Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would never have picked up this book on my own*, based on the title and the premise of reading an advice column. That’s a bit of red herring though; this is how Cheryl Strayed thinks you should handle practically every conflict and tragedy you’re likely to encounter in your life, with memoir-style illustrations. And apparently Strayed is as wise as she is a good a writer. I liked this one even better than Wild. Especially insightful regarding grief, and I cried more than once.

I read this on Ingrid Nilsen's recommendation. She mentioned this in a Youtube video of the three books that most changed her life: ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21g5WRq9gvw&feature=share.

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Promises to Keep by Joe Biden

Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joe Biden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Presumably, Biden wrote this in preparation for his 2008 Presidential run. I'm not sure if my perspective would have been different if I read then, but it falls flat in 2019. Part of this is due to his candor, which I appreciate, but even so. He doesn't seem like warm and charming "Uncle Joe," but rather a kind of arrogant, aggressively ambitious person who ran for President in 1988, even when, back then, he had no particular reason to run other than he wanted to President.

His politics are disturbingly centrist, or rather conservative by today's standards. I was horrified by his explanation of voting against bussing in 1974, and then - writing in 2007- he was more concerned that a bunch of Connecticut suburbanites had mistakenly thought he voted for bussing than being concerned that the rest of us might more accurately think he was a civil-rights-crushing Senator. Indeed, he expressed a lot of sympathy for people that repressed civil rights. Well, here in 2019, where we are witnessing a resurgence of racist language and legislation, these views seem gross and irresponsible at best.

He also largely underplayed his pretty well-documented plagiarism in law school and on the 1987 campaign trail. He was either sloppy and lazy in his youth, or quite straight-forwardly dishonest, and neither is good. Obviously, that part is 30 years in the past, and he's potentially changed quite a bit since then, but also, maybe he hasn't?

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Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Starts off as a slow tale about a New York City family before and during the World War II era. Ultimately, I was very invested in the Kerrigan family, though not in Styles family. There were also some plot moments that didn’t seem realistic, but Egan’s impressive writing carries you along anyway.

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The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cute joint humor memoir. Definitely answers any questions you might have about Mullally and Offerman as a couple. Discusses their careers a little, but there's nothing in depth about their time on their most popular shows, Will and Grace and Parks and Rec.

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Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg

Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future by Pete Buttigieg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty interesting and different. Though it’s definitely political in nature it falls more on the memoir side. For example, Buttigieg spends half a chapter discussing his piano playing, and nowhere does he discuss his potential domestic and foreign policy given that he’s running for President. It’s political but not full of policy. And I get it, he’s a former consultant that probably intends to let case studies and science run his policies but I’m left filling in the blanks myself and I worry I’ll just fill them with what I would like instead of what Buttigieg actually intends. Still, an interesting memoir by an intelligent person that is well-worth reading.

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Meet Me at the Happy Bar by Steve Langan

Meet Me at the Happy Bar by Steve Langan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

These poems possess great exactitude about the human condition and also a fair dose of dark humor. These quotes are pretty arbitrary as I found amazing lines throughout, but here are some of the ones I read last and so remembered best when I was writing this:

"You just have to believe in the suffering
of others; it's really the only way
some of us can go out into the new day."
- History of a Town

"Hurling our pain from the sidewalk into windows left open."
- Notes on Landscape

And a little bit of darkish humor I couldn't resist sharing:
"These are my (wink) deranged friends.

If I promise they won't steal anything,
do you mind if they smoke in your house?

Now don't steal anything."
- Meditation on the Campsite and the Pier

Now go read the collection so I don't end up quoting the whole thing.


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The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Diamond set out to compare pre-industrialized societies to modern Western society. He especially focuses on New Guinea for his comparisons. He compares legal systems, war, childcare, relationships to the elderly, perception of dangers, religion, number and uses of languages, and diet. I found the childcare part particularly interesting, but since it mostly focuses on babies and young children, the information is mostly superfluous to me now because my kids are older. I think the book is pretty entertaining, and sometimes thought-provoking, but not especially educational.

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Zealot by Reza Aslan

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't think it's accurate to say that this is in any way an attack on Christian faith. Rather, it seems to me that whether or not you believe in the divinity of Jesus, and especially if you do, you would want to clearly understand what Jesus believed. Aslan is using both historical material and the Bible itself to determine what can be verified about Jesus's life and teachings. To those that think this is an attack on Jesus's divinity, simply because Aslan himself does not believe in that divinity, I would point out that Aslan leaves the question of Jesus's resurrection open because there is no historical evidence to the contrary and evidence that the apostles fervently believed in the resurrection. He's applying his examination of history even-handedly whether or not it falls in favor of or against modern Christian teaching.

I do think Aslan's mix of historical sources and the Bible itself make him subject to some criticism from scholarly readers because the Bible is not historically reliable, but this shouldn't make him subject to criticism from fundamentalist Christians.

Do I think Aslan gets it right? I think he gets the history correct. However, if Jesus himself was filled with great faith in God, which we have to assume he was if he was willing to die for his faith, the sense of that faith is somewhat missing from this book. Yes, he believed passionately in justice for the poor but he also believed in the Jewish singular God and that concept is not fully explored here. Yes, that's difficult and would have made the book much longer. Still, this book is worth reading and it is very compelling reading as well- you won't be bored at all.

Favorite quote: "The choice between James's vision of a Jewish religion anchored in the law of Moses and derived by a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul's vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required nothing for salvation save belief in Christ, was not a difficult one for the second and third generations of Jesus's followers to make. Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul's creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of history."

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Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I feel like the allegorical lobster in the lobster pot. I love the way Murakami writes; it lulls me. That's probably why as this book got worse and worse I just kept right on cooking until I was almost at the end and realized what a big mistake I'd made. I'm puzzled over the good reviews.

Yes, there are some great sentences, mostly provided by Oshima who manages the library, but for me, they're insufficiently deep or life-changing to make up for the trainwreck of a plot. Yes, partly the plot is a retelling Oedipus, but the original story of Oedipus makes perfect sense even if it's outlandish. This is nonsensical, outlandish, and over-explained as a myth or analogy.

I also feel like it fails as a good fantasy book. First of all, I never appreciate it when the fantasy element of the story sneaks up on me, as this book starts out as magical realism and then all the sudden goes full low-fantasy ala American Gods with lots of characters over-explaining things that make no sense. More importantly, there are countless rules to the world that don't have any overarching concept. Perhaps it's a blend of Japanese mythology I'm unaware of, and even though I am familiar with the hungry ghost concept in Buddhism, and the magical powers of all objects of Shintoism, there's still a lot of randomnesses that isn't coming across to me.

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Corruption in America by Zephyr Teachout

Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United by Zephyr Teachout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a book by an attorney about the law. I’m an attorney but I think this is basically comprehensible to non-attorneys (though non-attorneys lack a background in the importance of “intention” under the law). It was a bit dry for me but her historical view of corruption in the United States was interesting and important. As a country, we’ve clearly made the wrong legal decisions regarding lobbying and campaign finance. Our system has long been like the card game of assholes. Once someone wins, he or she makes all the subsequent rules to make sure he stays King or at least never falls to asshole again. It’s interesting to learn about how concerned the founders and subsequent generations were about corruption and yet they were unable to implement meaningful protections. And here we are now.

Teachout doesn’t make any good suggestions here but the research I’ve seen suggests that the only way to fix anything now is through state laws. When enough state laws are in agreement about a particular issue, the tide can sometimes be turned. But majorities (as well as minority protections) no longer apply.

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If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's a lot about the partition of India and Pakistan in this poetry collection, which is really interesting, but what resonated with me the most is Asghar's grief at losing her parents and her loneliness and feelings of otherness. Her poetry is brave and raw.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A few authors sit down to try to say something about the experience of life and some try to capture a little bit of what God is in their writing. For me, very few succeed in both endeavors. So far, I've only found The End of the Affair, Gilead, and The Road. (My other favorite book is The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but it's not about God.) Please let me know if you know of other books in this class.

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Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my fourth Bryson book, and I really enjoyed the others, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Home, and A Walk in the Woods. This one felt less polished. I didn’t feel like I got a good sense of his travels, it was focused more on comedy, and the humor came off as aggressive or hostile throughout the book. I think part of the issue is that he wrote this book before the ones he wrote that I enjoyed. I think he must have improved a lot since this one.

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Grant by Ron Chernow

Grant by Ron Chernow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am so excited I finished this book! I felt like I experienced every minute of Grant’s 63 years.

I read this because Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested it in an article in The Atlantic and I spent the first half of the book wondering why. The first half of this large tome is Grant’s early life and what felt like the entire Civil War. Have you figured out that I am not a Civil War enthusiast?

I found the second half of the book about Reconstruction and the Grant presidency infinitely more readable. I breezed through that informative section only to be slowed down a bit by Chernow’s protracted coverage of Grant’s post-presidency, death, and burial. Mark Twain improved the end quite a bit.

I think Chernow let Grant off too easily on his bungling of Black Rock, but otherwise a very detailed and probably balanced look at Grant.

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CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are 7 short stories in this book. The first, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" is sort of interesting, as is the fifth story, "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz." The second story, "Isabelle," is super sad and disturbing to nihilistic levels. I know it technically has a happy ending but holy cow, it's rough. I don't even know what's happening in the third story, "The Wavemaker Falters." Feel free to explain that one to me. The fourth story, "The 400-Pound CEO" is another sad time. The sixth story, "Downtrodden Mary...," is even sadder yet as horrible things happen to an old lady. The seventh story, "Bounty," is actually a dystopian novella about a world where the genetically imperfect are vulnerable to enslavement or annihilation. While I love a good dystopian book, this one is crazypants Saunders in action.

I'm a fan of Saunders (this is my 7th Saunders book), but I wasn't a fan of this collection. Saunders's voice is too similar for each of the characters, especially the bad boss characters that love talking in cliches. The writing doesn't seem clear to me and I had to revisit a lot of it to figure out what was going on. Also, the stories meander so you think it's going to be about one thing, then it wanders off to a different idea.

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One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. I flew through it in two days, and I loved its exploration of love and grief, especially the latter. I'm describing it like I might a literary book but it's more in the chick lit category. That said, I'd argue that it's not completely not-literary. Sometimes you need double negatives. She really delves into grief in a protracted way. She only explores one or two aspects of love but maybe love is more complicated than grief and needs more space.

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Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution by Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution by Bernie Sanders
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought this would be a how-to of grassroots politics, but it's a summary of Sander's economic policies. If you read his 2016 book, as I did, there is nothing new here for you. However, the 2016 book was way too long, this one is extremely short. It could function basically as a pamphlet-plus for the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. I'd recommend this book mostly if you think that Sanders is not a viable candidate for President, or if you think that people that support him are extreme in some way. Don't blame me if this book converts you and you turn into a Bernie Bro. Okay, fine, blame me.

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My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish by Mo O'Hara

My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish by Mo O'Hara
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this because James is reading it and likes it. It's cute I guess, but I'm not planning on reading the sequels. It has a little bit of an environmentalist element to it, but other than that, it's mostly silly.

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