Summer Reading (June 2019)

Greetings fellow bibliophiles!

June was a great month for reading, and I flew through quite a few novels that I thoroughly enjoyed. Gotta love that summer reading! Shout out to Bill Gates again for recommending several of these books.

In other mommy news, Chloe had a great time hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law who came to visit and brought an amazing homemade, wood puzzle of the United States that she has already mastered. Maya continues to grow more adorable and smiley every day. Pics below for objective evidence supporting this claim. 

Cheers!

Tonya 

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier

Rating:  4 of 5 stars

Recommendation:  Yes, to anyone interested in solving the big, nasty problems the world is facing today

Review: This was an interesting book to read after recently completing Capital in the 21^st Century, which I reviewed last month. It also discusses how we can solve the problems that capitalism inevitably produces. The thing that I liked best was Collier’s advice to put aside ideology from both left and right to find the best solutions to problems like income inequality and the divide between left behind cities and rural areas and hyper-affluent metropolises. This approach resonated well with my data-driven GAO background, and I thought many of his policy solutions including a progressive tax on high earners in big cities were good ideas. 

The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, for those looking for a good, quick read and like young adult romance

Review: After reading the oft-time gag-worthy Everything, Everything by Yoon, I had low expectations for this book, so I was pleasantly surprised when this book was markedly better than that one. I liked that the story was told from the perspective of several characters, and most of my favorite moments in the book centered on the moments that these small, sideline characters had to shine. The romance was predictably gag-worthy at times, but what do you expect in a teenage romance?! I liked that the ending was somewhat ambiguous and not entirely expected.

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation:  Yes, for anyone interested in the problems the world faces and how to fix them

Review: This book was illuminating in so many ways, and I learned so much about the six countries that Diamond uses as case studies that I never knew, and that will help me understand the world better moving forward. Diamond applies a psychiatric framework based on how individuals handle personal crises to how nations handle crises. He applies this framework to evaluate how six countries – Finland, Japan, Chile, Australia, Indonesia, and Germany – successfully or unsuccessfully handled their own crises. I enjoyed learning about Finland’s crisis with the Soviet Union in World War II that still effects their foreign policy today and Germany’s reaction to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Diamond then evaluates how America is or isn’t handling current crises that we’re experiencing and uses his framework to recommend needed changes including, most importantly, overcoming recent growing trends of political polarization that has almost killed the bipartisanship that is necessary for this country to function. It was an excellent read. 

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation:  Yes! For anyone who enjoys fantasy or novels with awesome female protagonists 

Review: This was the best fantasy novel I’ve read in a long time. I’ve read a few of Novik’s Temeraire series, but this was far better. Novik draws inspiration from Eastern European folklore to tell a tale that has elements of fantasy, romance, adventure, and horror. The protagonist starts on the classic fantasy path by discovering she has magical abilities and being whisked away by the powerful sorcerer, Dragon, who as she eventually figures out after being really slow about it for 50 pages, teaches her magic. The whole story is overshadowed by an evil haunted forest that Dragon and the protagonist battle throughout the whole book. After several hundred pages of grimmy horror and intense fight scenes, the book ends with a relieving message of forgiveness and love. 

The Rosie Project Series by Graeme Simsion

Rating:  4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, for those looking for fun, comic reads

Review: Genetics Professor Don Tillman is not average. The three books in this series explore how to label him before finally arriving at autistic in the last book. The first one is basically a clever rom-com. The second is more angsty with the newly married couple nearly breaking up, and the third jumps forward 10 years and explores their son’s own experience with autism and bullying at school. All of them are hilarious as Don puts himself in more and more awkward situations that create outrageous problems that he then applies his vast scientific and problem-solving skills to solve. They were all wonderful combinations of funny and insightful, and I particularly liked the carefully balanced and revealing discussion about autism and other mental illnesses in the last book, which I wasn’t entirely expecting after reading the first two. 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes!

Review: Not only does this book have an amazingly original and clever premise, but it’s beautifully written, and has compelling and life-like characters that you grow to love or hate as the story unfolds. Count Alexander Rostov is labeled a Former Person following the Bolshevik Revolution and sentenced to a life of house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol hotel -- their equivalent of a Ritz. The book follows the Count over several decades as his life unfolds inside this icon of Moscow right across the street from the Kremlin. Although this book is fiction, it helped me learn about what life was like in post-revolutionary Russia, and as expected, the picture is quite grim. Nevertheless, the book, and its characters press on and manage to find happiness and fulfillment even while constricted to the four magnificent walls of the Metropol . The best part was it kept me guessing until the end, and I fell in love with the Count, his adopted daughter, and his best friends.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, also for those who love folklore-based fantasy and strong female protagonists

Review: After reading Uprooted I had to read this, which isn’t a sequel but also draws from Eastern European folklore to tell a fast-paced, nerve-wracking, and surprising story about three unlikely allies including the daughter of a poor Jewish money-lender who can turn silver into gold with a touch of her hand, the reluctant new Tsarina, and a girl trapped with an abusive father in extreme poverty. This unlikely threesome work together to battle a fiery, hellish demon that is possessing the Tsarina’s new husband, end a prolonged magical winter, and rise above their respective situations. It took me a bit to get into this book, and at first I didn’t like it as much as Uprooted, but as the action continued and the plot twisted several times, I found myself appreciating the different method of story-telling and admiring each girl’s strength, resilience, and courage. 

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, for anyone wondering why it’s so dang hard to adult nowadays. 

Review: I tried to read this book last year, but I thought that it would only make me sad and angry, which it did, but this time I soldiered on and was rewarded with a better understanding and increased empathy for my fellow Americans just struggling to make ends meet. I’ve noted before on this blog that I’m very privileged. My husband and I both come from upper-middle class, white, educated families who have been able to help us as we finish our education. Not everyone is so lucky, and many people have been hit particularly hard by the after effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Quart combines statistics and data on income inequality with real-life stories of people who are struggling sometimes unsuccessfully to stay in the middle class. While I didn’t agree with all her suggestions, I wholeheartedly agree with one of her main arguments that care is excessively undervalued in America. We are the only rich nation without paid parental leave of any kind, and all caring professions from teaching to nursing are underpaid. She talks about how many people are delaying having kids or having fewer children because of the exorbitant costs of childcare, a fact  that I am intimately familiar with. Even before baby #2 came along, childcare was our biggest expense, and now it’s going to consume an even larger portion of our income. Quart lays out the arguments for subsidized, public childcare, and based on my own experience, I absolutely agree that some policy solution to address this problem is sorely needed by American families.

Mommy Corner

Chloe likes to watch TV from the most interesting positions. Her current favorite show is Daniel Tiger, but since Amazon recently removed all but the first two seasons from their Prime streaming, she's been watching the same dozen episodes over and over. While this doesn't bug her at all, I'm starting to go crazy from hearing the same songs repeated over and over and over. Any suggestions you have for quality children's TV are welcome!

 I submit the following pictures as evidence of the above cuteness claim.

Chloe and her puzzle. Thanks Aunt Shelby and Uncle Logan!

Calling all my bibliophile moms out there (and anyone else who reads this)- May 2019

Hi friends!

May was a great month for reading. While we’re experiencing the expected ups and downs of maternity leave with a two year-old and a newborn here, it’s nice to be able to catch a few moments to read to either escape into a fantasy world or to think about possible solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems. I got to read the best book I’ve read by far this year – spoiler alert see Moment of Lift below – so that that was nice.

Also, I’ve included more pics of my adorable children in a shameless attempt to attract a wider audience. I guess that makes this a mommy blog and a reading blog. Although that might limit my audience to bibliophile mommies, and I’m not sure how big that demographic is. Oh well, maybe I’ve found my niche! Let me know if you fit that category.

Shout out to my Mom and my sister and brother-in-law Jon and Julia for recommending some of the books I read this month. Also to Bill Gates, but there’s no way he reads this. Side bar: I follow Bill Gates on social media — is this weird? — and I pretty much wait with baited breath for his book recommendations because the man reads some great books! So if you follow him too, you might see some overlap.  

As always, let me know if you've read and enjoyed any of these books and if you have any recommendations for future reading. 

Happy days and happy reading!

Tonya

x

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Sure

Review: This book had some good advice: speak impeccably, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. Ruiz is a type of medicine man from the Toltec tribe, and explains that these four tenets are the way to a life free from the evils of this hellish world. I thought he made some good points, but he wrapped the advice in assumptions that he made no attempt to justify and in a lingo that was a little too mystical for my liking. Like I said, his message and the advice made sense to me, but the delivery method was questionable.

Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes

Review: The best part of this book is that it’s short, to the point, and packs a punch. Beard is a professor of classics and brings her knowledge of all things ancient and Roman to an interesting question: what has been the relationship between women and power over the centuries? The answer is unsurprisingly depressing. Turns out that forbidding women from holding power is not a new phenomenon. She illustrates this with examples from several classic texts and myths and then draws modern-day parallels to the MeToo movement, and the mistreatment of female politicians in our day. She concludes that instead of trying to forcefully change the power mechanisms present in our society today to accommodate women, we should redefine what it means to hold and wield power in our society. She does all of this in just over 100 pages, which makes the whole thing even more convincing. 

Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, especially for those trying to figure out what’s wrong with the world

Review: I decided a while ago that I wanted to better understand income inequality and what the heck happened with the world that led to the resurgence of nationalism and populism when the events of the 20^th century seemed to definitively illustrate that these were really bad ideas. So, I read this 750-page book written by a French economist about income inequality. Did this book need to be 750 pages to understand what I wanted to know? Probably not. There was a lot of extraneous information that could have been cut or reduced, but I understand that Piketty was building an argument that he knew would be, and since has been viciously attacked from all sides and all angles, so he wanted to thoroughly prove his point. In the end, he recommends a world-wide wealth tax to address the problems that capitalism has created since the 1980s. He goes into depth explaining what would need to happen to create and enforce this tax and why it’s justified. After slogging through his entire argument and reasoning, I have to say that it makes sense to me too.

The Powder Mage Series (Books 1-3) by Brian McClellan

Rating:  4 of 5 stars

Recommendation:  Yes for those who enjoy epic fantasy

Review: These books fall soundly in the epic fantasy, creative magic system, and intense world-building genre. (Any fantasy book that starts with a map generally falls in this category.) McClellan delivered several interesting surprises that broke the typical storytelling arc throughout the three books, and the action scenes had my heart thumping and my fingers glued to the book. McClellan clearly has a gift for intricate plots, weaving together multiple storylines, and writing action-packed sometimes graphic scenes. While McClellan does a good job creating heroes who are flawed but still likable, some of the character arcs could have had more development. Overall, a great addition to the genre, but not quite on par with some of the books from my favorite fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson.

The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates

Rating:  5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes! Everyone should read this book!

Review:  This was the best book that I’ve read this year, and everyone should read it. As noted above, I follow Bill Gates on social media, so when I learned that his wife, Melinda, had written this book, I knew I wanted to read it. This book changed the way that I think about the world. In particular, it opened my eyes to the importance of empowering women to eliminate extreme poverty. She explains her own journey as she came to understand why women’s empowerment is crucial, and beautifully expounds stories from her own experiences and from women she considers role models. I loved her definition of feminism: “Being a feminist means believing that every woman should be able to pursue her potential, and that men and women should work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back.” I agree completely! Parts of this book were very hard to read, and parts of them I could strongly relate to. As a Girl Mom, I want my daughters to inherit a world where they won’t have to think about many of the problems described in this book because we’ll have solved them. Seems like a worthy goal to work towards.

Mommy Corner!

Maya looking as cute as ever. 

 Chloe took her first pictures. She's got some natural talent. 

I've been working hard to make sure Maya has a breast milk stash when I go back to work. Any other mom's out there do something similar? I now live in fear of a prolonged power outage...