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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