Here are the books I've read recently (many due to the book club I started about 5 months ago):
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett - I tore through this book, anxious to understand the hype. Then I understood- it was an entertaining, good read but somewhat missed the mark on racial politics, striking out when it came to relying on a white voice to tell the black experience in an imperative time in history. Which I know was the point, but I'm not sure this was successful.
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King - I really did not enjoy this book. I wanted to, though, to read something about time travel, the incredible discovery and comparison of what traveling backward in time can tell us about the present day - especially when it comes to interrupting a major history changing event like the assassination of JFK. I thought it would be full of as-yet-undeclared observations about politics and life in the early 1960's. But overall I found it to drag on, dully, inserting too many meticulously researched unimportant facts instead of observations about how the past and the present differentiate, complicate, explain each other. It disappointed me.
• Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman - Here's a book about an American ex-pat in France realizing that French kids are much better tolerated and tolerant in usual, adult society so she sets out to discover if there's something psychological, sociological, cultural behind better behaved French kids. She thinks there is, but the American parents who've heard of this seem to resent her observations. I keep thinking of a certain lunch picking up handfuls of thrown food off the floor as we leave, wondering how it could've gone differently. Nothing wrong with investigating different methods. Yet, as not a parent myself I find that I don't really get to have an opinion that counts yet, even if I do think some of the French child-raising ideas are squarely sound and I do plan to somewhat incorporate them when I raise mon bebes.
• Cruising Altitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet by Heather Poole - I'm a big fan of specific sociological studies because I'm so curious - okay nosy - when it come to other subcultures, ways of life that I've yet to learn about. Flight crew on commercial airlines was an inside job that I thought would be super interesting to hear about. Could have been better, this book, it was pretty poorly written with so! many! exclamation! points! And needless drama that I groaned as I read, even as I finished it.
• The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentleman Farmers by Josh Kilmer Purcell - I hearted this book in a deep way and here's why: on Netflix I found the TV series about Josh, his farm and Brent, his partner a former employee of Martha Stewart and in true TV fashion it was the episodic yukyuks about a couple gay city fish outta water, some goats, etc which I thoroughly enjoyed of course. But this book was like the diary behind all that, the true not-made-for-TV serious shit (and funnier stuff, too) that explains the context, the deeper considerations and realizations that occur when you give up a big city life and try to make it work it the littler country.
• Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals by Wendy Dale - I was excited to read this book because our previous (summer) book club choice was The Reader (not even briefly reviewed here - in two words: "sexually tedious") and so I tore into this travel memoir written by a young 20-something LA television writer out to have a worldly number of experiences as she circled the glob-------schreech to a halt and WTF? She's halfway into the book and hung up on a South American prisoner, giving up her job, her life and moving south to what - get him out of prison while she hates on her parents boo hoo who never helped her pay for college and wouldn't help her pay her expenses now as she's run out of money, trying to free her South American prisoner who eventually leaves her high and dry? Ugh, halfway through it becomes seriously so whiny and almost unbearable.
• If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley - I heard this author interviewed on Fresh Air, talking about how the toilet, the architectural placement of the kitchen within the home could be used to trace the development of humans through history. I was intrigued and so I bought the book and read about how everyday, meaningful human actions like food preparation, sex, giving birth, dinner time, taking a shit, entertaining guests - how these all informed our living spaces and shaped our homes and our lives. So interesting.
• You Are An Ironman by Jacques Steinberg - So I started training for a triathlon which means that I started reading a number of books to inform me, motivate me, educate me. This is a NY Times journalist who chronicles the roads of 6 amateur ("age grouper" as in not professional) athletes who train for the Tempe, Arizona Ironman. We hear their stories, struggles and a lot about their training in this book - all culminating in crossing the finish line after 140.6 miles to hear "You are an Ironman" declared upon them. Pretty inspiring.
• Slow Fat Triathlete by Jayne Williams - This is one of those books that all the onliners recommend to newbie triathletes - here's a book that is for anyone ready to achieve their athletic goals in the body they have now (as the book cover states), despite age, weight, clumsiness, etc... Definitely for me. It's funny and encouraging; stressing the point that you'll look like a dork out there trying to get your wetsuit off, dealing with the cycle chafing issues or walking during the "run" when you need to - so suck it up and FINISH THE RACE! (This is really meant for specifically triathletes, slow fat ones for that matter.)
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed - Goodness, this book broke my heart immediately in the introduction. It was one of those what if you lost your mother and the love of your life in the same year kinda tragedies and where does that leave you? Well, it left the author promiscuous and lost in life, experimenting with heroin and totally lamenting that this was not her best life. So she shed it all and put on a heavy pack, deciding to hike from Southern California to Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail to get her head right, find her real self sans makeup and tampons and showers and lacy bras. Such a lovely, brave read, one that as Helene Cixous says, could only be written with such ferocious honesty because the life barriers were removed - sense of self, loss of parents - or, those who would judge, scare you away from writing what you really are, what you really did, what you really think. It made me cry a lot and also inspired me much.
• A Life Without Limits by Chrissie Wellington - Another triathlon book, this one by the 5 time female world Ironman champion. I like to read these bios to know what they know, hear what they have to say and try to understand what it is that they go through to be the best in the world. Then I read these books and understand they do this as a full time job, it's their entire life and the book details all this inside information of a professional athlete in 24/7 training and it makes for a somewhat dull read on the page, even though I get that this person is winning big time. I guess it helps me see that this is true, top level elite athletics - it's the all day, every day training routine that sets you up for winning. I sort of covet that kind of focus, that sort of complete exertion that leads to obvious results, swimming biking running as your day job, the races your evaluations.
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