Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish the author had put the "About This Project" at the beginning of the book, and I recommend that if you read this book you start with that section. When I began the book I had the expectation that the book would have a lot of history, politics, policy, with some personal examples, as many nonfiction books focusing on a particular legal or policy issue typically do. This book is not like that, it's an ethnography. It is more of a biography of several people going through evictions - and the one landlord that was willing to participate. The distance between my expectations of the book and the actual substance of it made it made it difficult to finish. Another thing that made it very difficult to finish the book was how deeply depressing the subject is (granted it's important that it feel depressing but it makes it very difficult). That said, I am very glad I finished it, despite- or because of- all the tears.

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Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tongue-in-cheek spy novel that gets a bit dark and more exciting as it goes on. Graham Greene is a confusing author for me because he wrote one of my favorite literary works, The End of the Affair, but his writing isn't limited to literary fiction, and The Third Man, for example, is just some noir nonsense. This was sort of in between but I did enjoy it.

I was especially interested in the pre-Castro Cuban setting. My family is from Cuba, and around this time my grandparents would have been in their 20s. My paternal side moved to Santa Clara at about the time of the story (the main character James Wormold goes there on vacation). My maternal side moved to Havana shortly after the time period of the novel. All Cuban-Americans are devoutly anti-Castro but the sacrilegious question is always whether the dictator that preceded him, Batista, was also a bad guy. This makes the character Segura particularly interesting to me, especially since Greene doesn't make him as one-dimensional as it initially appears.

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Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really interesting, but too long. I saw lots of places it could have been edited down. (Though it's not really 900 pages. It's about 750 pages, plus about 150 pages of index.)

The abolitionists are the heroes of this book, and of American history. I didn't know much about Secretary of State William Seward or Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase previous to reading about them about here. My favorite parts were the meetings with Douglass Frederick. I have read Frederick's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Escape from Slavery but I didn't know about these amazing meetings with Lincoln. I'm glad I read his autobiography first, because then when I read about the meetings, I could more fully grasp their significance. These meetings are probably the happiest parts of the book.

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Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fun YA-fantasy-horror book. More consistently good than the first one of the Wayward Children series. The main thing I find problematic with both in the series is the inexplicable way otherwise fairly normal people turn to murder without much compunction. That doesn't seem realistic to me. I get that the whole thing isn't realistic because it's a fantasy novel but I do still expect the characters to behave like actual people.

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Poetics by Aristotle

Poetics by Aristotle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aristotle discusses the forms and best practices of tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry. There’s a strong emphasis on The Iliad, The Odyssey, and parts of The Orestia (which I am familiar with) and some other works with which I am not familiar. His literary critique and description is surprisingly timeless. Also, it’s so short and readable that there’s no reason to put it off if it’s on your reading list.

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Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazing work of art. Elizabeth Strout understands so much about this world. I'm just overawed by this book. Everything- the characters, the plot, the little details, just perfect. (This coming from me, a person who almost always wants to change something about a book.)

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Shakepeare Project Continued 2018

I made a lot of progress in trying to read all of these over 2016 and 2017. Here's my update. 15/38 done.

Play- Date First Performed (date read)

1. Henry VI, Part II- 1590-91  (10/19/16)
2. Henry VI, Part III- 1590-91 (4/29/17)
3. Henry VI, Part I- 1591-92 (9/23/16)
4. Richard III- 1592-93 
5. Comedy of Errors- 1592-93 (10/17/16)
6. Titus Andronicus-1593-94 (10/25/16)
7. Taming of the Shrew- 1593-94 (9/16/16)
8. Two Gentlemen of Verona- 1594-95 (11/26/16)
9. Love's Labour's Lost- 1594-95 (11/30/16)
10. Romeo and Juliet- 1594-95 (high school)
11. Richard II- 1595-96  (12/13/17)
12. A Midsummer Night's Dream- 1595-96 (3/2005)
13. King John- 1596-97 
14. The Merchant of Venice- 1596-97 
15. Henry IV, Part I- 1597-98 
16. Henry IV, Part II- 1597-98 
17. Much Ado About Nothing- 1598-99 (2004, 1/2/18)
18. Henry V- 1598-99 
19. Julius Caesar- 1599-1600 
20. As You Like It- 1599-1600 
21. Twelfth Night- 1599-1600 
22. Hamlet- 1600-01 (high school)
23. The Merry Wives of Windsor- 1600-01 
24. Troilus and Cressida- 1601-02 
25. All's Well That Ends Well- 1602-03 
26. Measure for Measure- 1604-05  (saw play)
27. Othello- 1604-05 
28. King Lear- 1605-06 
29. Macbeth- 1605-06 (high school)
30. Antony and Cleopatra- 1606-07 
31. Coriolanus- 1607-08 
32. Timon of Athens- 1607-08 
33. Pericles- 1608-09 
34. Cymbeline- 1609-10 
35. The Winter's Tale- 1610-11 
36. The Tempest- 1611-12 (4/8/14)
37. Henry VIII- 1612-13 
38. The Two Noble Kinsmen- 1612-13 (maybe not written by Shakespeare) 

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an easy fun Shakespeare play about love. There are two love stories, but I enjoyed the more comical one of Beatrice and Benedick the most. It's not terribly feminist, and I'm left feeling a bit cold for Claudio, who, in addition to jealousy and trust issues, doesn't seem to mind a replacement bride quite as much as he should.

"In brief, since I do
purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any
purpose that the world can say against it; and
therefore never flout at me for what I have said
against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my
conclusion." - Benedick

With Jaime at Much Ado at Shakespeare in the Park, Boston 2004

Much Ado at Shakespeare in the Park, Boston 2004

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A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a brilliant essay about writing and feminism, and it made me feel like cheering on Woolf. That said, I struggled with the fictional elements inside of the nonfictional essay.

Favorite quotes:

“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price.”

“They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.”

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

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General Reading Goals 2018

Instead of resolutions this year, I want to have some general reading goals this year. First and foremost, I want to read the books that are already in my house. I'd like to read more Pulitzer Prize books. I'd like to focus on these authors (in no particular order): Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Graham Greene, Alice Munroe, Lydia Davis, Margaret Atwood, John Updike, and Haruki Murakami.


Kevin recs:
Anna Karenina - Pevear translation
Madame Bovary - Lydia Davis translation
Tender is the Night- Fitzgerald

Alice Munroe Selected Stories
Flannery O'Connor Complete Stories

Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
Elizabeth Bishop Complete Poems

Stop Time- Frank Conroy

Old recs:
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munroe


Dad related goals:
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
The Shining Mountain by Peter Boardman