9 posts tagged “nonfiction”
I'm supposed to be reading this:
To wit: Last Monday I took a group of 38 8th graders to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose. For those not blessed to be living in the great city of San Jose, this library is a combined public/academic library, dripping with cool art and hidden surprises, the "biggest all-new library west of the Mississippi" (meaning what? exactly) and simply chock-full of awesomeness. Even the 8th graders liked the trip (although I think Caltrain + great weather + lunch on college campus - dorky librarian + unsupervised "book hunting" via escalator might have tipped the scales for me). So far, so good. But I also somehow managed to check out about 99 books on behalf of these middle schoolers, which I think we all know ends badly. For me. And for the MLK library. Oh well.
Instead of Out Stealing Horses, I'm reading this:
which despite its title lacks much HOT JUSTICE-ON-JUSTICE action.However, dirty ol' Clarence Thomas notwithstanding, thus far it's pretty fascinating! I was engrossed in the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsberg (did everyone else know that Mario Cuomo was supposed to get her seat? !!!) while I was supposed to be watching Ainsley and her next-door friend play hide-and-seek, and then I had to take said friend home with a big Band-Aid leaking blood. I blame all my poor parenting on the Supreme Court, but usually it's Antonin Scalia that bears the brunt.
And now, book updates from past posts (from sucks to rules):
Paper Towns: COMPLETELY RULES. John Green has completely locked up the funny-not-popular-high-school-boy voice. Even though his books are all the same, they are all so good that it's impossible to be disappointed.
Hunger Games: Rules, but ends with a cheesy To-Be-Continued that sucks.
Into the Volcano: Sucks for the first 3rd, then RULES through the end. Also makes me want to surf.
Erraturm: Eh. Doesn't suck, doesn't rule. Leans toward the suck end of things. And truly too confusing and complex for the age group it appears to be written for. How many fourth graders have a passing knowledge of many-worlds and string theory?
Oh, boy, am I proud to be an American today. Not so proud to be a Californian, but so proud of my country for electing Barack Obama in dare I say a LANDSLIDE. (Or it will be when NC's votes finally come in. ) Look at that beautiful blue map, folks.
Eric and I spent Election Night at Silicon Valley for Obama's big party at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which was pretty fantastic. I know most of those people put in WAY more time and effort than I did in getting Obama elected, but besides a few bucks sent to Howard Dean in 2003, I've never been remotely involved in anything political besides casting my ballot. So for me, knocking on doors before the primary, going to house parties before the convention, calling swing states this past month (with my MOM, no less!), putting up my Obama and No on 8 signs in our window ... it feels like the height of civic engagement. And with Obama's election, it feels like the dream of grassroots movements isn't dead, that unlikely dreams can prevail with enough people caring and doing just a little bit more.
I bet it feels that way for a lot of people today.
(Here's the tenuous book-related content): I read
Maybe he won't be able to achieve everything we've asked of him. Maybe we won't be able to do everything I hope he asks of us. But I think it's possible that the movement is bigger than the one person, and that how I feel -- that my contribution can make a difference, that my vote is important, that I'm not just a taxpayer or a constituent but a CITIZEN and that I too can bring about change -- is not my feeling alone but a feeling shared by millions of others who never dreamed that a day like this would happen in their lifetimes, if ever. So many wounds are beginning to heal today. So many wrongs are beginning to be rectified.
And then California has to go and harsh the vibe by stripping away basic human rights from fellow citizens. It's sad that the exultation about Obama's election is so tempered and tainted with the deep sorrow and outrage I feel about Prop 8 passing.
Let's hope the courts do the right thing again.
Hey, everyone! Looking for an antidote to all this doom-and-gloom market news? Need a little feel-good pick-me-up?
This ain't it:
But really, who hasn't needed help in their lives? Who hasn't made some bad decisions and needed to be bailed out? That's where your reliable friends and family come in. I speak from the position of ineffable privilege, since I had NONE of these poverty risk factors (totally stable, affluent upbringing), and managed to make absolutely NO stupid teenage decisions to derail my march to the Ivy League. In fact, my entire pre-adult experience can be summed up in this brief, completely true episode, circa 1992:
ME: What are we doing tonight?
Non-sexually-threatening, possible gay high school boyfriend: Let's go to this party.
(We arrive at the party. There is beer.)
NSTPGHSB: Are you going to drink?
ME: No, I have to drive (thanks, DARE!)
NSTPGHSB: Me neither. Let's go to a movie.
ME: Sure, but I should call my mom and tell her my plans have changed.
(We both responsibly call our parents.)
MOMS: Your plans have changed? You are leaving the beer party to go to a movie? You must have secret teenage ulterior sex-and-drug-related motives. Come home right now!
Damn.
But I digress. Even I, with advantages a-plenty -- personal, parental, educational, societal -- made some stupid decisions as a young independent and needed to be Bailed Out by my parents with cash. Had I no safely net, no one to help me out, these silly, easily-made errors would likely be dogging me and my credit rating still. Stupid, easily fixed, and yet somehow we let families be crushed by this for generations.
This book took a much different tone than Nickel and Dimed, although it covers a lot of the same ground. It did a much better job, I think, in examining the many factors that contribute to entrenched poverty, and doesn't canonize any of the people it pictures, the way Barbara Ehrenreich's book did a little. Not a quick read, and not uplifting -- it left me more disheartened with the problem than Fired Up, Ready To Go -- but still, compelling.
Another thing this book taught me: I am the only middle-class American that cleans my own house. Even my robot slave Scooba went all SkyNet on me and I mop my own floor. Seriously, a chapter of this book was devoted to the unhealthy stressors of poverty, which included cleaning one's own house. Once people claw their way above the poverty line, apparently their first call is to the Merry Maids.
I came to teaching through a program called San Jose Teaching Fellows, which was a "highly selective [and unsurprisingly defunct now, I believe -- AZB] program that is mobilizing talented young and mid-career professionals" to teach in the pretty dismal San Jose Unified School District. Not nearly as selective as Teach For America, and not nearly as demanding, it seems, from reading this book. But pretty darn demanding and exhausting as it was.
Donna Foote does a pretty good job of balanced reporting as she follows several TFA "corps members" through their first year in an LA high school. She represents their passion and energy, their disillusionment and "reillusionment", and their successes without completely endorsing The Program. As a "career teacher" (kinda) and an employee
of a wealthy private school (totally), I am deeply conflicted about TFA and this book did nothing to bring me down on either side of the fence. These teachers are passionate, but utterly unpracticed (and untested); they are not yet burned out (and yet they almost ALL LEAVE when their two years are up, if they make it that long); they are only assigned to schools that ALREADY have gigantic turnover -- but they do seem to make a difference in their short tenure.
Two things that were somewhat compelling -- the principal of the school in question described his conversion from anti- to pro-TFA as coming to see them as soldiers. We have a volunteer army in which people enlist for brief, finite amounts of time (at least, we used to before GWB's endless war kicked in), they receive brief but intense training, and then they learn on the job, so to speak. (Although, as I write this, don't you think we might be doing a bit better in Iraq if our soldiers needed to take a tyear-long credentialling program, pass a Middle East proficiency exam and spend a year observing a "master soldier"? Hmm.)
The other was a quote from Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA, who said that part of the goal of TFA was not only to provide excellent teachers for underserved areas, but to grow a network of Leaders who would have first-hand experience of educational inequity. So that, once they leave TFA, and go to law school, and then run for office, the Crisis in Education will be seared into their personal values and commitments.
That actually makes a lot of sense, copout though it is in terms of address the "teach-for-awhile" stigma.
My personal feeling is ... I was such a shitty teacher in my first year, and I'm so much better now. It has nothing to do with the ridiculously stupid and worthless credentialing program I went through, and everything to do with experience, confidence and SEEING OTHER TEACHERS DO THEIR THING (even the bad ones!). What we ought to have is apprenticeships, where you pass a few tests to weed out the total idiots, then spend a year or two being an OBSERVATIONAL AIDE in a classroom in the field where you want to work. You get paid, the teacher gets some assistance, you get to see how to do it or not do it, and then you've got experience to draw on before you ever enter a classroom. Fit some student teaching in there somewhere. Maybe some of the methods classes. Who knows?
And -- go year-round. There, I've said it. 4 days a week of regular curriculum, 1 day of enrichment or remedial instruction for the kids, 1 day of planning for the teacher. ALL YEAR ROUND. And all those teachers who took the job simply so they could veg by the pool in July and August (and because the coursework is sooo easy) can go work in fast food.
Here are two slightly divergent views of America. In Why We Buy (which should more accurately be titled How We Buy, since there is almost nothing on the the yawning abyss of soul-crushing emptiness inside that impels us Beyond Bed and Bath with credit cards aloft) takes us on the journey of Paco the Erstwhile Anthropologist, who spins his ethnographic credentials into a lucrative consulting business telling Target where it should locate its Ladies' Unmentionables. Sample tip from Dr. Paco to retailers: Your shoppers only have two hands! Make sure that shopping baskets are always available to them -- throughout the store -- so that Impulse Shopping can take place once two items are already selected! Also, if your grocery store has a Starbucks, make sure your carts have cupholders!
I valued this book because it enabled me to more educatedly thwart the merchandisers' attempt to seduce me with their colorful, touchable, and well-fonted product. Get thee behind me, merchandisers! I also think it sounds like too much fun to be one of the researchers at this firm, spying -- um, gathering data on unsuspecting shoppers as they are jostled from behind in the handbag section and as they squat to retrieve their herbal remedies. Like Papua New Guinea, but air-conditioned!
Humanity has been take onver by a parasitic (but gentle and peaceful) race known on this planet as "souls." One such soul is implanted into a human, but the human's consciousness does not go gently, which results in a kind of one-body-two-minds situation. Adventure and romance ensue.
This was a great, fun read, but what rescues it from being complete beach trash, to me, is the horror these peaceful parasites feel at humanity's casual and constant violence towards enemies and friends alike. They chose this planet to occupy specifically because they saw it being destroyed by human greed and hatred, and saw our wonderfully evolved human bodies (so many senses! so much emotion!) going to such waste. There are a few very funny scenes dealing with this -- one where a human tells a "soul" that the humans knew they were here when all the criminals and junkies started showing up at police stations and emergency rooms to turn themselves in and all the news shows just covered uplifting human-interest stories. Another great scene is where two humans in hiding are watching a basketball game, where two competitors stand next to the ball saying, "Take it, I'm the one that knocked it out of bounds." Ha HA!
... my vacation back East was wonderful. Despite my scary books, we had an absolutely fabulous time seeing my parents, my grandparents, my new baby cousin Benjamin (!!) and his parents, having some lovely together time with my husband, going to the beach, watching Crazy East Coast Apocalypse thunderstorms. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
One of the things Eric almost enjoyed was playing a round of golf with my dad. (Said round was interrupted early by aforementioned C.E.C.A.T.) My dad has been an avid golfer since forever, and upon our arrival presented Ainsley with her own set of clubs.
Ainsley got quite the golf education.
Another great part of this book is that he golfs with Mike Lupica, who has some great middle grade/YA sports novels (I think he writes grown-up stuff too). I do get him confused
I also just finished Maps and Legends, by Michael Chabon, whom I love, and it was excellent. Happily, I'd read all the books of his own he discusses in these essays, and much of the other literature as well (His Dark Materials and The Road, anyway, and Will Eisner stuff). Sandy's blog reminded me that I wanted to read this, but I think I liked it more than she did. At least, I found this non-fiction to be very straightforward and clearly written, whereas sometimes I find M.C.'s fictional prose to be a bit dense. Like, for instance, the serialization of Gentlemen of the Road? Come again? I felt like I was just learning English. Not so with the book. I felt perfectly proficient in the language, thank you very much.
This should be read solely for the tale of Michael Chabon accidentally pissing off the universe of Yiddish speakers. Which reminds me: everyone go read Outwitting History. Right now.If you are a lover of books, of immigrants, of lost causes, of old Jewish ladies that feed you too much and say "nu?" (and who isn't?) you must read this book. You will be inspired. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll thank me.
This was nevertheless a very quick and interesting read, following (go figure) the six days in October when the stock market loses more than 25% of its value. Fascinating how the stock market worked then, how trades were conducted and recorded (oy, the paperwork! all the poor clerks pulling all-nighters during this crash!), all the collusion, and how the bankers tried (unsuccessfully) to prop up the market by marching in to the exchange and placing large buy orders in a commanding voice for over the asking price (so low tech!).
My own copy lacks the humiliating "Wall Street Journal Book for Children" so prominently placed. So it's cool; I can read it on the train.
But how, you wonder? Am I not busy reading vampire teen novels and doing crosswords? Allow me to lay out my new strategy for Easy Knowledge Acquisition. I am going to read non-fiction intended for middle grade readers!
Yes, it's true. I've already begun this new regimen with another other recent awesome book: The Real Benedict Arnold. I knew next to nothing about BA prior to this book, other than he was a traitor in the Revolution. Treason seems kinda interesting to me, but did I want to seek out some damn David McCullough ten-pound tome to learn more? Absolutely not. But this book is well-written, well-researched, and just detailed enough for me to learn EVERYTHING I want to know about BA in 200-ish pages and a few hours of reading. I've even picked out my next middle-grade non-fiction, by the same author:
I may as well get it over with, before my Ebola symptoms wear off.
Or at least read like less of an asshole. It's like a drinking problem. I neglect my family, neglect my housework, feel kinda sick and hung over afterwards, and don't have much to show for it except a slightly perverse personal pleasure. Maybe it's more like excessive masturbation than alcoholism, I don't know. (I don't have either of those problems. At least, I don't think.) However, I do hope to blog more! We'll see.
Winter break started on Dec 22nd and I got some awesome books from the library before it went all holiday-hours.
For grownups, I took in: Foreskin's Lament, Shalom Auslander; How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman; True Notebooks, by Mark Salzman, and Native Tongue, by Carl Hiaasen, who is loved by me more and more with every passing day.
Foreskin's Lament was notable for its absolutely hilarious voice, this deadpan, I'm-so-mad-at-you-God, arrested-development author who has apparently been all over NPR all the time and yet I've not managed to hear him but once. (That damn Linda Hunt seems to be introducing City Arts and Lecture every single dingle second, however. Make some room, bitch!) Anyway, Shalom takes great umbrage when his deeply Orthodox friends and family describe him (treyf-eating, electricity-using) as notreligious instead of not observant. On Shabbat, he walks fifteen miles to Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers lose a Stanley Cup game, eats a hot dog as a big fuck-you to God afterwards, but guarantees that God will make them win the Cup just to piss him off more. Pair with God Is Not Great for a rollicking romp through the many ways religion can deform you!
I don't think True Notebooks, wherein Mark Salzman teaches a writing class to kids
Plus it was really funny in parts. Delinquent kids can lay down some freestyle rap!
For the teen crowd, I took in 13 Reasons Why, by Jay Asher and
UNWIND is my next new favorite sci-fi tech dystopia after FEED, which will always be my first tech-dystopia love. After the internecine Heartland War, between the pro-choice and pro-life factions, the Bill of Life gets written into the Constitution, protecting life from conception until age 13. From 13 to 18, parents can then choose to retroactively "abort" their children -- you know, bad grades, too much sass talk, send 'em back -- and have them "unwound", harvesting every ounce of them for use in other people. The pro-lifers accept this because technically, the Unwinds are still alive -- just in a "divided state." A little bit After The First Death, a little bit House of the Scorpion. Very suspenseful!
Lastly, for the middle grades, I enjoyed The name of this book is secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch. (Damn! He stole the world's best nom de plume. It saddens me in the way I was saddened when I was about 12, watching the early days of MTV, when I realized that I could never be in a girl metal band, because the band name VIXEN had already been taken.) Also worthwhile was Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale, although I grow weary of the many well-developed kingdoms of the various fantasy novels, each with their currencies and economies and hierarchical deities and gender expectations ...Can we all just agree that from here on out, all fantasy novels will take place in Tortall, or Prydain, or Damar, or WHEREVER JUST PICK A PLACE ALREADY FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODDESS OR TRICKSTER OR SO HELP ME YOU GET THE POINT. Atlases could be published. We could all move on.
Wait, one more. I was shocked, SHOCKED to find a children's book by George Saunders (!!) in my library, namely, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. I thought Civilwarland in Bad Decline was pretty much genius and to think there was this little illustrated George Saunders story nestled on my shelves the whole time, prepared to be foisted on the unsuspecting minds of third graders. I'm SO glad school is back in session!
Here are the words my little toddler can already read:
Mama Dad Ainsley Bama FedEx Up Hot Cold
Can Gappers of Frip be far behind?
