Hi friends,
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year and that your celebrations involved some good reading!
We enjoyed the holidays here at home and appreciated being able to do whatever
we wanted whenever we wanted. Although, we did dearly miss spending time with
family. Can’t have everything.
But you can have some great books! I didn’t find much time
for reading in December, so this month is short but sweet and includes all 5
star books!
As always, please leave any thoughts about these books or
recommendations for further reading.
Cheers,
Tonya
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: Yes!
Review: After reading this book, I decided that I want
Bill Bryson to write my eulogy and Stephen Fry to read it at my funeral.(When I told my husband this, he protested that he assumed he would write my eulogy, assuming he outlives me. I told him he could write one too.) To be
honest, I don’t even know if he’s British, but the voice I heard in my head
while I was reading the book definitely had a British accent. This book feels like you’re
sitting in a warm study by a fire drinking mugs of hot chocolate while an
erudite British professor tells you interesting and amazing facts and stories
about the human body. Bryson starts at the top of the body – the head – and works
his way down through every major bodily system explaining simply and
understandably how it all works and providing interesting facts and medical and
scientific discovery stories. The book ends, appropriately enough, with a
chapter on death. The final sentence sums up the whole tone of the
book when after expounding on how many people are buried versus cremated Bryson
ends the book abruptly and fittingly with the observation, “And that’s the end
of you. It was good, wasn’t it?” Highly recommend for anyone interested in
learning more about these miraculous but odd vessels that carry us around for all our lives.
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: Yes!
Review: Starsight
is the second book in a series that is supposed to stretch four books. I
reviewed the first book, Skyward, last year, and this one was just as good.
The second follows in the same vein as the first as our somewhat rash hero,
Spensa, ventures further from her home planet than any human has gone in a long time. She gradually
discovers more about her powers and herself while making new friends and trying
to apply her pilot training to an entirely new kind of mission – espionage! While
I enjoyed learning more about the colorful, complex, and fascinating universe
that Sanderson has again created, I did miss Spensa’s friends from the first
novel. The new characters are, of course, entertaining and help Spensa mature
as a character, but I wanted more follow-up on the relationships from the first
novel. Of course, the ending left me eagerly waiting for the third book, which is
expected to be released sometime in 2021. Ugg! So long.
One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power
and the Future of Foreign Policy by Allison Stanger
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: Yes
Review: Not many people would ask for a book about
government contracting for Christmas, but this book was exactly what I wanted. I’m
not gonna lie, there’s no way I would have read this book if I didn’t work for Congress
to provide oversight of billions of tax-payer dollars that are largely through
contracting. While most people, will probably immediately nod off at the
mention of a book about government contracting, this book does more to explain
how government actually functions than any civics book or news article you’ll
read, which is exactly why you should be interested. Although the book is a decade old now, the problems with contracting that
Stanger discusses and analyzes have, from my experience, only worsened. In
fact, many of the points she makes about special interest groups setting policy
through campaign contributions, the revolving door between government and industry,
and the sheer mass of work that government can no longer perform in-house are
bigger issues today than they were in 2009. One of the most revealing points
that Stanger makes is that while the federal workforce has remained largely the
same size since the 1970s, about 1.2 million people, the federal budget has grown
enormously. Where has all that money gone? Contractors! Perhaps the most important
question that Stanger raises and that still needs to be discussed and answered
today is, “What is the work of government? What functions are inherently
governmental and cannot be contracted out and filled by the private sector?” As
time has progressed, the answer to this question has evolved as contractors now
fill many traditional governmental roles including soldiering and setting and
executing foreign and domestic policy. Answering that question right now as we
fight over what government should and shouldn’t do is vital and the answer should
shape any approach to government policy including taxes, healthcare, defense,
and foreign policy. Stanger even discusses how the oversight role that I play
has been delegated to contractors with disastrous results.
Mommy Corner
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| Our favorite Christmas event in DC is always the model train exhibit at the U.S. Botanic Garden. They have the best tree in DC. They always have beautiful displays made entirely of organic materials. This year, they went very meta and had displays of other botanic gardens around the country. |
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| This is a recreation of the tallest concrete gnome in the world, found at a botanic garden in Ohio. |
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| Chloe had a lot of fun. |
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| This was an organic recreation of a rocket display from the Huntsville Botanic Garden. Since I've been working on reviews of NASA large systems, including some big rockets, I thought this was great! |
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| The girls' daycare was closed all Christmas week, so Dan watched them while I worked the days that we didn't have off. They had fun at the College Park Aviation Museum one day. It's one of our favorite places to hang out! |
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| Maya is finally big enough to get in on some of the action at the museum. |
