April 2024 Reviews

 

She's a Badass: women in rock shaping feminism by Katherine Yeske Taylor

I picked this book up because of the title and because I love music (although I have zero musical or singing ability personally). I loved her introduction about how she got into music journalism and how much women in music inspired Taylor as she faced sexism as a journalist and witnessed it in the music scene as well. I wasn't familiar with all the women she profiled but she definitely found a variety of women that showed feminism's progression (or lack thereof) through the 1960s and 70s through to today. I think this is a great concept for a book but I felt like some of the stories sounded the same after awhile. I think there were several women all from the same time frame and type/style of music and it felt like their stories were very similar or too much of the same things. While I felt like this was a good book overall, there were definitely other women I would like to have seen profiled. It would have been nice if the author included why she selected these specific women. The subtitle for the book is Women in Rock Shaping Feminism, yet many of the women specifically said they do NOT consider themselves feminists. I always find that interesting when women who ARE changing things for other women don't like that term or choose to use it to describe themselves. Overall, I did like the book but it got a little repetitive for me.

Some quotes I liked:

[Lydia Lunch] "She is unimpressed with the contrived provocativeness that so many commercially successful artists seem to portray these days. 'I think a real conundrum of our times is that we have what I call 'the new Puritanism.' And then we have this really extreme hypersexuality,' she says. ' I don't think it's liberating to wear a leotard onstage in a surgically enhanced body that other women will never live up to, claiming you're doing this for women's empowerment, when you're a corporate prostitute to a mainstream media-conglomerate.'" (p. 56-57)

[Donita Sparks of L7) "'I think that there was such vitriol toward the word feminist from the male community, and even from other females...'It has especially disturbed her to see women rejecting the 'feminist' label...[and on the Spice Girls making 'girl power' more mainstream palatable] 'It was funny and infuriating at the same time. You can't just dance in front of a neon sign that says 'feminist.' You've got to do more than that.'" (p. 96)

[Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses, the Breeders, and Belly] "But another incident in the 1990s made it even more evident that women were not always being treated fairly in the music business. She recalls 'sitting in a program director's office and having him say to me, as if this were completely understandable, 'Well, we can't pitch your single to radio because there are too many women on the radio right now.' And I remember being like, 'What?' 'Just to give you an idea of how bone-level this kind of systemic thinking was at the time, he wasn't even being a dick about it. It was just like we were comrades in the same battle, and I should understand that this was part of the war, basically: 'Well, you should understand. There are too many women right now, so we just have to wait a few months.'...Considering that radio playlists have always consisted of consecutive male artists' songs, the double standard was glaring." (p. 122)

Through the Wilderness by Brad Orsted

Brad Orsted had the dream - a beautiful wife, three daughters, and a beautiful home. He had grown up in an abusive and dysfunctional home, but his mother seemed to mellow as she got older and was especially excited to be a grandmother. When Brad's youngest daughter is around a year and a half old he lets his mom take her for a weekend. But something happens and Marley ends up dead and his mother refuses to tell the truth about what happened. This sends Orsted's life into a spiral of grief, guilt, and rage. He responds to that by drinking until he passes out most nights. Two years after Marley's death Orsted's wife lands a job in Yellowstone National Park and they move out there. Nature was always Orsted's refuge as a child, so he ends up turning back to nature to try to escape his grief over Marley's death. Eventually, the nature in Yellowstone helps Orsted decide to get sober and really deal with his grief and anger.

I wanted to like this book and there were likable parts, but overall it could have been better. 1) the story of what actually happened with Marley's death and the immediate aftermath was interspersed into several chapters. I think it would have been better to have that at the beginning of the book and then move into Orsted's healing/nature journey. It could have been divided into Before Yellowstone and After Yellowstone or something. 2) I feel like he kind of glosses over his sobriety and basically said he just white-knuckled a lot of it, which doesn't seem like great advice. 3) many marriages don't survive the death of a child, but I was surprised his managed to make it 10 years after Marley's death and then end once he had gotten his shit together. 4) after reading about his childhood I'm genuinely SHOCKED he left Marley alone overnight with his mother. Not blaming him for Marley's death, but that seemed like an obvious not good idea. 5) his obsession with the bear cubs seemed like obvious transference and you never know why they ended up euthanized. 6) I liked the photos added but it seemed odd to include both a picture of his biological dad and adopted dad when he never talks about meeting/talking to his biological dad and still considers his adopted father his dad. Overall, I didn't love it and probably wouldn't recommend this one.

The Ultimate Serial Killer Trivia Book by Jack Rosewood

I received this book as a gift from a coworker who knows how much I love true crime stuff. While it's definitely an interesting book and there was a lot of trivia/facts I had never heard before, it was a hard read because it was just a running laundry list of serial killer facts and figures. If you read a true crime book, even if it's about a serial killer, there is still other stuff going on in the book - background, other people, etc. This was a LOT of just gruesome facts and cases all in one place. I did like how the author divided the information into chapters by topic (although I could have done without the cannibalism chapter...). Overall, it was an interesting book but maybe I should have read like a chapter a week instead of plowing through it like a regular book/story.

Some quotes I liked:

"The USA has both the highest number of recorded serial killers and the highest rate per capita (0.99% per every 100,000 people). California is the US state that has produced the most serial killers, boasting over 1,000 since 1900. During the 1970s, California was dubbed the 'murder capital of the world.' Canada has only seen 106 serial killers between 1900 and 2016, despite its landmass being 1.6% larger than the United States. This puts its capita rate at 0.29% per 100,000 people." (p. 13-14)

[The Monster of the Andes] "[Pedro] Lopez was finally caught in 1979 after allegedly killing 'three girls a week for years.' It turns out Lopez wasn't lying, as he led authorities to a mass grave in Ecuador containing the remains of 53 girls. Lopez was sent to prison, with authorities believing he could have killed up to 300 people. However, Ecuador has a prison term limit of 20 years, so in 1999, Lopez was released into the world. Since then, no one has seen him." (p. 101)

The Hidden Language of Cats: how they have us at meow by Sarah Brown

I've always been a cat person so when I saw this book I knew I wanted to check it out. Dr. Sarah Brown started her doctoral program by studying cat behavior in two different feral cat colonies. This book is the result of her years of studying cat behavior. This book focuses totally on how cats communicate with each other and with humans. It was much more science focused than I was anticipating and I would have preferred a more general interest book than detailed information about dozens of cat-focused experiments. There were definitely things I learned and things I'll look for in my own cats, but as any cat owner knows cats do what they want whether the "research" backs it up or not. I'd always heard that cats only meow to humans, not other cats (outside of kittens to their mother). But my current cats meow to each other ALL THE TIME - calling each other to play or to show the other a toy/bug/whatever. I also really liked the very cute, simple line drawings that illustrated some of the pages - that really added to the book. But, overall it was definitely high on the science side of things and not as easy of a read as I was hoping for.

Some quotes I liked:

[On cats marking/spraying urine] "Herein lies a problem: many cleaning products contain ammonia, and so does cat urine. So when we cover a urine mark with our 'pine-scented' ammonia-based product, an area that now smells to us like a Norwegian pine forest smells to the cat like ammonia from cat urine. But not their own. This unfortunately results in them having an overwhelming urge to mark over the offending smell with their own urine once more. In this way owners often unwittingly enter into a scent 'conversation' with their cat rather than managing to properly eliminate the original smelly mark." (p. 46-47)

"One of my favorite words used in the study of human-animal interactions is 'gentling.' It refers to a combination of stroking/patting and calmly resting a hand on an animal, with or without speaking quietly. It's a technique long used to enhance bonding between humans and many animal species, including farm, laboratory, and companion animals." (p. 133-34)

The Wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder by David Grann

Two years after leaving England with a fleet of five warships survivors from The Wager wash up in Brazil telling a wild story of shipwreck, murder, and survival. These men are hailed as heroes who survived shipwreck, starvation, and a myriad of illnesses and trials. But a few months later another small ship lands in Chile and says the first group are actually mutineers who abandoned their captain and ship. The Navy calls a court martial and all surviving sailors from The Wager are called to testify. The press and public are fascinated with this dark tale of shipwreck and mutiny - but which group will prevail in the court martial? Who is actually telling the truth?

David Grann does an AMAZING job of telling this wild story that highlights the adage, the truth is stranger than fiction. And actually several maritime authors use the story of The Wager as inspiration for fictional books in later years. Grann gives the back stories of several of the key players in this real life drama, tells the story of The Wager's doomed voyage and shipwreck, and how the sailors who survived lived to tell their tales. It's amazing that anyone survived to today reading about how AWFUL life on the sea was for the sailors - and that was before any fighting/war even happened. Life on a ship it was almost like a prison with the chance of drowning added in and Grann explains how press gangs went around basically abducting men into service because it was such a hard life and high mortality that few would volunteer. What's amazing to me is several of the survivors went on to continue in Naval careers after their ordeal! The shipwrecked sailors ordeals were horrific and as one reviewer aptly put it - this was like Lord of the Flies non-fiction edition. I can't reiterate enough how well Grann lays out this story and the amount of research he did to get all the facts together and then convey it to the reader. He also includes several color photographs of paintings that depict some of the sailors and ships involved in this story, as well as some photographs of the island they were shipwrecked on in Patagonia. Once again, he's taken a true story that could have been lost to history and turned it into a page-turner book that you can't put down until you know what happens in the end.

Some quotes I liked:

"She was christened in honor of Sir Charles Wager, the seventy-four-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty. The ship's name seemed fitting: weren't they all gambling with their lives?" (p. 18-19)

"Byron confronted an inescapable truth of the wooden world: each man's life depended on the performance of others. They were akin to the cells in a human body; a single malignant one could destroy them all." (p. 38-39)

"Logbooks were supposed to be preserved from a wreck so that the Admiralty could later determine the potential culpability of not only the captain but also the lieutenant, the master, and other officers. Bulkeley was shocked to discover that many of the Wager's records had disappeared or were shredded, and not by mere accident. 'We have good reason to apprehend there was a person employed to destroy them,' he recalled. Somebody, whether a navigator or perhaps even a more senior officer, wanted to shield his actions from scrutiny." (p. 102)

Learned a new word - "internecine" which means "destructive to both sides in a conflict." and definitely summed up the shipwreck survivors of The Wager. p. 160

"Eighteenth-century British naval law has a reputation for being draconian, but it was often more flexible and forgiving in reality. Under the Articles of War, many transgressions, including falling asleep on watch, were punishable by death, yet there was usually an important caveat: a court could hand down a lesser sentence if it saw fit. And although overthrowing a captain was a grave crime, 'mutinous' behavior often applied to minor insubordinations not deemed worthy of severe punishment. Nevertheless, the case against all of the men of the Wager seemed overwhelming. They were not accused of negligible misconduct but, rather, of a complete breakdown of naval order, from the highest levels of command to the rank and file. And though they had each tried to shape their stories in ways that justified their actions, the legal system was designed to strip these narratives down to the bard, hard, unemotive facts." (p. 233)

"Strikingly, there was one surviving castaway who never had a chance to record his testimony in any form. Not in a book or in a deposition. Not even in a letter. And that was John Duck, the free Black seaman who had gone ashore with Morris's abandoned party. Duck had withstood the years of deprivation and starvation, and he had managed with Morris and two others to trek to the outskirts of Buenos Aires. But there his fortitude was of no avail, and he suffered what every free Black seaman dreaded: he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Morris didn't know where his friend had been taken, whether to the mines or to the fields - Duck's fate was unknown, as is the case for so many people whose stories can never be told." (p. 248)

"John Byron, who married and had six children, stayed in the Navy, serving for more than two decades and ascending the ranks all the way to vice-admiral...in the cloistered wooden world he seemed to find what he had longed for - a sense of fellowship. And he was widely praised for what one officer called his tenderness and his care toward his men." (p. 254)

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Evening Edition book club)

In 1952 Elizabeth Zott is working at Hastings Research Institute in a chemistry lab. She is the only woman in the building who is not a secretary. She meets Calvin Evans when she goes into his lab to "borrow" beakers because no one will give her any - then a few weeks later they bump into each other again at the theater. Once they start talking they never stop. Calvin is the first man to see Elizabeth for her brilliant mind and treat her as an equal. They also fall in love and move in together. Fast forward 10 years and Elizabeth is a single mother and accidentally lands a television show teaching cooking through chemistry. While she is the exact opposite of what everyone at the studio expects a woman on TV to be like, she draws a HUGE following precisely because she treats women as intelligent human beings who can do more than just look pretty and pop out babies. Along the way she finds out a huge secret from Calvin's past that will impact her future in incredible ways.

In looking at the first page of Goodreads reviews for this book it gets mixed reviews. I'll admit there were a few big things that I found extremely unlikely - 1) the rape at the beginning of the book while not unlikely (and sadly probably happened WAY more than anyone wants to know) I don't think the police would have reacted the way they did. This wasn't a he said/she said or date rape situation, it was an employer who beat the shit out of a woman and attempted to rape her. I think it was put in to highlight how often that kind of stuff happened and how the police were dismissive (and probably mostly still are today) but it seemed pretty exaggerated even for 1950. 2) birth control would have been MUCH harder to obtain in 1952 and it's mentioned like how could I have gotten pregnant when we were using contraception. In doing some research condoms were available but again I don't think in 1952 they were just on the shelf at the local drug store - hence the need for so many unwed mother homes in that time period. 3) the daughter actually being named Mad on the birth certificate - NEVER would have happened. I'm sure it was just meant to be funny but that just seemed dumb to me. 4) there was an obvious issue with religion and those views would have been kept much quieter (even if people thought/believed them) in the 1950s and 60s. To be fair Elizabeth and Calvin both had religion hurt them in HUGE ways multiple times. Madeline Murray O'Hare started up in 1963 so it's not totally outside of the realm of possibility, but again pretty heavy handed and unusual for the time.

Several reviews complained about how Elizabeth seemed to have time traveled from the current time with all her modern day views of feminism, sexuality, atheism, etc. And I agree it's pretty over the top but it's fiction and it does make for an interesting character. I also think there are two things that make her character a little more believable for the time 1) she was brilliant and so she could have been like the brilliant scientist who didn't have common sense type of person. She was so brilliant and could see the obvious logic of her views so she never understood why society didn't agree. 2) she obviously had a very unconventional and dysfunctional childhood. She didn't have parents who were enforcing the societal norms of the day (other than telling her brother he was going to hell for being gay). I think these two factors could make her into someone ahead of her time and/or just willing to go her own way even if that meant being alone. She also wasn't in the traditional family home waiting for a boy to propose. She had to fend for herself from a pretty young age so that would make anyone more independent regardless of the time period.

I did find the book funny - Garmus is a GREAT writer. Yes, there are several dark topics/scenes but there was humor throughout. I found myself laughing out loud several times. I also LOVED Six-Thirty even though I am NOT a dog person at all. He was such a great character and I loved that we got to hear his point of view too. There was a lot going on throughout the book but I found it read quickly and especially toward the end I really wanted to see how everything would play out. I'm sure my book club is going to love this one.

Some quotes I liked:

"Elizabeth Zott held grudges too. Except her grudges were mainly reserved for a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less. Less capable. Less intelligent. Less inventive. A society that believed men went to work and did important things - discovered planets, developed products, created laws - and women stayed at home and raised children. She didn't want children - she knew this about herself - but she also knew that plenty of other women did want children and a career. And what was wrong with that? Nothing. It was exactly what men got." (p. 14)

"When one is raised on steady diet of sorrow, it's hard to imagine that others might have had an even larger serving." (p. 39)

"Elizabeth considered this. No, she did not know how men were. With the exception of Calvin, and her dead brother, John, Dr. Mason, and maybe Walter Pine, she only ever seemed to bring out the worst in men. They either wanted to control her, touch her, dominate her, silence her, correct her, or tell her what to do. She didn't understand why they couldn't just treat her as a fellow human being, as a colleague, a friend, an equal, or even a stranger on the street, someone to whom one is automatically respectful until you find out they've buried a bunch of bodies in the backyard." (p. 237)

"The problem with being a minister was how many times a day he had to lie. This was because people needed constant reassurance that things were okay or were going to be okay instead of the more obvious reality that things were bad and were only going to get worse." (p. 243)

"The next day - Tuesday - Mudford's tree assignment revelations were the talk of the school: Madeline had been born out of wedlock; Amanda didn't have a mother; Tommy Dixon's father was an alcoholic. Not that any of the children themselves cared about these facts, but Mudford, her mean eyes wet with excitement, ate up the data like a hungry virus, then fed it to the other mothers, who spread it around the school like frosting." (p. 266)

Eve Isn't Evil by Julie Faith Parker

I really wanted to like this one and was excited enough that I bought it first (I rarely buy books as a Librarian). But I didn't really like it. I could tell from the first chapter that I wasn't going to agree with the author 100%, which is fine. I felt like some of the chapters were better than others and some stuff was just WAY out there in my opinion. I definitely consider myself a Christian feminist but I felt like some of the chapters it was way too much of a stretch for her "feminist interpretation." In chapter 3 she talks about the story of Abraham and Sarah and how they decided to make things happen their own way by using their slave Hagar to have a child with Abraham. She explains this like a modern day surrogate - except it definitely wasn't. Hagar was a slave, so there was NOTHING consensual about this whole thing and that was never brought up at all - that would have been a feminist interpretation to talk about those aspects of Bible stories. She also talked about the role of prostitutes and goddesses in Biblical times - but again it was almost in a way like these women were exalted in that day and time which would not have been the case either. I also felt like some of her more personal examples in the chapters felt forced - some worked really well like what happened with her parents in the chapter about Job. I do agree with her that Jesus is my favorite Jewish feminist too. Overall, I didn't love it. I probably won't keep it either. I feel like a MUCH better book is The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr and as she says just because patriarchy is the backdrop of the Bible doesn't make it Biblical. I would pass on this one.

Some quotes I did like:

"Biblical stories have been used to devalue women and limit their options because of what we are told they mean. Surprisingly, though, a lot of what we think is in the Bible comes from interpreters' biases and not the text itself." (p. 11)

"In Proverbs, the universe is cause and effect: do good, you are rewarded; do bad, you are punished. The book of Job turns this idea on its head and asks, 'Really?!' by showing a virtuous person who endures undeserved strife. Job's friends are convinced that he must have done something terribly wrong - otherwise why would this calamity have befallen him? They cling to a cause-and-effect way of understanding the universe because it works for them. They are safe and believe that Job's actions must have led to his misery. This theology - that horrible things happen to those who deserve the trouble - is as common ('it must be God's will') as it is cruel (blaming the sufferer for their pain)." (p. 76)

"Feminism and the Bible are not at odds with each other. Yes, women have been fed words of the Bible to nurture toxic thinking about their own supposed inferiority. But it is the feeders, not the scriptural food, at fault. No one should shove Bible verses down someone else's throat to make them choke, shrink, or suffer. Rather, we pick up the Bible to see what is good food for the soul, delights the senses, and is desired to make us wise." (p. 129)

March 2024 Cookbook Reviews

 

The Art of Extract Making by Paul and Jill Fulton

This is a unique cookbook in that it is all about extract making. The author gives a great overview of vanilla beans and how they are grown, harvested, sorted, sold, etc. Then he gets into actually making the extract - what kind of spirits to use, jars/containers, and other details. The last section is a variety of extract recipes. I thought the book was very thorough and did a good job of walking you through making your own extract. I just made my first batch of homemade vanilla extract last year and I'm excited to continue making extracts and might try some of their recipes in the future. I was also lucky enough to be able to visit the Hawaiian Vanilla Company on the Big Island of Hawaii back in 2014 and actually see how vanilla is grown and harvested in person. I was also able to get very reasonably priced vanilla beans at the local farmers markets in Hawaii. If you're curious about making your own vanilla extract definitely check out this book.

Tacos & Tequila by Cider Mill Press

I was really excited to check out this cookbook but it was a little disappointing. There were 3 basic recipe categories - tacos, fixings, and cocktails. The taco recipes were basically just proteins or main fillings - I was hoping for more combinations of ingredients in one taco recipe. There were several recipes for things I didn't know what they were. I think a one or two sentence description especially for something not common would have gone a long way. If you want cocktail recipes there were A LOT so it lived up to the title that way. There were a couple recipes I wanted to try but I wasn't impressed overall.

The Farm Table by Julius Roberts

Julius Roberts was working in a London restaurant but was realizing that he didn't enjoy the restaurant hours/life. He had always been interested in the ingredients and the head chef's constant search for the best quality ingredients. So he quit his chef job and moved out to his family's home in Suffolk where there was more land and he could grow some vegetables and raise some animals. He started with 4 pigs then continued to add animals and gardens until he outgrew that space and needed to find a larger farm further out. What I liked the most about this book was his introductions to each section (the recipes are organized by season) where he talked about what was going on at the farm during that season. I also love how honest he was about how hard it is to raise animals and then slaughter them. There weren't tons of recipes I wanted to try personally, but I love that he organized them by season and there are lots of beautiful pictures of both the food and the farm.

 

March 2024 Reviews

 

Eat Everything by Dawn Harris Sherling, MD

When Dr. Sherling first started practicing medicine she encountered a patient who was having gut related issues and was down to only being able to eat granola bars. After extensive testing, Dr. Sherling was no closer to a diagnosis for the patient than when they first started. Throughout her career she continued to see people with these type of gut issues that had no obvious diagnosis - then it started happening to her too. It was on a family vacation to Italy that helped open her eyes. In Italy Dr. Sherling could eat all the foods that caused her problems at home - dairy, wheat, etc. What she found was that in Italy food was almost exclusively made with local, whole ingredients. In the US most people consume a lot of ultra-processed foods full of additives and emulsifiers. These additives and emulsifiers can wreak havoc on our microbiome, the good bacteria and fungi in our digestive tracts. In this book Dr. Sherling shows us her journey and how she now tries to help her patients with a whole-food focused diet in addition to any medications they may need. The book is divided into 3 sections - the first section explores what is wrong with our food and why these additives are causing health problems, the second section looks at specific types of foods and how to source better quality ingredients/foods, and the third section is how this plays out in real life with tips for still eating out, managing weight, and dealing with or finding the right diagnosis. In the Appendixes she includes a list of additives and why they might be problematic, a sample weekly meal plan for focusing on whole foods, and 25 whole-food based recipes. Overall, while I didn't agree with EVERYTHING she said this is a pretty impressive book. Dr. Sherling explores yet another layer of our industrial food system that is bad for us and how we can do better.

I'm thankful that I don't have any gut/digestion issues, but even if like me you don't have these issues these additives are not good and it's much better to eat whole foods anyway. I would add to her suggestions sourcing locally grown/raised food from local farmers. Or even better grow some of your own food too with a vegetable garden. I've found that homegrown vegetables taste WAY better than store bought and you're much more likely to eat the stuff you took the time to grow. I'm already a big proponent of homemade, from-scratch cooking so this book was right up my alley.

Two quotes I disagree with:

"You may have a hard time finding unadulterated cream on store shelves (at least without a co-op market or dairy nearby) because without some kind of emulsifying agent, the pasteurization process causes the cream to separate as it sits in the store's refrigerator. So you either need fairly fresh pasteurized cream or really fresh unpasteurized cream to go additive-free. As a physician, I cannot recommend drinking unpasteurized cream. Pasteurization has prevented thousands of deaths and millions of illnesses. It isn't a bad thing. It just makes finding good cream a challenge. Listeria, the bacteria you can get from unpasteurized dairy, is worse than additives." (p. 83)
[I personally know people who had life-long gut/digestive issues that were cured with raw milk. Yes, getting Listeria is MUCH worse than additives. But, raw milk can often be consumed even by people who are lactose intolerant and has so many benefits that pasteurization removes. The problem with most food-born illnesses is the industrialization part. How did people drink milk in the pre-pasteurization time and not all die from Listeria? Small and local is how.]

"After the highly successful introduction of sugar, and later high-fructose corn syrup, the cereal additives just kept coming. With an emphasis on marketing and convenience, more traditional breakfast foods didn't stand a chance. And so today we have an entire aisle in the grocery store devoted to ultra-processed breakfast bits delivered in brightly colored cardboard boxes...But you will have to pry the cereal box out of my cold, sleepy hand. One kid won't get out of bed. The other can't find her shoes. And we all need to get going! Mornings are challenging in most homes, and cereal provides a cheap and quick solution - one that most kids over the age of six can handle getting for themselves." (p. 92)
[I was REALLY surprised to see a medical doctor advocate for breakfast cereal. Cereal is one of the absolute WORST things you can eat with almost no nutritional value. And as for cheap? It is $5-8 for a box of Cheerios ($3+ for the generic store brand). Compare that to a dozen eggs. Eggs are a MUCH better breakfast and only take about 5 minutes to cook. There are PLENTY of other breakfast options that are much better than cereal.]

Buttermilk Graffiti by Edward Lee - Books & Banter and Evening Edition book clubs, Community Read, re-read

Edward Lee spent two years traveling the US exploring immigrant food. Immigrants are what makes up America, so how do immigrants incorporate their food into their new culture and how does American food change with the influence of all this immigrant food? These are some of the questions Lee explores in this book. Each chapter focuses on a specific ethnic food in a small town in America. Often it's surprising as Lee claims the best Jewish Deli is in Indianapolis, or there is a huge Middle Eastern population and food culture in Dearborn, Michigan. Lee says, "The plate of food has never been the be-all and end-all for me. Quite the opposite: for me, good food is just the beginning of a trail that leads back to a person whose story is usually worth telling." (p. 32) and that is exactly what he does in this book he highlights not just ethnic food all over the US, but the specific people who are cooking this food and their stories. Definitely an interesting look at just how diverse the food culture is here in the US.

Notes on re-reading for Community Read 3/1 - 3/6/24:

I didn't enjoy this as much this time as I remember liking it the first time. I think it's just a case of bad reading timing. While I do like his writing and he is entertaining, this time reading it it just came across inauthentic to me. Like he would be irritated when strangers in a restaurant or bar didn't want to chat it up with him - dude, you're a stranger to them that's creepy. This time reading it I felt like he was trying to be like Anthony Bourdain on his TV shows - but those were obviously planned they didn't just film Bourdain trying to talk to strangers. I wasn't as impressed this time but I am looking forward to seeing him speak at our library event.

Some quotes I liked this time:

[I forgot that he mentioned Staunton, VA in the book which is now a place I go at least once a year thanks to Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm.]

[On talking about the longevity of Shapiro's deli in Indianapolis] "'All the chefs these days are artists, and that's fine, but then you have a restaurant linked to an individual, not a tradition. There will never be a restaurant that lasts one hundred years anymore. Chefs change their food depending on the trends. We don't.' 'So there is no chef here?' 'We don't call them chefs. It is family recipes that are made by everyone. It speaks to the culture of a group, not an individual. If we persist in making food that is an individual expression, our restaurants will only last as long as the artist's whim or the public's attention span. This...' he gestures to the room. 'This can go on forever.'" (p. 325)

"I hate it that these women, the true guardians of this tradition, are getting overlooked. They are the ones who kept this food alive while the culinary world was busy fawning over European or California cuisine. For Janice and Shirley Mae, food was never about a trend or a concept. It was, and is, their heritage. And because of women like them, we now have an actual flavor profile we can reference when we talk about dishes such as pork neck and turnip greens. It's a living thing, not just words in a historical text." (p. 356)

"Their two approaches to cornbread are not simply a variation in technique. They represent a rift in their upbringing: one rural and the other urban. I never would have made that distinction if I had not talked to them at length. I would simply have assumed that they made different cornbreads for reasons that random. It took me a long time to understand that their choices in their cornbread recipes tell an intimate story of their past." (p. 358-59)

Of Time and Turtles: mending the world, shell by shattered shell by Sy Montgomery

I love Sy Montgomery's writing and I ALWAYS learn something new when I read her books. Of Time and Turtles is no exception. Shortly before the COVID pandemic Sy and her friend Matt Patterson start volunteering with the Turtle Rescue League (or TRL for short). This New England rescue does a LOT for turtles - rescuing injured turtles and rehabilitating them, marking and protecting turtle nests, incubating rescued turtle eggs, even providing long term for turtles they've saved but for varying reason can't be released back into the wild. The book spans two years starting at the beginning of 2020 and going into 2022. While I could have done without some of the COVID related comments (death tolls, how the vaccine will save everyone, etc.) it wasn't super heavy handed. I was honestly amazed at the work TRL does for the turtle world in New England - driving all over to pick up injured or discarded turtles, spending a lot of time caring for seriously injured turtles, and much, much more. Turtles really are amazing animals and Montgomery does a great job of highlighting just how unique they are, as well as just how long they can live (up to 200 years!). I've always been someone who stops on the side of the road for a turtle and helps them across but after reading this book I will keep my eyes even more peeled for turtles.

The main thing I could have done without in the book was the chapter that revealed that Alexxia and Natasha (the couple who runs TRL) are both transgender women. That really added NOTHING to the story, their rescue work, anything. It just felt like it was mentioned because trans everything is such a focus right now. Honestly I was like why is she including this. If either of the women were writing a book about their rescue and how/why they started it that would make sense, but it felt unnecessary to add that into this book. Otherwise, the work they do is amazing and Montgomery's experience with their rescue made for an interesting book and anyone would look at turtles differently after reading this.

Some terrifying statistics and data:

"Turtles are a red-hot commodity in the ruthless world of the illegal wildlife trade. Like the underground market for guns, drugs, and sex, turtle trafficking is networked, clandestine, and lucrative. A single Yunnan box turtle could command $200,000 on the black market. A Chinese three-striped box turtle, whose powdered plastron is rumored (incorrectly) to cure cancer, can fetch as much as $25,000. In many parts of Asia - where most of the stolen turtles turn up in phony elixirs (often claimed, due to turtles' longevity, to preserve youthful beauty in women or sexual potency in men), as tortoiseshell accessories like pens and bracelets, or sold as prestigious pets - more than three quarters of the native species are either threatened with extinction or already gone from their natural homes. So many Asian turtles have been 'vacuumed from the wild,' as one TSA [Turtle Survival Alliance] video puts it, that now the reptiles are being snatched from ponds, woodlands, and seas of the United States to be illegally shipped to feed this malignant market." (p. 31-32)

"A survey by the State University of New York biologist James Gibbs estimated that in the Northeast, Great Lakes, and southeastern U.S., in areas crisscrossed by roads, up to twenty percent of the adult turtle population is killed by cars each year....Results of another study, concentrating on snappers living in an Ontario-area wetland bisected by a highway, were equally dire: Here, in the seventeen years between 1985 and 2002, the snapper population dropped from 941 to 177. The researchers predicted that things would only get worse. The snappers would soon be gone from the swamp." (p. 51)

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the odds of a sea turtle hatchling surviving to adulthood may range from an unlikely one in one thousand to an almost impossible one in ten thousand. Survival rates may be even more disheartening for the less-studied freshwater turtles and tortoises. Some researchers estimate that as many as ninety percent of snapping turtle eggs may be destroyed before the babies are even born. 'I used to find turtle eggshells outside the nest and think, Oh great, baby turtles hatched here,' Jeanne tells Matt and me. But because hatchlings leave their eggshells behind, in their underground nests, seeing scattered eggshells aboveground means that predators got them." (p. 84)

The Meth Lunches: food and longing in an American city by Kim Foster

I wasn't really sure what to expect with this book but it definitely delved into some things I wasn't expecting. The book starts out (and gets the title) when Foster's family moves from NYC to Las Vegas, Nevada and need some work done on their house. They go through an agency that matches out of work laborers with homeowners who need work done. The family meets Charlie who is semi-homeless due to his meth addiction. As his addiction progresses Foster starts referring to their meals with Charlie as The Meth Lunches. Next we get into the Foster family becoming foster parents and some of the CRAZY things that come along with that - including Foster finding the mother of one of their foster children in jail and bringing the kid to her for visits (I'm pretty sure she was NOT supposed to do that) and overall getting overly involved with the families of some of their foster kids. Then COVID hits and Foster starts up a food pantry to replace a little free library in their yard - this also devolves into craziness and drug addicts routinely stealing meat to sell for drugs and showing up at all hours demanding food supposedly for "several" families but again likely taking it to resell for drug money.

In all of these instances Foster seems to get WAY overly involved with all of these people. I think her intentions were good but I worried for her family and the amount of potential danger she was exposing them to every day. Her food pantry eventually gets shut down when it's reported by another food pantry operator (apparently there is a lot of rivalry and competition between food pantry operators - who knew?!). While there was a lot of interesting information, a lot of the stories seemed pretty far out there. It seemed like she was addicted to chaos and got very quickly invested in all these people's lives more than she should have possibly. It seemed a little over the top to me. There was also a weird dichotomy between her vivid descriptions of all the ethnic food she made her family and the homeless or poverty-level people she was interacting with throughout the book. Overall, it was interesting but definitely a wild ride I wasn't totally expecting.

Some quotes I liked:

"Food can be a weapon. Food can be a way to control. And punish. And abuse. And force people to conform. The Meth Lunches with Charlie get me thinking about the severely wounded people in our new community and what food means and doesn't mean to them. I think about hoarding food. And giving food. And accepting food. And having no food at all. Food is a litmus test, I think. It must be. What we are eating and how we are eating tells us something integral about how we are doing, what our lives are like." (p. 29-30)

"Because humans need food, consistently, multiple times a day, food is one of the first ways children gauge how safe they are. Food, how much they get, when they get it, and how their caregiver provides for them when they cry out, sends a fundamental message about their worth in the world. That message is hardwired into their brain's pathways. It stays with them, always. Being fed consistently is safety." (p. 74)

"McDonald's offers something substantial to the communities it inhabits. For my son and many kids in the system, fast-food restaurants offer comfort. They provide consistency and permanence in their unpredictable lives. The burger always tastes the same. The nuggets. The fries. They never change. And wherever you go, whatever family takes you in this time, no matter how many times you move, the Play Place rocks the same colors. The same netting. The same slides and tunnels...Starbucks calls itself 'the third place,' the space we inhabit outside of home, work, school. But McDonald's is American's third place for a much larger, if less privileged, population...For the unhoused, addicted, and the hardest-struggling people in our communities, McDonald's offers luxuries, like Wi-Fi. Cheap food. Bathrooms. Outlets for phone charging. And a lenient staff who often allow people to hang out in booths, sipping coffee. It's a place to connect with other people, where no one will shoo you away." (p. 102-3)

Own Your Past Change Your Future by Dr. John Delony

I recently found Dr. John Delony on Instagram and really liked the clips from his podcast and work with Dave Ramsey so I decided to check out this book. I wasn't sure what to expect but I liked it. Like the title says he discusses how to Own Your Past Change Your Future. The book is divided into two sections - The Stories are the Problem and The Stories are the Solution. The first section looks at all the stories in our lives - stories you're born into, stories others tell about you, stories about relationships, stories we tell ourselves, etc. In the second section he gives some concrete tips for changing your future by addressing those stories and putting down the ones that aren't helpful. While also encouraging us to get connected, change our thoughts, and then change our actions. Interspersed throughout the book are his personal stories and stories from people he's helped in various roles Dr. Delony has held over the years. Overall, I thought the book could be helpful and several chapters have questions at the end to help you work through some of the stuff he's talking about. I was also impressed that he had quotes from Andy Gullahorn and Andrew Peterson - two amazing musicians I enjoy and follow.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

This is a beautifully written memoir/family history highlighting all the women in Crystal Wilkinson's family line and how cooking was their legacy and way of showing love. Crystal became the family keeper of stories and family recipes. Looking back at five generations of Wilkinson women Crystal tells their family story through food. She is also telling the story of Black Appalachian history through cooking as well. Going from slavery days to the modern day this beautifully written collection of essays will make you want to get in the kitchen and make some of your own food memories. Each essay covers a food topic and is followed by a few recipes that are mentioned in that essay or Crystal's updated version. There is a struggle between keeping family recipes in the traditional way and creating more modern/updated versions. I thought Crystal did a great job illuminating that struggle. She was vegetarian off and on for 20 years and at times wouldn't eat her grandmother's food that was seasoned with pork and her grandmother never understood that. Today Crystal tries to keep her family's cooking legacy alive by making both the traditional recipes and her own updated/recreated versions. I just can't reiterate enough how beautifully written this book is. I wish it was twice as long so I could keep reading more. There are several recipes I'd like to try as well.

Some quotes I liked:

"I reach back in my memory. I can see us there on the hillside, but I have forgotten so much that I thought I'd never need. I am a child of plenty. I was never hungry. Food was never scarce. When I was a child, I thought this information was expendable...By the time I came along, my grandmother was already putting the harder days of her life behind her. Days of hunger pangs and worry about how she and my grandfather would feed their seven children were gone. She wanted to show me the family's old ways, but we weren't out at first light when the dew dried out of necessity." (p. 41)

"During slavery and even after manumission, not many Black people had the fortune of eating 'high on the hog' (loins, pork chops, ham). Instead they adapted with resilience and skill and made the offal 'low parts' into delicacies. My grandfather often recalled a recurring heartbreak he suffered as a young husband and father. A racist man he worked for refused even the offal to him. 'He would rather see the chitlins rot on the ground than see me take them home to feed my young'uns,' Grandaddy said. The resounding ancestral memory of my people doing without echoes loud in me still." (p. 194)

"It never dawned on me that my daughters wouldn't be exactly like me, staunch feminists who lean into their domesticated side. While Ron washes all the dishes, launders our clothes, keeps the house clean, I work outside our home as a writer and professor and I cook all the meals. I don't have to cook and sometimes I don't, but cooking is how I commune with our ancestors. I love cooking. It's one way that my family knows I care. Wouldn't my children follow in my footsteps? Perhaps it's my generation, but I've never seen cooking as an oppressive act, though it was for some of my foremothers." (p. 229-230)

"I have the privilege of education, of making a living from my mind and not my domestic labor in a white woman's kitchen. I cook out of homage, for pleasure, and not by bound duty. I am keenly aware that Black Appalachian foodways are a legacy to be treasured, to be passed on to the next and the next and the next. I'm thankful that my children and grandchildren will find their own ways to morph and change culinary traditions, to add to and subtract from their mother's mother's mother's ways, to honor the calling of the kitchen ghosts, however they see fit." (p. 233)

Secrets of the Octopus by Sy Montgomery

This is a book all about the octopus complete with tons of beautiful, color photos. If you're a fan/reader of Sy Montgomery then you probably are already familiar with her book The Soul of an Octopus about her time working directly with octopuses at the New England Aquarium and even learning to scuba dive so she could try to find octopuses in the wild. There is a little overlap in content, but this book is mainly just about octopuses and not her personal experiences with them. It's divided into 3 sections - Masters of Camouflage, Gelatinous Geniuses, and Octopus Kingdom. After the epilogue there is also a section of "octoprofiles" with profiles of 16 octopuses and cuttlefish. Pulling from cutting edge science, Montgomery shows just how incredibly smart, unique, and interesting octopuses are. There were several funny stories about octopuses from either aquariums or laboratories where they pulled pranks, escaped tanks, invaded other tanks to eat the fish inside, flooded rooms and even shorted out the electricity three days in a row (before the keepers figured out the octopus didn't like a nearby bright light). In short, everything we know about octopuses is constantly changing and they can be very hard to study in both captivity and the wild. But this book highlights some of their most unique characteristics and the included photographs completely make the book. Overall, if you're interested in octopuses this is a great book to check out.

A quote I liked:

"Keepers at SEA LIFE Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand, taught their female giant Pacific octopus, named Rambo, to thread her arm down a tube to press an orange button to take photos of visitors with a waterproof digital camera - making her the world's first documented 'octographer.' Other institutions have encouraged their octopuses to exploit their artistic talent. Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center devised a system of levers that allowed its giant Pacific octopus to move a series of paint brushes against a canvas outside her tank. After their first octopus painter, Squirt, became a sensation, other aquariums in Tennessee and Florida trained more octopus artists." (p. 103-106) [I would TOTALLY buy an octopus photo or painting!]

February 2024 Cookbook Reviews

 

The Fresh-Milled Flour Bread Book by Tim Giuffi

I've started getting into milling my own flour and my library hasn't had very many books on the subject at all. So, when I saw this one I definitely wanted to check it out. But, almost immediately I was disappointed. The author talks about how he got into milling and baking in the Introduction, then talks about grain mills and different types of grains. Then it goes right into the recipes. My issue? At least 2/3 of the recipes require a sourdough starter - that is not super obvious by the title. Yes, it is in the subtitle, but I would argue that the subtitle does not imply that ALL the recipes will be for sourdough. Also, there are a lot of tools and specific types of pans noted in the recipes with no explanation. I'm a good home cook and read a lot about cooking and food and I had to look some of the equipment up because I wasn't familiar with it. There is no section about recommended tools/pans/etc. or a chapter on how to start and maintain a sourdough starter. It was very disappointing because I felt like there wasn't enough information.

Week Light by Donna Hay

I had checked out a couple other cookbooks by Donna Hay so I decided to check this one out too. While I'm all about eating healthy, I just didn't see hardly any recipes I wanted to try. I did like that in the "basics to brilliance" chapter there was a base recipe and then several recipes using that base. If you really enjoy ethnic, vegetarian food I think this is the cookbook for you. But, if you want to eat healthier and still include meat and dairy there wasn't much here for you. I liked her other cookbooks that I checked out but I didn't like this one much.

Flour Lab: an at-home guide to baking with freshly milled grains by Adam Leonti

I've started getting into milling my own flour but have had a hard time finding cookbooks that are designed specifically around home milling. This one seems to fit the bill. I think I will end up buying this one because I felt like it was the most comprehensive one I've seen yet. I especially liked how much information he gave in the first few chapters about types of wheat, types of mills, general info about wheat and milling, supplies, cooking tips - then on to the recipes. While I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, they look pretty simple to follow and there is a wide variety of recipes. This book has definitely inspired me to source some more varieties of wheat and try to expand beyond just whole wheat bread.

February 2024 Reviews

 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Evening Edition book club)

I didn't know who Jennette McCurdy was and never watched either of her Nickelodeon shows iCarly or Sam & Cat. One of my book clubs voted this one in and as someone who often reads dysfunctional family memoirs I thought this would be a good fit for me. Jeannette's mother was obviously mentally ill (as was her grandmother and probably her father too) but it was hard for me figure out what exactly her diagnosis would have been - she was a hoarder, anorexic, extremely overly involved in her children's lives (to the point of still bathing them into their teens), and threw explosive tantrums when she didn't get her way. She was obviously narcissistic but there had to be more. Jeannette's mother's dream was to be an actor, so she pushed her only daughter into that role. Because of both that forced push into acting and all the underlying mental illness, Jeannette developed OCD, a SERIOUS eating disorder, alcoholism, and several extremely dysfunctional dating relationships. But she was also a movie/TV star. Even though that was all her mother ever wanted, it still wasn't enough. Thankfully, during Jeannette's run on Sam & Cat her mother died of cancer. Despite the title being somewhat of a dark joke, by the end of the book I was glad her mother died too, I just wish it had been earlier. It took Jeannette YEARS of self-destructive behavior before she finally started getting help and admitting to herself just how abusive her mother was to their family. The ending is somewhat hopeful, but this was a hard, hard read. I read hard stuff ALL THE TIME and I was glad to put this one down. After reading this book I wonder what her brothers experiences were like or if Jeannette got the worst of things since she was living her mother's dream. I felt bad for the whole family even though Jeannette's father and grandparents definitely helped enable her mother's behavior. Overall, this was a tough read and I probably would have only given it 3 stars but she is a good writer. I'll be curious what my book club members will think of this one.

A quote I liked:

"Fame has put a wedge between Mom and me that I didn't think was possible. She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize that she's happy and I'm not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine. I feel robbed and exploited." (p. 121)

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead (Books & Banter book club)

Crook Manifesto picks up with Ray Carney 4 years after Harlem Shuffle ended. Ray has decided to stay on the straight path and just run his furniture business on the up and up. But when his daughter is desperate to see the Jackson 5, he turns back to some of his shady connections to try to score tickets for her. This reopens the door to his crooked life with a bang. The book is divided into 3 sections and each section covers 3-4 years. In the first section Ray reconnects with a crooked white cop to get the concert tickets for his daughter. The second section brings back Pepper and follows his unusual security work on a movie set. The third section Ray and Pepper team up to try to track down an arsonist who injured the child of one of Ray's tenants.

I absolutely LOVED Harlem Shuffle and Ray Carney's struggle with whether to stay straight or bend toward crooked. This one was a disappointment. All the heist/criminal stories seemed really far-fetched, especially the first one with the crooked white cop. It felt very over the top and like something from a criminal action movie. The ending of the book is very ambiguous and really leaves you hanging. I know this is the second in a trilogy so that's probably on purpose. But for all the action the ending was just kind of lame. Whitehead's writing is wonderful and there were lots of great funny lines and quips, but I just didn't like this one. I will probably read #3 when it comes out just to see what does happen with Ray, but it will be hard to recommend this one.

Some quotes I liked:

[On the Carney house on Strivers Row] "Of course they were going to buy it. What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?" (p. 19)

"Carney still had the business card: Martin Green, Antiques. Why hadn't he thrown it out? Because he knew or wished a day like this might come. Crooked stays crooked." (p. 29)

"Carney had worked with the detective long enough to know he was lying, and lying about the tickets as well. It was his own fault. He had been on the straight and narrow for four years, but slip once and everybody is glad to help you slip hard. Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight. The rest is survival." (p. 51)

"Hippie attire aside, black men generally kept their beards and mustaches fit and sharp, their Afros immaculate. These white kids walked around with stuff on their heads that - well, dead alley cats rotting behind garbage cans kept it more correct. The new shit was always upon you and you had to adjust, such was life, but the new shit came so fast these days, and it was so wily and unlikely, that he had a hard time keeping up." (p. 139)

"'I don't take money from guys like that.' Foot soldier for assholes? He'd already done that in World War II. No. A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches." (p. 179)

"Poor girl makes good, was a more interesting story than suburban girl makes good, he supposed. Pepper had heard of passing for white before but passing for broke was a new one on him." (p. 194)

"Was the trio playing 'The Star-Spangled Banner'? This fucking bicentennial shit was driving Carney batty. It was inescapable, like a dome of red, white, and blue smog." (p. 214)

"Payback had healed the old crook - planning, anticipation, execution, and basking in his bloody ingenuity afterward. When her mother passed, Elizabeth got a copy of that book On Death and Dying, which identified the Five Stages of Grief. When Pepper was laid low, the Four Stages of Putting Your Foot Up Somebody's Ass provided similar comfort." (p. 278)

Disobedient Women by Sarah Stankorb

Disobedient Women is a hard but important read for any Christian. Sarah Stankorb is a journalist who has been reporting on religion and often on how people are harmed by religion. She found much of her early content from blogs in the early 2000's - the beginning of the "deconstruction" movement in evangelical Christianity. In this book she highlights several women who experienced sexual abuse in their churches and found the strength to stand up, call it out, and fight back. She covers 4 main churches/denominations - IBLP (Bill Gothard, Duggar family, and the Prime documentary Shiny Happy People), the Southern Baptist denomination, Sovereign Grace Ministries (CJ Mahaney and Joshua Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame), and Doug Wilson's Christ Church in Moscow, ID. In all of these cases there were YEARS of abuse that was covered up and not reported to the authorities. Stankorb shows how complementarian theology and purity culture creates an atmosphere that is ripe for abuse. While some of these women did see some changes or at least got out of their toxic environments, this is not a happy ending kind of book. As a Christian it is gut wrenching to read about pastors and church leadership not only BE the abusers but also hide and cover up obvious abuse and pedophilia in the name of "forgiveness" and not making their church look bad to the public. I don't know what Bible they are reading but this is NOT in there. I kept thinking of Matthew 18:5-7 that says in part "If anyone causes one of these little ones - those who believe in me - to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea..." To me it's super obvious that the common denominator with all these situation is complementarian theology. The over-arching Church needs to do better.

While I think this is well researched book and very eye-opening I was expecting something more along the lines of She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey based on the description. I also think the book could have been divided a little better - more clearly by the denomination/church. And while I did appreciate the author's personal story as it did relate to the book and her own faith struggles, I felt that it sometimes detracted from the overall story as she did not experience faith/church abuse. Overall, it was a good book but still a hard read.

Some quotes I liked:

"Over the years as [Christa] Brown refused to back down [on asking the SBC to create a database of known abusers], she became a common recipient of SBC leaders' ire. Otherwise buttery-voiced pastors dripped venom toward her. Former SBC president Paige Patterson called SNAP [Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests] advocates (Brown was by then SNAP's Baptist director) slanderers, and thus, 'evil doers' and as 'reprehensible as sex criminals.'" (p. 78)

"The Washington Post called [Rachel] Held Evans 'the most polarizing woman in evangelicalism.' In reality, Held Evans became a voice for moderation within a religious movement sliding rapidly toward deeper extremes." (p. 82)

"In hindsight, the relative youth of the leadership team at Covenant Life, aside from Mahaney, did strike Pam as unusual. Most of the church leaders seemed to be in their twenties. They might have 'real strong gifting,' but a pastor who has never had children, giving advice to parents with teens, could mean a disconnect. 'Telling everybody what to do, without knowledge, without real experience, or education,' she elaborated. If pastors did have degrees at all, they weren't in theology." (p. 104)

"Although Mahaney took a leave of absence in summer 2011 to examine his character flaws - pride, unentreatability, deceit, and hypocrisy - by spring 2012, he'd returned and SGM moved its headquarters from Maryland to Louisville, Kentucky, close to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and its Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW; which Mahaney joined in 2000, later serving as vice chairman)...In 2012, Covenant Life Church voted with a 93 percent majority to break away from SGM. By spring 2013, Mahaney had stepped down as president of SGM. Nearly twenty churches left the network." (p. 117-18)

"There was another, ample reason for purity culture's reconsideration. In 2016, many evangelical leaders who had taught young girls they were tempting boys into sin with front-hugs or premarital kissing appeared to develop politically motivated moral amnesia. With the promise of a president who would nominate Supreme Court justices to help overturn Roe v. Wade and other major culture war precedents, major evangelical leaders fell in line with thrice-married socialite Donald Trump." (p. 172-73)

What an Owl Knows: the new science of the world's most enigmatic birds by Jennifer Ackerman

I've always been fascinated by owls and so I was interested when I saw this book. Then I realized I had already read one of Ackerman's previous books, The Bird Way. Even though I remembered that her previous book had been pretty science-heavy, I was still interested enough in owls to check this one out. It was very interesting, but also very science-heavy and not always the easiest read. There are nine chapters that focus on different aspects of owls from how they mate and nest, raising owlets, their vocalizations, all the way to how owls are seen in different cultures (as a harbinger of death or revered as wise). I did learn a lot and I realize now just how rare and special the times I've actually seen owls in person are as owls are VERY elusive even to skilled scientists who exclusively study owls. I did really like that there were lots of pictures, both in black & white and also a section in the middle of color photos. Overall, it was an interesting book but not a quick read.

Some quotes I liked:

"It's easy to love a living tree, with its lush foliage and canopy of greenery. But snags are like skeletons. They've lost their leaves, sloughed their skin. Their bones are furrowed with insect tracks, riddled with holes, rotted at the core, and their tops are stunted and snaggled. But what life they support! More than a hundred species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians use snags for nesting, roosting, denning, and feeding, including these magnificent owls." (p. 138)

"Mott describes a nesting hollow in a tree that had been used for more than ten years by a pair of Powerful Owls. Fires ripped through the area and burned the tree from the inside out. After the fire, the pair sat in an adjacent tree. 'Large forest owls make a really obvious grieving noise when they've lost a chick,' she says. 'And they did the same thing for this tree hollow. It was quite heart-wrenching.'" (p. 142)

"In the United Kingdom, it's legal to buy a pet owl if the bird is captive bred. You don't need a license or any credentials. Moreover, owls bred in captivity can be sold without any regulation, and it's a lucrative trade. A Snowy Owl can bring in about £250. In the wake of Harry Potter, so many people bought pet owls in the UK, only to dump them after realizing the cost and complexity of caring for them, that a special animal sanctuary opened to adopt the unwanted birds." (p. 212)

[On caring for injured owls] "They restore essential flight feathers on the wing and tail through 'imping,' a remarkable technique in use since the thirteenth century in birds used for falconry. 'We clip the damaged feather near the base, leaving a hollow keratin sheath,' explains Pierce. A matching feather molted from a donor bird is cut to length and inserted into the sheath with a tiny keratin dowel and then superglued to keep it in place. 'If all goes according to plan,' she says, 'the imped feather serves as a good replacement for the original feather until the bird molts it naturally, dropping the imped feather and growing a new one.'" (p. 216-17)

"Owls can also offer surprising glimpses into the ecological past. It's an idea raised in Anthony Doerr's beautiful novel Cloud Cuckoo Land. In the sanitized virtual world he has been hired to create, the book's main character surreptitiously undermines the system by slipping in the truth in the form of little owls, 'owl graffiti, an owl-shaped drinking fountain, a bicyclist in a tuxedo with an owl mask,' writes Doerr. 'Find one, touch it, and you peel back the sanitized, polished imagery to reveal the truth beneath' - the calamities, drought, famine, and suffering of the real past. There is a deep hunch here. Owls may be mirrors of our souls, but they're also windows into what life was like long ago." (p. 267-68) [I had forgotten about that part of Cloud Cuckoo Land and how much owls played in that storyline.]

This Country: searching for home in (very) rural America by Navied Mahdavian

Navied Mahdavian and his wife Emelie were living in the San Francisco Bay Area when they visit rural Idaho and decide to buy some land there. Hoping that by living off the grid they can afford to actually work on their passions instead of jobs to pay the ever higher bills in the Bay Area. Navied is Iranian-American and so stands out even more in rural Idaho. They both seem shocked by the racism and extremely conservative political views of their neighbors. While they do make some friends and try to make it work in Idaho, once their daughter is born they decide that they don't want that ultra-conservative rural culture to be what she grows up around. So they move to Salt Lake City, Utah - no ultra-conservatism there I'm sure... This was a quick read and there were some interesting parts to their story, but I didn't love it. It felt like this was a VERY quick overview of their time there and could have been better or at least had some of the parts more fleshed out. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one.

Emotional Labor: the invisible work shaping our lives and how to claim our power by Rose Hackman

Emotional labor is often viewed as a problem of privileged white women, but it literally affects every person on the planet - just some more than others. And often it is women who perform the majority of emotional labor. Rose Hackman does a great job of exploring the issue of emotional labor from several points of view. I personally mostly think of it as issues within a marriage or household, but she highlights aspects from service jobs, caregiving (hospital workers, childcare, and elderly care), racial identity, violence against women, how it affects men, and even how prison creates more emotional labor for the family (and often women) on the outside. I was really impressed with how broad her scope was in the book. It's frustrating to read how many people still say things like "Oh, women are just better at _____, that's why they do it." I do think Hackman gives some good suggestions and ideas for recognizing the importance of emotional labor and how to make it more equal in a variety of circumstances. I do think some of the chapters were a little long and repetitive, hence the 3 star rating. But, a good overview of all the myriad ways that emotional labor impacts us all.

Some quotes I liked:

"One of the cleverest tricks of patriarchy is that it transforms all work deemed feminine into fixed, subliminal expressions of femininity - however much work involves active time, effort, and skill. The best way to maintain a system in which women work for little to nothing, and for the benefit of others, especially men, is to convince society that they are not working at all." (p. 8)

"The point with emotional labor is not that it inherently points to an injustice. When seen, when valued or appreciated, or when part of an exchange, a mutuality, an ecosystem where love is power - then it needn't be exploitative. Quite the contrary: doing emotional labor for people who are doing it for you is the goal, not the problem." (p. 66)

"When women are told to 'smile' by a stranger on the street, they are being reminded of this through harassment. When women going about their business are accused of having a 'resting bitch face,' they are being reminded of their expected constant enthusiastic performance for the benefit of the world. A man not smiling while going about a task is never told he has a 'resting dick face.' He's likely treated as busy and important, if his expression is noted at all." (p. 87)

"As opportunities to be in the public eye have hugely expanded for women over the last decades - as previous formal barriers to public life have lifted - so, too, has the volume and level of feedback audiences inflict on them. This is true whether audiences are parents at a swim lesson, friends and acquaintances on social media, or television viewers of a political debate...This reality, instead of receding with women's legal progress, has only intensified. Today, women are more scrutinized, and more set up for humiliation than ever." (p. 92-93)

"The threat of rape and assault has a paralyzing effect on our ability to live life to its fullest, our willingness to jump on a bike, take a walk, use public transportation, explore the world. It has a paralyzing effect on our freedom...This constant lookout is a form of emotional labor that conditions us to double, triple think, to be hesitant and impose limits on ourselves and on our lives. To be a strong, empowered woman does not mean no longer taking precautions; it means making painstaking decisions about freedom versus safety, saving versus safety, economic opportunity versus safety." (p. 114-15)

"Homicide stands as the fourth leading cause of death for girls and women one to nineteen years old, and the fifth leading cause of death for women twenty to forty-four. Unlike male victims of homicide, who are mostly killed by members of the same sex, 98 percent of killers of women are men." (p. 118)

"An extraordinarily grim academic article from 2009 looked at the marital outcomes of 515 patients diagnosed with life-threatening diseases, observing groups battling malignant primary brain tumors, other forms of cancer, and multiple sclerosis...When the patient was male, and supporting spouse female, divorce happened in 2.9 percent of cases. When the patient was female and the supporting spouse was male, divorce happened in 20.8 percent of cases - it was seven times more likely to happen...the disparity is too big to brush under the carpet. It shows a severe gender gap in terms of who steps up to provide care and emotional labor in the most essential times, and an incredible gender gap in terms of who benefits." (p. 188-89)

Deadly Declarations by Landis Wade

When 96-year-old Matthew Collins dies and a hastily written will is found that revokes his previous will and leaves his fortune to Sue Ellen Parker, the most hated resident at the Indie retirement community, Collins' friends Yeager and Harriet rope in new resident and recently retired lawyer Craig Travail to help solve this mystery. But they quickly uncover a new mystery involving the Meck Dec, or Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, that may have led to their friend's demise and could also land the three of them in even more trouble. The characters in Deadly Declarations prove that there is more to retirement communities than card games and crafts - sex, lies, secret relationships, local historical mysteries, courtroom drama, and more follow these characters throughout the novel. Several twists and turns keep you guessing until the end.

While this is not the type of book I normally read - 1) Landis Wade is a local author and has participated in library book club discussions of his book and has done several other program about writing for the library and 2) this is the book chosen by a community for their community read program and they've asked me to come speak at their event. I figured the least I could do is read the book and participate in the whole event.

Wade is a good writer. While I didn't love every aspect of the story and there were some pretty outlandish things thrown in, it was funny and well written enough to keep my attention. I loved the character of Craig Travail and how his story was told and expanded throughout the book. I did feel like a few parts were a little melodramatic and over the top - but again it kept my attention and even with some crazy things I wanted to see how everything played out in the end. Overall, it was good but not my personal cup of reading tea.