Last week I published part 1 of my annual book post. This week is part 2: nonfiction, with assorted recommendations.
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Politics & Current Events:
Neil Barofsky, Bailout
Laura Bates, Girl Up
Alexandra Brodsky & Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, The Feminist Utopia Project
Carl Hiaasen, Dance of the Reptiles
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
John Krakauer, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Jane Mayer, Dark Money
Keith Olbermann, Pitchforks & Torches
Samantha Power: A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide
Jessica Valenti, Sex Object
Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything and Jane Mayer’s Dark Money are essential reading to understand where we are right now. Klein is pessimistic about the currently popular “make environmentalism profitable” approach — the longer we keep avoiding the major changes we need, the more painful they’ll be when we face the reality of climate change. As for Mayer’s book, the amazing thing (for me) was how the Koch crew really do sound like cartoon villains. One of the Koch brothers told a group of his fellow gazillionaires the he knew it “made them sick” to have to pretend to care about ordinary Americans. If I’d written that in fiction, any editor would tell me it was too heavy-handed.
Read a lot of good books on feminism this year. John Krakauer’s Missoula is a painfully timely examination of how both the legal system and campus administration routinely mishandle sexual assault cases. Laura Bates’s Girl Up is a book for teenage girls that doesn’t condescend or sugarcoat when it talks about sex, sexism, media, and a host of other issues. Jessica Valenti’s Sex Object jumps around a lot, but keeps coming back to the question of how different her life might have been if not for multiple encounters with being treated as prey, from subway pervs to online trolls to a creepy married friend. And The Feminist Utopia Project sought articles and artwork from women imagining a better future — and got a fascinating, extremely varied collection of responses.
I love Carl Hiaasen’s fiction, so I checked out Dance of the Reptiles, a collection of his newspaper columns. Passionate and funny commentary on environmentalism, political corruption, and the weirdness of Florida.
Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell comes to the disturbing conclusion that US policy on genocide is operating exactly as intended: always finding a way to redefine genocide as something else until the crisis has gotten much, much bigger.
Misc Nonfiction:
Sandra Boynton, Chocolate: The Consuming Passion
Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way
John Cleese, So Anyway...
Lillian Faderman, Ed., Chloe Plus Olivia
Matthew Fox & Adam Bucko, Occupy Spirituality
Stephen Levine, Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Kirk Wisland, Melancholy of Falling Men
Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is outstanding. It’s a history of the Great Migration, when African-Americans moved in large numbers from the South to the Northern cities, and how that changed both their lives and the rest of America. She follows three families from different decades, but also gives a clear overview of the whole phenomenon.
Lillian Faderman’s Chloe Plus Olivia is a collection of lesbian writing from the 17th century to the late 20th century. It includes letters, journal entries, poetry, fiction, articles, and drama, from famous writers and everyday people. She notes the cultural evolution from “romantic friendships” (which were viewed as ordinary and not necessarily sexualized), through the pathologizing of the Freudian era, the use of coded images, the emergence of lesbian-feminism, and beyond.
Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue was extremely entertaining, but a fellow kossack pointed out a number of inaccuracies in it. Which is too bad, because I’m a word nerd who loves delving into the many weirdnesses of English and other languages.
John Cleese’s So Anyway was surprisingly understated, and included some painful personal stories about his mother’s struggle with mental illness. It’s not the Monty Python tone I expected, though it does mention the origins of some of the Python sketches.
For anyone interested in Buddhism or spirituality in general, I highly recommend Stephen Levine’s Becoming Kuan Yin. It’s both insightful and beautifully written.
Poetry:
Sara Adams, Think Like a B
Bryan Borland, Ed., Lady Business: A Celebration of Lesbian Poetry
Kate Farrell, Ed., Art & Love
Leah Gorlick, For Your Own Good
Patricia Monaghan, Seasons of the Witch
Marge Piercy, Made in Detroit
Carolyne Wright et al, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workplace
I have two requirements for poetry: it has to be (1) comprehensible, and (2) actually about something. Marge Piercy always delivers, and Made in Detroit covers topics from politics to love to aging — but especially politics.
Leah Gorlick wrote For Your Own Good because she’d couldn’t find anything else that reflected her experience of being sexually assaulted by a female lover. It’s a powerful read, but it would have helped if the epilogue explaining the context for the poems had been at the front instead.
Raising Lilly Ledbetter is a great collection of poems by women about work, from scientists to office drones (shout out to the social workers!).
Art & Love is a collection of love poems — some famous, some obscure — paired with paintings from the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pairings are well done, giving fresh dimension to both the writing & art.
Sara Adams’s Think Like a B is a brief collection of “erasure poems.” She took pages from Donald Trump’s Think Like a Billionaire and removed words until left with poems he probably wouldn’t appreciate. Even better, the proceeds go the ACLU.
Plays:
Berthold Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Berthold Brecht, Life of Galileo
Berthold Brecht, The Resistable Rise of Umberto Ui
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist
Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Faire
Ben Jonson, Volpone
Moliere, The Doctor Despite Himself
Moliere, The Misanthrope
Moliere, Such Foolish Affected Ladies
Moliere, Tartuffe
Reading comedies from another era, it’s interesting that some tropes stand the test of time, like the religious hypocrite (Tartuffe), the con artists who get their just desserts (Volpone, The Alchemist, The Doctor Despite Himself), and mistaken identity (Such Foolish Affected Ladies, The Doctor Despite Himself). Others, not so much, like beating the servants, and domestic violence played for laughs.
Brecht’s Resistable Rise of Umberto Ui is an odd satire, portraying Hitler as a Chicago mobster cornering the market on cauliflower. The message is that his rise was indeed resistable. And for some reason I’m reminded of someone else...give me a minute, it’ll come to me….
On to Top Comments!
From ZenTrainer:
Very funny comment series here. I hope it shows which one it's answering. Too exhausted to link all the parties properly but it was nice to come home to a laugh. (Note from Tara: start with this innocent comment from dconrad, then this response from BMScott, and an afterthought by markdd.)
From your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
The latest, ahem, “leaks” about Trump have inspired a number of hilarious but kinda-gross responses. Bryduck highlighted this meme from Dr A W Niloc, and I LOL’d even as I groaned.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: