They Can't Kill Us All

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery (2016)

If you've paid any attention to what's been going on in the United States in the last several years, you know about the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and many other black men at the hands of the police. Journalist Wesley Lowery was on the ground in Ferguson, MO and several other cities over the course of the year, observing the aftermath of these shootings close up. His book is a different perspective on the stories we're familiar with, but it also puts these recent events in a larger historical context of racial justice movements.

This was not at all a pleasant book to read, though it was short and fairly easy to follow. It's just not a story one wants to delve into for pleasure so I sort of had to force my way through it. I knew about all these deaths already, have closely followed the aftermath (well, from afar anyhow), and have made a point in the last year or so to read about race and policing and related issues. It's not a pretty picture.

I remember after Michael Brown was shot, when Ferguson was in chaos, and many well-intentioned people pointed out how unnecessary the rioting and burning and looting were. But what many of us didn't realize is that police had been shooting black people in that neighborhood for years, and before it blew up into a newsworthy revolt it didn't grab anyone's attention. This particular shooting was the straw that broke the camel's back, and the people of Ferguson made sure everyone knew about it.

The fact is that police are all local, the decentralization making it hard to hold them accountable at any but the most local level, and they have an almost unilateral right to kill people. This is horrifying. And it doesn't help that our police forces have the power to arm themselves with military equipment. Their job - or so I was always taught - was to keep the peace. But as Lowery describes in one scene about a demonstration in West Baltimore, it was volunteers who had to stand between protestors and police and de-escalate. Why aren't police taught to de-escalate situations? It looks an awful lot like they don't want to. And no, not all police are horrible. Lowery includes a passage when a Black Lives Matter volunteer named Mica Grimm attended a small conference at the White House. A police chief in attendance slipped her a note saying "Don't be deterred from speaking truth to power." Yet the violence and racism is undoubtedly systemic and pervasive.

It made me so mad, and I was already mad about this. I'm mad that we have to come out and say things like "black lives matter" AND that so many people are upset by that statement. I'm mad that this is all ingrained into the fabric of our society in such a way it's hard to get at, and it feels like there is literally nothing I can do about the injustice. Lowery includes the following Einstein quote: "The world will not be destroyed by evil, but by those who watch without doing anything." This is similar to the oft-quoted "First they came for the Socialists..." piece, and it's all true. I guess just speaking out whenever there's an opportunity, protesting when there's a protest, and learning as much as possible about these issues is a start. I'm sure not going to sit by and just watch it all continue to happen. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to even realize the extent of the problem.

Anyhow, this is less a review than an angry diatribe about racial injustice in the United States, but I do urge you to read this book if that's something you want to learn about. (And you do, right?) I've already read The New Jim Crow, which I think should be required reading, and this is a great follow-up as it gets into events that have happened since The New Jim Crow was published. I'd love other suggestions of books on this topic if you have them.

This book fulfills the "race" category of my 2017 Personal Reading Challenge. I've read other books this year that would probably have fit, like You Can't Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. But I wanted to pick something that focused exclusively on race and this was the first one picked up that does so. I've ready plenty of articles, watched YouTube videos, and listened to many episodes of the Code Switch podcast, so it's not as though I haven't been paying attention to these issues, but this is the first book I picked up this year focused solely on race.

Miracle Morning

Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8am) by Hal Elrod (2012)

I wasn't going to post about this book that I picked up impulsively and was very cynical about. I mean, when I saw the "before 8am" part, I almost didn't open it. But the thing is, as much as I hate getting up early, I've always thought I'd be way more productive and together if I made it a habit to get up at an excruciating hour and get stuff done. I think I first heard about this book in the FB community for the By the Book podcast - which you should totally be listening to. It's two women reading and living by self-help books and talking about their experiences. A couple of people suggested this as a future book, and then it popped up somewhere else - a blog? A list of recommend self-help books? - and that was enough for me to request it from the library.

The basic idea of the book is that you should start your day with a series of activities abbreviated with the handy acronym SAVERS. Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing. Silence is meditation or prayer, and I already meditate, but not in the early morning because for a time I did get up extra-early to meditate and it just felt like an extension of sleep. Affirmations are new to me (I just think of Stuart Smalley, and Elrod admits that was also his first thought) but apparently the idea is that you rewire your thinking about yourself by replacing your negative thoughts ("I always screw up everything!") with positive ones ("I am a competent professional who excels at my job".) It makes a sort of sense. Visualization is basically what it sounds like, visualizing what you want your life to be like. Exercise is exercise. Obviously. Reading refers specifically to that related to personal development (i.e. self-help books), and Scribing is writing (because SAVERW is not a good acronym) and can be anything, but Elrod recommends writing in a journal.

The book is only about 128 pages, which includes a lot of padding and repetition because honestly this is not a difficult concept. There's also a lot of the irritating cheerleading that is present in pretty much every self-help book ever. You can make your life whatever you want it to be! If your life isn't awesome, it's your own fault! You can make a ton of money if only you want it enough! Seriously, he says that if you surround yourself with wealthy people you will be wealthy. Most infuriatingly, he says that 95% of people are just settling for mediocrity because they can't be bothered to make their lives better. Yes kids, most people are lazy and they suck. Super nice, Elrod. Way to show compassion for your fellow humans. As much as he insists he's not blaming people when bad things happen to them, he really sort of is. Oh, and he also says that writing a bestseller is "easy." Ugh. Anyhow, I ignored the stuff that annoyed me and focused on the bits that seemed helpful.

One thing he said really stuck with me. He talked a little about one's life purpose, a concept that I find frustrating and confounding. I don't know my life's purpose and with a lot of self-helpy stuff, you can't go anywhere if you don't know that. Anyhow, Elrod said at one point that it's not something you "figure out," you "make it up, create it, decide what you want it to be." It might be a semantic nuance, but the way he put it makes me feel so much better. I can totally just pick something! And then if it doesn't seem right, pick something else! This makes so much more sense than the idea that you must look deep within yourself to try and discover your life's purpose which is surely hidden in there somewhere.

There are some practical considerations to doing all these 6 things before getting for work. He suggests either a 30-minute or 60-minute Miracle Morning, with some suggested breakdowns for how much time to spend on each activity. My concern, though, is the time it takes to move from one to the other. And, like, the first day I tried doing all the things, I started with meditation and spent the whole time thinking about how the other activities would go and what order I should do them in and I never write in a journal so what should I write about? Elrod says that he arranges everything he'd need the night before so it's all ready for him when he gets up. Journal, yoga DVD, etc. This makes sense. I suspect that some of the other kinks might work themselves out with practice.

I'm still concerned about the actual getting-up-early aspect though, which I think is where I'm going to get stuck. I wonder if it's enough to just do all these things every day and not necessarily all in the morning, but I guess the idea is that you're starting your day off making sure that you feel like your best self before you tackle everything you need to do. I don't know how much of this I'll implement, but I do know that currently I'm not off and running in the mornings, and I don't always go into work with the best mindset to do a good job, so I'm willing to try. I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes in my monthly wrap-up!

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017)

Evelyn Hugo is an actress who rose to fame in the 1950s and became as well-known for her string of marriages as for her acting skill. But she has always kept her private life as private as possible. Now elderly, she contacts a little-known journalist named Monique to write her life story for her, as long as she promises not to publish until after Hugo's death. Monique is baffled about why Hugo chose her, but is happy to listen as Evelyn Hugo finally reveals her secrets, once and for all.

This is a marked departure from Reid's other books. It is more....literary? I'm sure a book reviewer would say it far surpasses her other books which, though they have very thought-provoking themes, are written in a light breezy style. Here, we get all the detail and description of a typical historical novel as we hear the full story of a fascinating woman's scandalous life. I certainly can't fault it - it's a great book - but I'm disappointed because I so enjoy Reid's typical, unique style.

But without comparing it to her other books, there is little to criticize. There's one thing, though, and that's the whole framing device of Monique and her story. I'm not a fan of this device in books as it's usually superfluous. It is here, too. There's a purpose, of course, something you learn at the end that ties their two stories together, but I found Hugo's story interesting enough without it. As often happens in books with this structure, we didn't get enough of Monique's story or get it often enough to keep it in my mind. So every time the focus switched back to her I had to remind myself what was going on with her, sometimes needing to flip back in the book searching for the last bit about her. I also just didn't think Monique was a very good character. For a journalist, she sure made a lot of assumptions and jumped to conclusions, sometimes without even hearing out what Evelyn was trying to say.

Despite these flaws, it was a pretty great book. Evelyn Hugo's story was incredibly compelling. The big question posed early on was "Who was the love of your life?" With seven husbands, there were plenty to choose from, and there had always been questions about which of her marriages were for love and which for convenience or to help her career. But it turns out - and this is revealed fairly early - that the love of Evelyn's life was another actress, Celia St. James. Anyone in a same-sex relationship at that time had to think long and hard about how to conduct their lives, and who to reveal themselves to; of course that went double if they were famous. If a regular person lost a job because their boss found out they were in a same-sex relationship, that person could still find another job even if they had to move to another town to do it. But a famous person is too well-known to escape any information that is revealed about them. Evelyn and Celia spent literally decades trying to navigate their situation, sometimes breaking up for years before inevitably coming together again.

Meanwhile, there were marriages, and Evelyn did love at least a couple of her husbands. The first one was just to get her out of her town, and she even got married once or twice to distract the press from other situations she didn't want them to focus on. One she married for love, and he turned out to be abusive. Another, Harry Cameron, was a close friend throughout her life. Ultimately, she was a smart woman who knew how to manipulate people to get what she wanted. Her choices weren't always kind, but they were usually thoughtful.

As long as I don't think about how this book compares to her others, I like it quite a bit! It just feels like a lot of other people's books, and her older books don't. But if I need another fix of the old-school, Taylor Jenkins Reid, I still haven't read her very first book, Forever, Interrupted. If you like historical fiction, especially about Hollywood lives, I'd recommend The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

August wrap-up and plans for September

Reading

I had a lot of assigned reading this month! But I also managed to read a few things that are pretty new that I had been anticipating, such as The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, Young Jane Young, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (which I'm just finishing up now.)

I finished reading for the IPNE book awards, which is a relief. I haven't posted reviews because I can't until after the winners are announced and by then they won't be fresh in my mind, so I've just decided not to review these ones.

My other assigned reading was for my library's Community Read committee, for which I read Homegoing and The Only Road. Homegoing was also on my Personal Challenge list for the year, so I was going to read it anyhow.

Let's check the categories I'm tracking!

Reading Challenge List: Homegoing, as I mentioned, and The Fold by Peter Clines

CBAM: Ugh, fail. They were reading Northanger Abbey which I just read last year, so I was going to read Sense and Sensibility - AND count it for Austen in August as well - but I only got as far as checking a copy of the book out of the library and then returning it soon after. Boo.

Romance: Falling for Trouble by Sarah Title

Nonfiction: Another fail. But I just grabbed a copy of They Can't Kill Us All, and I have The Fact of a Body on its way to me, so maybe I'll make up for it in September.

Listening

Gratuitous dog photo

I listened to the first two books of His Dark Materials as preparation for the new Philip Pullman coming out this fall.

I found the most amazing new podcast!
By the Book is hosted by two hilarious women who read and live by self-help books and talk about their experiences. I love it!

Unexpectedly, I also caught a live show this month. There's the old English ska band called The Selecter that Eric loves and they came to the US and played very near us. It's all about the lead singer, Pauline Black, who is 63 years old now (!) but still amazing and energetic. I'm not into going to 10pm shows in the middle of week, especially when I don't know about it ahead of time, but I saw them a few years ago and knew it was a show not to be missed!

Watching

I'm still watching Doctor Who, and I think that's basically it. I haven't watched any other show or movie. But I've watched enough episodes to get a decent amount of knitting done.

Knitting

I finished my Waterfall Rib socks finally, and ripped back and restarted my East Neuk Hoodie. I'm still not sure if it's right, but the only way to be sure is to keep going and see how it turns out. It's so tempting to start another project right now, but I'm just not that kind of a knitter anymore. If I get back to knitting every day, then I can have multiple projects going.

Eating

For years, we've struggled with taking lunches to work. I know it's the way to go - both financially and healthwise - but coming up with make-ahead food that is transportable, filling, healthy, and delicious is a challenge. Plus, as much as I like a good sandwich, I don't have extra time in the mornings to prep anything so what I'm taking for lunch needs to be ready to go when I am. Recently, we've somewhat given up in that we're just not doing this together anymore. Eric is....I don't know what he's doing. I guess going out to lunch every day? I'm still bringing lunch, but at least I can just pick something and not worry about whether he'll like it, who's actually going to make the thing, etc. I have a whole Pinterest board for food. It's ridiculous. Recently I made My Big Fat Greek Quinoa Salad and Mediterranean Pasta Salad. In the summer, I like to eat lunch outside in the park behind the library, so something I can eat cold is a must. This week, however, I've been bringing prepared/frozen entrees from Trader Joe's. It's kind of a treat actually, because I haven't gone to a Trader Joe's in ages and one just opened up near me. 

Soon I'll be able to make soups and casseroles again, which are good for bringing to work. But it's always an extra thing to do on the weekend. If only we cooked big meals every night, there would always be something leftover for work. But that's completely unrealistic, and usually if we make something for dinner that has leftovers, we eat them another day for dinner.

I've thought about just going out to lunch more, as there are plenty of options near my work. But sometimes I don't want to take the time to do that, or go outside the building in bad weather. It's such a dilemma.

How do you deal with work lunch? What are your favorite foods to make ahead of time to bring to work? I can use any and all advice on this!

Doing

A room with a pew

The trip to the spa on my Bermuda cruise has sort of kindled my interest in finding good personal care products, so I subscribed to Birchbox. I really enjoyed my first box!

I'm still running twice a week, and getting back on a more regular meditation schedule.

I took a random day off from work because I have a lot of time I need to use before the end of the year, and I devoted it to going through some old photos. This is part of my effort to pull together a room we recently had redone that I've sort of taken over as my meditation room / room of solitude / happy place. The church pew I bought back in June is in there, and I've added candles and an art print that I checked out of the library and I'm keeping it all very tidy and cozy and calming because god knows I have no control over the rest of the house. That's my meditation cushions underneath the pew in the photo. I just slide them out when I need to use them.

Plans for September

As much as I don't feel like I've had enough summer, I do have some fun plans for fall. Next week I'll be camping for the first time in a few years and I can't wait! A couple of weeks after that is my annual trip to CT with my sisters and niece to visit my aunt. It's just a relaxing weekend of sitting around lazily and eating things, with occasional activities thrown in, but I've come to really look forward to it every year. We started doing it after my mother died so we'd be sure to still see our aunt occasionally, and I kind of wish we had started this years ago!

I don't know when this will start, but I think a couple of my friends and I will be reading Middlemarch together this fall.

How was your August?

Young Jane Young

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin (2017)

When Aviva Grossman was in college, she worked as a congressional intern and had an affair with her boss that became public. Much like Monica Lewinsky, Aviva was then slut-shamed and though the story was soon overshadowed by the events of 9/11 she was never quite forgotten. The story of her downfall and invention is told in five parts, from five different perspectives.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, or who tells different parts of the story, because it's too much fun to discover all of that for yourself. But I can tell you that Aviva had a very difficult time getting a job after this scandal broke. And that the first part of the story was told by Aviva's divorced mother about a series of first dates she goes on when she's in her sixties. And part of the story is told through a series of emails written by a precocious young girl to her Indonesian pen pal. And that the final section of the book is written as a Choose Your Own Adventure.

Young Jane Young was just released on August 22, but if you can snag a copy soon I'd recommend it for one of your last days at the beach. It's easy and quick and enjoyable to read, but it will also give you some food for thought. I'm still mulling over a few things that, to me, seem a little unresolved. I have questions. The main theme, of course, is about slut-shaming and how to move past the errors of one's youth. (Monica Lewinsky did a great TED Talk about her experiences, by the way.) It's also about infidelity and the ways women respond to unfaithful husbands, as well as mother/daughter relationships.

In case you can't tell, this is an unabashedly feminist novel. Some of the characters claim not to be feminists, as many women in real life also do (though I've honestly never understood those women.) There's a discussion about moving out of the way for people on the sidewalk, and how some men just seem to assume the crowd will part for them; when Aviva sees a man she dislikes walking down the street like he owns it, she decides she won't step aside as everyone else is doing and has a small but triumphant moment when he must step aside for her. There's a brief conversation about "gaydar" in which someone points out that it's just based on prejudice and people with gaydar are actually bigots. (Which...right? Isn't gaydar just stereotyping?) The aforementioned young child has a transgender teacher and learns a couple of lessons about what that means and how to speak respectfully about trans people (though, unfortunately, she wasn't corrected for her use of the word "transgendered.")

The more I think about it, the more I think this could be a good novel for a book group. I imagine some great discussions about escaping from the past, who has the right to know what about other people, controlling information about oneself and meddling in other people's lives, and of course publicly shaming women for doing the same things men do all the time with barely any repercussions, and various other feminist issues. But whether you read it with a group or alone, if you like funny, feminist novels you should definitely read it!

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (2017)

In the 18th century, it was popular for well-off young men to take a Grand Tour of Europe after finishing school and before settling down with the responsibilities of adulthood. For Henry "Monty" Montague, this means traveling with his best friend Percy and his sister Felicity. Monty is a complete rake and has just been kicked out of school; the tour is his last opportunity to prove to his father that he's not a complete screw-up. Felicity, who has always wanted an education, is to be dropped at a finishing school along the way. And they are to be accompanied by a stuffy chaperone, whose job apparently is to make sure they don't have any fun at all. But it goes off the rails rather early and the group ends up being attacked by highwaymen, captured by pirates, and having an amazing adventure, during which they all grow up quite a bit and come to learn their own value.

Did I mention that Henry is in love with Percy? Or that Felicity is more suited to medical school than finishing school? Or that Percy is biracial? There is a lot going on in this novel, and it is all completely my sort of catnip. The Gentleman's Guide came out in June, but I heard about it last winter when a librarian I used to work with raved about it after reading an advanced copy. I was sold on the cover alone.

It seems a bit long (500 pages) but it's super easy to read! I sped through it in just a few days. The author uses a lot of period terminology I was unfamiliar with and had fun looking things up (xebecs, cicerone) even though in most cases I could get the general gist from the context. Monty is the narrator and his voice is just so casual and flip, but fun and witty. He describes his own dimples as "so deep you could pour tea into them." Yes, he is egotistical and self-centered. Although Percy is his best friend, it has never occurred to him that Percy is often treated differently because of his brown skin, often mistaken for a servant or a slave. Monty is also such an incredible flirt. He's the Jack Harkness of the early 18th century. He's attracted to everyone, it seems, male and female alike. In one scene Percy says "You would play the coquette with a well-upholstered sofa." The two young men banter so much that they can't decide if the other one is reciprocating romantic feelings or not, and if those feelings are serious or just more about having fun for the moment.

I've barely mentioned the plot and adventure! Near the beginning of the tour, Monty is already partying a little too heartily. He ends up in a compromising position with the mistress of the Duke of Bourbon (whom he has already offended) and manages to steal a valuable object during the escapade. He just swiped the small puzzle box to piss off the Duke, thinking it was nothing but a trinket, but of course it turns out to be more valuable than he ever could have imagined. This theft sets the whole rest of the adventure in motion, as the group is now being pursued by those trying to help the Duke get it back, but when it's discovered that the Duke stole it himself, Monty thinks they should return it to the rightful owners. The adventure takes them all over Europe in a very different sort of Tour than they had planned.

I could go on at length and quote more passages that I like and talked about how much I like the characters (and can we have another book in which Felicity is the star?*) but just go ahead and read it for yourself!

(*After investigating Mackenzi Lee's forthcoming books, I've learned that there will be a sequel and it will be about Felicity. It's called The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, because of course it is. 2018!)

The Only Road

The Only Road by Alexandria Diaz (2016)

Jaime and his cousin Miguel were asked to join a gang in their native Guatemala and refused, and now Miguel is dead. The gang wants Jaime and his cousin Angela, so their parents decide the only solution is for the two to make their way to the United States to live with Jaime's older brother. They don't have passports or very much money, but their families pool everything they've got and make a plan. Together, Jaime and Angela take buses and trains, stay in refugee camps, and entrust themselves to strangers - sometimes regretting it - to try and escape to a better life.

This is one of our picks for the Community Read committee at my library. We asked for suggestions from the public and many, many people wanted something about immigration. This definitely fits the bill, and it's a middle grade book so it's accessible to people of many ages.

I found it pretty easy to get into, and I liked the characters a lot. Jaime was a budding artist and as he traveled, his sketchbook was his prized possession and he was always worried about losing it. I can't even imagine leaving my life for another country with only a backpack. How do you decide what to bring? Angela was almost sixteen and I think she felt a responsibility to be a bit more in charge, but also she was only sixteen. I know that in real life kids do leave their homes for similar reason and try to get to the US and it is mind-boggling. They're kids! It's hard enough for an adult to do what they did.

I think my only criticism really is that, despite the hardships and dangers of this journey, I felt like these characters probably wouldn't have made it in real life. They would have been caught and sent back home, stranded somewhere in Mexico for years, or killed. They just kept lucking out. But the author acknowledges this in her note at the end and, really, it's a book for kids. You can have a couple of people die or go missing, but you've got to let these kids reach their destination fairly unscathed or nobody is going to let their kid read this. I think it's a good way to introduce the idea of immigration, and the necessity and dangers of illegal immigration, without scaring the pants off kids. You just want to make them be compassionate, not traumatized.

This was pretty good, despite my trepidation because it's a middle grade book which I'm not usually super keen on. Also, you may not have noticed, but I don't ever read any kind of Latin American literature. I once tried reading Love in the Time of Cholera and then I tried reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and I couldn't get through either of them and I became convinced that I just dislike Latin American books and/or authors, and that something is very very wrong with me. This is ridiculous of course, and I'm very glad to have actually finished and enjoyed this book because maybe it will snap me out of this silly mindset. Oh! And there's a glossary of all the Spanish words used, which would have been awesome to know about before I reached the end (though it was easy to figure them out through context.)

In terms of the Community Read, I don't yet know what my top pick will be, but I can at least say that I wouldn't be upset if this was it. It's not the sort of book that I'll be thinking about for weeks and recommending to everyone I know, but it was a good story on a topic that is important and relevant and I enjoyed reading it.