I Am, I Am, I Am

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell (2018), narrated by Daisy Donovan

I've read a couple of novels by Maggie O'Farrell, but it's been a while since I've read anything of hers and this memoir has been languishing on my To Read list. I just downloaded it on audio through my library and listened to it in what felt like just a few days. Between the knitting and the jigsaw puzzles, I've gotten a lot of podcast/audiobook time recently!

This memoir is a bunch of snapshots, not in order, of all the times that O'Farrell has had a brush with death. The first one was the most chilling. When she was young (I think 18-20?) she was walking through the woods and encountered a guy who didn't do anything quite wrong that she could put her finger on, but who gave her a very bad feeling. At one point, while pointing out duck in a pond, he put his binocular strap around her neck. She chattered away, mentioning that she needed to get back to work before they came looking for her, and got away. She went to the police, who dismissed her concerns because the guy hadn't actually done anything. But a week later, they showed up at her door to ask questions because another young woman had also encountered him, and she was raped and strangled...with his binoculars strap. I will probably not forget this story for a while.

O'Farrell has some disabilities, aftereffects from what I think was her earliest brush with death - a bout of encephalitis when she was young, which confined her to a wheelchair for a time, caused lasting brain damage, and meant that she couldn't deliver a baby without a c-section. Later when she was pregnant and told her doctor that she would need a c-section, he refused, accusing her of reading too many celebrity magazines. (Can you imagine?) She almost died during the birth. Another time she almost drowned because her neurological problems mean that she has trouble orientating herself in space if she can't see, and it happened to be very dark.

The whole thing had a rather dreamy quality, partly because of O'Farrell's writing style and the way the book flitted around to various periods in her life, but also because of the narrator. Daisy Donovan has a very posh English accent and a soft, soothing voice that worked very well with this book. It was very good, and of course it's also a great reminder to be grateful for what you have because it could slip away at any moment.

The Indifferent Stars Above

The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown (2009)

We've all heard of the Donner Party, a group of doomed pioneers trying to cross the Sierra Nevada under such tough conditions they resorted to cannibalism. Before reading this book, that's all I knew about them. Thanks to Daniel James Brown, the gaps in my knowledge have been filled in great and disturbing detail.

The author chose to pick one character as his focus: Sarah Graves, a young newly-married woman who was traveling with her husband, parents, and a slew of siblings ranging from infant to adult. They were part of a larger group of 87 people. Things first went wrong when they took the advice of a man named Lansford Hastings, who wrote a guide for emigrants that suggested a cutoff that would trim many miles off the trip across the Sierra Nevada into California. What it shaved off in distance it more than made up for in difficulty, making travel with wagons almost impossible. The party also hit some early delays that meant their trip would be hitting it close to winter under the best circumstances. At one point they came to a complete halt, unable to make it over a pass, already hungry and cold and weakened as snow fell heavily around them. Here they built some rough shelters and stayed. They made several attempts at getting through the pass, crafting snowshoes to help them. Eventually a group, including Sarah Graves, made it across to their destination, Johnson's Ranch, but not without losing some people along the way. People who they ended up eating in desperation.

They were starving, their clothes and shoes in tatters, and some of them were snowblind. As people died, eating their flesh seemed to be the only way to survive. I know they've been judged for this behavior, but to be honest, those bodies aren't of any use to anyone, so why not? Otherwise they would just have been eaten by wild animals. (And by the way, the Donner Party consumed their own oxen and pet dogs before resorting to eating humans.)

In the end, out of 87 people in the original group, 47 died. I was actually surprised near the end to see those numbers because I didn't realize the group was so large to begin with. I think I had forgotten how many kids everyone had and, although Brown did talk about (or at least mention) everyone in the group at some point, I hadn't added them up in my head. Another thing I found surprising was the demographic breakdown of deaths, men dying at a much faster rate than women. Apparently, those who were single were in much more danger than those who traveled as part of a family group, and most single travelers were men. Also, women have more body fat and are thus less likely to die from hypothermia, and of course their caloric demands are also a little less.

There was a lot of interesting information about the science of starvation, the psychology of survival, and other related topics. Sometimes that sort of thing can feel like filler, but I found it fascinating. Brown also provided context about what else was going on in the world at the time, which I love. For instance: Christmas was just beginning to be celebrated in the 1840s, Edgar Allen Poe was writing "Murders in the Rue Morgue," Neptune was discovered, and a powerful new steam locomotive was unveiled.

Obviously the group didn't expect things to be quite so bad, but still, it's kind of shocking to realize how much people were willing to risk for the promise of a better life. From what we learned in the book, their lives weren't terrible in the first place; mostly they just wanted more opportunities than they already had. As hard as it can be to be trapped in a house during a pandemic, it's much preferable to spending months struggling across a mountain range in the winter while literally starving to death. I highly recommend this if you're interested in stories of survival under difficult circumstances.

Unfollow

Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper (2019)

We all know what Westboro Baptist Church is famous for - I'm not even going to repeat their hateful potty-mouthed slogans here, so you can Google them if you're unfamiliar. Started by pastor Fred Phelps, the church is made up primarily of his family members. Until a few years ago that included his granddaughter Megan. From the time she was 5, she was out on picket lines spewing hate. By the time she was in her 20s she was the most recognized voice from the church on social media, where she seemed to enjoy sparring with their detractors. But then something changed, and once she began to question everything she was raised to believe, there was no going back. This memoir is about growing up in the Westboro Baptist Church and the very painful, but necessary, decision to leave the church and her family for good.

A lot of things that I learned here surprised me. First, Megan's family was very kind and loving and supportive of one another. They had fun, joked around, and were very closed to one another. Given the things they say publicly, I did not expect them to be nice people. Second, Fred Phelps was a well-known civil rights lawyer. Why someone would be a strong proponent of civil rights - an unpopular stance in that place and time - but be so committed to hatred of the LGBT community seems very inconsistent. He also required that all of his children and their spouses be lawyers and work for the family law firm. I'll admit I was surprised to learn how well-educated WBC members are.

I heard about this book on a podcast (I think it was Get Booked) and the host mentioned that it was Megan's conversations with people on Twitter that led her to leave the church, remarking "It's probably the only good thing that's ever come out of Twitter." Reading this story, I don't know that I'd give all the credit to the conversations on Twitter, but it's true that some very kind people took the time to get to know Megan as a person, which was way more effective at helping her see why WBC is bad then just ranting at her. There were changes at WBC at the time that also contributed to her questioning their direction and their adherence to scripture. I think she's not even entirely sure what happened, but it seems like a lot of little things added up and she knew she could no longer live that way.

I've never understand many of the church's positions and Megan did her best to explain them. Picketing the funerals of soldiers is one that has always mystified me, and apparently they also celebrated deaths of children, such as those killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. It had to do with punishing people for their sins, and something about God's will - I don't know. It kind of sense in a twisted way when she explained it, but only for a moment. That's the thing about many of their beliefs. They are based on the Bible, but really twisted and manipulated.

It must have been terrifying to leave the only home she had ever known. She knew she would be cut off from family, because that's what happened to the few others who had left. But her sister Grace also left with her, so at least they had each other. Phelps-Roper clearly still loves her parents deeply and mourns the loss of their relationship, and holds out hope that they will come around. And the same for her remaining siblings. I was struck by how she wrote about death of her grandfather, Fred Phelps. He was actually kicked out of the church just before he died and was in hospice all alone because he had been abandoned by his family. I don't know how anyone who calls themselves Christians can treat family the way the Phelps clan does.

I found the earlier parts of the book a bit slow, I think because it was all about growing up in the church and what they believed and there were a lot of Bible verses quoted, and they just make my eyes glaze over. Otherwise it was thoughtful and hopeful, and mostly I'm just glad this person was able to get out of the cult in which she was raised. I hope more of her family follow her.

Catch and Kill

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow (2019), narrated by the author

Ronan Farrow is the journalist who broke the story about Harvey Weinstein's pattern of abuse, pursuing his leads despite pushback from NBC. He documents the whole crazy story here, including his interviews with Weinstein's victims, interactions with NBC executives who refused to run the story, and a creeping sense of paranoia that turned out to be very well-founded when he discovered he was being watched by a surveillance team hired by Weinstein.

It's hard to know where to start here, and I don't want to recount the whole story because there's too much of it and you should really read it, so I'll pull out a few things I found especially interesting. One is that he worked closely with NBC News producer Rich McHugh on this story, and McHugh was the only person at NBC who really stood by him through all of it. The two continued to be confused about why NBC kept telling them they didn't have enough, even though they had women on camera telling their stories and a recording of Weinstein admitting to his behavior. Which is the second thing - the audiobook actually included this clip from an NYPD sting operation, in which Weinstein tried to get Ambra Gutierrez to go to his hotel room with him, admitting that he was "used to" forcing himself on women the way he had done with her the day before. That was really hard to listen to. I felt really gross just from hearing it. I was shocked and heartened that when Gutierrez went to the police, they believed her. Another heartening part of the book was that Farrow often went to veteran news anchor Tom Brokaw for advice, and he supported Farrow and his work and kept encouraging him to make sure the story was told.

Mostly I found the story horrifying and enraging. That Rose McGowan's lawyer told her she wouldn't be believed because she had once done a sex scene. (What does that have to do with it?) That tabloids like the National Enquirer helped Weinstein by smearing his victims and buying stories about his abuse and not running them (which is what "catch and kill" refers to.) That so many people helped cover up this guy's crimes. Even Hillary Clinton refused an interview with Farrow about something entirely different when she learned he was working on a story about Weinstein. Women who helped protect Weinstein was mystifying. The fact that non-disclosure agreements are a thing that is legal - Weinstein would regularly pay off women who he hurt and make them sign an agreement they wouldn't talk about it. What kind of a world do we live in where that is ok? Beyond the legal agreement, all the women were terrified to speak because they knew Weinstein was powerful enough to kill their careers and their reputations. And there were just so many parts in which men hemmed and hawed over whether or not any of this was enough of a big deal to be news. We're talking about rape here. I wanted to punch these guys. And it's all a great lesson about bias in the news, and why you should get news from a variety of sources.

In some ways it wasn't the best choice for audio for me because there were SO many people and it was hard to keep track. But I don't know if I ever would have picked up the print book, and Farrow does a great job of narrating. I was listening to this while reading The People in the Trees, which is about a man in prison for sexual assault, and still listening to it when Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race leaving us with old white guys as the only remaining viable candidates. So I was (am) pretty full up on patriarchy and really honestly glad to be done hearing this story.

Still, it's such an important story to tell and Farrow faced so much difficulty in doing so. I wasn't familiar with him before this book, but I can't help admiring him after what he went through to get this story out there. Of course the outcome wasn't known at the time of publishing, but I'm glad I read it knowing that Weinstein was heading to prison.

Danger Close

Danger Close: My Epic Journey as a Combat Helicopter Pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan by Amber Smith (2016)

Amber Smith grew up in a family of pilots and learned to fly when she was still a kid. Then she and both of her sisters joined the military and became pilots. Amber writes about her experiences, starting with boot camp and flight school, through her tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan where she flew Kiowa helicopters. I never read books about the military, but I happened across this one several years ago when I was looking for books about helicopters. I think it was soon after I had taken a helicopter flying lesson and I was a little obsessed. (I am still a little obsessed.)

I was doubtful that I'd actually like this, to be honest. Interesting and talented people who have great stories aren't necessarily good writers, but Smith writes well. She was pretty casual about some of the training she had to endure. I know she enjoyed some of it, but some sounded terrible. Like in flight school where you have to learn how to get out of a helicopter if it crashes in the water - they strap you into a cockpit and dunk it into a swimming pool, repeatedly. She hated this. Survival school consisted of crawling through swamps, not eating for days, and drinking algae-infested water. I actually wanted to hear more about this, but she didn't dwell on this part for very long.

I'm not, and never have been, interested in the military. When I was growing up I couldn't fathom why anyone would do such a thing. In many ways that hasn't changed. But the way Smith wrote about her experiences, I could kind of see the appeal. I definitely see the appeal of flying, and the military is probably the best opportunity for that. But also there is a logic and order to the work that leaves no room for uncertainty. There are very specific procedures to follow for every situation, leaving no room for ambiguity. She tells one story in which she was out in her helicopter and waiting for orders from above and they weren't coming; finally she was forced to leave the situation to refuel. She says, "Indecision is a decision." For a moment I was almost jealous of how cut-and-dried her job is, but then I remembered that although I am faced with uncertainty at my job, I am in much less danger of dying.

My only criticism is that I think she glossed things over a bit. She was working under some pretty tough conditions. She mentions the heat in the Middle East, and the spiders (she's afraid of spiders and they have HUGE ones there) but somehow these were just asides. She didn't deny that it was hard, but surely she must have been scared at times and I wonder if she left out some things about how the guys treated her. She talks about how hard it was to fit in. She was one of very few women, but also she says that she smiled a lot and didn't try to be a badass, and that made it harder. I definitely respect that she didn't try to change too much to fit in. But I've heard some horror stories about the way women are treated in the military and I have to wonder what she experienced that she's keeping to herself. She describes some situations where men didn't take her seriously, and I think that if that was the worst she endured she is extremely lucky.

All in all, I found it pretty interesting. I went into it for the helicopters and I got a LOT of stories about the helicopters. It was pretty eye-opening in other ways too, because I just know so little about the military and I think I got a much better idea of what it's like day to day. As much as I try to read books about people who are different from me, those differences are usually based on race or country or origin or something like that. Amber Smith may also be a white woman in America, but she is definitely very different from me and I found her story surprisingly engaging.

The Nature Fix

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams (2017)

I first heard about The Nature Fix on the By the Book podcast, which you probably should be listening to if you aren't already. The two hosts live by self-help books for two weeks and then talk about it and have follow-up episodes where they share feedback from listeners. The Nature Fix is by no means a self-help book and now it's been so long since I listened to that episode that I don't remember how they managed to frame it into one, but it was a great episode about getting outside more and encouraged me to pick up this book.

It's arranged in five parts. Part one introduces the two dominant theories about why our brains benefit from nature; the author visits Japan and goes forest bathing, and then spends time in a Utah desert. The next three parts focus on the effects of spending different lengths of time experiencing nature. Part two examines short bursts of nature, like having forest views from your windows, using nature smells in aromatherapy, and listening to nature sounds. Part three focuses on the Finnish recommendation of spending five hours a month and how that affects your body and brain. In part four, she looks at longer forays into the wilderness through some pretty interesting initiatives such as an outdoor school for kids with problems like ADHD and a program that helps veterans with PTSD by taking them on several-day long whitewater rafting trips. In the final part, she examines what all of this means for how most people live, which is in cities, and how we might benefit from letting more nature in.

I am already totally on board with the ideas in this book. Even before reading it, I've been trying to take walks on my lunch break a few times a week (it's winter, but it's a really mild winter!) and I have vague plans to go snowshoeing, if we ever actually have snow. I might go hiking in a couple of weeks. I go camping every summer already. So I'm absolutely the audience for this book and Florence Williams is really preaching to the choir here. But since I listened to that podcast episode I've definitely been thinking about this more, and wondering how certain things affect me, for example, that I live next to a highway. I know that the longer I live here, the more chance I have of developing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases (I was even in a Boston Globe article about this. Yay me.) But now I'm also worried about the effects of listening to traffic constantly. So hooray - now I have even more things to worry about!

I found it disturbing to think about all this in the context of the way we now normally live our lives. Williams shared a lot of scary statistics about kids and illness and vitamin D deficiency and teen suicide and anxiety and depression. Kids stay inside so much these days that rickets, a disease that was once virtually eradicated (and which is caused by lack of vitamin D) has had an upsurge in both the US and UK. It's crazy to think that these issues could be dealt with by simply spending more time outdoors but that we'd rather just medicate everyone. For all our sakes, I really hope the solutions that Williams presents start to catch on.

There were other, more random, interesting bits as well. I was amused by an Oscar Wilde quote that I haven't heard before; he defined nature as "a place where birds fly around uncooked." I was also really intrigued by learning that in Finland the law allows you to traipse all over everyone else's land, pick their berries, and camp out (you can't cut timber or hunt game.) I bet a lot of Americans would be absolutely horrified to hear that, but I think it's kind of nice. Also, Thoreau bloviated about how in order to "preserve his health and spirits" he had to spend at least four hours a day just outside walking, "absolutely free from all worldly engagements" and if that's not privilege, I don't know what is.

Having said all that, and being totally on board with the ideas in this book, this is going to sound kind of strange, but I didn't actually love reading it. I did really like all the stories about the outside trips and forest bathing, and everything that took place somewhere outside of the US, but the science itself didn't really interest me a ton. I may also have really not been in the mood to read nonfiction at the time, which isn't the book's fault. So I guess I can sum it up by saying that I like the book but I love the ideas and it all reinforces something I already believe.

Nicholas and Alexandra

Nicholas and Alexandra: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie (1967)

Nicholas II was the last tsar of Russia before the revolution, and in this classic book by Robert K. Massie, he tells the strange and dramatic story of this last generation of the Romanov family and their downfall. Nicholas and Alexandra had five children, the youngest of whom, being male, was the heir to the throne. He suffered from hemophilia (inherited from his maternal grandmother, Queen Victoria) so his family was extremely protective of him. Part of that was a close relationship that developed between the family and Rasputin, who they believed to be a holy man who performed miracles of health on their sick son. But this relationship with Rasputin only exacerbated the growing distrust of the royal family by the public, feeding the flames of the revolution to come until the government was dissolved, Nicholas forced to abdicate, and the entire family was murdered in a cellar in 1918. Spoiler alert.

This is a detailed account that took me more than two weeks to read and I'm not gonna lie - it was a little tough to get through. All of the parts that focused on the family and their domestic life and their friendships with Anna Vyrubova and Rasputin were easy to read, but there's necessarily a lot of politics and details about World War I and that was harder. It was also difficult to keep track of all the different people involved in the government, especially since some of them had similar names. So in this way it wasn't quite as compelling as Massie's Catherine the Great, which I read a little over a year ago. But still, it was quite a story!

What really stands out from all the drama of the last Romanovs is, of course, Rasputin. A peasant who passed himself off as a holy man, he was this unwashed weirdo who would just go up to women and start unbuttoning their clothes. Many women had affairs with him, but he was also accused of attempted rape many times. (The police did not take action.) Despite his known drunken and violent tendencies, he presented a completely different character to the royal family and the Alexandra specifically was very devoted to him. When World War I began and Nicholas was away at the front, she handled some government affairs, always on the advice of Rasputin. He earned her trust when Alexei was sick and seemed to get better with Rasputin at his side. There were a number of times when he seemed to have this effect or when his predictions appeared to come true.

I'm not certain how Massie determined the truth of Rasputin's predictions. I looked in the back of the book at the citations for one instance, and it was from the account of Anna Vyrubova, herself a very loyal friend of Rasputin and hardly an unbiased observer. Perhaps it's true that certain prophecies of his did come to pass, but I have to wonder how many prophecies he made all together. If he made 1000 prophecies and we're only talking about the 10 that came true, those can probably be chalked up to coincidence. But I don't have the information to really know. However, what seems certain is that Rasputin was one creepy dude and the fact that he had to be poisoned, shot several times, AND drowned before he actually died only adds to his creepiness. It was also clear that he was manipulative, as one of his prophecies to the Empress was "If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months." No wonder she kept him around. (This particular prophecy came true, too.)

As for the family itself, I mostly felt bad for them. They were born into this life (or in Alexandra's case, married into it) and Nicholas was not a terrible ruler. He did the best he could. Of course the children were all just victims. When they were murdered the oldest daughter was twenty-two and Alexei was not quite fourteen. Despite being born into wealth he had a very hard life. He wasn't allowed to run and play the way other kids were (he always forbidden to ride a bike, which he really wanted to do) because of the risk of injury. And when he did manage to hurt himself, he'd be in bed in terrible pain for days at a time, or even weeks. Even though I knew how their lives ended, as I was reading I kept hoping they'd escape and leave Russia to start a new life. None of them were bad people. Alexandra was the worst, and she was more misguided than actually a bad person.

All in all, it seemed a very thorough account of a significant family and period in history. The only thing that really bugged me was how all the names were westernized. Alexei was referred to as Alexis, for example, and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was called Kaiser William which really confused me for a while. I had to look up "Kaiser William" to see if that was a person. I'm guessing this must have just been a convention at the time this book was written.

As I said, I didn't love this one as much as Catherine the Great, but it was still quite good. I had already read The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming, which was excellent but it was written for teens and was much shorter. Now having read Nicholas and Alexander, it only affirms my opinion of what a good job Fleming did in condensing the story down into a shorter book, but of course there was a lot that was left out. (I just knew there was more to Rasputin's sketchy character than she told us about, for example.) It's altogether a fascinating story, and Robert K. Massie told it well.

The Witches Are Coming

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West (2019)

The author of Shrill is back with a new book of essays on feminism, politics, and pop culture. Taking on everything from the #MeToo movement to abortion to Joan Rivers to Ted Bundy, she shares her clever observations and astute perspectives with her trademarked humor.

So look, I am not the sort of audience for whom this book is going to force me to look at things in a different way or make me aware of issues I knew nothing about. This is basically a book full of opinions that I already believe, but expressed much better than I'd ever be able to.

Except the thing about pockets. Apparently Lindy West doesn't care if her dresses have pockets and thinks those of us who talk about this a lot are wasting our time. But she is wrong about this. She clearly doesn't have a job in an office full of locked doors and only her phone as a watch, because if so she would realize how important it is to have somewhere to put your phone and keys. (Unless she thinks we should all walk around constantly carrying our purses like Sophia Petrillo?) But I digress.

West writes a lot about the culture of misogyny, racism, the rise of neo-Nazis in America and the backlash against people like her who speak out about these things. She addresses the complexity of things like the idea that we should all be friends with each other regardless of political views, which is great in theory, but not if you're part of a minority that people of a different political party would like to see eradicated. You can't just be friends with people who think you shouldn't exist, and you shouldn't try. And she points out the reality that those of us who aren't part of those minorities are the people who can just ignore politics and embrace escapist TV shows, and that that's what privilege means.

In an essay called "Gear Swap," she tells the story of a Facebook page her musician husband is part of, in which people swap and sell musical gear. Some (white male) sellers started offering discounts based on gender or race, and there was a backlash from some other guys who thought it was akin to communism or fascism or murder. The group moderators basically said that sellers could sell their stuff however they want and to please stop bothering them with these ridiculous complaints. West highlights this because, as she says, Facebook or Twitter could also be reasonable about things but they insist on playing the "both sides" game ad infinitum as though the Nazi perspective is one that is just as legitimate as any other.

She talks more about this "both sides" argument in the essay "A Giant Douche Is a Good Thing If You're a Giant," in which she also discusses social media memes about being offended and how they serve primarily to make large systemic injustice look like petty grievances. I also hate those memes and think that it's the people who make and share who are the ones who seem most offended. And they are offended at those of us trying to be respectful by using people's preferred pronouns and other things that are just basic human decency and not that difficult.

This is getting long, but I also want to mention "Do, Make, Be, Barf" in which West attends the Goop expo. Goop, if you're unfamiliar, is a health/lifestyle brand developed by Gwyneth Paltrow and which I really enjoy making fun of. Previously West had spent some time cooking from Paltrow's cookbook It's All Good, which was surprisingly good, apparently, though very expensive to cook from. (She specifically mentions a beet, butternut, quinoa salad that she still makes, and which I now want to try.) At the expo though, a culture of extreme privilege was on display and what I thought was so interesting was that all the stuff about self-care started sounding a whole lot more like rationalizing selfishness. This was interesting to hear because I've also thought that about some of the self-care things I read, so it was good to know it's not just me.

That was pretty much the experience of this book for me - humorous validation. It was a surprisingly quick read, both fun and thought-provoking.

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb (2019)

When Lori Gottlieb was blindsided by a breakup, she started seeing a therapist named Wendell to help her work through her feelings. A therapist herself, she shares her experience of being in therapy as well as the stories of some of her own patients (disguised, of course, for their privacy.)

Getting the perspective of both therapist and patient made for an excellent read, especially if you're not familiar with the inner workings on therapy. It was interesting to see Gottlieb fall into the same traps as her patients, and to see her therapist help her in ways she recognized as they were happening. Her self-awareness during the process made it all the more educational.

I really liked the stories about her patients. I'm trying not to overthink which parts are real and how the real stories are different, but at any rate they are all great character studies. One is a young newlywed named Julie who is dying of cancer and trying to make the most of the time she has left, while rejecting the uber-positive cancer culture. John is an asshole Hollywood writer who Lori finds very difficult to empathize with at first, but it turns out he's keeping a major tragedy a secret from her and it is only after he is willing to talk about it than any real growth can occur. He was probably the most interesting character. An older woman named Rita is - I'm pretty sure - the person I'm going to end up being someday. She is alone and bitter and feels that she has nothing to look forward to. She has kids, but they are estranged, and she just pushes people away and now that she is old she is isolated and unhappy. All of these people experienced positive growth through their therapy, and it was fascinating to hear the conversations that made them able to change their lives for the better.

There was also a patient she made no headway with and she stopped seeing, which kept it real. This situation highlighted the ways that therapy doesn't work for everyone, and how it only works if you actually keep an open mind and do the work. I'm glad she included this story, or else I would have been skeptical because it all went so much better for the other patients.

This was a lot of book. It was over 400 pages which seems excessive and I started to feel very eager to be done with it, while still dying to know how things turned out for everybody. Mostly it just made me want to see a therapist, since it resulted in major positive life changes for everyone in the book.

To be honest, this book was only vaguely on my radar - it's very popular and I keep seeing it around at the library but I didn't really intend to read it. But one day I saw an available copy and impulsively grabbed it, and I'm very glad I did. It was such an interesting look at the way our views of the world and people around us, and everything that goes on in our heads, affect our lives. I highly recommend it.

Midnight in Chernobyl

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham (2019)

I was on the cusp of 13 when the disaster at Chernobyl occurred so I was completely unaware of it until probably years later, and even then I didn't know much about it. But I heard a lot about this book recently and was further inspired to read it after Baba Dunja's Last Love, a novel that took place with the Chernobyl disaster as a backdrop.

Higginbotham has put together a detailed account of the time leading up to the disaster, how things went wrong, and the aftermath. It was fascinating and stressful to watch it all unfold, even though I knew it ended in disaster. It's so hard to watch that train wreck coming.

I appreciate that we didn't get the entire history of the Soviet Union or of nuclear energy before getting to the real story. Too many nonfiction books dump far more background information than needed, and though I did get a little bit bogged down in the explanation of how the reactors work, that was tough because of my poor understanding of science, not because it was unnecessary. There was enough story here to not have to pad it. This might be a good time to mention that the book isn't as daunting as it first appears; although it's over 500 pages, the main part of the book is 372 pages, with the rest being the afterward, notes, and even an index (how I love an index in any nonfiction book!) There were SO many people in this story it was hard to keep them straight, but there's a helpful list of everyone in the front of the book, which I also appreciate.

What most surprised me about how this disaster went down was that even though there was an explosion, it wasn't especially dramatic. Nobody knew how bad it was just after, so people were still going about their business in the nearby town of Pripyat for quite a while before being evacuated. Although radiation traveled quickly to Scandinavia and other areas, you do need special equipment to detect it, so it wasn't always obvious right away. Of course, the government cover-up didn't help, but there was a real lack of information and poor communication also. The seriousness of the situation wasn't known until later, and the consequences definitely weren't dealt with for far longer than they should have. I couldn't believe how long they debated where or not to evacuate people who lived in the area. And even then, people were willing to still work at the plant to try and get the other reactors back up and running. I actually have questions about this still, because I don't quite understand how people were going to work here every day when nearby Pripyat had been permanently evacuated because of the danger.

I was also surprised to learn how many other disasters had occurred before Chernobyl. This, too, was covered up as part of maintaining the illusion of Soviet superiority when it came to nuclear power. They just kept blaming it on operator error and continuing on with other nuclear projects, though eventually they had to admit there were serious problems with the design of the type of reactor they were building. (There were human errors as well, to be sure.) But Chernobyl was a larger disaster that was impossible to keep secret, and it resulted in a legal trial and changes to the way reactors were built.

I thought Adam Higginbotham did a great job of giving us a full picture of this disaster and the circumstances surrounding it, without getting bogged down in too much extraneous detail. For a nonfiction book about a well-known historical event about which we all know the ending, it was quite a page-turner.

The End of Night

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard (2013)

Several years ago, probably in 2013 when the book came out, I heard Paul Bogard interviewed and I've never forgotten it. He talked about how we have lit the world so brightly that it is difficult (if not impossible) to ever see stars, and that maybe we should reconsider the need to use lights everywhere, all the time. What stuck with me most was what he said about safety and security: that we often use these as reasoning for adding lights everywhere, but that it may actually make us less safe. I've thought about it ever since, but didn't think I'd ever have the motivation or stamina to read an entire book on the subject. What inspired me to pick it up was a recent trip I took to Maine; one of the things I was most looking forward to was seeing stars. It was overcast the whole time so there were none to be seen, and it made me think more about what I'm missing in the night sky by living in a city.

Surprisingly, I not only made it through the entire book, but I found it pretty interesting. Sometimes nonfiction books really could have been articles and they are heavily padded with excessive background information and tangents. When things started to get tangential here, though, it always retained at least some relevance and was always interesting. So although the book is about light pollution, I learned that there are still gas lamps and lamplighters in London, that once a Luna moth emerges from its cocoon it never eats again, and that when bats fly too close to turbines the pressure drop makes their lungs burst.

I learned about all the ways in which artificial light at night is bad for us and for animals. It upset circadian rhythms in most species, it negatively affects visibility with shadows and glare, and makes it easier to commit crimes at night because the people committing them can see what they're doing. There is apparently a possible connection between working night shifts and certain kinds of cancer, because we only produce melatonin while in natural darkness, and melatonin plays a role in preventing the growth of these types of cancer.

Paul Bogard visited many of the darkest places so he could see the natural night sky, and spoke often of the International Dark Sky Association which works to recognize places that have little or no artificial light at night. Some communities have taken steps to improve their lighting so it reduces the associated problems. It was surprising to learn about how inefficient and badly-planned lighting is in most places. But it was heartening to hear how many people are concerned about it and working to educate the public about these issues and make improvements in how we use light.

Part of me feels discouraged that I now have one more thing to worry about, but another part of me sees how easily the problems associated with light pollution could be solved with more education. We cling to our current practices out of ignorance about the issues. I found this book very easy to read for a nonfiction book without a linear story, and highly recommend it. Bogard makes a compelling case for preserving natural darkness, one that should interest anyone who cares about the environment and public health.

The Trauma Cleaner

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster by Sarah Krasnostein (2017), narrated by Rachael Tidd

Sandra Pankhurst makes a living cleaning other people's houses, but only if there's been a death or a hoarding situation. She has specialized knowledge and equipment to deal with intense cleaning needs like bodily fluids, feces, and decomposition. This would all make her interesting enough, but she's also a transgender woman who transitioned back in a day when most people didn't realize that was possible.

Sandra's story is told by Sarah Krasnostein, who alternates between stories of Sandra's present-day work and her life growing up. She's in her 60s now and suffering from some pretty serious health problems, but she's still as lively and salty and competent as ever. This woman is super organized, knows how to talk to people who are justifying living in squalor, and has a deep compassion which is often tempered with an honest and often harsh attitude.

Krasnostein says that Sandra is not the most reliable narrator because she has a lot of problems with her memory and it made writing this book difficult. She did have help though, notably through interviewing Sandra's ex-wife Linda. They were together back when Sandra was living as a man and had two children before Sandra left. Their story was quite a sad one, with Linda's un-requited love for Sandra and the rift it left between Sandra and her children, who she was no longer allowed to see after the divorce.

But the worst part of Sandra's life had to be her childhood. Adopted by a couple with a daughter who weren't able to have more children, Sandra was welcome in the family until they were surprised by two more natural children, at which point Sandra was made to move into a shed in the yard and not allowed in the house after 4:30pm. They also apparently didn't feed her anymore. I don't know how parents can just stop loving a kid, or maybe they never really loved her, but they were just awful people. It was clear Sandra just wanted their love and acceptance and couldn't get it, and it only got worse once she came out as transgender.

I should mention this book takes place in Australia, but it sounds like the attitudes toward gay and transgender people is similar to in the U.S. It only makes Sandra's story more remarkable. There was a point in her 20s or 30s when she was working as a prostitute and she was raped and abused by a client - the most difficult part of the book to listen to - and she reported the crime. Shockingly, even though she was a transgender prostitute and this was the 1980s, the guy ended up sentenced to 6 years for the crime. What it must have taken for her to essentially lay herself bare in a court of law in order to see this case through really gives me pause. But Sandra was so matter-of-fact about everything; she knew how people felt about people like her, but at the same time had a strong enough sense of self-worth she didn't ever back down from a challenge.

Rachael Tidd reads the book with just the right notes of respect and empathy, as well as an Australian accent. I can't help but admire Sandra Pankhurst after learning so much about her, and the juxtaposition of her story and those of the clients she is helping gave me a lot to think about.

Life's Work

Life's Work by Dr. Willie Parker (2017)

A fundamentalist Christian from the South, Willie Parker became an ob/gyn doctor. For a while he didn't perform abortions, but after being inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s interpretation of the Good Samaritan, he focused his career entirely on providing abortions. His philosophy is that he should be helping women who need it without judging them, and given how few doctors there are in the South who will perform abortions he now spends all his time there, traveling from clinic to clinic.

I was struck by a number of things while reading Dr. Parker's story. One was his complete and utter devotion to his work. Despite being legal and upheld by the Constitution, abortion remains controversial and a target, which means that Dr. Parker is also a target. He has had colleagues who perform abortion and have been murdered for it, or whose families have been threatened. This is one reason, he says, why he has not married or had children. I do wish he had talked a bit more about that because I didn't get a sense of how much of a sacrifice that was. Was he even interested in marriage? Did he avoid dating because of his job? It honestly sounds like he's so busy in his career that he doesn't have time for anything else.

Also, I was struck by his respect for women. He talks about how they know their own lives better than anyone else, and how by the time they get to the clinic (which is not easy, given how far some have to travel, and how hard it can be to scrape together the money) they've spent a lot of time thinking about their choice and he is confident that they're making the best decisions they can for themselves and their families. He doesn't question or judge those decisions.

There are situations, however, in which he will not perform an abortion. He won't do them after 25 weeks, but will refer the woman to someone who will. He won't do one if he thinks the woman doesn't actually want it, if he thinks she's being pressured by her partner or by a parent. Interestingly, he also won't do it if the choice is based on the gender or race of the fetus.

Another surprising thing about this book that I appreciated was that he explained the whole process of an abortion, which is something that nobody ever really talks about specifically. Although something like one third of women have had abortions, I imagine a lot of them go into it not knowing what to expect and for everyone else the whole process remains a mystery. It was good to see it all explained and know what is actually involved.

The book is about more than just his experiences; he also talks about political and societal issues. For instance, he is disappointed that the left has adopted the idea that abortion is always a sad, tragic choice. He feels like it doesn't do the pro-choice movement any good to assign such moral weight to a medical, practical procedure. He also talks about the fetishization of motherhood and children in our culture, and how we so often view birth as a miracle, when in fact it's just an ordinary biological process. This also only serves to fuel the anti-abortion movement. He feels that there's no intrinsic moral value to becoming a mother, or not becoming a mother. I totally agree with all of these views.

I found this whole book very enlightening and thoughtful and thought-provoking. I'm not very interested in religion, but I even found his religious evolution interesting. I can't help but admire Dr. Parker for his respect for women and commitment to justice. Many of us talk the talk about abortion rights, but he is really walking the walk. This is a great complement to another book I read not long ago, Pro by Katha Pollitt.

The Way Home

The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle (2019)

It feels strange to be writing a blog post about a book that is all about stepping away from technology and getting in touch with the actual world, but it's one I want to recommend and if I had to tell everyone in person, it just wouldn't happen.

Mark Boyle moved to a smallholding in Ireland to make a life for himself in a way that was not damaging to the earth or to himself. Rather than working for someone else all day to earn money to buy things for himself, he spends his days working for himself. Gardening, foraging, hunting, chopping firewood, whittling, doing laundry by hand, making everything he needs himself. He's not alone - his girlfriend Kristy lives with him in his cabin and there's also a farmhouse on the property. They have a free hostel where people can come and stay to experience the same sort of life.

The book isn't a straight-up memoir; there are vignettes about the way he lives interspersed with his thoughts about technology, nature, and people. A third element, set apart by italics, is the story of Great Blasket Island, inhabited by people living the old ways until it was evacuated in 1953. He spends a lot of time thinking about how he lives and how he used to live, how everything he does affects the natural world, and how technology affects us. It's very thoughtful and introspective. When I began reading and realized there wasn't really a story, just fragments of story mixed in with thoughts, I thought I might not like it. But it turns out that his thoughts are so compelling and well-expressed, and his life so interesting, that I had no trouble at all. The bits about Great Blasket Island didn't hold my interest quite as well, but even that was fairly interesting.

Doing everything the hard way means that Boyle has thought a lot about the easy way and its cost. There's also a cost for him to do things slowly and painstakingly, but one of the results is that you make time for the things that are really important and don't bother with the rest, a lesson we could all probably stand to take to heart. When he was using social media he was, of course, in touch with people he never saw otherwise, but in his new life he relied on the mail. At first, his mailbox was stuffed and keeping up with it was overwhelming, but over time it dwindled, which was a relief. He says "Inconvenience is a great filter." In terms of producing food and making things that he needs, it also filters out those things which are unnecessary but which we wouldn't think twice about acquiring when it's easy or cheap. But those things have a large cost to the environment and to the people getting paid pennies to produce them.

Sometimes it can sound like he's pining for the "good old days" but he has very good points about where our attention is these days, the number of distractions, and how removed from the natural world we are. This would be a good place to mention the value of some of our modern developments like antibiotics, but we have misused and overused them irresponsibly and I'm allergic to most of them anyway so they don't do me any good. In Boyle's case, he says he hasn't been to a doctor in ten years which I think he's trying to attribute to his healthy lifestyle and I'm sure that helps, but not having health issues is also a privilege that allows him to take on this strenuous self-reliant lifestyle. He also complains a lot about government regulations, some of which I'm sure are ridiculous, but at other times he comes across a bit like he's criticizing something just because he doesn't understand it. This isn't a complaint about the book, just a way of pointing out that although I feel pretty convinced that he's on the right track, he's imperfect like the rest of us.

Surprisingly, my favorite thing about his life is that he doesn't have any clocks and never knows what time it is. I'm a total clock-watcher because, like everyone else in our society, my life is ruled by having to be at work at a certain time which means having to get up a certain time, which means needing to be in bed at a certain time. It's a kind of prison and I have often wondered what my days would be like if I could just go to sleep and get up and eat when I feel like it rather than when my clock dictates. I was so jealous of this part of his life, but I'll probably have to wait until retirement to experience it for myself.

Look, I could probably talk about this book and its related ideas all day. I haven't even touched on the meditative aspects of picking nettles, the way advertising invades our privacy by constantly forcing its way into our heads, or many of the valid criticisms he has about capitalism. There's just too much here. I've always been a little obsessed with old-timey ways of life and people who live off the land, so this is very much up my alley. He's got a nice bibliography at the end of the book and although I'm unlikely to pick up a copy of Deerskins into Buckskins: How to Tan with Natural Materials,  I'd probably be interested in Helen and Scott Nearing's Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, especially since I've already read their memoir The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living and found it quite inspiring. I'm unlikely to go live in the woods and start making my own soap and whittling my own spoons, but I do hope to be more thoughtful about the way I live my life.

The Mother of All Questions

The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit (2017)

I impulsively borrowed this from a friend when I was at his house, despite having plenty to read and only moments before refusing his offer to borrow "anything I'd like" when he saw me browsing his shelves. But Rebecca Solnit is so smart and I so enjoyed Men Explain Things To Me that I couldn't pass up this book.

It actually took me a while to get through the first essay, "A Short History of Silence," which at 50-something pages is a pretty substantial chunk of the book. It was also probably the most abstract, and abstract is not something I am good at. It was about the many ways in which people (and more specifically, women) are silenced and even though it was a bit long and may be too broad and all-emcompassing for me, there were still passages I noted. One example is when she talks about how films primarily featuring men are just films, while those with primarily female characters are considered girls' or womens' films. She says "Men are not expected to engage in the empathic extension of identifying with a different gender, just as white people are not asked, the way people of color are, to identify with other races. Being dominant means seeing yourself and not seeing others; privilege often limits or obstructs imagination."

After this lengthy essay, which took me a few days to read, I read the rest of the book in probably a 24-hour period. As expected, having read Solnit's essays before, I was worked up into a rage, but also couldn't help smile at how clever, erudite, and articulate she is. I'm not great at expressing my thoughts and it's so satisfying to read the words of someone who can pinpoint exactly what it is about something that is so unjust or infuriating.

These essays examine events like the O.J. Simpson murders, Gamergate, and sexual harassment by men from Bill Cosby to Jian Ghomeshi. She talks about how women who have already been treated poorly by men are further harassed, often receiving rape and death threats online. She says "...the plethora of men attacking women and anyone who stands up for women in order to prove that women are not under attack and feminism has no basis in reality are apparently unaware that they're handily proving the opposite."  She always provides interesting statistics, such as that 38% of women murdered are killed by their partners, a sad but unsurprising fact.

In "Men Explain Lolita To Me," Solnit discusses the Esquire article "80 Books Every Man Should Read" (79 of which were written by men) and posits the merits of learning about others through reading, an idea that seems to upset some men. She says "Many among that curious gender are easy to upset, and when they are upset they don't know it. They just think you're wrong and sometimes also evil." (In that same essay she discusses the way that magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan feel the need to constantly instruct how to be your gender. "Maybe it says a lot about the fragility of gender that instructions on being the two main ones have been issued monthly for so long.") She points out the way that white men are forever talking about other people who can't take a joke or need to be coddled, when in fact they are the ones who react to jokes about themselves with rage and threats, and respond to criticisms about, say, male video game culture by threatening rape, death, doxxing, and bombs to the women who dare voice this criticism.

Rebecca Solnit gets at so many ideas in surprisingly few pages, and puts voice to things that are dancing on the periphery of my vision that I can't quite express. She's a lot smarter than I am, and I'm grateful that she shares her brilliance with the world. I was interested to learn from one of her essays that she has written a book about the history of walking, called Wanderlust, which I'd like to think I will read someday.

Peace Is Every Step

Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness In Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh (1990)

This slim volume is basically a collection of short essays about finding peace, compassion, and harmony in everyday life by slowing down and living mindfully. It's divided into three sections. "Breathe! You Are Alive" is very much about the everyday: how to live in the moment and focus on the little things like breathing, walking, eating, or even doing the dishes. "Transformation and Healing" applies these principles to dealing with difficult emotions like anger and transforming them into more productive ones. It talks a lot about dealing with other people, such as parents or romantic partners, and emphasizes the importance of community. "Peace Is Every Step" takes this philosophy even farther outside of ourselves to look at world problems with a lens of kindness, compassion, peace and justice.

 At this point I've read a few things about mindfulness and about Buddhism and it's starting to get interesting to see how they complement or contradict each other. For instance, one thing that has stuck with me from The Wise Heart is noticing your feelings but realizing that they are not part of you, and will come and go like the weather. Here, in a piece called "Mindfulness of Anger" Nhat Hanh says "When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress it or chase it away is to suppress or chase away our self." He compares it to garbage and compost: you can take something unwanted and transform it into something useful and nurturing. I'm not sure that the two perspectives are actually contradictory in terms of what Buddhism is about because the important thing, I think, is being aware of your emotions and recognizing that some of them are not helpful. Perhaps whether you wait for them to pass or transform them is not important.

He uses garbage in his writing a lot actually. Another passage I liked is about how if you want to live peacefully with a person you need to recognize the whole person. He says "We do not expect a person always to be a flower. We have to understand his or her garbage as well."

I also like how he talks about engaging with the world. Buddhism isn't all about staying inside your own head all the time, despite the emphasis on meditation. Meditation is to help with focus and clarity and should help you see the world. Once you see it, you need to act on what you see. And he sees us as all interdependent. In a passage entitled "Flowers and Garbage" (I told you he likes garbage!) he writes about prostitution and how we look down on prostitutes and how prostitutes may feel badly when they compare themselves to "good girls" from good family. Nhat Hanh says that the prostitute is the way she is because others are the way they are and asks "How can a 'good girl,' belonging to a good family, be proud? Because the 'good family's' way of life is the way it is, the prostitute has to live as a prostitute. No one among us has clean hands." The same is true with wealth and poverty.

He talks about war and peace and the environment. He talks about writing positive letters to our congressional representatives, letters they will want to read and not just throw away, and he acknowledges the need for understanding the constraints of doing their jobs. He talks about all the little ways that what we do every day affects the world; the way we speak to people, what we throw in the trash. He talks about looking at people who do bad things - like pirates who rape young girls - and considering what conditions in the world contributed to them becoming how they are; he thinks that if he had faced the same conditions in his life, perhaps he would also have ended up a pirate.

Thich Nhat Hanh is very well-known and popular for his views and his writing, and this book feels like one it would be good to own and turn to now and again to try and soak up more of his advice. It's the first book by Nhat Hanh that I've read but I am interested in reading more as I really like how he views the world, and the way he writes about it.

The Everything Buddhism Book

The Everything Buddhism Book by Arnie Kozak (2010)

I started this while re-reading The Wise Heart, but luckily they're two very different books so I should be able to keep them straight. I've been meditating for a few years now (I mean, not continuously!) and I'm trying to integrate Buddhist principles into my life more because I'm really starting to think that guy was onto something. Somebody I follow on Twitter was getting suggestions for books to read about Buddhism and this was one that was mentioned.

This really is a little bit of everything about Buddhism. It covers Buddha's life, his teachings, the spread of Buddhism, different types of Buddhism, specific practices, art, and various other topics. Unsurprisingly, there were chapters that I found much more relevant to my interests than other chapters, some I found boring, and some that I didn't really understand. So I read parts of it more intently than other parts.

I've read other books that go over the basics of the philosophy (The Wise Heart, Buddhism Without Beliefs) but at this point I still really need to be reminded so it was totally fine to read about that again. I also really liked reading about different types of meditation, art and architecture, tea ceremonies, social activism, and applying Buddhism to daily life. It really helped give me a broad, holistic view of how Buddhism applies to various facets of a person's life and the world. I tend to be pretty socially conscious so I was happy to read the chapter about how beneficial this philosophy can be in terms of environment issues, politics, leadership, and other aspects of social life. The chapter on karma and what it actually means was not only enlightening but very familiar. It's not a magical property whereby if you are mean to somebody you will later be struck by lightning; rather it's more like if you're mean to somebody, you're hurting your relationship with that person and that's going to be bad for you as well.

Chapters I struggled with were those that really delved into the nuances of the different schools of Buddhism, because I had a tough time thoroughly understanding it. Some of the history was also a bit dry for me, especially the overview of how Buddhism spread throughout Asia, with short chapters on each country covered. But it's good information and it made sense to be there.

It took me a while to get through this book, but I found it very helpful and also came away with lots of suggestions for further reading. I feel like a lot of this is going to fall out of my head almost immediately because I'm terrible at retaining information, but hopefully if I read enough on the subject it will really start to stick.

Barracoon

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston (2018)

In 1927, author Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last person alive who was brought from Africa on a slave ship, but the story wasn't published until last year. Cudjo Lewis was 86 when Hurston interviewed him, and he had experienced a lot in his lifetime. His village was destroyed by another group of African who captured the survivors and held them prisoner until they were sold to white men and brought to America. Lewis then worked as a slave for 5 years or so until he was freed. Life continued to be a struggle for him and his family.

His story is only around 100 pages; the rest of the book contains multiple introductions, prefaces, an afterward, an appendix, glossary, notes, etc. I don't have very much to say about it. I learned a little more about the role other Africans played in the slave trade, at least in this particular instance. I didn't learn much more about slavery, which I had hoped to - I thought I would get more of a first-hand story about the experience but he didn't talk about it much at all.

Hurston let him tell his own story, and I understand and respect that decision. However, he just told the story in a very simple way and that's what we got. Most books show rather than tell, but this one was definitely telling which made it difficult to really get into the story and get much out of it. Even when Lewis told about the deaths of all his children and his wife, it didn't pack the emotional punch it could have had we gotten the opportunity to get to know them first. I hate to criticize this book for not being, essentially, a novel. I do think it's an important story and I'm glad that Hurston was able to capture it. It's an interesting story, but I just didn't get a whole lot out of it.

The Soul of an Octopus

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery (2015)

In truth, I put this book about octopuses on my To Read list after hearing a couple of co-workers talk about how good it was, but I didn't think I'd ever actually read it. Recently though, I impulsively picked it up at the library and actually read it.

It's not just a book about octopuses, but rather a memoir about one person's experiences with octopuses. This made it much more readable, though maybe not as informative. Sy Montgomery began visiting with octopuses at the New England Aquarium in Boston, hanging out with the staff there and getting good quality time up close and personal with the octopuses. She also learned to scuba dive so that she could observe octopuses in the wild. Along the way she learned a lot about the creatures and formed attachments, which made it pretty painful when they died, sometimes unexpectedly.

The book lacked some basic information that would have been helpful. Like she refers to them as mollusks and as cephalopods, but doesn't ever explain how those two categories relate to each other (cephalopods are a class of mollusk, but I had to google that.) She also doesn't go over basic anatomy, just making a reference to the head and body not being where we expect, or something along those lines, and says that the beak is in the armpit - these are confusing concepts and a basic diagram would have helped. Again, I just googled.

What bothered me the most - and almost caused me to abandon the book - is that she talks about how intelligent and complex and emotional octopuses are while not acknowledging the cruelty of removing them from the wild and keeping them in captivity for the education and enjoyment of people like her. In one case, an octopus was kept in a small, dark pickle barrel for around 7 months, with little access to mental stimulation aside from visits from humans. She kept talking about the octopuses trying to escape, saying they were "uncooperative" or "mischievous" when in fact they were basically imprisoned and just wanted to get out and go home.

But I stuck with it anyhow because it was interesting and I find sea creatures fascinating. Ultimately I'm glad I did read the whole thing. There was actually a point where another person in the book spoke to the idea of keeping the octopuses in captivity, saying that this is how people learn about these animals and, in turn, come to care about protecting them and the oceans they live in. Which, ok, I've mulled this over in relation to zoos too, and I'm not completely on board but I do kind of get it.

The most immediate affect of the book is that it gave me an overwhelming desire to watch Finding Nemo again (we own a copy and have watched it about 47 times and no, we don't have kids) and I immediately did so the very evening I finished reading the book. Man I love that movie. I also want to read more books about ocean life, so if you know of another easy-to-read book along these lines, please let me know.

We Are All Shipwrecks

We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle (2017)

When Kelly was three weeks old, her mother was murdered. She grew up with her grandfather and his much younger wife, sometimes staying with her grandmother and her friend Dee. Her grandfather owned a porn shop and as he got older and less able to work, his wife Marilyn assumed most of the responsibilities of running the business. At one point he bought a boat and because of the costs of fixing it up, they ended up giving up their house and living on the boat full-time. In her memoir, Kelly Grey Carlisle documents her unusual childhood and adolescence, while trying to unravel the mystery of her mother's life and death.

Her grandfather, Richard Grey, was British and insisted he was titled, calling himself Sir Richard Grey. He claimed a lot of things about his life, some of which were true. Although he took good care of Kelly, he was an angry man, what some called verbally abusive. The little he told Kelly about her mother was not necessarily true. She had mixed feelings about her grandfather and so did I by the time I finished reading.

Marilyn put up with a lot, and I was struck by her devotion to taking care of Kelly. She married Kelly's grandfather because he was stable and she very much wanted a baby. Since she didn't have children of her own, when Kelly's mother was killed, Marilyn was the person who most wanted to take care of her. She wasn't happy with some aspects of her life and I really think she would have left had it not been for Kelly.

The idea of living on a boat in the marine seems very foreign to me, but apparently it's not that unusual. For one thing, they had lots of neighbors who also lived on their boats and they made up a pretty tight-knit community. While reading this book I happened across a new book called The Tiny Mess, which documents people who cook in tiny kitchens. Their living quarters vary from tiny houses to vans to converted water towers, but I was struck by how many people live (and cook!) on boats. They're primarily in Southern California, which is also where Kelly grew up. It's a whole world that I didn't know existed.

Mostly this book was slice-of-life in that there weren't major events or catastrophes she was documenting, but just what it was like to grow up the way she did. Always in the background though were the questions about her mother and the years leading up to her murder. Kelly got conflicting stories from family about why her mother was living on her own so young, and what her relationship with her family was like. As an adult Kelly got in touch with the investigators assigned to the case and finally learned some answers to her questions. Ultimately it was a satisfying story that explores themes about family, both blood-related and not.

We Are All Shipwrecks first caught my eye because of the title - I do love a good title - but it has languished on my To Read list for quite a while. It was the 2019 TBR Pile Challenge that finally got me to pick it up. If you're interested in delving into a quirky life filled with complex people and relationships, you may also enjoy this story.