and watched all the debates and read all the articles- I was still captivated by this fairly straightforward account. The authors got all of the information for the book "on background" during the election in exchange for not going public until after the election. The writers do a great job of giving everyone and everything that happened a lot of life and movement. I think this book will be especially helpful as a historical account one day. Because honestly, no one will be able to understand how this horror happened unless we get it down clearly now.

It's a pretty good campaign playbook complete with dos and don'ts, though the authors put a lot of blame on Robert E. Mook, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, who relied a lot on "analytics." It also places blame on Hillary, Bill, Senator Bernie Sanders, and former FBI Director James Comey.

This book mentions but does not really examine the Russian involvement which seems like a huge oversight when the numbers were in tight in numerous states and the Russian advertisement was targeted at precisely the people who did vote for Trump. Nor does it talk about the two third-party candidates who also drained votes. But that's just not what this book about. This is fairly solidly about what Democrats did wrong, not what others contributed to this mess.

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Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This isn't really about Veronica, it's about the narrator character Allison, a model in Paris and New York. The writing is both good and unique but also crass in a way that made me feel like a curmudgeonly old lady. "Why is that necessary? Or that? Or that?"

To the extent that it is about Veronica, I'm offended for Veronica. Veronica's love story reminded me of Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe in Just Kids. In fact, a famous and crass Robert Maplethorpe photograph does make an appearance in this book.

In short, this novel was good; I did not enjoy it.

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Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read this mostly in English. I recommend reading Tlon, Herbert Quain, The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths (maybe), Funes, and The Secret Miracle. The rest I could have lived without.

1. Tlon (5 stars)- Fantasy about an alien world which is really a commentary about our own.

2. The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim- I can't even rate this one because it went completely over my head. Completely.

3. Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quijote (2 stars)- Interesting idea, but mostly hated reading this story.

4. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.

5. The Babylon Lottery/ The Lottery in Babylon (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Library of Babel and The Garden of Forking Paths. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.

6. An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (4 stars)- Another review of a fictional author's work like in "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim." I like that he got to write about super interesting plot lines without actually having to write them. Borges describes a detective story "The God of the Labyrinth" in which the solution given is wrong, but the reader can figure the real solution out from the clues. I also like the idea of "April March," a novel with nine different beginnings going backwards in time.

7. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in The Magicians anyone?)

8. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.

9. Funes (5 stars)- Love hearing about a completely different way of perceiving, understanding, and analyzing, but in real life memory experts do employ similar tactics to Funes. See eg, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

10. The Forms of the Sword (4 stars)- An interesting story about cowardice, Christianity, and shame with a Borges ending. Though I was surprised Borges spelled out the ending so clearly even though it was already clear. He usually trusts his reader more.

11. Theme of the Traitor (3 stars) - Ha! Clever and politically astute.

12. Death and a Compass (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one seems to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."

13. The Secret Miracle (5 stars)- I read this in Spanish and English. It is my favorite Borges story and it has stayed with me since I first read it in maybe 1998. I love its conception of reality, time, God, purpose, and the ephemerality of our work on Earth.

14. Three Versions of Judas (2 stars) - There's not too much I can say about this one.

15. The End (2 stars)- Just sad and weird.

16. The Sect of the Phoenix (2 stars)- Another not-good one.

17. The South (3 stars)- I read this in Spanish and in English. It's sad and and a strangely normal story for Borges.

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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is wonderful. Tolstoy captures every important human feeling, thought, and relationship in a way that I doubt could be surpassed. He tackles birth, death, and the meaning of life with his genius of perception and communication.

It’s a long book and dragged a bit in the sections on Levin’s farming or political debates and observations. But even these sections contribute to a more complete sense of the historical context and life of the characters. Additionally, Tolstoy seemed to understand the concept of mindfulness and flow and explained it in the mowing section pretty well.

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10 Things a Husband Needs from His Wife by Erin Smalley

10 Things a Husband Needs from His Wife: Everyday Ways to Show Him Love by Erin Smalley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Most of the advice is fairly reasonable, though not earth-shattering. I think I do most of what is suggested in the book, though my husband is extremely cooperative with me as well so he makes it easy.

As a general rule, I am fine with nonfiction books that incorporate the author's Christianity. For example, Dave Ramsey's financial books rely in part on his religious views. And I read the Bible in its entirety last year so I have my chops. But this book sometimes quotes large and seemingly unrelated portions of the Bible as it's primary source for marriage advice. I didn't expect the term "goat sacrifice" to come up in a marriage advice book, but it really did!

And there's a certain tone regarding "nonbelievers" that I didn't appreciate, as if you can assume the values of such people or as if they are responsible for the sinfulness of this world. For example, there's an example of a Christian woman who cheats and seeks a divorce and starts hanging out with nonbelievers "who don't share her values." Presumably, her values are faithfulness and devotion to marriage, and they don't share that. But really she's the one that cheated and sought a divorce, why are these bystander "nonbelievers" getting blamed? Is the implication that her Christians friends would somehow have prevented this, though, in fact, they did not? I think the style of the book would be off-putting for all but more conservative evangelical Protestants.

"If I use the word 'God,' I sure don't mean an old man in the sky who just loves the occasional goat sacrifice." - Anne Lamott

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Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I borrowed Nimona for Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, "4- A comic written and drawn by the same person." My son James saw it and said it looks like a “kids book” so James has now joined the reading challenge. We were passing the book back and forth and trying to stay in about the same place but I got impatient and finished it before him because I just needed to know what happened next. Nimona was awesome and adorable! I need a sequel. Need.

James is still reading it, and I'm a little worried because it gets kind of scary at the end. He's almost 7 years old but he's an advanced reader and he really needs challenging material to even be interested in the book at all. The vocabulary is a little tough for him in some places but he really loves the complexity of the story. I think it might be more appropriate for a kid who is at least 9 - though obviously great for adults too.

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The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finally read this feminist classic. The first half was super interesting both from a historical perspective and for the eerie feeling that it was describing my current life despite the fact that I have complete freedom to go back to work. Regarding the latter issue, I wonder how much housewife despair is actually the luxury and time to contemplate the lack of objective meaning in life. Is the distraction of work really the answer? Sooner or later we have to come to terms with meaning or lack thereof- may be at retirement or on our deathbed. I suppose if there is no answer, distraction is an adequate enough solution.

I especially liked how Friedan tied the oppression of women to the overall issues of labor and corporate abuses.

The second half the book suffered from a number of problems. As a number of other reviewers mentioned the comparison to Holocaust camps (to demonstrate the negative feelings of lack of control over one's own life) is inappropriate. Couldn't Friedan just have studied or discussed the effects of lack of control on regular prisoners? Or even on dependent elderly adults? The second half also had a lot of dated and strange views about homosexuality the book would have been better without. Finally, it got really repetitive.

Overall, well worth reading and contemplating how far we have and haven't come.

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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The events are horrific and reading about it is tortuous, but the book is so well-written it is just bearable.

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Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very thorough and interesting account of all the myriad of things that went wrong at Enron and Arthur Anderson. The culture is very familiar to me from my days in big law.

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Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Feels like the bad parts of being in my 20s again.

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Just Kids by Patti Smith

Just Kids by Patti Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

More of a love letter to her former boyfriend and famous photographer Robert Maplethorpe, rather than a traditional memoir. If you're interested in learning about Patti Smith's music career, this book doesn't really get there until nearly the end, and then only briefly discusses it. Otherwise really interesting and almost spell-binding narrative about being poor and artistic in the 1970s and 1980s New York City. Smith makes the city sound gritty, glamorous, and full of possibilities all at the same time.

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The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The writing is great, especially for nonfiction. The people she writes about are fascinating, even when Orlean is writing about past people she hasn't met. She definitely manages to convey the excitement these people feel for orchids- all of the sudden I am super interested in orchids too and googling them. I really want a monkey orchid now, though I'm not good at keeping any plants alive so I probably shouldn't pursue that interest. Florida, in particular the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, is almost its own character in the book- wet, muddy, dangerous, and crowded with life.

I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I felt like Orleans led one way and then left us elsewhere. Relatedly, she suggests wanting to be personally transformed by her investigation of these people's passions but doesn't give us any indication that this has happened.

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Happiness Is a Choice You Make by John Leland

Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an interesting, thought-provoking book about old age and how to get the most quality of life. There is some science in it, but it's not a science-based book. Instead, it's based on a small number of long-term interviews. To a lesser extent, it's about facing the inevitability of death, but the focus here is on how to confront life now in order to be prepared for whatever form death takes. There are some valuable thoughts worth considering, and it has an overall inspiring tone I think a lot of people would enjoy.

For me, it doesn't go deep enough, it isn't scientific enough, and it doesn't make my top meaning-of-life books. (But it did just inspire me to go back and add that tag to a bunch of books.)

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The Analects by Confucius

The Analects by Confucius


This is a great translation. I only compared it to one other but it far exceeded the other translation. The language in the Analects is clear and then followed by short paragraphs to explain the missing context or the connotation of particular Chinese words. I enjoyed the number of passages focused on education and respect, though the ones about the historical politicians held less interest for me.

(I don't rate religious or semi-religious texts.)

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Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This isn't a 4-star book on its own, it's 4-stars as a good third book in a series that makes you like everything that came before it even better. Without the darker first two books, this one would seem unbearably silly. With them, this one is a bit of a relief. This one introduced a new character Cora who I didn't love. I was more interested in the characters we already knew, and Cora didn't interest me as much. I'm hoping there will be a fourth, darker book about one of the other characters we already know.

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The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam

The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book contained some interesting insights into Belichick's background and football strategy. The beginning suffered from a lack of chronology jumping back and forth between young Bill Belichick and his father Steve. It also felt like there wasn't enough about his most important time on the Patriots, in part because his early years on the Patriots were somewhat devoid of the bitter politics he encountered at his other jobs, and in part because this book came out in 2005, and since then Belichick has been coaching the Patriots an additional 12 years and won another 2 Super Bowls. I am a Patriot's fan via my Massachusetts-born husband, and I was disappointed that Belichick didn't pull out any defensive magic last night in Super Bowl LII.

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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I like this book because it totally immerses you in a strange world as an alien trying to understand- but not completely understanding everything. That strikes me as particularly realistic because it takes a really long time to understand a foreign culture, and probably you never fully get it.

I also like the way the main character develops a complicated friendship with a person of such a dissimilar culture, becoming deeply bonded while still not fully understanding each other.

Finally, the whole exploration of a gender-neutral society so far in advance of the gender nonconformity movement we are currently living through is really interesting, and particularly strange as seen through the eyes of a vaguely sexist but still open-minded main character.


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Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mind blown. This is a lot like stepping into an intermediate or advanced class on intersectionality which is tough for me because I'm still trying to get a beginners' foundation in feminism, race equality, and intersectionality. Nonetheless, wow. I can't believe that I managed to get a law degree without ever even hearing about the prison abolition movement.

There's so much in here, so much to process, that I can't tackle all my thoughts on it yet. It makes me feel like I need to do a lot more reading to fully wrap my mind around the concepts Davis introduced.

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If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? by Alan Alda

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating by Alan Alda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good book about the importance of good communication and how to improve at communicating with others. I’m familiar with some of the research that Alda referenced from other books. Alda seems to over-emphasize his own ideas and under-emphasize more researched strategies such as reading literary fiction (though he does mention it). He spends too much time making fun of “shakras” and not enough time explaining the research on the effectiveness of meditation and a simple explanation of say, breathe meditation. Still, it is definitely useful to read, and the more people that read it the better.

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Apology by Plato

Apology by Plato
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Interesting, moving, my favorite dialogue so far. Though we've all heard "the unexamined life is not worth living" I particularly enjoyed the full quote (depending on your translation this may vary obviously):

"And if I say again that the greatest good of man is to converse daily about virtue and all that which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, that you are still less likely to believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it hard for me to persuade you."

This quote is a great precursor to Jesus:
“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”


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