May 2022 Reviews

 

Cultish: the language of fanaticism by Amanda Montell

"This is a book about the language of fanaticism in its many forms: a language I'm calling Cultish (like English, Spanish, or Swedish)." (p. 13) Amanda Montell explores cults through the language they use and how that language is designed to draw us in and keep us in despite any red flags we're seeing. The first section of the book discusses the language we use to talk about cultish groups, including myths about what the term "cult" even means. The rest of the sections discuss specific types of cults and how language plays out in those more specific types of cults or cultish groups - "suicide cults," controversial religions, MLMs (multi-level marketing companies), "cult fitness," and social media gurus. I thought this was a really unique way to look at cults and how there are so many similarities regardless of what the theology/beliefs are. Despite several reviews I read, Montell doesn't equate Jonestown with MLMs or Peloton users. A lot of the book is looking at how cultish language is at play throughout our world and what does it mean - is it really a cult? Or is the language being used as a marketing technique? The reviews I read were kind of mixed, but I absolutely loved this book. I'm currently running a Learning Circle at the library where I work about cults and decided to read this book at the same time and it honestly could have been a textbook for this class it fit so perfectly. I was impressed overall and think if you are fascinated by cults then this book is a must read!

There were lots of quotes I liked:

"The reason millions of us binge cult documentaries or go down rabbit holes researching groups from Jonestown to QAnon is not that there's some twisted voyeur inside us all that's inexplicably attracted to darkness...we're still hunting for a satisfying answer to the question of what causes seemingly 'normal' people to join - and, more important, stay in - fanatical fringe groups with extreme ideologies. We're scanning for threats, on some level wondering, Is everyone susceptible to cultish influence? Could it happen to you? Could it happen to me? And if so, how?" (p. 11)

"The twenty-first century has produced a climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long-established institutions, like church, government, Big Pharma, and big business. It's the perfect societal recipe for making new and unconventional groups - everything from Reddit incles to wo0-woo wellness influencers - who promise to provide answers that the conventional ones couldn't supply seem freshly appealing. Add the development of social media and declining marriage rates, and culture-wide feelings of isolation are at an all-time high. Civic engagement is at a record-breaking low." (p. 21)

"For those who bristle at the idea of comparing workout classes to religion, know that as tricky as it is to define 'cult,' scholars have been arguing even harder for centuries over how to classify 'religion.' You might have a feeling that Christianity is a religion, while fitness is not, but even experts have a tough time distinguishing exactly why. I like Burton's way of looking at it, which is less about what religions are and more about what religions do, which is to provide the following four things: meaning, purpose, a sense of community, and ritual. Less and less often are seekers finding these things at church." (p. 24)

"Only the most destructive cults gain attention, so we come to think of all cults as destructive, and we simultaneously only recognize the destructive ones as cults, so those gain more attention, reinforcing their negative reputation, and so on ad infinitum." (p. 36)

"Eileen Barker's studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it's not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups - instead, it's an overabundance of optimism." (p. 98)

"When you're experimenting with faith and belief, there has to be room to ask questions, express your misgivings, and seek outside information, both early on and deep into your membership. 'The most important thing to remember is that if something is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny,' [Dr.] Steven Hassan told me." (p. 149)

"It's not totally clear why some people have a System 1 Spidey sense for pyramid schemes, quack health cures, and other too-good-to-be-true messaging while others don't. Some researchers say it might be related to differences in trust that stem from early childhood - the theory being that when you develop trust as a little kid, it sets a lifelong expectation that the world will be honest and nice to you. All sorts of childhood exposures could cause a person to become more or less trusting." (p. 194)

"Research consistently shows that something like one in five CEOs has psychopathic tendencies." (p. 197)

"According to [Michael] Shermer [founder of the Skeptics Society], studies show that American test subjects with the lowest education levels have a higher probability of subscribing to certain paranormal beliefs, like haunted houses, Satanic possession, and UFO landings; but it's test subjects with the most education who are likeliest to believe in New Age ideas, like the power of the mind to heal disease." (p. 270)

"No 'cult leader' takes advantage of our psychological drives quite like The Algorithm [of social media], which thrives on sending us down rabbit holes, so we never even come across rhetoric we don't agree with unless we actively search for it." (p. 280)

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Books & Banter and Evening Edition book clubs)

Nora Seed has had a disappointing life. Whatever path she takes seems to be the wrong one and after a particularly bad day she decides she's done with life and plans to kill herself. But, instead of dying she ends up in The Midnight Library where she has to confront all her regrets and can re-live some of the lives that could have been to see if the paths not chosen would have been better or not.

I had heard almost nothing but high praise for this book, but I did not like it at all. I would have put it down after the first 50 pages if it wasn't for both of my book clubs reading it. I didn't like Nora, I didn't like the premise of the library and I pretty much guessed the end about 50-75 pages in. This was like an awful self-help book masquerading as a novel. Haig really beat a dead horse ALL THE WAY THROUGH THIS BOOK. Also, it seems like this book takes depression and suicide too lightly - like "oh, just appreciate your situation more and you'll be happy and fine." Ugh. Do NOT see what all the hype is about on this one.

To Boldly Grow by Tamar Haspel

Tamar Haspel was already a foodie and writer, but didn't consider herself an "adventurer." Her husband was very much an adventurer and doer, so he got them started in the food growing world with a rooftop vegetable garden. When they decided to move from New York city to Cape Cod, Haspel had the idea of trying to go a year eating at least one "first-hand" every day. She defines "first-hand food" as food they either grew, raised, foraged, or hunted themselves. Living on Cape Cod that meant a lot of fish and clams at the beginning, but as their food adventures continued their "first-hand food" menu expanded. Eventually they were gardening, foraging, raised chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pigs, and kept bees. They also fished and hunted. I was honestly more impressed that they started doing all this in their 40's - a lot of the things they did are very physically demanding. I was also super impressed (and somewhat surprised) that Haspel who was adamantly anti-gun would want to start hunting. Overall, it's a solid food/gardening/homesteading memoir.

Some quotes I liked:

"Gardening and clamming, the activities, don't bear much resemblance to each other. One is terrestrial and one, aquatic. One yields a plant, and the other, an animal. The skills and tools involved are completely different. Only one requires waders, which are unflattering to absolutely everybody. But the satisfaction of the food itself was identical. In the next few years, I'd discover it was the same with fish I'd caught, venison I hunted, mushrooms I'd foraged. Yet there was no name either for that satisfaction or for the category of food that elicited it. The category, I've taken to calling first-hand food." (p. xx)

"Many of us who believe livestock should have a decent life are trying to convince American consumers that it's worth it to spend a little more for eggs, milk, and meat from well-treated animals. One of the arguments, often, is that those products taste better. If those products don't taste better, the American consumer who ponies up the extra bucks only to find that the expensive stuff tastes just like the cheap stuff is going to feel, quite rightly, that she's been sold a bill of goods." (p. 66) [I disagree with the author on this one. While it may be true that blind egg tasting can't distinguish free-range eggs over factory farmed eggs, there is a HUGE difference in nutritional content. I wish she had explained that and there are studies that show it as well. Sustainably raised meat is light years in nutritional content above factory farmed meat.]

"All our first-hand food activities have connected us to our community and introduced us to people we wouldn't have met otherwise, but none as much as hunting. I'm a left-leaning centrist with a libertarian streak, and the hunting world most definitely leans right. Meeting people who don't share your politics, outside the realm of politics, gives you a chance to see them as three-dimensional, as people who share an interest with you, as people you might even like." (p. 216)

Damaged Goods: new perspectives on Christian purity by Dianna Anderson

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, but decided to read it based on the title. I grew up in the Church during the Purity movement, but my childhood church wasn't fully engulfed in it. I definitely think the Purity movement is damaging - particularly to women and Anderson did a good job of showing some of the ramifications of it. But, despite the title, she did not give a "new perspective on Christian purity." Her solution is to just do whatever you want sexually and not feel bad about anything (as long as everyone involved is consenting). Despite trying, she did not make a biblical case for her views at all. This is a hard issue, but I still believe there is a middle ground between Purity culture and doing whatever you want sexually. Especially if you're claiming to be a Bible-following Christian. I don't have all the answers, but this book is not it.

A much better book on the Purity movement is Pure by Linda Kay Klein and a fantastic book that explores the biblical support of egalitarianism is The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr.

A quote I liked:

"Large portions of modesty teachings are centered on making sure women know our place in the larger scheme of things. We are to be submissive, demure, and quiet. Once we buck this standard, once we step out of line, we will lose the supposed respect of people who did not respect us in the first place." (p. 92)

Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown

According to Brene Brown "To form meaningful connections with others, we must first connect with ourselves, but to do either, we must first establish a common understanding of the language of emotion and human experience." (p. xxx) So, Atlas of the Heart attempts to do that - Brown and her team categorized 88 emotions and organized them by categories that grouped similar emotions together. Each chapter is one category that explores several emotions and reiterates that differentiating between emotions is important for real connection. While the concept is interesting, this read more like a beginner's level textbook than a popular non-fiction or self-help book. It is also weirdly oversized and could have easily been cut down to a more regular book size. About every 3rd page is an oversized quote from the nearby pages - to me that seemed mostly unnecessary. I think this book could be helpful for a therapist or even a teacher to help patients or children understand different emotions and why it's important to name emotions correctly. But, I wouldn't recommend this one to the average non-fiction reader. I've only read a few other Brene Brown books, but this one was very different from the other books I've read by her. Overall, it's interesting information, but feels more scholarly or instructive.

Some quotes I liked:

"This is one reason we need to dispel the myth that empathy is 'walking in someone else's shoes.' Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it's like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn't match my experiences." (p. 124-25)

"This connection between humiliation and aggression/violence explains much of what we're seeing today. Amplified by the reach of social media, dehumanizing and humiliating others are becoming increasingly normalized, along with violence. Now, rather than humiliating someone in front of a small group of people, we have the power to eviscerate someone in front of a global audience of strangers." (p. 149)

"The brokenhearted are the bravest among us - they dared to love." (p. 191)

"A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 'motive attribution asymmetry' - the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent's is based in hate - suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it is driven by benevolence, while the other is evil and motivated by hatred - and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise." (p. 228-29) [And that is pre-2016 election AND pre-COVID...]

"The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets - John Mark Green." (p. 238)

Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff by Matt Paxton

Matt Paxton is probably best known for his work on the TV series Hoarders. But, in this book he gives tips on how to declutter, downsize, or move with all the experience he's learned in over twenty years of working in the industry. Each chapter focuses on a particular step or issue in the process - for example how to best sort through photographs and paperwork or how to most efficiently sell your belongings or decide what to sell vs. donate. And in each chapter he also includes either a personal story or a story from a client who highlights that particular chapter's topic. Along the way he gives TONS of detailed tips and company/business information.

I've always been fascinated by hoarding and I always liked the episodes of Hoarders that Matt was on, but I put this book on hold before I even realized he wrote it. I'm not a hoarder, but I'm also far from a minimalist. I wanted to read this book to see if it had some tips on dealing with more of the emotional side of family/personal stuff. There were some emotional tips, but it was mostly more practical/physical tips on how to manage the stuff. But, I did like hearing more of his personal story and the book was very well-written with lots of helpful information.

Unearthing the Secret Garden by Marta McDowell

I absolutely LOVED The Secret Garden as a kid and remember watching one of the movie versions with my Dad. My Dad was a gardener and I remember us going to visit gardens on the weekends and looking for one like The Secret Garden with a brick wall enclosure. Frances Burnett had a very interesting life, especially for the time as a woman. She was very successful as a writer and worked all the time, but also devoted lots of time to gardening and planning her gardens. This book is divided into 4 sections - about each of her three homes and the gardens she kept there and how they inspired her to write The Secret Garden. The final section is some of her other writings including a precious story of the robin who inspired the robin in The Secret Garden book. The final chapter is written by Frances's great-great-granddaughter Keri Wilt about her great-great-grandmother's gardening inspiration in their family. Overall, it was a great book about Burnett's love of gardening and how that inspired one of the world's most beloved children's books. If you're a fan of The Secret Garden AND a gardener then this is the perfect book for you. It reminded me a lot of Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell.

A quote I liked:

"And as long as you have a garden you have a future, and as long as you have a future you are alive." (p. 267)

12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke

12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You is about how much smartphones and social media have become a near-constant part of our daily lives and what that means for us a Christians. Reinke isn't arguing for going back to pre-smartphone days, but does make some good points about evaluating the actual benefits versus drawbacks of smartphones. This book is written for a VERY SPECIFIC audience - adult Christians. I felt like it would have been hugely beneficial to talk about issues around smartphones/social media and children - especially from a Christian perspective - but that isn't discussed at all. I also feel like more data about phone/social media usage in general would have been helpful, but almost all the data he mentions is from a survey geared towards Christians. Not that that data isn't helpful, but general data on phone/social media usage and how it's grown/changed especially in the last few years would have add to the book in my opinion. I felt like the overall message was as Christians our focus should be on Christ, not ourselves or the world and is whatever I'm doing (on your phone or not) glorifying God and helping spread the gospel. I felt like these two main points were made in pretty much every chapter, so it overall felt a little repetitive to me. But, there were some good points made and I liked that there were several lists of questions to ask yourself about how your phone/social media usage is impacting your life and/or spiritual walk with God.

Some quotes I liked:

"Facebook becomes a safe and sanitized room where I can watch the ups and downs of other as an anonymous spectator, with no compulsive impulse to respond and care in any meaningful way. As as I do, I become more and more blind to the flesh and blood around me." (p. 53)

"In Donna Freitas's extensive study of the social-media habits of college students, one sharp female student told her: 'People used to do things and then post them, and the approval you gained from whatever you were putting out there was a byproduct of the actual activity. Now the anticipated approval is what's driving the behavior or the activity, so there just sort of been this reversal.' Phones with social connections transform us - and our friends and children - into actors. That's huge." (p. 97-98)

"The walls of inconvenience [or fear of getting caught/seen] that made vices difficult to act on in previous generations have been lowered or eliminated in the digital age." (p. 134)

"In the end, I wonder if most of the self-destructive patterns in our lives - from overeating to worrying to fighting to overspending to grabbing our phones first thing in the morning - are the result of starved imaginations, malnourished of hope." (p. 142-43)

"In the introduction to his landmark book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman contrasted two very different cultural warnings, those of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Orwell argued that books would disappear by censorship; Huxley thought books would be marginalized by data torrent. Postman summarizes the contrast well. 'Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.' Huxley seems to have won." (p. 145)

"Social media is not replacing the mass media; it is becoming the filter through which the content produced by the mass media must now pass to reach untold masses." (p. 148)

"What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull the lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C.S. Lewis called it the 'Nothing' strategy in his Screwtape Letters. It is the strategy that eventually leaves a man at the end of his life looking back in lament: 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'...Lewis's warning about the 'dreary flickering' in front of our eyes is a loud prophetic alarm to the digital age." (p. 191)

April 2022 Cookbook Reviews

 

Southern Baking Cookbook by Jenn Davis

I love a good Southern cookbook. While most "baking" books focus more on desserts or strictly bread, I liked that this was a combination of both sweet and savory baking. It's organized by type of recipes - pies (includes savory), cakes, cookies, breads, and breakfast baked goods. The author has a blog called Two Cups Flour that I hadn't heard of, but I might check it out now after seeing this cookbook since there are several recipes I'd like to try. Overall, a good Southern baking cookbook.

April 2022 Reviews

 

The Address Book by Dierdre Mask

When Deirdre Mask was living in Ireland she wanted to send a letter home to her family in North Carolina. When she was affixing the stamp she started to wonder about the postage and how it's possible to pay such a small fee and have your letter delivered across the world. That led to some Google searching and her stumbling upon the Addressing the World initiative that is working to help map and address homes around the world. That then led Mask to go down the rabbit hole of addresses and what they can mean for people, why street names and numbers matter (and what they also say about wealth, race, and class), and how different cultures view neighborhoods, streets, and what constitutes a home or address. While I did find the book interesting it was a little all over the place and often the chapters delved very deeply into history when it didn't always seem necessary (to me anyway). There was a LOT of interesting and unique information though. A few new things I learned - how often street names are changed (around the world and in the US), that in New York it's possible to buy "vanity addresses," and how a language reads often influences how that culture views neighborhoods and addresses (English speakers/readers vs. Japanese speakers/readers). An interesting book that gets a little too bogged down in details and history.

Some quotes I liked:

"China has used street names as a tool to keep ethnic minority regions in check, as political scientist Jonathan Hassid has described. You would expect place that have their own languages and cultures to have more variation in street names, but Hassid found that the opposite is largely true; areas with a higher concentration of ethnic minorities largely have streets that sound more like those in Beijing than other areas. Street names became one more tool to keep the locals under control." (p. 152-53)

"The more I read about German street names, the more I came across this word...Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. It's made up of two ideas - 'the past' and 'the process of coming to terms or coping.' It's a word that is very German, and it often used to describe the nation's reckoning with its Nazi past and the German division during the Cold War. But its meaning is universal. We all have the need to confront the past, memorialize it, struggle with it, do something with it. That something often involves street names." (p. 172)

"The growth of the Civil War monuments peaked twice: first, in the early twentieth century, when Jim Crow laws were being made, and then again in the 1950s and '60s when the laws were being challenged." (p. 185)

"As I write, the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, which is 87 percent white, has a median household income of $203,250. About seven miles away, the zip code around MLK Drive is 94 percent black, and the neighborhood's median income is about $27,608." (p. 198)

Taste: my life through food by Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci grew up in New York in an Italian family where food was love. And he got a LOT of love growing up. His childhood is where his love of food started and it's only grown from there. As an actor he began to look for ways to combine his acting with food -whether movies or his PBS series "Searching for Italy." A few years before COVID struck Tucci was diagnosed with a rare mouth cancer and while he survived it was a rough treatment and recovery. He couldn't eat during the treatment and had to have a feeding tube. And when he could start eating again he had to be very careful and couldn't eat anything and everything like before. Now he is back to normal, but I think that experience really highlighted how important food is for him - not just eating (everyone has to eat), but cooking, planning meals, enjoying food with family and friends, etc. The majority of the book is not about his cancer diagnosis, but more a collection of food related memories and experiences that shaped him. Was it the most amazing book ever written? No. But, it was a fun, food-filled memoir that also includes lots of family recipes. And if this book doesn't make you want to eat or cook then something is wrong with you.

A quote I liked:

"There have been two rather strange beneficial effects from the radiation treatments, neither of which I anticipated. One is an increased metabolism. I already had a very fast metabolism, yet now mine could keep pace with that of my eighteen-year-old self. The other is any food allergies I had, such as intolerance to dairy, sugar, and at times gluten, have basically disappeared. I have been told that because I didn't really eat for so long my system 'reset,' as it were." (p. 276)

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad (Books & Banter book club)

Suleika Jaouad was just starting her "real life" after college. She'd just moved to Paris and had fallen in love with Will who moved to Paris to be with her. But, even before the move she'd been feeling run down and that only got worse in Paris. Eventually she was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia with only a 35% survival rate. She had to move back home with her parents and spent the next three and a half years literally fighting for her life. Once she was "cured" however, she felt lost. While she was sick there were different emotional struggles, but there was still the regime of treatment. Now she had to figure out who she was now and who she wanted to be. When she was sick she started writing columns for the New York Times and connected with people all over the country. So, once she was well enough she decided to take a 100 day road trip to connect with the people she had met online or through her articles. This 100 days turns out to be a different kind of healing process for Jaouad.

I was looking forward to reading this even though I knew it might be a tough book. But, honestly it was REALLY depressing. As several reviews I read mentioned, Jaouad is extremely privileged (which she does recognize), yet also seems somehow mad about her privilege and at her family and boyfriend who drop their lives to help her for several years. There aren't many people who would have stepped up like Will did especially after only dating for 6 months. She COMPLETELY took him for granted and expected him to behave like a long-time spouse. It took her a really long time to realize how badly she'd treated him and not just focus on the fact that he left her. I thought once she was better the book would get better, but it doesn't really. It's just a sad, depressing book and while it's well-written I didn't really enjoy it much. I bumped it up to three stars because the writing was really good. Overall, I didn't love it.

Some quote I did like:

"I understood now why so many writers and artists, while in the thick of illness, became memoirists. It provided a sense of control, a way to reshape your circumstances on your own terms, in your own words." (p. 107)

"After three and a half years, I am officially done with cancer - more than four years, if you start with the itch. I thought I'd feel victorious when I reached this moment - I thought I'd want to celebrate. But instead, it feels like the beginning of a new kind of reckoning. I've spent the past fifteen hundred days working tirelessly toward a single goal - survival. And now that I've survived, I'm realizing I don't know how to live." (p. 211)

"Trauma has a way of dividing you view of the world into two camps: those who get it and those who don't." (p. 271)

"I used to think healing meant ridding your body and the heart of anything that hurt. It meant putting your pain behind you, leaving it in the past. But I'm learning that's not how it works. Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn't there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss." (p. 312)

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner grows up in a small town in Oregon. She always felt out of place as half-Korean in a small, mostly white town. She finds an outlet in music, but her mother doesn't really approve and wants her to go to college and find a real career. Zauner has a complicated relationship with her mother, but of course loves her and fondly remembers their annual summer trips back to Korea. When Zauner is 25 her mother is diagnosed with cancer so she moves back home to help care for her. While dealing with her mother's illness Zauner reconnects more with her Korean roots and is drawn to learn how to cook all the Korean food she grew up eating. When her mother passes away food is what continues to connect Zauner with her father as they sort through their grief together. It's a sad, yet hopeful at the end book. The main irony being that after her mother's death Zauner records an album of songs about her mother and then plans to quit music and find a "real career." But, that album is what kickstarts her music career that is able to support both her and her husband in the band Japanese Breakfast.

I wasn't familiar with Zauner or Japanese Breakfast before this book, but picked it up based on some friends suggestions and the good reviews I'd heard. I didn't love it because it's pretty sad overall. But, it's well written and I really liked how Zauner focused on continuing to connect with her mother through their shared love of food.

A quote I liked:

"Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I was not raised in a household with many books or records. I was not exposed to fine arts at a young age or taken to museums or plays at established cultural institutions...But my parents were worldly in their own ways. They had seen much of the world and had tasted what it had to offer. What they lacked in high culture, they made up for by spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhood was rich in flavor - blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table." (p. 23)

The Power of Fun: how to feel alive again by Catherine Price

I wasn't really sure what to expect with this one, but I put in on hold through my library based on the title. As I've gotten older I feel like I struggle to have fun and tend to let chores take over my free time. So, I thought this might be helpful to motivate me to find more fun in my life. The first section of the book is mostly about how smartphones are ruining people/things/etc. Her previous book is How to Break Up With Your Phone so that makes sense and mindless scrolling on social media is what the author deems "fake fun." It seems fun/relaxing, but really it's not good for us at all. The second part of the book spells out her SPARK fun philosophy - Make Space, Pursue Passions, Attract Fun, Rebel, and Keep At It. While she had some good ideas the majority of the book seemed to focus on continuing to break up with your phone and keeping a fun journal. I get the idea behind the journal and trying to figure out what made fun times you've had in the past actually fun and then trying to find ways to replicate that now, but it seemed super un-fun to have to do all this work on the front end. The book overall also kind of made me feel bad about myself (even though she constantly says not to be hard on yourself) for my lack of fun. Overall, I didn't love it. I initially thought I might like to read her prior book, but but now I'm not sure. Several reviews I read said this book seems to be a recap so maybe I already got the gist of that one too now.

Some quotes I liked:

"In a 2017 cover story in The Atlantic titled 'Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?' psychology professor Jean Twenge made this point when she wrote that 'it's not an exaggeration to describe [the generation that has grown up with smartphones] as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.'" (p. 53)

"Before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the average adult was spending upward of four hours a day on their phone, and for many of us, the number is now even higher. Four hours a day adds up to nearly sixty full days a year. It's nine months' worth of forty-hour work weeks. It's a quarter of our waking lives. And that's just our phones. Add in our tablets and televisions, our computers and videogame consoles, and I think it's safe to say that many people are now spending most of their waking lives staring at screens. Yes, obviously some of this is necessary for work. But think about it: How much time each day, if you're being honest with yourself, do you actually spend on your hobbies or with your partner, family, or friends, in person? Even if you add them all up, does it come anywhere close to four hours - let alone the total time you spend on all screens?" (p. 58-9)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Evening Edition book club)

The Vignes twins grow up in a small Louisiana town called Mallard. Desiree and Stella look identical, but their personalities are very different. Mallard was founded by an interracial man who wanted to create a town for light-skinned African-American people and so that became what Mallard was known for. The twins decide to run away together to New Orleans when they are sixteen. While there Stella ends up being mistaken for white at a job interview and takes it because she can make better money. She doesn't intend to "pass" as white forever, but when she falls in love with her boss who only knows her as white she marries him and keeps that identity. But, the cost of that is her relationship with her sister and mother. Years later, fleeing an abusive relationship Desiree comes back to Mallard with her daughter and is constantly reminded of her missing sister. Eventually Desiree's daughter Jude and Stella's daughter Kennedy cross paths and begin to reconnect these two sisters very different lives.

I didn't have any expectations going into this one and I did like the book overall. It's well written and unique. But, I read several reviews that said that they felt like the characters weren't fully developed and I agree with that. I feel like a lot was left hanging with all the characters. I didn't fully realize it when I was reading it, but several reviews said that they felt the author was trying to compare Stella "passing" as white to Reece "passing" as a man. I just felt like Reece's character was odd overall because for that time period I don't think his relationship with Jude would have happened, much less lasted for years and years. That part to me felt forced into that time period because it's such a hot topic today. I do wish there had been more especially from Stella's perspective and I'd love to know if she stays in her marriage or not. I can't imagine living that kind of lie your whole life. Overall, I liked it but didn't think it was amazing.

Some quotes I liked:

[On the twins father being lynched] "'White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little.' Willie Lee shook his head, packing tobacco into his pipe. 'You gotta follow they rules but they change 'em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.'...But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die." (p. 35)

"Sometimes she wondered if Miss Vignes was a separate person altogether. Maybe she wasn't a mask that Stella put on. Maybe Miss Vignes was already a part of her, as if she had been split in half. She could become whichever woman she decided, whichever side of her face she tilted to the light." (p. 188-89)

I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet by Shauna Niequist

I love Shauna Niequist and was excited to read her newest book. It did not disappoint. As in her previous books this is a collection of essays about everything from aging to the stress of moving to disconstructing and rebuilding your faith. The title comes from her family's move from the Chicago suburbs to New York City. Everything was new and their family slogan became I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet because they were constantly learning the "New York way" to do things they thought they already knew. But, obviously that phrase could cover a lot of things in our lives. I love how honest and open Niequist is with her own struggles because as she says when you're going through something hard you always feel like you're the only one. In all her books she is saying "me too" and opening the door to talk about hard things. Another great book from a wonderful writer!

A quote I really liked:

"Prayer is like yoga for our insides. My number one favorite kind of yoga is the kind that's mostly breathing and lying down. But my second favorite kind is when you're in a pose that's really demanding, and just for a few seconds you trust your body and you trust your breath and your body becomes able in that moment to do things it wasn't able to do before. It's an amazing feeling. This is the sacred, interior version of that." (p. 110)

March 2022 Reviews

 

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (Books & Banter book club, re-read)

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American Dream. The Air Force brings the Galvin family to Colorado and they find a beautiful home large enough for their 12 children. Every Sunday the whole family dressed up for church and looked picture perfect. But, inside their house on Hidden Valley Road things were definitely not perfect. Starting with Donald, the oldest, six of the twelve children were diagnosed with schizophrenia one after the other, while the other six lived in constant fear that they might be next. The Galvins tried to keep their children's mental illness a secret, but as the number of mentally ill children increased that became harder to do. Eventually everyone avoided the family and the strange antics of the mentally ill became almost commonplace in their neighborhood. Even as their family fell apart, the Galvin parents still seemed to cling to secrets - many were only uncovered after their deaths. In Hidden Valley Road Robert Kolker explores the phenomenon of the Galvin family's mental illness and also the history and treatment of schizophrenia, which sadly hasn't improved as much as treatments for other illnesses has over time. Kolker does an amazing job of telling this family's terrible story with compassion, while also highlighting the plight and mystery of mental illness even today.

When I first heard about this book I couldn't imagine growing up in a family like this. I thought I would feel sorrier for the parents, but really they were pretty terrible parents long before any of their kids showed signs of mental illness. They had no control over their children, yet they just kept having more. There was so much physical fighting between the boys that it was like something from Lord of the Flies and the parents were just like, "whatever, boys will be boys." Then I never expected there to be so much sexual abuse. The two youngest children, both girls, were molested by not one, but two of their brothers. There are questions about whether some of the younger brothers were molested as well, but with their schizophrenia it's hard to tell what is a true experience and what is a delusion. Then at least some of the older boys were also molested by a trusted priest who helped Mimi convert to Catholicism. I felt the worst for the "normal"/non-mentally ill children. In a family of 12 the odds are low that you're going to get a lot of one-on-one attention from your parents, but when 6 of the 12 children are seriously mentally ill and in and out of hospitals you don't stand a chance as a "healthy" child. It's sad to see that the siblings don't have great relationships today. Many of the "healthy" children escaped and have little to do with their mentally ill siblings. Only Lindsay/Mary the youngest really tries to help her mentally ill siblings and encourages her other healthy siblings to do the same. But, I can only imagine the kinds of deep wounds you would have growing up in a family like this. Mental illness is sad and terrifying, but for a family like this it almost seems like some kind of genetic punishment for everyone - sick and healthy alike.

Some quotes I liked:

"For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member. Even if just one child has schizophrenia, everything about the internal logic of that family changes. But the Galvin never were an ordinary family. In the years when Donald was the first, most conspicuous case, five other Galvin brothers were quietly breaking down." (p. xviii)

"The great break between Freud and Jung took place largely over the issue of the nature of madness itself. Early psychoanalysis's greatest partnership was over. But the argument over the origins and nature of schizophrenia was only just beginning." (p. 19)

"Practically every drug prescribed for psychosis, from Donald's time until now, has been a variation on Thorazine or clozapine. Thorazine and its successors became knowns as 'typical' neuroleptic drugs, while clozapine and its heirs were 'atypical,' the Pepsi to Thorazine's Coke. Like Thorazine, clozapine could be dangerous: Concerns over drastically low blood pressure and seizures were serious enough to take it off the market for more than a decade. Even so, drugs became the common treatment of schizophrenia, and the psychiatric profession's great schism only widened. On one side of the street, doctors at the large state hospitals said schizophrenia required drugs, while the therapists in more rarefied settings still recommended psychotherapy. Like most families, the Galvin were at the mercy of what was a mental health care system in name only, forced to choose from options they weren't equipped to assess." (p. 87-88)

"In the calculus of their preteen minds, blocking out the nighttime encounters with Jim and his violence toward his wife was the price Margaret and Mary had to pay to gain a few days of liberty from the house on Hidden Valley Road. It was more than that. Being with Kathy and Jimmy gave the a sense of belonging they couldn't get at home, not when so much attention was being paid elsewhere. They both so dreaded Donald that in the contest between Donald and Jim, Jim won. That, if nothing else, explained why they both kept coming back." (p. 101)

[After Brian's murder/suicide] "But what only Mimi and Don knew, and told no one for many years, was that sometime before his death, Brian had been prescribed Navane, an antipsychotic. There is no known record of the diagnosis that called for that prescription - mania, or depressive psychosis, or trauma-induced psychosis, or a psychotic break triggered by the habitual use of psychedelic drugs. The other children never learned when their parents first knew about this. But both Don and Mimi must have understood that one of the conditions Navane treats is schizophrenia. The thought of another insane son - their amazing Brian, of all people - was so devastating to them, they kept his prescription secret for decades." (p. 129-30)

"Matt's first admission to Pueblo [state mental hospital] was on December 7, 1978. Five days later, Peter joined him there, for his third visit to Pueblo that year. Donald was also cycling in and out of Pueblo that year - three Galvin brothers on separate wards of the same hospital, for what would not be the last time. From then on, when Mary was alone with Matt and Peter, she locked herself in her parents' room until someone else came home." (p. 169-70)

[When Lindsay/Mary tells her mother about Jim's molestation] "Mimi was talking about her own experience, skipping right past the details of what Lindsay was saying about Jim. Lindsay needed Mimi to take her side, to tell her that what Jim had done to her was wrong. But Mimi did not do that. She had never picked the side of a healthy child against a sick one, and she wasn't going to start now. Instead, Mimi started talking about how Jim was mentally ill. Lindsay flushed. To her, schizophrenia wasn't an excuse for what Jim had done to her. Certainly no mainstream researcher or psychiatrist would say that it was Jim's psychotic delusions that made him a pedophile. But Mimi was not willing to separate the two issues. Lindsay, though she expected as much, was still deeply hurt. What made it so hard for her mother to sympathize with anyone other than her boys? It was as if she had used up all of her compassion on the sick children, even Jim, leaving nothing for anyone else. But that day, Lindsay was ready. She told her mother she would never agree to be in the same room as her brother [Jim] again." (p. 199-200)

[After Mimi's death Lindsay uncovers that her father was receiving ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for years before his death and no one knew] "Mimi had to have known about Don's ECT sessions. She'd gone there with him, and no doubt driven him home afterward, as often as once a month for years on end. She'd kept this secret, too. To be a member of the Galvin family is to never stop tripping on land mines of family history, buried in odd places, stashed away out of shame." (p. 313)

"There is no way of knowing how life might have been different for the Galvin brothers if the culture of mental illness had been less rigid, less inclined to cut people off from mainstream society, more proactive about intervening when warning signs first appeared. But there is, perhaps, reason to hope that for people like the Galvin born fifty years from now, things could be different, even transformed." (p. 323)

On re-reading for book club 2/25/22 - 3/1/22:

Re-reading this book was a lot sadder than when I read it the first time. I think the first time you're just so shocked at the Galvin family's life - not even the mental illness, but the constant chaos and fighting. Re-reading it this time I just felt sad for everyone. I still didn't like the parents much. I do think they were a product of the times, but still seemed like pretty terrible parents long before the mental illness came on. I still felt most sorry for the "well"/non-mentally ill kids who were not only terrified of becoming mentally ill as well, but were also tormented physically by their siblings growing up. It just seemed like a horrific experience for everyone. I wish the studies of their family's DNA had helped the study of schizophrenia more, but who knows maybe in the future those samples will answer the riddle of who gets schizophrenia and why.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah (Evening Edition book club)

Meredith and Nina always had a complicated relationship with their mother. She obviously adored their father, but was always cold towards them. So, they each became daddy's girls who adored and followed their father around. Nina becomes a famous photographer and Meredith takes over her father's apple orchard business. And when their father dies both daughters struggle with his final request - get to know their mother. As they try to follow their father's final wishes both Meredith and Nina have to confront the walls they've created in their own lives. Once their mother does start telling them more of her history in war-torn Leningrad, they all finally begin to heal and create a new family relationship.

I honestly wasn't looking forward to reading this because I'm not a Kristin Hannah fan. But, since it was for book club I was willing to give it a chance. I did want to find out what happened in Anya's life in Leningrad, but like the other Hannah books I've read there was a LOT of overly dramatic scenes and a twist at the end that was a little too perfect in tying the two main stories together. But, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Still very Lifetime movie-esque for my taste.

Meditations With Cows by Shreve Stockton

I didn't realize when I put this book on hold that it was by the same author as The Daily Coyote which I LOVED. In this book Stockton talks about how not long after adopting Charlie, the coyote pup that is the focus of her first book, she also starting raising beef and dairy cattle. She got her first dairy cow, Daisy, because she wanted a reliable source of raw milk and her boyfriend was already raising cattle and had the land needed. Then she decided to start raising beef cattle for herself and others who were seeking grass-finished beef raised in a humane and regenerative way. Ironically, her farming business was subsidized by her art - her books and photography. Her artistic work also allowed her to create her own schedule so she could be around her cows when more needed like during calving season. While she does talk about the horrors of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and the benefits of regenerative farming (for both the food and the land), the majority of the book is her writing about how much she enjoys being around the cows, how much they've taught her, and just how much she enjoys this quiet, farming life she found. She also talks a lot about some of the specific cows she developed a closer relationship with and how their personalities are so unique. I've personally not spent much time around cows, but I remember the first time I visited Joel Salatin's farm and on the farm tour we were near some of the cows and they ALL walked over to the fence to check us out. I think most farm animals are much smarter and more intelligent than we give them credit for - probably because it makes it easier to eat them if you think they are dumb. While this book is very different than The Daily Coyote, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's also got lots of beautiful photographs from Stockton throughout the book.

Some quotes I liked:

"It's not that bulls aren't dangerous, it's that there's a difference between dangerous and mean. All bovines can be dangerous because of their size and strength - far more people are killed each year by cattle than by sharks." (p. 33)

"In the United States, methane emissions from 'manure management' have risen nearly 70 percent since 1990, while emissions from enteric methane (bovine burps) have increased by just 8 percent. Grazing and foraging animals don't create manure management problems - CAFOs do." (p. 108-9) [But Bill Gates wants us to think the only solution to climate change is fake meat - which is a different kind of manure problem.]

"I closed my eyes and silent tears traveled down my face. I've been providing humanely raised beef to my customers for nearly a decade and I still cry when my steers transition to food. Not from guilt, not exactly from sadness. I cry from the sheer intensity of being so closely involved in the circle of life and death, and death for life. We're all involved in this - every time we eat or drink, no matter what we eat and drink - but often from such a distance that we don't feel it. That distance, that disconnect, is so much easier than feeling the enormity of life and death with every bite. But no one is outside it." (p. 120)

"It's not about not getting attached. I love my cattle. I eat my beef. I cry when they die. I sell their bodies because I believe in this work. It's all so incredibly complicated. And it should be complicated. The neat, sterile packaging in grocery stores removes the general public from the processes of how that meat came to be; absolves the consumer from any responsibility for what happens to the living beings that provide us meat; and allows CAFOs to proliferate with profit as the only driving force." (p. 124-25)

"If someone is buying jewelry or new clothes every month, or paying thousands annually for climate control in a four-thousand-square-foot house with three people living in it, but balks at spending more money for sustainably raised food, I'll side-eye them. The idea that food should be the cheapest thing we spend our money on is the dark side of capitalism: the system has been rigged to train us to buy cheap food so we have money to spend on more clothes and knick-knacks than we need - often made by exploitative labor - or make payments on a brand new car." (p. 136)

"In 2017, over 180 million acres of cropland in the United States were planted to corn and soy - over 90 million acres of each. It's hard to visualize 180 million acres. To put it in context, in 2017, all the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States - sold fresh, frozen, and processed into french fries, tomato sauce, almond milk, and so much more - was done on less than 10 million acres, or about 5 percent of the land used for corn and soybeans. That's a lot of corn and soy. So what's it all used for?...Between 4 and 14 percent of the total field corn crop goes to human food products, like candy and soda pop, and industrial use, like packaging. [40 percent to ethanol, 36 percent to animal feed, 10-20 percent exported]...[About half of the soy crop is exported, the other half is processed into oil and meal.] Soybeans are 20 percent oil, and the oil is used in processed foods, for biodiesel, and industrially, in products like adhesives, ink, and foam. The other 80 percent becomes soybean meal, and 97 percent of our soybean meal goes to animal feed. The remaining 3 percent of soybean meal goes to processed human food like mock meats, tofu, and soy milk." (p. 146-47)

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet by Pamela Paul

When we think of the internet we think of progress and technology that makes our lives easier. But, there are also things we're losing to the internet that are not good or beneficial. The internet is shaping younger generations faster than we can even realize what they might be losing. Some people are happy to say good riddance to paper maps, landline phones, the rolodex or checkbooks. But, should we be happy about losing patience, a good nights sleep, real work-free vacations, and penmanship/hand writing? It might seem trivial, but is it really good that kids are no longer being taught to touch-type? That people barely know how to interact face to face anymore? This interesting list of 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet is written in a non-judgmental way, but definitely makes you think about which of the 100 things are good and which are maybe bad losses.

As an aside, I didn't realize when I put this book on hold that I had already read two of the author's previous books - Pornified in my pre-Goodreads days and My Life with Bob. Two very different books than this one, but that I also very much enjoyed.

Some quotes I liked:

[On the loss of school libraries] "Many schools, even in upscale and progressive districts like Montclair, New Jersey, no longer have a librarian on the premises. Fully 206 out of 218 public schools in Philadelphia have no librarian at all, and 200 have no library book collection. California has the worst ratio of students to school librarians in the nation: 7,000 to 1." (p. 57)

"Before everyone toted an Internet megaphone, most people didn't bother telegraphing their every passing pensee and opinion for public dissection, mostly because the baseline assumption was that nobody really cared what you thought; people kept their own counsel. Once we were all given a platform to stand on, the ground-level assumption was that we all had something to say and should speak up. Who knew how much we were holding in all that time?" (p. 104-5)

"In the online world, there is more speaking than hearing, and very little in the way of open listening. Interaction is more often about finding people to get angry with and angry at than it is about sharing hearts and minds. Basically, it's the opposite of empathy. On the Internet, fury does quite well for itself; it's the other feelings that get left out." (p. 145-46)

"In 2019, I received in the snail mail a tasteful invitation printed on heavy stock with an RSVP card tucked neatly inside, and a phone number to call if you opted not to mail the card in. Astonishingly, there was no email address included. My first thought was, 'How quaint and unusual; most lovely!' but it was swiftly followed by, 'What a pain.' Manners are charming, but time-consuming." (p. 170-71)

"Currency itself is on the way out, with only 7 percent of all financial transactions involving bill and coin." (p. 194)

"Anyone who has mastered the QWERTY keyboard knows just how excruciating it is to watch someone who doesn't know how to type...But it turns out, the kids who can't handwrite in fourth grade also can't touch-type when they get to middle school. Just as schools ignore cursive, they have abandoned typing in their rush to get kids onscreen...Touch-typing is like riding a bike, a kind of cognitive automaticity; once you know how, you can do it without thinking about it, freeing your mind to think about ideas, sentence structure, language, rhythm and flow. You write faster and you write better." (p. 241-42)

American Baby: a mother, a child, and the shadow history of adoption by Gabrielle Glaser

In the 1950s and 60s in the United States an unplanned, out of wedlock pregnancy was a huge scandal and black mark on not only the girl, but her whole family (not surprisingly the fathers of these unplanned babies didn't have many or any consequences). Because of this an entire network was created to spirit these girls away to homes for unwed mothers - usually out of town or out of state - and also adopt out these babies to couples who couldn't conceive. As a way to "protect" everyone involved the adoption records were sealed and almost no one could access them. So, when Margaret Erle fell in love with George Katz and got pregnant in 1961 she was pushed into this shadow world of adoption with seemingly no other options. If Margaret and George's parents hadn't hated each other they might could have had a quick shotgun wedding, but neither family wanted the couple to be together and wanted the "problem" to go away. While Margaret did eventually sign over her son Stephen, she fought to keep him more than most women in position did. She and George even eloped not long afterward hoping that if they were married they might get him back. Margaret and George went on to have three more children, but their first son was a painful secret they rarely ever talked about. Only in 2014 with the help of a DNA test was Margaret's son, now named David, able to find her and reconnect - sadly only a few weeks before his death from cancer. Margaret and David/Stephen's story fleshes out the reality of the secret and forced adoptions of the 1950s and 60s. Back in 2006 or 2007 I read The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler and was shocked by this part of our cultural history. That book really stayed with me and this book is a longer story of one family affected by an unplanned pregnancy and forced adoption. It's a sad book, but I was happy that Margaret and David/Stephen did get to reconnect briefly, but theirs could have been a much happier story if Margaret and George had been able to keep their first son.

Some quotes I liked:

"I realized that the way the United States dealt with unplanned babies in the decades after World War II - when abortion was illegal, contraception was forbidden even for married couples, and discussion of sex and reproduction were taboo - revealed a great deal about this country. Again and again, the nation's powerful religious and political institutions collaborated to control women's lives and the destinies of babies born out of wedlock." (p. 8)

[Samuel Karelitz was a pediatrician who created experiments to evaluate infants and better match them with adoptive parents. He theorized that differences in babies cries indicated their level of intelligence.] "To gauge this, Karelitz and Fisichelli used a specially designed gun that shot rubber bands at the feet of newborns. Some were only ten minutes old. The researchers then rated the length and quality of the crying that resulted from the snap of the elastic on their tender new flesh. The most vocal infants, the researchers believed, would become the smartest children...Putting aside for one moment how deeply horrifying this whole endeavor was, conducting such research posed an obvious problem: Where would researchers find parents willing to let doctors intentionally subject their newborns to pain? And so Karelitz and Fisichelli tapped a population with no real rights or protectors: babies awaiting adoption while in the custody of adoption agencies...In a 1962 study in the Journal of Pediatrics, Karelitz and Fisichelli explained that they had considered and decided against using electric shock and heat, as such stimuli seemed 'too severe for use on very young infants.'" (p. 100-101)

"Another prominent child advocate played a central - and disturbing - role at Louise Wise Services. Viola Bernard, a Columbia University psychiatrist, joined the agency as its principal consulting psychiatrist in the 1930s, and was a board member for a half century...Bernard and Peter Neubauer, a New York University psychiatrist...devised a study they believed would yield the greatest clues for weighing the influence of nurture over nature. They wanted to separate identical twins and triples who had been surrendered for adoption, place them with different families, and track their development over many years...Beginning in 1961, [Louise Wise Services] turned over the files for at least eleven sets of identical twins and one set of identical triplets and arranged to have the children adopted into separate families...[the triplets were reunited in the 1980s] Fifteen years after the triplets reunited, Eddy Galland took his own life. Like his brothers, he had long struggled with profound depression. Other twins from the study also displayed worrisome behavior when they were children. Their adoptive parents reported that they banged their heads, were unable to soothe themselves, and held their breath until they passed out. Most describe a lifelong sadness. In addition to Galland, two other twins have killed themselves." (p. 106 & 108)

"There had always been adoptions and facilitators, but now a full-scale and complicated bureaucracy - think of it as an 'adoption-industrial complex' - came to fruition after World War II under a system of laws and policies crafted to serve the interests (and privacy) of the upper class and emerging middle class. It was the work of an array of institutions, from researchers whose pseudoscience justified the advantages of unproven practices, to adoption agencies that stood to profit from each woman who was persuaded to relinquish a child by their social workers. Good intentions often masked colder calculations." (p. 118)

"The new trend in closed adoptions promoted by the agencies was also consistent with the prevailing view of women who became pregnant out of wedlock - that they had morally transgressed and needed to be punished by losing contact with their sons and daughters forever. The principles of eugenics - still embraced by doctors trained in the 1920s and '30s - offered a scientific underpinning for this argument. Many believed that unmarried women who became pregnant before marriage had a moral flaw that made them unfit to raise children: they could not control their sexual impulses." (p. 133) [I find it curious how there were SO MANY sexually deviant women, yet no mention of the men who were having sex with and impregnating them. Where were they? Were they not also morally deficient?]

How the Other Half Eats by Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD

Inequality in America is nothing new and neither is inequality in food, but in How the Other Half Eats Priya Fielding-Singh looks deeper into what goes into the food decisions the average family makes. Most of us have heard of "food deserts" and how lower-income people often have much less access to fresh food and more access to highly processed foods. Fielding-Singh wanted to go beyond that to why parents chose the foods they did to feed their children/families. She interviewed one hundred and sixty parents and kids about the foods they purchased and ate. She also asked four of the families she interviewed if she could observe their daily lives (particularly with meal times and food shopping) to get a more in-depth look at their food habits. This made for a particularly interesting and unique book. What Fielding-Singh quickly realizes is that there is MUCH more to the issue of food and income than food deserts and lack of fresh vegetables/food. For the lower income families they said "no" so often to their kids that saying "yes" to treats like soda, chips, or ice cream was an easy way to show love and comfort. For the higher income families they were able to say "yes" to so much for their kids that they didn't feel bad saying "no" to junk food. I felt like that was really the crux of the book - the societal norms of the different socio-economic classes. Another thing that wasn't really news, but definitely stood out was how few fathers were involved with cooking/food/feeding the families. The societal pressure on these moms regardless of their income/class was sad and Fielding-Singh's observations showed that the higher income mothers put the most pressure on themselves and on their families to constantly be "better" around food/weight/eating.

As someone who is very interested in food and cooking, it was interesting to see more of the "whys" behind what these families chose to eat. I think it's also obvious how much what you eat in childhood stays with you - what you see as "comfort food" or what you crave. I also think today it's vitally important for children to see BOTH parents cooking and shopping. Eating is not only for women, so cooking should be something EVERYONE does. At the end of the book Fielding-Singh gives her thoughts on changes that could help some of the struggles this book highlights. But, most of what she recommended was more government programs. Increasing SNAP and WIC funds and expanding who gets it is great, but what really needs to change (in my opinion) is how our society views food and cooking. The government artificially keeps food prices low with subsidies and promotes industrial agriculture which is harmful for literally everyone involved - the farmers, the land/animals, and the consumers. Our society still mostly views shopping, cooking, and raising/feeding children as women's work. These are the two biggest issues in my opinion and more government involvement won't fix those issues. But, more people opting out of the industrial food system and supporting local farmers and/or growing your own food will help. This was definitely a very interesting book, but to me only highlights the importance of getting OUT of the industrial food system.

Some quotes I liked:

"But the very different worlds in which the moms I observed were raising their kids drove how specifically they used food to accomplish this goal of being 'good.' Saying yes to junk-food requests was how low-income moms worked to prove to themselves they were good mothers; saying no was how affluent moms tried to derive that exact same sense of worth." (p. 98)

"Joaquin Vargas was one such parent. Joaquin, a short, lean man with kind eyes and a receding hairline, was the only stay-at-home father I interviewed. He was also an anomaly in the United States, where only 7 percent of fathers are full-time caregivers to their children (compared to 27 percent of mothers). A dad of two, he was also one of only four dads in my study of seventy-five families who was primarily in charge of food." (p. 199)

"I couldn't help thinking that perhaps it wasn't an accident that Joaquin didn't know [the right things to feed his kids] - that perhaps the goal of media outlets, health blogs, and the food industry was to keep people guessing...Dissent - not consensus - sells. The media always need new nutrition stories to print, and health bloggers depend on making strong claims to draw viewers repeatedly to sites. The food industry profits from keeping people confused so that they continue buying its spurious health claims and its products." (p. 201)

"Access to healthy food means being able to live a life with resources and supports that make a nutritious diet the default, not the exception. Access to healthy food means not having to fight - to constantly struggle - to eat the food you want and deserve. It is one thing to be able to find and afford a head of cauliflower. But it is another to want to buy that cauliflower, to choose to spend one's money on that cauliflower (at the expense of other purchases), to have the time and know-how to cook that cauliflower, and to possess the patience to weather one's child's complaints and pleas for macaroni and cheese and soldier on to feed that cauliflower to one's child. Only a handful of parents I met had all of these things. The vast majority didn't. Families' contexts determined whether they had access to and the money to buy cauliflower, and those same contexts also shaped whether buying cauliflower made any sense, given everything else going on." (p. 253)

"But there is no biological reason why food should be solely mothers' [or women's] cognitive, emotional, and logistical responsibility to shoulder." (p. 254)

Faith Based Fraud by Warren Cole Smith

In 1993 Warren Cole Smith moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to work in banking. While living here he ended up starting a weekly newspaper called The Charlotte World and finding his calling as a Christian journalist. During his time writing for The Charlotte World Smith researched and wrote about lots of Faith-Based Fraud. Because of his financial background Smith started to see common red flags with faith organizations that ended up in financial or moral trouble. Most of these red flags are obvious, but as he skillfully points out throughout the book it's so easy to slowly slide into gray areas that soon turn into blatantly sinful areas. Pastors and ministry leaders are humans first and no one is immune from sin or bad decisions. He covers a wide variety of frauds from blatant Ponzi schemes to more subtle slippery slope or questionable situations. In each fraud exploration Smith tells the story, but also points out the obvious red flags that could have possibly prevented these situations. This is a really unique book. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, but I really liked that Smith is a Christian and wrote this book from a Christian perspective. So, it's not "look at how awful Christians and churches are," but more as Christians we should be better than this. His main points/suggestions which are discussed in more detail throughout the book are: greater transparency, greater accountability, a self-regulating organization for ministry groups, re-regulation of the nonprofit sector, a philanthropy marketplace, aggressive Christian journalism, and a theology of work. I was really impressed overall, but it's also a somewhat hard/frustrating read as a Christian.

Some quotes I liked:

"The problems I recount in this book are not organizational problems that can be solved with new regulations and procedures. The problems are spiritual and theological ones that merely manifest themselves as organizational problems." (p. 18)

[On the false prosperity gospel theology] "I would also observe that prosperity theology is self-contradictory, and that fact exposes it as fraud. In other words: If it is true that God always and inevitably returns financial seeds sown with an abundant financial return, why would not these very prosperity preachers immediately sow the money they are given into the lives of others rather than on the material goods for themselves? Their very behavior, their lavish expenditures on mansions and airplanes, and their stockpiles of cash are the clearest indicators that they don't believe what they're preaching. Otherwise, they too would be giving away all they own in anticipation of an even greater return." (p. 192-93)

[On the topic of private jets owned by prosperity gospel pastors - specifically Jesse Duplantis] "In May 2018...he was asking his followers to donate money so he could purchase a new fifty-four million dollar Dassault Falcon 7X. He said during his fundraising for the jet that he needed a new one - which would be at least the fourth one his ministry has owned since 2006, that he was 'just burning them up for the Lord Jesus Christ.' He also said, 'I really believe that if Jesus was physically on the earth today, he wouldn't be riding a donkey. Think about that for a minute. He'd be in an airplane, preaching the gospel all over the world.'....But perhaps his most bizarre rationale for the jet came in 2016, when Duplantis was a guest on Kenneth Copeland's television program. Here a partial transcript of their exchange: Copeland: Oral [Roberts] used to fly [commercial] airlines. But, even back then it got to the place where it was agitating his spirit. People coming up to him, he had become famous, and they wanted him to pray for them and all that. You can't, you can't manage that today. This dope-filled world, and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. And it's deadly. Duplantis: It works on your heart, it really does." (p. 196-97)

"All of which seems to confirm Albert Meyer's assertion that 'government oversight is not worthless, it is worse than worthless, because it gives people a false sense of security, a sense that someone is paying attention, when in fact most of the time they are not.'" (p. 260-61)

This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

In This is Your Mind on Plants Michael Pollan looks at three consciousness altering plants and how they have been used historically and up to the present. He looks at opium (from poppies), coffee, and mescaline (the hallucinogenic found in peyote and San Pedro cacti). In each section he covers the history of how that plant/substance was discovered and used historically and into the present day. Each section was interesting, but I was shocked at the poppy/opium chapter and a specific story he recounts from the height of the "war on drugs" days of the early 1990's. The more I read about the DEA and anything that went on during the "war on drugs" the madder I get at how awful our government is and how extreme everything was and with no real results. I didn't enjoy the section on coffee as much because I'm not a coffee drinker, but the history of it was still interesting. The section on mescaline was also interesting in that I knew Native Americans had some exceptions around using peyote for religious reasons, but what was interesting is that they don't agree with the current "decriminalize nature" movement that seeks to make "drug" crimes around natural plants legal. Their overall view is that peyote should ONLY be used by Native Americans and de-criminalizing it could make more people interested and deplete the natural supply. Each section had lots of interesting and unique information and Pollan does a great job tying everything together. You don't have to be a gardener or interested in plants to appreciate this book.

Some quotes I liked:

[John Ehrlichman was President Nixon's domestic policy advisor. On the start of the "war on drugs"] "'You want to know what this was really all about?' Ehrlichman began, startling the journalist with both his candor and his cynicism. Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon White House 'had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people...We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.'" (p. 17)

[On a conversation with a DEA agent about someone growing poppies and writing about how to make opium tea] "It was a chilling conversation. I was reminded of something Hogshire had said about the laws governing opium poppies. 'It's as if they had on the books a twenty-miles-per-hour speed limit that was never posted, never enforced, never even talked about. There's no way for you to know that this is the law. Then they pick someone out and say, Hey, you were going fifty. Don't you know the speed limit is twenty? You broke the law - you're going to jail! But nobody else is being stopped, you say. That doesn't matter - this is the law and we have the discretion. The fact that your car is covered with political bumper stickers that we don't like has nothing to do with it. This isn't about free speech!' Whatever else they may be, the drug laws are a powerful weapon in the hand of an Agent Anonymous or, for that matter, a Bob Black. With the speed limit set so low, all it takes is an angry government agent or a 'citizen informant' to get you pulled over - to get your door kicked." (p. 57-58)

"It was in pursuit of precisely this freedom [of religion], of course, that the American colonialists originally fled Europe, coming to the Indian lands they rechristened New England. That their descendants would now seek to suppress the Indians' own religious freedom was an irony apparently lost on most Americans, including the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. In a shocking 1990 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Native American Church lost its right to practice its religion...The government's interest in prosecuting its war on drugs had won out over the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty." (p. 198)

Find Your People by Jennie Allen

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but I put it on hold because as I've gotten older it is MUCH harder to make and keep friends. Talking about this from a biblical perspective should be an even better match for me, but I did NOT like this one at all and I'm obviously in the small minority. If you're going to write a book about friendship and you are a huge extrovert you have to understand that not everyone is like you. I feel like she glosses over a lot in this book and makes sweeping generalizations. For her friendship is calling someone while you're in the midst of a crying meltdown (which the author seems to have frequently), showing up at their house unannounced, and inviting yourself over for dinner. None of which sounds like the kind of friends I want (I would be there for a friend calling me upset or in a crisis, but I do NOT want people showing up at my house unannounced or inviting themselves over for dinner). I am an introvert, so a lot of her suggestions made my skin crawl.

And even though I am a Christian, I felt like this book was beating you over the head with how Jesus is our example of community, how much God loves you, etc. If you want to write a book about why we need Jesus or the importance of biblical community/church then write that book. She could have had one chapter on the biblical model of community/friendship and moved on. It felt like she didn't have enough actual friendship content/suggestions so every chapter was a little bit of tips and LOTS of repetition about how much God wants us to live in community with others. Overall, I was unimpressed with this book and did not find much at all helpful to me personally.

A few awful quotes that stood out to me:

[On the Christian proverb/Bible verse about "iron sharpening iron"] "I lost my knife sharpener for years and finally picked one up recently. I had no idea how dull and ineffective my knives had become until I vigorously pulled their blades against that metal rod and then sliced through a tomato. It flew through the tomato in one slash. My jaw dropped. My knife was so happy! It was finally serving its purpose again!" (p. 122) [this really reminded me of rolling my eyes when I read Marie Kondo's book where you're supposed to thank your purse everyday.]

"A few months in, [to a new church small group] the leader matter-of-factly said something like, 'Next week we're going to lay out our finances for each other, including numbers, and talk about how we can hold each other accountable in our generosity, spending, and debt.' Wait, I remember thinking. You want to know what?! Yep. They wanted specifics on purchases being considered, purchases that had been made, and overall financial standing. They wanted data - as in, spreadsheets were encouraged." [I'm not going to lie, I would have never gone back to that small group - that's beyond invasive in my opinion.]

[Dr. John Townsend who co-authored the book Boundaries said in an interview with Allen] "Any relationship that drains you faster than it pours into you isn't a friendship; it's a ministry opportunity." (p. 214) [Not every draining person you meet is supposed to be your friend or your project. Not everyone is for everyone.]

My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Let me start off by saying how much I LOVE RBG. My rating of this book is NOT a reflection of her or all the amazing work she's done for women in her lifetime. But, saying that I did not love this book. I knew going in that it was a collection of writings by RBG, but I just found most of it very dry. I guess there's a reason I'm not a lawyer. It was interesting to see some of her much earlier writing (middle and high school), but because she was such a brilliant lawyer a lot of the speeches and writings were written for that audience - which is not me. I would have enjoyed a regular biography about her life and all the trailblazing she did for women more than this. I did enjoy the speech written by her husband Marty (I love him almost as much as RBG and he was equally a trailblazer for equal marriage) and her acceptance speech when she was nominated for the Supreme Court. Overall though I didn't love it. I think this book is important to have, but not the most enjoyable reading in my opinion.

Some quotes I liked:

"In the United States, in very recent years, appreciation of women's place has reached the nascent state. Activated by feminists of both sexes, courts and legislatures are beginning to recognize the claim of women to full membership in the class people, entitled to due process guarantees of life and liberty and equal protection of the laws." (p. 120)

"Changing positions of marriage, access to safer methods of controlling birth, longer life spans, and, in significant part, inflation - all contributed to a social dynamic that yielded this new reality: in the 1970s, for the first time in the history of the United States, the 'average' woman was experiencing most of her adult years in a household not dominated by child care responsibilities. (That development, a well-known Columbia University economics professor [Eli Ginzberg] said in 1977, might well prove 'the single most outstanding phenomenon' of the late twentieth century.)" (p. 161)

Women Rising: learning to listen, reclaiming our voice by Meghan Tschanz

I stumbled upon Meghan Tschanz on Instagram and started following her. Then when I realized she had written a book I knew I wanted to read it. While most of her social media posts are about Christian feminism (my all-time favorite subject), this is more of a memoir about how her views of women and the Church changed during a year-long missions trip around the world. Tschanz grew up in a traditional, evangelical church and was taught that men were leaders and "good" Christian women only aspired to be wives and mothers who submitted to the spiritual men in their lives. Even before she could articulate it, she knew that wasn't right, but sadly internalized it to think something was wrong with her not something wrong with the theology. After college she embarked on a year-long mission trip where she traveled with other young people and spent a month or two in different parts of the world. A lot of the places she went she was working with women who were in sexual slavery so it was hard to see (and read about). But, the lightbulb moment came for her when she started to realize that patriarchy was the real problem - and that there was an awful lot of patriarchy in the Church too. For every woman or girl rescued from brothels there are a dozen more being added - that's not to say don't try to help them or shut that trade down - but the real problem was the demand. Why were so many men willing to pay for sex and view these women and nothing more than objects? Realizing what her calling really was Tschanz came home ready to tell everyone what she had realized. But, sadly not everyone in her family or church were on board with her message. For many Christians "feminist" is liberal issue that doesn't belong in the Church and on the flip side for more liberal people "Christian" is seen as the problem. It's a hard space to be in and you feel alone. I know I have a LOT and I'm not trying to make a career out of writing about it like Tschanz is. While this isn't a book that "proves" feminist theology is correct (see The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr to start) it's a great memoir of one woman's experience of finding her God-given voice and using it for His kingdom.

Some quotes I liked:

"It's no wonder that vulnerable girls fall prey to men. How many movies feature a damsel in distress, a woman uncared for, unloved, and abused, and in rides a man who kisses her and makes it all better? This primes girls to look to men to save them, and far too often these men end up being abusers." (p. 79)

"Patriarchal culture is described on nearly every page of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The question is whether these patriarchal norms are the point of the Bible or its backdrop...Jesus' very life stands in direct opposition to the patriarchal culture he was born into. Instead of conquering or ordaining himself to positions of power as past patriarchs in the Bible had, he repeatedly gives up power on behalf of those on the margins. And it makes me ask the question, 'Did Jesus come to save us from patriarchy too?'" (p. 141-143)

"It's disturbing to me that prominent evangelical pastors who call for strict gender roles sound similar to the men who buy women in bars in Southeast Asia. They both focus on the need for women to respect men, while requiring nothing of the men." (p. 144)

"...birth control is still seen as a women's issue, as if men do not contribute to the act of procreating." (p. 171)