Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that really changed my perspective-- which is such a gift. I was certainly open to what he had to say, but there were many concepts in here that I hadn't considered in the way that Giridharadas analyzes it. Part of my preparation for this book includes having already read 56 "popular nonfiction" economics books and some additional behavioral economics books. I'm not sure if someone who doesn't otherwise read economics books would be open to the concepts in here.

The basic premise is that the richest 1% claim to be trying to help with social problems but what they should actually do is pay their employees living wages so that they don't need charity, stop polluting the environment so that the subsequent disaster areas don't need charity money, stop lobbying against things that help the 99% of citizens like regulations, stop creating tax shelters so that government can't function properly, stop impeding government in general. In other words, instead of being bad guys and covering up their sins with philanthropy, they should stop being bad guys. In addition, actual income equality creates a huge power inequality. Democracy cannot work when a small percent of the population wields such disproportionate power. Part of that is the money itself, part of that is the disaster of current day finance regulations. The central thesis is that the rich can't even fix problems with philanthropy because their solutions involve mostly self-interested band-aids that don't address the underlying causes: them.

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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There were 22 stories in this collection, and I especially enjoyed 5 of them: They're Not Your Husband, Neighbors, What's in Alaska, Bicycles, and the title story. Carver seems especially good at the sadness of disappointment though Bicycles, in particular, seemed like the opposite- about a boy's admiration of his father. I have been told I need to read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

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Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riveting memoir with very interesting insights into family, psychology, loneliness, and life in general. Kindle and Goodreads tell me that I highlighted 49 sentences or passages, which should give you an idea of how much I valued this writing. A lot of people are overly focused on the fact that the memoir is about the author's struggle with anorexia, but to me, the part I valued most was the author's honest and brilliantly written struggle with despair, depression, and just life itself. It is a bit lopsided because she discusses her pseudo-recoveries after her first two hospitalizations but not after the third, but perhaps her next memoir, which I plan to read, covers that more.

As I said, I highlighted many sentences in the memoir, but this one is so me, haha: "I was my parents' only child, which is unfortunate because you are their pride and joy and the bane of their existence all at once."

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Mala by Melinda Lopez

Mala by Melinda Lopez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is so unbelievably good. This is the (Cuban-American) Boomer/ Gen X Death of Ivan Ilyich. Also if you want an approximation of many of the things (but definitely not all) I personally experienced with my dad's and my mother's deaths this is eerily close. My parents were very young though, my dad was 61 and my mom was late 50s. They very much did not want to die and were very scared. Both fought to the end, though my mother did agree to hospice in what turned out to be her last month. She didn't call me "mala" but it was strongly implied any time I tried to restrict any of her choices which I avoided a great deal.

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Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent history and analysis of racism in America. Definitely expanded the way I think about the discourse in this country. Some examination of sexism and intersectionality though it wasn't the central focus. I was persuaded that racism is not caused by ignorance (because who is that dumb at this point?) but as a tool to oppress both black and white populations.

I found almost every paragraph riveting, but here is a favorite:
The Mennonites did not intend to leave behind one site of oppression to build another in America. Mennonites therefore circulated an antislavery petition on April 18, 1688. “There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are,” they wrote. “In Europe there are many oppressed” for their religion, and “here those are oppressed” for their “black colour.” Both oppressions were wrong. Actually, as an oppressor, America “surpass[ed] Holland and Germany.” Africans had the “right to fight for their freedom.” The 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery was the inaugural antiracist tract among European settlers in colonial America. Beginning with this piece, the Golden Rule would forever inspire the cause of White antiracists. Antiracists of all races—whether out of altruism or intelligent self-interest—would always recognize that preserving racial hierarchy simultaneously preserves ethnic, gender, class, sexual, age, and religious hierarchies. Human hierarchies of any kind, they understood, would do little more than oppress all of humanity.

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Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen, Bryce Leung

Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required by Kristy Shen, Bryce Leung
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

She has some good points and ideas (though she seems to willfully ignore Dave Ramsey's existence) and I'll definitely raise this one more star if I manage to implement her investing concepts. We are committed to living in our house until the kids (and probably after) are out of school and I'm not even sure how much of what she talks about applies in that very common situation.

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 8th Murakami book I've read and definitely in the top three for me along with Norwegian Wood and After Dark. The short of it is that Toru Okada is having some angst after leaving his legal job (I relate to that!) when things get very magically weird and his wife leaves him in mysterious circumstances. Interwoven with that is a bunch of truly horrific World War II stories from the perspective of Japanese soldiers in Mongolia, China, and Russia.

Beyond that, it's really difficult to explain what I think the book's deeper meaning is about. It's pretty complex; to give you a rough idea, it's very long and I can't actually think of any scenes that could have been cut. I pretty much always think editors should have slashed down long books. Unlike many Murakami novels, it actually mostly made sense even though it was full of literal magic. I wasn't prepared for such an in-depth exploration of violence, and I think this fantasy book also deserves a horror classification.


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Pirates Past Noon by Mary Pope Osborne

Pirates Past Noon by Mary Pope Osborne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The true story of the Magic Tree House is revealed in this one. I think I'm good to go with the series now. I won't be reading or buying any more unless my daughter falls in love with the first 4 and demands them or something. My son isn't impressed either but he's already 8 and he's a pretty strong reader.

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Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborne

Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I am not feeling the ghosts. Time hopping to see real things is one thing. Time hopping to see fake things is another.

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Finish by Jon Acuff

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short and useful book. Here's what I got from it, but it might be worth a second read.

Pick a fun goal! And fun ways to achieve the goal.
Make the goal smaller than you originally want
Make the timeline to achieve your goal longer
Don't let "noble" prerequisites get in your way.
Don't let perfectionism stop you when you're almost done. (Actually usually for me, it's the opposite-- it's pessimism that gets me before I'm done.)
And you don't need to figure out what's next before you're done.

What are you getting from not finishing? (Fear of failure.)

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The Valedictorian of Being Dead by Heather B. Armstrong

The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live by Heather B. Armstrong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I started reading this, I didn't remember at first that this was the mom blogger of Dooce fame. I started reading it purely because of the novel mental health treatment. I was also hoping for a little bit of death philosophy, but there was none of that here. The memoir was very interesting, but a little repetitive, and not at all literary. I know she's written other books, and I would love to read a memoir from her in the future that is more inclusive of her entire life story, including an abridged form of the part of her story in this book. She's extremely interesting and has been through a lot in her life, but I would also like her to have some deep thoughts about what these major life events have meant: leaving her church, the growth of her blog, separating from her husband, the decline of her blog, getting experimental treatment for depression, facing the idea of death.

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Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really liked the beginning "Chapter 1," which was the first 50% of the book. Then it got tougher to read though I particularly appreciated Amar's views on God. Some things about the book, some of the Iraqi connections and who Ezra Blazer was based on, I got on my own. Other things I learned from reading multiple reviews. The fact that you even have to "get" it is a bit disappointing to me. I don't love gimmicks in my literary fiction. Frankly, I'm ambivalent about how I feel about the novel.

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Unbelievable by Katy Tur

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting memoir and definitely contains some fodder for historians seeking to study the campaigns of politicians that go on to abuse power. My two main problems are that the jumping around through the chronology of the 2016 campaign is very difficult to follow. I followed the campaign closely and I'm still frequently confused.

My second big issue is the lack of depth one might expect from a more literary memoir writer. In the same vein, there is also a lack of analysis of what was happening at the time. The analysis of the suggested Muslim ban isn't that it's unconstitutional and why it's central to American values, it's a surface comparison to George W. Bush who said not to attack Muslim-Americans after 9/11. There's no analysis on dropping the Muslim ban issue or his attacks on other groups and instead Tur asked him questions about the size of his hands when the circus called for it. Any regrets or feelings of responsibility? No. In the same vein, whenever she touches upon feminist topics, there is no depth of analysis as to what should or shouldn't be allowed in journalism or social media or why.

It feels more like she left a voice recorder running while she reported and spoke on the phone to a friend.

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Never Broken by Jewel

Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty good (I think my ratings are getting tougher as I read more and more, so maybe the old me would have given this 4 stars). Jewel's life so far has been interesting and she's clearly learned a lot which she tries to impart. There's a lot of stuff that feels like filler. It feels like she shoved an entire poetry/songbook inside the memoir and that should be a separate book. (In fact, she already has a poetry book, so it was strange that she decided to cram all this in.) There's also a lot of cliche-sounding self-help in this book. I don't personally appreciate the mix of self-help with memoir. If she just gave a sentence of advice here or there, it would have been fine, but it was pretty heavy-handed in giving entire lists of positive-thinking and meditation-type advice. I've read books on meditation as well, and there are many authors that cover it better than Jewel. Generally, she just needed a tougher editor and a book about 3/4ths the length of this one.

Here's a good one though: "We're so busy looking for and working towards the things that will make us happy that we blow right by our actual happiness... sitting quietly under a tree, being present with your child while you read a book to them, living in a smaller home, perhaps, so you can work less and have more quality time with your family, doing fewer enrichment activities so that you and your children can experience the joy of play."

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In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman

In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is short and doesn't contain new information but would make a fine gift for someone who works too much or for a young person foolishly considering a job in business or law.

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Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be by Rachel Hollis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes my reviews say that I really wanted to like something because I love the author or I loved the idea, but this was the opposite, I expected, even wanted, to dislike it because I felt like the author has no special expertise. I wasn't wrong in my assumptions, her only qualification here is that she's been successful building a business, and that doesn't count for much outside of business books, which themselves are not so thrilling or important to me.

That said, her book was really entertaining and enjoyable to read and came from a really good place -- she's honestly trying to help people I think, and there is some valuable stuff in this book. I especially enjoyed her particular brand of Christianity which focuses on actually doing stuff of help, and sharing in Jesus's acceptance of all people, instead of the brand that I often encounter which is sometimes a vehicle of oppression. I was also fascinated and horrified by her account of the foster system. So yes, there are a lot of cliches about magical thinking that I think you should actively disregard, but there's also things of value in here. I liked it.

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The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very good coming-of-age YA in a poetic prose style. The scene with her mother at the end, this was so my mother, minus the religion.

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The Food Therapist by Shira Lenchewski

The Food Therapist: Break Bad Habits, Eat with Intention, and Indulge Without Worry by Shira Lenchewski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty good. It had some good points and good tips. My main problem with it is that it entirely dismissed the fasting diets and there is a lot of science to support both their efficacy and their long-term health benefits, so just dismissing them without any explanation seemed very unscientific to me. That said, most of what she recommends here works well with fasting diets, and makes the fasting diets more likely to stick. On the flip side, fasting diets make Lenchewski's suggestions easier to implement. Lenchewski's suggestions also fall in line with what commercial diets like Weight Watchers aim to make clients do (though they mostly hide it behind their point system so you keep paying them).

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Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin

Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I appreciate that this book was short. I remembered a lot of the advice from the first book, Happiness Project. In general, I prefer the Marie Kondo book on decluttering and organization which Rubin did reference at the end.

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Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Nutshell by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though the premise is somewhat silly in its device, this dark and humorous tale captivated me completely. I loved McEwan’s literary magic. In general, I try to avoid horror or even horror-tinged books, but this was grabbed me in slow increments and at the end I was so invested in the character of the baby that I wanted to know how the rest of his life went. Time to reread Hamlet.

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Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not a huge romance book fan (though I haven't ruled out reading more of them in the future) but I really enjoyed this book because of the witty banter between the two young men, and because of the political components of the book. I definitely wanted to live in this alternate universe where the 2016 election never happened.

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