What are you reading right now? – June 2024

I’m doing book reviews again. Jealous?

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise
by Colleen Oakley

Endearing story about an old woman and her young driver. It surprised me with every twist and turn, I laughed out loud a lot, and I highly recommend it.

“Mom, we’ve been over this. You can’t go around threatening people at gunpoint.”

“In life there are two types of friends: friends who would wish you well on your journey to battle, and friends who would jump in the trenches with you.”

“To them, she was a mother, and once a mother, you’re never quite a fully-formed person in the eyes of your children.”

Harriet the Spy
by Louise Fitzhugh

The theme for this month’s book club read was “story you loved as a child.” Harriet the Spy is a cute story, but not as wonderful as I remember as a kid. It’s dated. Harriet is a child who likes to spy on people and write about them in her notebook. That’s the plot.

Class: A memoir
by Stephanie Land

Have you seen the Netflix series Maid? It’s about a single mother who is a maid. She struggles, but works hard.

This is her life sequal. She’s in school now, after Maid, but before getting a Netflix series. She’s going to school for writing and is still on the verge of poverty. Her choices are her own, but they confuse me. She has another child when she’s not really in a place to do so. Kudos to her for it working out, though.

Devout: A memoir of doubt
by Anna Gazmarian

I’m sounding judgy, but I don’t understand people’s life decisions. This author is bipolar and extremely religious. She prays to god to take away the depression and he doesn’t. Everyone’s advice in her life boils down to read the bible, basically. It makes me want to punch these people in the face. She doesn’t turn away from her religion, though.

“I was used to this way of thinking about faith. Are you having a hard time? You must be doing something wrong. Are you feeling sad? Then you’ve only got to rely even more on God.”

Unfortunately, science fails her, too, just giving her different medications to try with terrible side effects.

I understand! It’s not fun trying to find a combination of drugs that works and it can seem like doctors just want to prescribe pills. She has treatment-resistant bipolar disorder and tries ketomatine and lithium and every drug you can think of. It’s sad to watch.

She’s dating and then, in a flash, she’s married and expecting. We’re all a product of our culture and it’s hard to leave that behind even if it doesn’t serve you. It just seems so limiting, looking at the entire world through the lens of a single religion.

But since the meds don’t work for her, I guess I kind of understand the holding tight to religion.

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
by J. Ryan Stradal

I really liked another of the author’s books, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, but this one didn’t grab me. It was a little tedious and introduced characters that went nowhere. We’re in Minnesota again and going through several generations of families. The jumping through time and between characters was a little too much for me.

White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy
by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman

I read to understand and another thing I don’t understand is the right side of the political divide in the United States. This book attempts to explain it to me. It boils down to four elements:

1. White despair. Rural ruin. Rural towns are being decimated by brain drain and corporate consolidation of farms, and automation of coal, and opiod addiction. They’re poor and getting poorer. Sparse and getting sparser. Their towns are vanishing as is their way of life.
2. Outsize political power. Thanks to the electoral college and the way we elect powerful senators, rural, white votes are worth more than those of people in big cities. There are other ethnic rages, like Native American rage and Black rage, but we only care about white, rural rage because they have so much power. Other rages are electorally impotent.
3. Veneration of white culture and values. These people are racist, basically, believing their own culture as superior to all others.
4. Media triggering of whites. They’re addicted to outrage and like that dopamine hit of indignation, which the far right media gladly stokes, even if it doesn’t mirror reality at all.

The book infuriated me, which made it hard to read. The difference in policy proposals between the democrats and the republicans is so stark. What could have been! If people stopped voting against their own interests and were able to think critically.

Barack Obama touted hope and change. Donald Trump proclaims doom and gloom. For rural, white voters, life was better before and the echoes of a more prosperous town are everywhere. Trump’s campaign was “an exercise in fantasy that allowed his supporters to indulge their desires.” Truth doesn’t matter anymore.

The authors don’t offer any solutions, only rage. Wouldn’t recommend.

Sovietstan
by Erika Fatland

I’m planning a trip to central Asia in September and read this book to get ideas on what to do and how to do it. It’s only a few years old, but already dated in terms of visa requirements and all that. The internet is probably better for planning trips as information changes so fast.

I didn’t read the whole book, just the sections on Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

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What are you reading right now?