Pale Ride by Laura Spinney

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read a few books about the 1918 flu this year, and this was an excellent overview ofthe history, science, and changing culture of the time. It was entertaining, well-written, and not overly dark considering the topic.

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Win Bigly by Scott Adams

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The thesis of this book is that Trump is a master persuader. Let's grant him this even though he has only persuaded 30% of the US population and no world leaders. I suppose he was more persuasive than the other (too many) Republican primary candidates. The concept that he was more persuasive than Hillary Clinton is low grade ridiculous since she persuaded 3 million more people than Trump.

Here's another central proposition in this book: that Trump is not incompetent. See Adams wrote this at the beginning of the administration when that was even moderately believable. Shutting down the pandemic response, and increasing covid deaths in the US say otherwise.

Also he claims that Trump is often "directionally" correct but operates in the realm of hyperbole. But he's not "directionally" correct. And Adams claiming Trump is "directionally" correct is ridiculous levels of bias in favor of Trump no matter how many times Adams says it is not.

Another main theme is that Scott Adams is so smart. He doesn't even understand the most basic concepts about racism. Of course, a racist can hug a black person or kiss a black baby. What utter nonsense. Adams claims he was able to predict elements of the 2016 election accurately! But again, reading this in 2020, you can see that Hillary Clinton is still healthy, Donald Trump has come out in support of white supremacists repeatedly and it was the election of Trump, that erupted in violence in the US. The idea that Trump supporters are not violent and Clinton supporters is divorced from reality. Adams will of course disregard facts in favor of emotions. Possibly because Adams gets everything wrong.

Surprise surprise, Adams is also a climate denier in that he feels that scientists could be in a mass delusion which is just not how science works. Yes, sometimes scientists are wrong but the point is to follow the experiments and analysis and studies until there is something that contradicts it. After decades, there isn't much doubt left about climate science.

Here are some Trump strategies:
1) Refocusing your energy on what he wants to discuss even if he's claiming something crazy. You want the critics to scream so you get attention on what you want.

2) "Setting the table" You can negotiate down from your crazy stance to a more moderate position where you are the winner. (Not at all what Trump has done - he's insisted on the crazy stance.)

3) Continue to repeat the big lie after they've been completely debunked. Adams didn't phrase it like this because he thinks comparisons to Nazis are hyperbole. Or maybe Adams is wrong again.

At a certain point, I started wondering if Adams is mentally ill as he has delusions of grandeur and thinks he can predict the future. I'm not kidding.

This book gets 1 star for making the world a worse place than if Adams had not written it.

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Cottontail Rabbits by Christina Leighton

Cottontail Rabbits by Christina Leighton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is very difficult to get but short and informative. I read it because James is doing a report in his 4th-grade class.

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Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My rating is kind of nonsense as I have basically no idea how I feel about this book. It is unrealistic in the number of dramatic things that hold up its framework- surrogacy, adoption, abortion- pick a lane. But like the photographer in the book, Ng takes a number of topics and weaves them into a cohesive (though sometimes contradictory because hey real life is complicated) monstrous whole about privilege, justice, and family. Glad I read it but I'm going to be unpacking this one for awhile.

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Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely worth the time to read. I wish I knew exactly the difference between this and the kid version because I'd like to buy the kid version for my 9-year old son and eventually my younger daughter.

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Monsters and Mold by Asia Citro

Monsters and Mold (Zoey and Sassafras, #2) by Asia Citro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It took a lot of tries this time, but Zoey persisted!

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We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. by Samantha Irby

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really like Samantha Irby as a person, but I didn't like this one as much as Meaty. Possibly because I felt like she took aim at my own personal lameness in this one. Haha. (Ex: I once didn't have a TV and would totally talk about how I did other things, just like Irby mocked. I have a TV now though. It even has Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney so I'm not acting snotty about not watching TV. Ha!)

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Dragons and Marshmallows by Asia Citro

Dragons and Marshmallows (Zoey and Sassafras, #1) by Asia Citro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mrs. Srb has been reading this virtually to Miranda these last two weeks and I've been listening too. Fantastic book for Kindergarteners and 1st graders. It's magical but also teaches scientific concepts and age-appropriate emotional lessons. Loved it! Read this instead of that treehouse junk.

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UnSelfie by Michele Borba

UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I appreciate the general concept of a parenting book about teaching children empathy. Empathy is definitely one of the fundamental values in our home. My only complaints were that 1) I don't like the entire concept of discussing it in terms of giving your children some advantage in the marketplace. Admittedly the author didn't spend too much time on this so I suspect it was an editorial marketing suggestion? Complaint 2) The chapter attacking millennials. I'm Generation X but I know more Boomer narcissists than Millennial narcissists. Literally the whole point of those "participation trophies" were to not hurt kids' feelings. Teachers that taught my generation (Boomers and Silent Generation) were known for joining the bullies in their teasing. Not to mention the whole destroying the environment for future generations thing.

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Get Well Soon by Jennifer Wright

Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is THE pandemic book everyone should read right now. It's terrifying, hilarious, and ethically-inspiring in equal measure. It will snap you out of your dream-like coronavirus confusion. It's amazing.

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The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the interplay between Vasia, her stepmother, and the priest, and I liked the fairy tale vibe. I didn't like how SLOW the beginning was... and how many useless characters (siblings mostly) there were at the beginning. It took me forever to get invested, but I was glad things were finally happening to characters I was interested in by the end.

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Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Beartown by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very slow beginning really picks up midway. It was pretty stressful for me to read because it's pretty dark after the middle and the ending was a bit scattered. Overall, worth reading and thinking about.

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Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sweet and funny children's book about inclusion, friendship, environmentalism, and best of all- a busybody tree. Highly recommend.

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How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyimana

How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A powerful and moving memoir about Uwiringiyimana's experiences in the Congo, a Burundi refugee camp, and finally New York. Her story is important and she's a very relatable writer.

The horrifying thing is that the ethnic cleansing in the Congo has barely slowed down. In January of 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46896159. In general, all the news from The DR of Congo is bad: https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cvenzmgylgwt/democratic-republic-of-congo.

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Real Friends by Shannon Hale

Real Friends by Shannon Hale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After my 8-year-old son read this I saw that it had good reviews from adults so I read it too. I could really relate to some of Shannon Hale's childhood experiences and I think this is a wonderful book about how difficult it is to be a kid and to form friendships as a kid. I think especially as adults, we romanticize elementary school as the simple time when making friends is easy before popularity because a roadblock but it's true that elementary school often means that children are completely indelicate about forming or breaking off friendships. It's also a reminder that these breaks can be extremely painful.

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Dollars and Sense by Dan Ariely

Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter by Dan Ariely
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a better book if you haven't already read a ton of behavioral economics. For me, it was a compilation of a lot of effects I'd already read about (for example in Ariely's Predictably Irrational). This book would be great for people who don't know that much about behavioral economics who are interested in personal finance.

I was also uncomfortable with the way the authors veered into territory that was somewhat morality- based without a holistic view of the issue. I fear economics often makes this mistake, but to my mind, behavioral economics is more sophisticated and shouldn't make this error. We've rejected the idea that humans make the most rational economic decisions. We've also learned that morality can be very closely tied to empathy and other emotional systems. So I didn't find the section on "fairness" to very sophisticated with regards to current economics, psychology, biology, or ethics research. Sure, you should pay the locksmith his rate for the reasons stated in this book, but I disagree that you shouldn't battle large companies like Netflix or Uber when they do something you consider unfair- and certainly when they do unethical things.

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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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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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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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The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen

The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses by Peter Brannen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the sort of book the fictional Ross Geller would have deeply enjoyed. A lot of this was covered in The Sixth Extinction more briefly and more rivetingly but if you want the ins and outs of prehistoric life (not dinosaurs, all the other life) then this is the book for you.

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