Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist by Jack Abramoff (2011)
Known now as the face of the Washington scandal, Jack Abramoff tries to explain himself in this oddly interesting book about his life and career. He stumbles into lobbying not sure what it is. His life is defined by his Judaism, not because of his family, but in spite of it. He finds himself at the uber-liberal institution founded on ideals of social justice, my alma mater, Brandeis University, a conservative Orthodox Jew determined to pound the pavement and find all the College Republicans in Waltham and beyond. And he does.
To his credit, he grows the organization, makes a name for himself as a young man, decides not to finish at Georgetown Law Center and begins lobbying. He is enamored of the 70s and 80s Republican big wigs and easily becomes enmeshed in the DC political scene. Soon he is a major player taking cases and 'making a difference,' in his words.
But when the mighty fall, they fall hard. Though from his reaction, you'd think he was not a big firm Washington player, but a neophyte to whom 'full disclosure' and 'split fees' were terms unfamiliar. To hear him rationalize a la Robin Hood that his money was going to charitable ventures was almost painful. After all, whether you fall on his side of the aisle or not, Abramoff is a bright man who knew how to work people and the system, whether right or wrong. Was that the best he could do? Also not impressed with the naivete and dichotomy of his religion and his immorality. If you stop work because of the Sabbath, but what you're stopping is bribes, does it really matter?
The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban (2013) YA
Reminiscent of Thirteen Reasons Why, mainly because of the device used to tell the story, this book is told through the voices of Tim, an albino boy, and Duncan, both students of the fictional Irving School in Westchester, NY.
The senior English project is the Tragedy Paper and it is a BIG deal. Woven throughout this book is the need to write this paper, how the lives of these students intersect and how one student's story may become the Tragedy Paper for the other.
Duncan arrives at school to begin his senior year and is placed in the room Tim had the year prior. Left for him as his 'treasure,' an Irving tradition, is a set of CDs on which Tim recorded length messages for Duncan to hear. We are told the story of Tim, Vanessa and the prior year through these recordings, and intertwined in real time is Duncan's story. While this could have had more depth, not quite sure of my expectations, this was a good YA story about accepting others, regretting mistakes made and trying to do the right thing.
Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays by Bernadette Barton (2013)
I can only imagine the size of the closet Bible Belt Gays need in which to hide. This book by PhD and lesbian Barton is well-researched. She spoke to almost 60 gay men and women living in the Bible Belt and they divulged their experiences being raised there, the abuse they suffered at the hands of their own parents upon coming out, the treatment by their churches and communities as well as the rejection and ostracism they experienced. She also attended an Exodus International conference, visited the Creation Museum and discussed many sociological and psychological studies.
On a regular basis, the negative messages gays in the Bible Belt are inundated with are overwhelming. From bumper stickers that proclaim 'marriage=one man+one woman' to billboards against homosexuality as a sin to ex-gay programs promoted like Exodus International, political signs on lawns to vote for propositions for marriage amendments, regular church sermons about homosexual sinners burning in hell, the discomfort of being able to walk down the street hand in hand with your same sex partner because of widespread disapproval, the ability to fire someone for their sexual orientation. It is endless.
Barton talks about how the gay community is incredibly oppressed, forced into what she calls a 'toxic closet.' They have to be careful to whom they disclose their relationship for fear of repercussions. They have to be wary of the conservative Christian community, for although Christianity espouses love, their experiences have been of exclusion and hate. On the other hand, studies have shown that when gay people come out, those who fear or hate gays have it normalized because they realize that the people they know who are gay are not the heretic, immoral monsters they feared but everyday people very much like themselves. Hopefully this book will be picked up by many, though those who need it most surely will not.
I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b
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2.07.2013
Female protagonists abound.
This week, I somehow fell into three books that all prominently featured females.
Gold: A Novel by Chris Cleave (2012)
Two female cyclists. Rivals. They met at 19 years old, personalities quite different, yet talent and determination there for both. A third, male cyclist, likewise, meets them at the same event. They train with a commanding but amusing coach who comes to care very much for these athletes over 15 years.
These Brits' careers are followed through current and flashback stories involving Championships, Olympics, marriage, solitude, scandal, illness, children and injury. The story is absorbing, and though well-crafted, it is just that. Crafted. You have to suspend disbelief too much and the frustration you might feel at some turns overshadow the positive aspects of the story, spoiling what could have been great and making it mediocre.
Cleave certainly keeps you turning pages. Star Wars fans might be enamored of the fantasy aspect in little Sophie's life. For non fans, there's something of a curve. Depending on your tastes, a particular character may be so distasteful, she can become a distraction. For others, I suppose she could be an inspiration? But the writing style and redeeming characters keep you reading. Definitely entertaining if at times, exasperating.
Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story (2013)
Woman idolizes Carrie Bradshaw/Candace Bushnell. I should have stopped right there. But I didn't. She suffers a breakup, moves out of her Manhattan apt shared with her boyfriend after obligatory street drama with him and finds affordable room in apartment of Hassidic man willing to share space with a woman. Man says he is a Rabbi. Surely the memoir's eponymous pair are not exactly what they say they are: not a genuine Rabbi, not a genuine blonde.
They share space, form a friendship (albeit one that comes across as one dimensional), expose each other to their different lives and "corrupt" one another. The blonde was open to experiences less vapid than the party and fashion world and the 'Rabbi' was waiting for someone to buy him a cheeseburger.
All in all, I'd say this book was satisfying to the blond and perhaps the 'Rabbi.' Though I'm not sure why it was picked up by as a memoir because I'm still waiting for what I was supposed to get out of the experience. I hope some of you read it and get back to me.
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung (2012)
A Korean family settled in the United States has problems. We all do. Some are rooted in the tight grip the parents have over their daughters and others are the kind that plague anyone, anywhere. Health crises and family drama.
College-aged daughter Hannah leaves and the family cannot track her down. Meanwhile, her father is diagnosed with potentially terminal cancer and the plan is to return to Korea for treatment. Hannah's disappearance is devastating to the family and though she is found, she is defiant, refusing to return. It is a story of sisters, of illness, of immigrants, family. But therein lies the problem in this promising novel. What was the actual story? At first glance this is a story of the disappearance and we want to know WHY? How does it relate to the illness, the family leaving America?
Then it becomes a story of family loyalty and terminal illness. Still a promising story. You care about the people. But it begins to lose focus. Is it the disappearance that the climax will turn on? Is it the illness? The move to Korea? Suddenly you aren't sure. When the story ends, unfortunately, you still aren't sure. If Chung writes again, I will surely pick up her novel and give her another chance, though Forgotten Country asked a number of questions throughout and left pivotal ones unanswered.
I read therefore I am,
the lowercase b
Gold: A Novel by Chris Cleave (2012)
Two female cyclists. Rivals. They met at 19 years old, personalities quite different, yet talent and determination there for both. A third, male cyclist, likewise, meets them at the same event. They train with a commanding but amusing coach who comes to care very much for these athletes over 15 years.
These Brits' careers are followed through current and flashback stories involving Championships, Olympics, marriage, solitude, scandal, illness, children and injury. The story is absorbing, and though well-crafted, it is just that. Crafted. You have to suspend disbelief too much and the frustration you might feel at some turns overshadow the positive aspects of the story, spoiling what could have been great and making it mediocre.
Cleave certainly keeps you turning pages. Star Wars fans might be enamored of the fantasy aspect in little Sophie's life. For non fans, there's something of a curve. Depending on your tastes, a particular character may be so distasteful, she can become a distraction. For others, I suppose she could be an inspiration? But the writing style and redeeming characters keep you reading. Definitely entertaining if at times, exasperating.
Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story (2013)
Woman idolizes Carrie Bradshaw/Candace Bushnell. I should have stopped right there. But I didn't. She suffers a breakup, moves out of her Manhattan apt shared with her boyfriend after obligatory street drama with him and finds affordable room in apartment of Hassidic man willing to share space with a woman. Man says he is a Rabbi. Surely the memoir's eponymous pair are not exactly what they say they are: not a genuine Rabbi, not a genuine blonde.
They share space, form a friendship (albeit one that comes across as one dimensional), expose each other to their different lives and "corrupt" one another. The blonde was open to experiences less vapid than the party and fashion world and the 'Rabbi' was waiting for someone to buy him a cheeseburger.
All in all, I'd say this book was satisfying to the blond and perhaps the 'Rabbi.' Though I'm not sure why it was picked up by as a memoir because I'm still waiting for what I was supposed to get out of the experience. I hope some of you read it and get back to me.
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung (2012)
A Korean family settled in the United States has problems. We all do. Some are rooted in the tight grip the parents have over their daughters and others are the kind that plague anyone, anywhere. Health crises and family drama.
College-aged daughter Hannah leaves and the family cannot track her down. Meanwhile, her father is diagnosed with potentially terminal cancer and the plan is to return to Korea for treatment. Hannah's disappearance is devastating to the family and though she is found, she is defiant, refusing to return. It is a story of sisters, of illness, of immigrants, family. But therein lies the problem in this promising novel. What was the actual story? At first glance this is a story of the disappearance and we want to know WHY? How does it relate to the illness, the family leaving America?
Then it becomes a story of family loyalty and terminal illness. Still a promising story. You care about the people. But it begins to lose focus. Is it the disappearance that the climax will turn on? Is it the illness? The move to Korea? Suddenly you aren't sure. When the story ends, unfortunately, you still aren't sure. If Chung writes again, I will surely pick up her novel and give her another chance, though Forgotten Country asked a number of questions throughout and left pivotal ones unanswered.
I read therefore I am,
the lowercase b
2.03.2013
Truth stranger than fiction?
Last week I read three books, all worthy, depending on what you look for in a book.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (2012)
Reading Wild, I separated the protagonist from the experience. One I found mundane, the other exhilarating. But of course, we could not have one without the other.
A young women loses her mother, throws away her marriage and decides it's time to do something drastic. Meaning, more drastic than hard drugs and throwing away your marriage. A chance meeting with a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, no hiking experience and no other prospects naturally developed into a plan. Soon, Cheryl, who took the manufactured name 'Strayed' after her divorce, was packing to spend months hiking alone, having never embarked on such a trip. Ill-prepared but motivated, she set out with a backpack she could barely lift to walk from the Mojave desert up California through Oregon to the border of Washington State.
Along the way, her ill-fitting boots ruin her most-needed asset, her feet. She encounters snakes and bears. She meets and befriends hikers, most of whom are kind, a couple who are borderline criminal.
This is no vapid, self-absorbed life-journey. Cheryl could have bailed soon after she realized she overpacked, that snow conditions sent seasoned hikers to Appalachia, when her feet were first damaged, when the money ran out, at any number of points when most of us would have called it a month. She did not. She persevered. Just a few weeks into this adventure, Cheryl was not the same Cheryl who was messing up her life.
As a person, I was not impressed with her antics pre-hike and even throughout, I thought, has she learned? Has she changed? Was she supposed to? The idea of doing something so grand and potentially dangerous without proper preparation, so impulsively, was in and of itself immature. Ridiculous.
The writing was engaging. I never even cared about hiking. And certainly not about women 'Strayed' who 'find themselves.' But this was a good, solid adventure both philosophically and physically.
Living with Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment by Craig R. Whitney (2012)
Regardless of your feelings about guns in America, they aren't going anywhere fast. This book gives a solid history of guns in America back to the colonies, the treatment of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court over the years and while the author is clearly a liberal, he reconciles how we can live with guns with how to attempt to do it safely. In his opinion, where the NRA dropped the ball is the civic duty angle on gun ownership, turning it into a bastion of individual, self-defense rights issues.
The National Rifle Association does not walk away unscathed. Whitney attempted to reach the NRA for discussion but they lacked interest in doing so. They are guilty of promoting individual gun rights to the detriment of individuals overall. They are against education standards for gun owners and any kind of registration or even inventory on gun shops where it's the business norm everywhere else. Why did they move away from education and training? Why are they against promoting responsible gun ownership?
In this well-researched book, even the 'stand your ground' laws are explored and how they are being staunchly defended by the NRA and gun-rights activists when they are not grounded in any Constitutional right.
Published post-Aurora, pre-Sandy Hook, Whitney doesn't have all the answers. But he does a fair stab at examining laws we have, ones we need, loopholes that should be closed, how the NRA fights all of the above and what can and should be done to make sure that both the Second Amendment, which the author believes does give individuals gun-packing rights (whether or not you agree) and safety of the populace are adequately protected.
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick (2011)
Sometimes a picture can be worth much more than 1000 words. If the picture in question is an iconic photo of two teenagers, in the foreground, one black and on her way to her first day at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the other white, angry, scowling at the black girl in opposition of desegregation, then books can be written and movements can grow from it.
Elizabeth Eckford was the black teen, one of nine who broke through and began the desegregation process at Central that September 1957. In retrospect, we think, this was the beginning! It's wonderful, it's amazing! But the story of Elizabeth's days at Central and the life that followed for her was quite different than the fairy tale. She was ostracized and taunted by a white community that did not want her or the other African-American students poisoning their white school. She was stoic and her education was important to her. There were white students who did befriend her. But the bad far outweighed the good and the photo was definitely a harbinger of things to come at Central.
Hazel Bryan Massery, the angry white girl, had no idea that she'd gain notoriety for screaming racial epithets in a crowd that morning, caught on film by not one but three reporters. But that she did. It haunted her throughout her life. Soon after these events, she left Central and married young. But these opinions did not stay with her. Caught on film, though, she was forever branded a racist.
Margolick follows the lives of the two women in the picture through high school, after and how they fared. Their lives surprisingly intersected, they grew and changed. Sad, surprising, sobering, we think of icons frozen in time but the truth is often very different from the story we're told.
I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (2012)
Reading Wild, I separated the protagonist from the experience. One I found mundane, the other exhilarating. But of course, we could not have one without the other.
A young women loses her mother, throws away her marriage and decides it's time to do something drastic. Meaning, more drastic than hard drugs and throwing away your marriage. A chance meeting with a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, no hiking experience and no other prospects naturally developed into a plan. Soon, Cheryl, who took the manufactured name 'Strayed' after her divorce, was packing to spend months hiking alone, having never embarked on such a trip. Ill-prepared but motivated, she set out with a backpack she could barely lift to walk from the Mojave desert up California through Oregon to the border of Washington State.
Along the way, her ill-fitting boots ruin her most-needed asset, her feet. She encounters snakes and bears. She meets and befriends hikers, most of whom are kind, a couple who are borderline criminal.
This is no vapid, self-absorbed life-journey. Cheryl could have bailed soon after she realized she overpacked, that snow conditions sent seasoned hikers to Appalachia, when her feet were first damaged, when the money ran out, at any number of points when most of us would have called it a month. She did not. She persevered. Just a few weeks into this adventure, Cheryl was not the same Cheryl who was messing up her life.
As a person, I was not impressed with her antics pre-hike and even throughout, I thought, has she learned? Has she changed? Was she supposed to? The idea of doing something so grand and potentially dangerous without proper preparation, so impulsively, was in and of itself immature. Ridiculous.
The writing was engaging. I never even cared about hiking. And certainly not about women 'Strayed' who 'find themselves.' But this was a good, solid adventure both philosophically and physically.
Living with Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment by Craig R. Whitney (2012)
Regardless of your feelings about guns in America, they aren't going anywhere fast. This book gives a solid history of guns in America back to the colonies, the treatment of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court over the years and while the author is clearly a liberal, he reconciles how we can live with guns with how to attempt to do it safely. In his opinion, where the NRA dropped the ball is the civic duty angle on gun ownership, turning it into a bastion of individual, self-defense rights issues.
The National Rifle Association does not walk away unscathed. Whitney attempted to reach the NRA for discussion but they lacked interest in doing so. They are guilty of promoting individual gun rights to the detriment of individuals overall. They are against education standards for gun owners and any kind of registration or even inventory on gun shops where it's the business norm everywhere else. Why did they move away from education and training? Why are they against promoting responsible gun ownership?
In this well-researched book, even the 'stand your ground' laws are explored and how they are being staunchly defended by the NRA and gun-rights activists when they are not grounded in any Constitutional right.
Published post-Aurora, pre-Sandy Hook, Whitney doesn't have all the answers. But he does a fair stab at examining laws we have, ones we need, loopholes that should be closed, how the NRA fights all of the above and what can and should be done to make sure that both the Second Amendment, which the author believes does give individuals gun-packing rights (whether or not you agree) and safety of the populace are adequately protected.
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick (2011)
Sometimes a picture can be worth much more than 1000 words. If the picture in question is an iconic photo of two teenagers, in the foreground, one black and on her way to her first day at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the other white, angry, scowling at the black girl in opposition of desegregation, then books can be written and movements can grow from it.
Elizabeth Eckford was the black teen, one of nine who broke through and began the desegregation process at Central that September 1957. In retrospect, we think, this was the beginning! It's wonderful, it's amazing! But the story of Elizabeth's days at Central and the life that followed for her was quite different than the fairy tale. She was ostracized and taunted by a white community that did not want her or the other African-American students poisoning their white school. She was stoic and her education was important to her. There were white students who did befriend her. But the bad far outweighed the good and the photo was definitely a harbinger of things to come at Central.
Hazel Bryan Massery, the angry white girl, had no idea that she'd gain notoriety for screaming racial epithets in a crowd that morning, caught on film by not one but three reporters. But that she did. It haunted her throughout her life. Soon after these events, she left Central and married young. But these opinions did not stay with her. Caught on film, though, she was forever branded a racist.
Margolick follows the lives of the two women in the picture through high school, after and how they fared. Their lives surprisingly intersected, they grew and changed. Sad, surprising, sobering, we think of icons frozen in time but the truth is often very different from the story we're told.
I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b
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