Book Review: "Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World" by Matt Alt

 Holy cow Japan...you guys have a lot to unpack. You are a complicated country.

 My friend Garrett gave me this book for Christmas this year because we often discuss Japan and their place in history (generally WWII) and the unusual (to us) societal quirks that may have come from the shock of the nuclear bombs and the upsetting of their empire. If this is something that interests you I can't possibly recommend Dan Carlin's podcast and his series on the Supernova in the East enough. 

Also a beautiful independent theater in the Milwaukee area has started doing Anime April and Miyazaki March so I (reluctantly at first) went to a couple of movies the last few years during those times with Garrett and our friend Gage and while a couple of them weren't my favorite I have enjoyed far more than I have disliked. Totoro, you cute sonofabitch.

This is a lot of words to basically say that, before reading this book I would say "I mean, I dabble in a few Japanese things but that's really about it". Now that I have read this book I realize that I have: sang karaoke, know who Hello Kitty is, almost ran over people staring at their phones playing PokemonGo and played with a Tamagotchi I guess I know more about Japanese pop culture than I thought I did. And I bet you do too! 

As usual, as follows are things that I found interesting or questions that I have after reading this book.

-For a time, and maybe still now, women were expected to graduate from college, work for a couple years, and then get married and quit their job. That's what happened to the woman who designed Hello Kitty did. And then the company was kind of like "uhhhhh so should we just let hello kitty die out even though it's really popular because we don't know what girls/women want?". The assistant to the original designer bucked tradition, stayed unamarried and at her job and became Hello Kitty's human "manager" and helped keep the company out of bankruptcy and maintaining and worldwide phenom. Hello Kitty makes a half billion dollars in revenue at year. The company that makes her is the 8th biggest licensor in the world - ahead of Pokemon, the NFL and Playboy.

-The guy who created Pokemon loved playing outdoors as a child. However, one day his favorite fishing spot suddenly had a new building built there, an arcade. He went in, became obsessed with Space Invaders and it changed the direction of his life. The irony on this kills me because a lot of little kids probably were yelled at by their parents to put down their Pokemon stuff and GO PLAY OUTSIDE. Though I bet the PokemonGo everyone goes outside and wanders looking for invisible critters kind of balances the scales back. I've also decided that Lickitungs is the grossest sounding Pokemon name. 

- Prewar Japan was like, a huge producer and connoisseur of children's toys. This obviously screeched to a halt during the war. 6 months after the war a man who was a toy maker before the war started collecting the tins that occupying Americans trashed (we are preeeettty great at generating trash) and made little toy American Jeeps. They were a sensation. It was one of the first little luxuries that Japan had after the war. 

- There are a lot of pages devoted to Dragonball Z, early origins of anime (RocketBoy) and how it came to America, some super shady stuff on the internet, the invention of the Walkman and karaoke machines. 

Most of the information on this book was completely new to me, so it made reading a little slow going and a lot to digest but I learned so much! If you have an interest in pop culture this would be a great book for you!

Book review: "What Are You Looking At? The Surprising, Shocking and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art" by Will Gompertz

I don't know how I got SO lucky that I read two books that almost back to back that I really really enjoyed. I'd give it an incredibly enthusiastic 4.5 stars. 

So the author of this book was the curator of the Tate in London, if there is someone who can try to make sense of modern art it's him. If you look at a Jackson Pollock painting, with it's seemingly random drips and swirls and think "This is so dumb, my 5 year old could do this". (First of all, it's not dumb, second of all no they couldn't and no they haven't so stop saying things like that) Then this might be the book for you. One of the most amazing things about this book is that the inside of the covers contains a map, and it looks like a London Tube map but instead of finding Piccadilly Circus and Islington, you find Pollack and Monet and Damien Hirst and how they all fit together and who leads to who. I love it. I want it blown up and on my wall.

There's so much information in this book that I don't even know how I'm going to condense it, but whatever that's the job so here's my effort :)

• Many impressionists, specifically Manet and Monet, were influenced by Japanese wood block prints. Japan was just coming out of it's self isolation and this was some of the first art anyone in the world people saw coming out of Japan. You miiiiiiight know this one. Mostly the influence was in perspective.

• I really thought the couple of pages on Degas were super interesting. He was the most non-Impressionist Impressionist of the bunch. He didn't like painting en plein air, he was meticulous about his prep work and sketching, he cared more about his subject's movements then the lighting. You may know Degas from things like ...
• 

• Seurat was El Capitan of color theory and pointillism. Though Da Vinci did it first because #GOAT.  Pointilisim means that you use dots not strokes and the dots don't touch. You may know Seurat from such things like...

Here's a quote that I liked: "The truth is that abstract art is a bit of a mystery; one that plays havoc with out rational brains if we believe paintings and sculptures need to tell a story. It is a complex idea that is typically expressed in a simple way....subsequent generations of artists eliminated yet more visual information in an attempt to capture atmospheric light (Impressionism), accentuate the emotive qualities of color (Fauvism), or look at a subject from multiple viewpoints (Cubism). "

Here's another quote I like, it's in reference to museum curators describing art in a kinda pompous and incomprehensible way sometime because  they are trying to cater to a broad constituency. "It's a fact of life: rock stars trash hotels, sportsmen and women get injured, art folks talk bollocks". 

Rene Margritte is one of my favorite painters, and when I explain him to people I'm like "I like his stuff because if you glance at it everything looks fine but then you look closer and things are not fine". The author says "(he) inhabits a world of the everyday and the mundane where the ordinary is extraordinary-in a very bad way... he was the prince of paranoia, the doyen of dread". There are so many great examples of this, but this is the picture that they highlight in the book. Take a long, long look at it the worse it gets.

 

There's a discussion of a painting by an artist I'd never heard of before. The artist's name is Marcus Harvey and the painting is called Myra. It's a portrait of a British woman who killed some children and instead of brushstrokes the painting is made of palm prints....of children. The actual face I made when I read that. 🤯

Anyway, I loved this book, I was massively entertained, I learned so much.

Book Review: "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman

 I really liked this book but I felt like it was a little bit all over the place. The general theme is that humans are innately good. What's kind of weird about this book is that he says that and then he talks a lot about really garbage things that people have done (like the Stanford prison experiment or that experiment where people shock someone that they can't see even if they are screaming, and the like). The book is more like a series of essays then a cohesive nonfiction book.

So, as usual - here's a list of things that I found interesting.

- Going all the way back in history, even with a lot of training, war combatants are incredibly reluctant to shoot another human. During WWII only 15-25 percent of soldiers fired their weapons. There's also a stat somewhere that I couldn't re-find that said in WWI that the amount of soldiers killed in hand to hand combat was in the single digits. It was almost always long distance killing (mortar shells shot from across no man's land, grenades, bombs dropped by plans, etc.) We truly don't want to hurt people even when our lives depend on it. And the reason that we do fight? Not for ideas or presidents or territory, it's to protect the person standing next to us. 

- When people talk about the terror of unchecked human nature they talk about Lord of the Flies. Which, I get. The thing is the guy that wrote that book was a teacher who HATED children. And was in general a pessimistic and heavily depressed person. Also a teacher. A teacher that hates kids? Greattttt....

-Did you know that humans are the only animals that blush?

-There was a lot of talk about neanderthals and such in this book but honestly I always think that stuff is super boring so I don't have much to expound on from that part

- 99% of Denmark's Jews survived WWII. A nazi who didn't agree with what was happening (Greg Ferdinand Duckwitz) warned the Dutch government that a raid was coming in two days to collect their jews. The country hid them, helped them flee, refused to give up their neighbors, escaped routes organized, Danish police refused to cooperate. It honestly feels like a miracle in a mass of terrible things. This was a unique event in WWII. (There were some countries that gave up their "undesirables" the second the nazis walked through their borders - looking at you a couple far eastern european countries)

-There's a section on Kitty Genovese. If you've ever heard about bystander effect and Kitty's murder I suggest listening to this FANTASTIC podcast episode. I always cry at the end. 

Wow, that got long.

Book review: "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder

 This book is noteworthy for many reasons but on a personal level it's because this is my first 5 star read of 2020! People use different scales for rating books, but for me, a 5 is pretttty rare. That means I'm very excited to share this book with you!

If the name Timothy Snyder sounds familiar maybe it's because you have seen him on the blog before. Bloodlands (review here) is about the countries that are located between Russia and Germany and how, almost without fail, that's a sucky place to be. Black Earth (review here) is one of the most elegantly written and well researched books about the Holocaust I have ever read. It seems like Tim has taken all of the knowledge gleaned from these two books, and other books that he has written (so many on my TBR) and put them into this slim, pocket sized book.

The book has, as you may have guessed from the title - 20 lessons from the 20th century. Each very short chapter has a short introduction paragraph and then the chapter.  Some chapters include "Be Wary of Paramilitaries" - "When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and carrying torches...the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come". "Believe in Truth" -"To abandon facts is to abandon freedom...If nothing is true than all is spectacle". 

There's also a chapter entitled "Remember professional ethics" which I'm like I don't really know what that means. Turns out, what it means is that no tyrannical regime operates on their own, they need obedient civil servants. Take for example - trains were essential to the Nazi regime to move their people AND victims of their terrible practices throughout their occupied territories. Did you know that no train company was ever persecuted for their collaboration? If a couple of train companies said "absolutely not, you are not using our train tracks or train cars to take these people to these camps throughout Europe" things could have looked VERY DIFFERENT. There's a reason that so many resistance groups blew up train tracks.

This book provoked a really emotional response in me, that was a little surprising to me. When you get familiar with a few different low points in history it's easy to look at the people who were terribly effected by those incidents and go "why didn't they get out while they could? How could they not see how bad it would get?" . This book is kind of a roadmap of things to look for before things get bad, and, instructions on how to prevent it from getting there in the first place. It's also very easy to put a lot of trust in our long standing institutions that "that can't happen here, we have all of these things in place" or "this can't happen, someone will stop it". That person and that institution needs to be you if the time calls for it. "Be as courageous as you can" the last lesson tells us.

Milwaukee Film Festival 2020 - Movie Round Up

It's the most wonderful tiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeeeeear! It's Milwaukee Film Festival. I was worried that the Film Festival was going to be another thing that the damn pandemic took from us. The good news is that MFF did an amazing job turning the whole thing virtual. It was my first year as a member of Milwaukee Film and it felt really good to support such a wonderful cause in such a weird time. What made it even better was that I won a contest and the prize was two free vouchers for a movie AND a pound of coffee from a local coffee shop. (I'm not a coffee drinker so I handed that over to my two Film Fest Viewing Buddies aka Garrett and Maggie). Part of the film fest that I love the most is the "well it's 8pm on a Tuesday night and I'm getting in the car and driving to a small, cool, theater in downtown Milwaukee to watch a documentary on competitive chicken showing in New Zealand. I won't get home until midnight 30 and I'll be trash for the first part of the next day but I have 0 REGRETS". The good thing is that film fest is just as magical from my couch in the suburbs with pizza and root beer floats because the company and the movies are still amazing.

Let's talk about movies, shall we?

 Stage: The Culinary Internship - A documentary about people going through a very intense cooking internship at a famous restaurant in Spain. It's some very serious gastronomy. Like, where you aren't particularly sure that the food is actually food because it's so fancy. The idea was interesting but there wasn't much context about the restaurant and I'd have liked if they would have gotten more in-depth with the interns. 3/5 stars.

Shiva Baby - As a Milwaukee Film member one of the perks during film fest is that you get access to a "Super Secret Members Only Screening" (actual name). What's super fun about the screening is that it's only available for one day AND you don't know what it is until you literally start the movie. This movie is about a young Jewish woman who is about to graduate college and feeling aimless and uninspired. She goes to sit shiva for a distant family friend and runs into her sugar daddy...who is married...and has a baby.... This movie was tense and awkward and there were many times where we were yelling "JUST RUN OUT THE DOOR. JUST GO". A fun thing about the movie was that the soundtrack sounded like a horror movie soundtrack. If you closed your eyes and just listened to the music you would think that there was about to be a body to be found in a basement, not a girl stress eating bagels and avoiding weird looks across the living room of a near stranger. 3.5/5 stars. 

Shorts: The Best Damn Fu*#king Midnight Shorts Ever. Sh*t.  (Again, this is the actual name.) The midnight shorts selection is a legendary part of Milwaukee Film. It's a collection of the weirdest, scariest, freakiest, "did I actually take mushrooms and forget" short films that the fest has to offer. My favorites were: "The Motorist" - we see a man get welded into a car after refusing to leave it in a weird ancient ritual. "Diabla"" - a woman gets revenge on her rapist with the help other other women who have been in similar circumstances.  "Little Miss Fate" - a weird, animated short that talks about the literal hand of fate. Also talking genitals. It was weird but not in a completely unheartwarming way. "Regrets" has had me checking the corners of dark rooms before I go to bed since I've seen it. 3.8/5 stars.

Lapsis - A man takes up a job laying cable (this is really a stand in for things like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, etc) in an effort to make enough money to treat his brother's sickness (it's like a constant fatigue due to the crush of everyday life). But as we all know, when things seem to go to be true, they usually are and that is the case here. Our lovable, slightly oafish main character bumbles his way through a world he doesn't really understand and unwittingly helps start a revolution. Side bar - if the robots from Boston Dynamics makes you cringe this will also make you cringe. Maggie and I were disappointed by the lack of true scifi or horror from the Fest this year, but between the shorts and his movie it helped scratch that itch for us. 4/5 stars.

Black Bear - Maggie and Garrett both had this on their lists of films they were interested in watching, so we went for it. I agreed because Garrett said Kit Harrington was in it. Garrett was wrong, it's just a guy that looked kind of like Kit Harrington. Audrey Plaza is the star of this movie as a screenwriter/actress who goes on a retreat out in rural New York. There's a big twist after the most AWKWARD dinner of all time. I liked the format of this one, and I liked Audrey Plaza's performance more than I anticipated, but I don't think this is going to be one that I really mull over for a long time after I've seen it. 3/5 stars.

Coded Bias - This movie is basically about artificial intelligence and it's flaws and how because of who it is developed by and the fact that it's still a developing field, it's got some racist tendencies. A great thing about this movie was how incredibly well women were represented with who they interview. A lot of the things in this documentary were pretty infuriating (do we have a constitutional right to avoid government sanctioned facial recognition? how safe is it to buy things with your face?) and led to some really thoughtful conversations. Almost not yelling. 3.4/5 stars.

What I've Been Reading

"The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides. I've heard talk about this movie and new the basic premise (ugh its in the name) but didn't know much about it. I picked it up kind of randomly. The most interesting thing about this book was it's narrated in a "collective we". It's a bunch of neighborhood boys who you don't learn most of their names and they kind of function like one singular entity. I think it really works for this book and the type of story that this is. It's a short book and considering the subject matter isn't as depressing as I thought it would be.

"Time Traveler: A Scientist's Dream to Make Time Travel a Reality" by Dr Ronald L Mallet. A young man loses his father at 10 years old and becomes obsessed with the idea of time travel. He doesn't become a quack on the streets, he has a PhD and loves Einstein and has spoke to thousands about if time travel is actually a thing we can accomplish.

"The Devil All the Time" by Donald Ray Pollock.  This book kind of sounded like it was going to be a short story collection but really it was just a regular format book with a lot of interconnected stories. I really liked the format and the setting - the characters were well developed. It was mostly sad. But that's okay.

"The Old Guard, Book One: Open Fire": by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez. Did you watch Old Guard, the netflix movie with the most beautiful woman in the world Charlize Theron? This is the graphic novel that it is based on. There was a couple of changes (more details on Andy, the Asian lady isn't in the book but there are others like her that they mention) but the movie stayed pretty close to the source material. I really liked it and am looking forward ot the next installment that comes out in September! Fun fact - the "is that your boyfriend?" scene in the kidnapper van? It's in the comic and the creators insisted that the scene be kept exactly the same as in the comic. Yay representation!

Book Review: "Berlin Now: The City After the Wall" by Peter Schneider

I read many history books, a borderline obscene amount. But I completely own up to having a fair amount of gaps in that knowledge that need filled especially - things that aren't war related. I love books that tie to very specific places or time frames and this book is certainly that - the city of Berlin after the fall of the The Wall (which fell in November 1991). This is the second Berlin specific book I've read that I've really enjoyed, the other one is this one! I've got a special place in my heart for Berlin. The "dirty, sexy, cheap" city is expansive, vibrant and the two times I've been there I've always found myself wanting more time there. While reading this book I was browsing AirBnB listings which is...self cruelty right now. See you on the otherside of this shitshow, Berlin. Mwah! 

Let's talk about what's interesting in this book:

-You know how in NYC on New Year's Eve a bunch of people gather in Time Square for the ball drop but an actual New Yorker would rather die then do that?  In Berlin on New Year's the location is Brandenburg Gate but the people there are mostly Italian. 

- The club scene in Berlin has always been a no holds barred, judgement free, free for all. (I mean, "Cabaret" is in Berlin between the wars for a reason).Hemingway said that nightlife in Berlin was "sordid, vicious and desperate". And you know Hemingway wasn't one to shy away from shenanigans.  The current club scene involves not opening until midnight on Saturday and staying open until Tuesday morning. There's no "hey we can't sell booze after 2am so go home" because they can sell booze...whenever. It's also much cheaper than other big party capitals in the world. I have endless questions about this. Can I bring a change of clothes? I'm going to get sweaty if I'm dancing for 3 days. Are there snacks? Can I order food to get delivered to the club? Is there a place for me to power nap if I need it?

-The Berlin Wall came down, but, where did it go? There are pieces of the Berlin Wall in at least 125 locations around the world (when I say pieces I mean large chunks not paperweights) including on the campus of a Hawaiian' community college and at the country estate of a Cognac heiress. Most of it however, was reprocessed and was used to build highways in the former East Germany. 

- There has been some really disturbing behavior against immigrants to Berlin, especially if they are obviously non-European (aka African immigrants, Asian immigrants). From the government AND from Germans. Immigrants had their passports confiscated, put in barracks, and had up to 12% of their paycheck seized. There's been some incredibly violent outbursts against these groups too, including a group of armed Germans burning down a building that housed a hostel for Vietnamese contract workers. Or more than one incident about far-right groups going on the prowl with baseball bats "looking for black people to beat up". 

Germany (like so many other countries) needs to take a look at themselves and figure out what fundamental attitudes need to change to make a better Berlin and Germany. Germany isn't just for Hoffmanns and Wagners it's also for Nguyens and Alis. You know who had a huge hand in rebuilding Berlin after the war? Immigrants. You know how when you think about German food you think about spaetzle but also kebobs? Hmm, wonder why.

Quarantine Movie and TV Round Up

 I'm sure that I am not alone in the fact that there have been a lot of movies and tv watched while quarantine has happened. I'm a devout fan of going to the movies, but that obviously hasn't happened since....late February. So at home entertainment it is!

Movies

This might be a good time to reiterate that I am such a wuss and I hate being scared but I watch a ridiculous amount of horror movies. I can't explain it. But it has to be a particular type of horror movie. I don't generally do slasher/murder ones and I try to stay away from demon-y ones because homie don't play with that shit. Bye Exorcist, see you never!

Werewolf movies: There was a stretch of like a week and a half pretty early in quarantine where all I watched was werewolf movies on Shudder. Of course the OG, best werewolf movie of all time is "American Werewolf in London". Goes without saying. "Howl" was actually pretty entertaining, would recommend.

"Tigers Are Not Afraid": This was the actual reason I got a Shudder subscription for like a month. It's a movie about a group of orphaned children caught up in the Mexican drug war. It's a bit fairytale, a bit magical realism, and more than a bit of heartbreak. I thought it was really well done, and I think about it a lot. Also, female director.

"The Ritual": A friend group who is growing apart take a memorial camping trip in the Swedish wilderness. Things are already tense because of the circumstances but quickly come off the rails when a mysterious presence makes itself known, threw weird noises in the wilderness and even scarier homages found in an abandoned cabin. The reason I like this movie is the tension through the group of friends feels very real and pretty familiar. Also the design on the mysterious presence makes me really happy. 

"JoJo Rabbit": We laugh, we cry, we yell "Do you even speak German?!" across the house whenever we watch this Hoffmann family favorite. God, I love this movie soooo much.

"Bone Tomahawk": The first hour and half of this movie I'm like okay, this is a good western and I'm enjoying it but I don't know if I'd call it a "horror western" like people have said. Last 45 minutes of this movie OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE GORE THE HORROR SHIT SHIT SHIT. Still, a pretty good movie. Great writing.

TV Shows

The Boys: If you watch the Marvel/DC movies but have questions about whether or not these superheroes are ACTUALLY a good idea...this show might be for you. I know that's why this show is for me. I am the Frenchie of my friend group. Without the cocaine habit. 

Fort Salem: Motherland: I need to make this clear - this show is TRASH. The idea is kind of interesting but it was obviously dumbed down to appeal to teenage girls at their lowest level. Like, maybe if you didn't write trash for teenage girls you'd be surprised that they would like it! Like, give them some credit. So, the basic idea of the show is that way way back in the pilgrim days there was an agreement between the early US government and witches that the government would stop persecuting them if the witches agreed to fight in the armed services. And basically draft their children. Forever. Premise is good, some fun world building, but poorly sketched out characters, some good diversity, and some very handsome but very dull boy characters. I binged a season in two days. I don't know what's wrong with me. 

Away: We are a very pro space program household so I wasn't surprised when Josh turned on this Netflix show. He's way more into it than I am. I do appreciate the mental toll that space travel takes. It's not a walk in the park up there. It actually sounds pretty unpleasant as a whole. I've also watched the Challenger documentary twice now.

Book review: "Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That A Movement Forgot" by Mikki Kendall

 We selected this book for our department's Feminist Book Club at work, and I'm so glad that we did!

The rub is (as my friend Maggie and I have discussed a few times) the more you learn about all of the injustices in the world the more that it feels like there's just an endless pile of societal shit and all we have to make a difference is a shovel the size of a toothpick. If anyone has any good tips on how to try to make a difference when you feel like you are drowning in the shit pile I will gladly take them!

In this book, Mikki says that the feminist movement has left behind poor women and women of color.

When white women are striving for CEO positions and that corner office, women of color are trying to not be discriminated against because of their hair or having a "weird" name, two things that could prevent them from getting jobs or even callbacks for interviews. 

Black children and teens are more than 4 times more likely to be killed with guns than white children. There are efforts to reduce gun violence, but they are oddly leaving out women. You might be thinking, how is gun violence a feminist issue? Well, black women experience the highest rate of gun homicide than any other group of women. Black women are also far more likely than black men to be killed by a spouse, family member, or an intimate acquaintance than by a stranger. The book also led me to the story of Rekia Boyd, a woman who was shot, doing nothing, by a police officer who was off duty and fired his gun over his shoulder as he was driving away. Don't worry he went to prison for a long time OH WAIT NO HE DIDN'T.

There's a whole section about childhood obesity and how there's lots of of pushes against that (which, like great) but if we dig a little deeper to the roots of the problem we might be able to make more change. (Some people don't have access to clean drinking water, but a bottle of Sprite doesn't need to be refrigerated - good if you don't have a kitchen, takes a long time to expire - which is good if you are trying to stretch your dollar, and costs....probably less than a dollar). Speaking of food - 40% of SNAP recipients are already working. 

Between 40 and 60 percent of black girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. I don't know the statistics on white women but I bet it's considerably less.One in three Indigenous women will be victims of sexual assault. Trans women are also much more likely to be victims of sexual crimes. 40% have trans folks have attempted suicide.

This was a quote that I thought was beautifully written: "Poverty is an apocalypse in slow motion, inexorable and generational". 

This was not always and easy book to read, but I learned a lot and am excited to discuss it with the women in my book club!

Book review: "The White Man's Guide to White Male Writer's of the Western Canon" by Dana Schwartz

 This book was written by Dana Schwartz, I know her from being the voice on one of my favorite podcasts, Noble Blood. Others might know her as @GuyinYourMFA from twitter, where Dana pretends to be that dude that so many advanced English classes have - the chain smoking, coffee guzzling, self righteous, arrogant, pain in the ass who thinks he knows better than everyone including the teacher. 

The book was written in the style of the Guy in Your MFA, which got a little old at times, but there was some legit good information in there!

• Maybe you have heard that when John Milton went blind he had his daughters read to him in Greek and Latin. That's true. What people don't know is that they didn't understand Greek or Latin. He just taught them how to read it. Which means they spent hours reading things outloud they didn't understand. Because Milton thought it was kinda a waste of time to educate them.
• Charles Dicken's family members gave him the nickname "Boz"
• On his wedding night Tolstoy gave his brand new wife a written accounting of every sexual encounter he'd had. Including impregnating a family serf with a child he never saw or supported
• A TON of Faulkner's titles came from Shakespeare (To Die, To Sleep - Hamlet, The Wild and Wasteful & Crispin Crispian - Henry V, Kill the Envious Moon - Romeo and Juliet
• Nabokov's rich Russian emigre father was killed by an English monarchist, kind of on accident 
• JD Salinger met and became friends with Hemingway during WWII. JD also fought in D-Day AND the Battle of the Bulge.

Book Review: "Big Friendships: How We Keep Each Other Close" by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

 Amintaou and Ann are friends who have a podcast together, Call Your Girlfriend, which I honestly had't heard of before I picked up this book. This book talks about their friendship in particular, but also how we treat friendships, the effort that they take, and how friendships are unique against other relationships in our lives.

A point that they made which I thought was super interesting was that while there is a lot of research about romantic relationships and familial relationships there is far less research done about friendships. Which on the surface makes sense because if you have a friend breakup odds are that you don't have to disentangle your finances, figure out joint holidays, childcare or other things that are associated with familial or romantic relationships. However, anyone who has been through a friend breakup knows that it can be just as devastating as a romantic breakup, even if society doesn't weigh them in a similar way. The fear of abandonment that exists in friendship doesn't necessarily exist in other relationships when you are linked together through marriage or blood.

A&A also invented the "Shine Theory" which is basically that we all "shine" more when we all shine. Supportive friendships mean that we make more room at the table for people, we amplify each other's voices, and don't worry about "well if they have success does that mean I am a failure?". A win for one feels like a win for everyone. 

They cite a study (by Dunbar) that says that the average person's emotional connections max out at 150. "5 people who are extremely close to them...15 who are in regular contact with them and emotionally crucial, about 50 who are strongly and emotionally connected to them and 80 who are slightly less connected but still a strong and important presence in their lives".  This made me laugh because one of my 5's husbands said that he doesn't need more than 5 friends ever and it's become a bit of a joke in our group. Like "if I do that will get kicked out of your 5?" 

There was a quote that they reference, from the mutual friend who introduced them that I thought was lovely: "There's a kind of sonar with friendship. You're bouncing your personality off things and people so it's reflected back to you. Good friendships produce true knowledge about yourself, even just subliminally."

May we all be so lucky to have 1 friend (or 5 if we are really lucky!) to help show us our true selves (good and bad). 

Book review: "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" by Ross King

You know how sometimes you look at something and go "man, I bet that was a massive pain in the ass to do" ? The Sistine Chapel is like the Grand Poobah of those things.

This book had a lot of interesting facts but was pretty dry and read reeeeaaally slowly so I have tried to pull out the fun facts here.

• The Sistine Chapel was built to the same dimensions as Solomon's temple. It's three times as long as it is wide!
• When artists like Michelangelo would plan their pieces they would do them on large pieces of paper called cartone which is where we get our word for cartoon!
• The pope during this time was Julius II who was called the Warrior Pope because he was stirring up all kinds of trouble because he wanted a bunch of land that wasn't the church's and he did literally everything for his own glory and sounded like a jackass and not a good pope. They butted heads a lot, mostly because he didn't pay Michelangelo on time.
• One of Michelangelo's most ambitious unrealized projects was a bridge that would go over the Bosporus river and connect Europe and Asia which was an idea he got from Da Vinci. He drew up some plans but it never happened. HOWEVER in 2001 a Norwegian architect used the same plans on a Norwegian motorway which is SO COOL.
• Michelangelo featured some of Jesus' lesser known ancestors on the ceiling, which was a uncommon subject matter at the time
• The legend that Michelangelo painted the whole thing on his back is untrue. Though he did have to design scaffolding specifically for this job and it did involve some reclining. 

So, like I said before the content was good but it was a little dry, so 2.5 stars?

"Fierce, Free, Fire: The Guide to Being a Glorious You" by Jen Hatmaker

 I think I've read every Jen Hatmaker book that has come out. Some of them have really hit for me, like 7 and some have hit a little less for me like Of Mess and Moxie. (Part of that could be because the word moxie makes me roll my eyes so much, I don't even know why). I think this one was a win for me, I think because it feels a little more instructional and grounded then some of her other books.

There was a couple of chapters and takeaways that I really felt, like:

-There's a section on how we feel about our bodies. And some of the staggering statistics on how early in our lives we are made to feel bad about our bodies and who makes us feel bad about our bodies and how it's so hard to shake that once it is ingrained in us. It's truly the work of a lifetime. But even if we hate our thicc thighs or our arms that never look unflabby - our bodies are miracles. Every great idea, every kind word, every overloud laugh, every heart stopping kiss, every walk through a foreign country was made possible by that body that you are talking so much shit about. Your body is an ally to your glorious life, not something that you need to beat into submission to fit an idea that the world has held up for you. (Oh man, such an easier thing to say or do. Amirite?)

-There's a section about how sometimes it's easy to put an idea about something you are passionate about out there into the universe ("I'm going to start a nonprofit to end homelessness! I'm going to write that book! I'm going to do this thing that I always wanted to do that I always told myself that I couldn't do because of whatever reason!" ) - even though being vulnerable in that way to the people in your life might not be easy- but the next step is critical. No one will do that hard work that comes next to make that dream a reality but you. And it might be a straight up GRIND. Your dream doesn't work unless you do. 

-She also talks about our need for connection whether it's romantic or friends or work or family. Humans aren't designed to live in our own little vacuums of space. My relationships are of just paramount importance to me. If I have a fight with a friend it ruins my days until we work it out. If I know my sisters are irritated with me it makes me sad. So sometimes I struggle with having healthy boundaries on how my relationships make me feel. I'm not a good compartmentalizer when it comes to things like this. In the section about connections Jen had this wonderful quote that gave me pause and it is still lingering with me because it's something that I feel so deep in my soul too :

"A connected life drunk with rich relationships is central to my soul theology...if all I was left holding were my relationships with my family and closest community, if that is all that remained I would still consider myself the luckiest girl on earth. My life derives it greatest meaning, its power and energy, from the people I love who love me too". 

Just so lovely.

Jen is always one for frank honesty and vulnerability and that's why I keep coming back to her. If that is something that you are looking for check this book out!

Still More of What I Have Been Reading....

My Great Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. So I picked up this book because an author who I like (he wrote a really interesting book about living in CS Lewis' house on Oxford Campus) mentioned it on his instagram. I was so in over my head with this book. I didn't realize that the author was a poet or else I wouldn't have even tried to be honest. For as much as I love reading, beyond 2 or 3 that I really enjoy, I just haven't been able to find my groove with poetry ever. This book was very poetry heavy and kind of windy and very introspective so I felt lost alot. May have gotten a couple decent book recommendations out of it though. So I guess we will see? Or maybe I'll get bamboozled again. 

The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. If I had to rank my favorite CS Lewis books this one is always very near the top. I would say that this one is my favorite CS Lewis book that DOESN'T make me cry. (Looking at your Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters!)I think that the descriptions in this book are just so amazingly vivid and some of the behaviors of the humans of this book are very familiar (like in a bad way). I figured I was do for a re-read that I knew I loved, since I have been a little hit or miss with the books lately! 

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. This book was pretty buzzy and I was excited enough for it to plop myself on a long wait list at the library for it. I spoiled, rich, cultured young woman in 1950s Mexico city goes to the rescue of her cousin who has married into a English family that lives in rural, wooded Mexico in genteel poverty.But obviously, nothing is quite as it appears. I honestly was a little disappointed in this book. I thought it squandered an interesting concept and setting for something kind of meh.

William Gibson's Archangel. *Apparently William Gibson is a pretty fiction writer which explains the title I guess?* So, our version of the world is in ruins after a nuclear war so technology was developed for a person to time travel back to where things go real wrong to try to save us from that eventuality but turns out that guy is evil and it doesn't go great. Lots of badass female characters in this one. Can't take that for granted with some graphic novels.

Book Review: "From the Underground Church to Freedom" by Tomas Halik

This book came across my radar because this man was mentioned in another religious book that I had read recently. The author and subject of this book grew up in Prague during the Communist occupation (a time where religion was seriously suppressed and the secret police LOVED imprisoning religious leaders and believers), came to faith through the Catholic Church, and eventually was ordained as a priest - all in secret because he could have been tortured to death for like, a 1/3 of the amount of things that he had done. A story about giving the middle finger to foreign occupation in one of my favorite places in the world? Yes please, sign me up.

Okay, so the guy telling the story is Tomas Halik. He was born to an upper crust intelligentsia family in Prague. He was a nerdy kid who loved history and books. This was post WWII which means the Czechs had recently traded the Nazis for the Communists. This means that there was really no religions allowed to practice in the open and Stalin had a particular hatred for priests so he looked for any opportunity to stifle any underground churches and loved to imprison and torture religious folks. Through a series of events Tomas becomes involved in an underground Catholic church, comes to faith, decides that he wants to be a priest, goes to like, an underground catholic seminary, becomes and priest and can't actually be a priest until the Communists leave in the late 80s. The first president post communism, a playwright named Vaclav Havel was a family friend of Halik's and so Halik was pretty high ranking in czech society and has met popes and the Dali Llama and a bunch of other famous people. 

Aside from the story of Father Halik there were two really interesting things that I keep thinking about from this book.

- When the Velvet Revolution happened in Prague (when the Communists finally left the Czech Republic in 1989) the citizens would gather in Wenceslas Square and shake their keys in a "it's time for you to go now" move to the governing bodies. I like this because a)it's such a flex and b) in high school at our basketball games if we were winning a game by a ton everyone would pull out their keys and do this. Very similar circumstances, obviously.  

-I heard about this next part when Quinn and I were in Prague, but I had forgotten about it until I read about it in this book. When the Communists left there was an option for you to see what your secret police file said about you. I've talked about this with a couple of different people, would you want to see your file or not? What if one of your friends denounced you to the police? Your parents? Your spouse? I decided that if someone denounced me under duress (aka torture) I wouldn't be mad, but if someone denounced me because, like, they wanted the apartment I lived in or because I was dating their ex-boyfriend and that somehow landed me in prison I would want to know. Even though I have a feeling that would make me incredibly bitter for at least a little while. 

What I have been reading...(Summer Reading Program Edition!)

The summer reading program for adults is happening at my local public library so we are going for quantity and not book reviewing so maybe we can win a prize! So unless there is a book that is AMAZING only snippet reviews until it's over :)

The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys Club by Eileen Pollack. So this woman busted her ass her whole life and got into Yale (in the 70s) for Physics. She was one of the very few women in the "hard science" departments and she really struggled in part to the systematic sexism that she came up against. There were some definitely good and valid points in this book but I couldn't get over the fact that when she was at Yale and there were so few women she looked at all of them as competition like, she really wanted to be the first woman to graduate from Yale with a BS in Physics. And the whole time I'm sitting here thinking "oh, you feel isolated and stupid and unprepared and so damn lonely I bet those girls feel that way too. So maybe get off of your own pedestal of eliteness and go talk to those girls and make yourself a support system and help support them too!". It REALLY irritated me.

Time Travel: A History by James Gleick. I picked up this book because the author was one of the talking heads on a documentary series that I was watching about science fiction movies and I thought it sounded interesting. It was interesting but there was also a lot of physics in it. I learned a lot though! A few quick facts: 

-Mark Twain had a telephone installed in it's house the very year it was patented (maybe the first in a private residence?) and two years before he got a typewriter!

-There is a section about Daylight Savings and Time Zones - did you know that when the Nazis invaded France they had everyone reset their clocks to the same time as Berlin? Megalomaniac power move.

-Isaac Asimov invented the word "robotics". (Was also a bit of a toolbag, wrote great stories though)

-Ursula LeGuin went to the same school as Philip K Dick

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn. This is indeed a novel of letters. It's told in letters back and forth between people. And it's also about a town that's whole life changes once letters start falling off of a statue. That town council (who be cray) tell the residents that once a letter falls off it can never be used again. Then in the letter between people there are no mentions of that letter ever again. Like when the "D" falls off and they have to rename all of the letters of the week. I thought this book might be a little gimmicky but I was intrigued by the premise. I was really pleased when I found it to be a super compelling book about a city gone mad.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Microbes are EVERYWHERE. In your eyelashes, on your hands, on your pets in your car. These tiny microscopic organisms influence your life and health in more ways than you possibly know. I am not a person with a lot of scientific background but have worked at a medical school with neuroscience researchers for the last 5(!) years and have grown to really appreciate interesting science writing, so I picked this book up. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) by all the way that neuroscience factored into this book. The brain and your gut (the gut microbiome, as the cool kids call it) are linked closely, often in ways we don't understand. Someday maybe I'll tell you how I ended up with the job of "secondary poop wrangler" for a study that involves that exactly.

Two real interesting things from this book - did you know that your emotional state effects your rate of digestion? We know this in part because there was a guy in the 1800s that got shot in the stomach and it never healed right so a doctor could physically watch his stomach acid digest food. Sometimes even dangling food through the hole and pulling it in and out. (It was a big hole). Secondly, there was a very interesting study about pregnant mice - if a pregnant mouse was injected with an infection (measles, influenza - something microbial) the baby mouse would develop just fine but then at adolescence would start developing symptoms that to scientists look like schizophrenia and autism in humans. One of my coworkers is getting his PhD and is studying schizophrenia in developing brains and does a very similar study to try to figure out if we can do anything to prevent or predict if someone will get schizophrenia. Science ya'll. We are doing big things when we can go to work. Damn pandemic. 

What I've Been Reading...

We've got some rapid fire book reviews on this Monday which doubles as my husbands birthday! Woohoo Dairy Queen ice cream cake!

"Long Walk to Valhalla" by Adam Smith - Picked this short graphic novel off a library display as I was frantically grabbing for things to read in anticipation of a library shut down due to COVID19. A quick read about the bond between brothers in a wretched family situation and a mysterious girl who shows up one day. Odin meets The South.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King - I very much like The Shining, the book and the movie, so I was intrigued by the sequel. I saw the movie first and I thought "this was a decent movie but I bet it's one of those movies that they had to cut out a bunch of things to make it a reasonable length of time". So I read the book. I liked it! It was a completely serviceable sequel to a wildly popular work. I liked grown up Danny, but I love a good redemption story.

"Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London" by Lauren Elkin. I did not like this book like, at all. It was a struggle. I thought it was going to be like "this lady walks around all of these cities and these are her observances about what makes these cities great" and it was not like that at all. It was a lot of whining and long rambles about movie plots that were barely connected and ugh. No.

You're A Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass): Embracing the Emotions, Habits and Mystery that Makes You You by Mike McHargue. I didn't know this author, but an author that I liked had mentioned this book coming out in her newsletter and it sounded intriguing so I checked it out. It didn't quite hit for me and I'm not really sure why. It was a very honest memoir in part (and I don't really do memoirs so maybe that is part of it) and then got very sciencey in others. I felt like it just didn't quite know what it was and struggled to find a cohesive path.

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh. This book is about 4 sisters who are cloistered on an island with her paranoid parents to keep them from men that are physically toxic to women. Or are they just lying? Meh, this book was fine.

The Last by Hanna Jameson : My first read of the Adult Summer Reading program from my library! A story about a group of travelers stranded in a Swiss hotel during a nuclear war. I liked that it felt like was pretty realistic about how people would behave if you didn't die immediately in a nuclear war. Lots of characters but not too hard to keep straight- there was one storyline that was wrapped up poorly I thought but was otherwise a really satisfying, entertaining book.

Book Review: "The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz" by Erik Larson

A ways back I heard that Erik Larson was going to have a new book coming out and I was like well, no matter what I'm going to read it because I love me some Erik Larson. And then I found out he had written another book set during WWII and I was super thrilled! I had preordered the book and was saving it to read during my vacation in France this summer but...well...so I still read it during the time I was supposed to be in France, except for now it was being read on my couch in my living room or in the office snatching a few pages here and there between meetings.

So this whole book orbits around Churchill and the people who he saw the most during his day to day life during the war (his wife, his kids, his cabinet members, etc). But for context we also hear about Hitler and Goring, who was running the Luftwaffe, the Nazis air force. And when the USA enters the war; FDR. Also this book is the first time where I've heard a lot of details about London during the Blitz. It made me think of a lot of questions about these bombs and how they worked and how (in one particular instance) how a bomb ripped through a basement night club and killed a whole bunch of people - there was a group of people seated at a table and they had no visible injuries but were all killed instantly, but a woman standing not far away from them had her stockings burned off but was totally fine otherwise. But like, these are not things that I feel real comfortable googling. Helllllo watchlist.

Since this book covers a lot of facts I'm going to give you some of my highlights:

• Hitler and Churchill both HATED whistling. A weird center circle of their Venn diagram but there it is.
• Churchill was rough on his secretarys and typists. All hours, sometimes he's naked in bed dictating, sometimes you're taking short hand in a speeding car in a time where there is no seatbelts, a day in the life must have been exhausting
• Churchill's son Randolph was a Class A Dickweed. He had an intense gambling problem and had a habit of leaving maps that had confidential information on them overnight on his "parked on the street" unlocked car. It didn't take long for them to NOT give Randolph those maps anymore.
• So many stories of bombers on both sides dropping bombs on the wrong cities by accident. German pilots dropped bombs onto a playground in Germany killing 20 kids thinking that they had bombed a city in France.Flying by night with no lights and unreliable maps/navigation - not great!
• So many Londoners experienced gastrointestinal distress due to the consistent threat of bombings. They called in Siren Stomach, I call it the Anxiety Shits.They had good reason - between 1940-1941 44,652 Londoners were killed and 52,370 were injured. 5,626 of the dead were children.

The facts above may make it seem like it was a super depressing book - it was not. It definitely had sad parts but really highlighted the humanity of everyone who was working hard to provide safety and continued existence in England and beyond. 4 out of 5 stars!

Book review: "There is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life is Scary, Awful and Unfair to People You Love" by Kelsey Crowe, PhD and Emily McDowell

Do you hate greeting card shopping? Everyone in my family but me does. I'm the designated card gett-er if we are doing a group gift because I enjoy the hunt for trying to fit the person the gift is for. But what if there is no good card for the occasion? Like; your neighbor who you talk to occasionally just had a child diagnosed with cancer and you want to be helpful and supportive but you don't even know their last name? A friend loses someone to suicide and all of the cards have flowery, overly sentimental sentiments when you just want to say "oh my god, this is unbelievably terrible how can I help?" (even if you don't know how to help) A coworker is getting divorced and you don't know if it's a "woohoo lost that dead weight let's go to Vegas and celebrate" divorce or a "I've been married so long that even if I wasn't happy I don't know who I am without this person and now my life is in a free fall" type of divorce. There just aren't cards for that.  Usually I just find a card on Etsy that is blank on the inside but has some sort of applicable thing on front.

This book understands that when being presented with these situations people can be so worried about saying the wrong thing that they just don't say anything and shy away from the affected individual which potentially can make them feel even more isolate and crummier. Here are the "three touchstones of showing up" that the book suggests 1) Your kindness is your credential 2)Listening speaks volumes 3) Small gestures make a big difference

What does that mean?

- If you are going to ask a person who is grieving/suffering "how are you?" be prepared to actually sit there and listen to the person. Don't ask and then sit there staring at your watch the whole time because you need to be somewhere in 5 minutes. If you run into someone and you don't have time to talk make a specific suggestion to catch up with them "Hi friend x, I want to spend time talking with you because I know times are hard right now,can I call you tomorrow around 11? Can I stop by the house and bring coffee and doughnuts?"


-"All of our difficult times involve some degree of shame, fear and loneliness/ At times like that we don't need anyone to impress us our skillfully talk us out of our pain. We mostly just need the kindness that compels anyone to try". and "What someone in crisis really needs is not your skilled perfection,but you"

- When you don't know what to say, just listen. It's huge. People need to feel heard. But if someone doesn't want to talk you need to let them as well. (That one is hard for me.)

-Most importantly, if it comes down to saying something or not saying something - say something. Sometimes the (sometimes courageous) act of going up to a person and saying something)even if it sounds vague or stupid (as long as it's not like, offensive) is better than saying nothing. People might not remember what you said but they will remember that you said something.

Emily, who is one of the coauthors on this book has an amazing stationary/gift store online that has some great cards. I love her line of empathy cards.

This was a great, practical, encouraging book and I think it should be required reading.

Inklings Week - Library Lists!

I'm guest posting today over at my friend Jamie's blog for #InklingsWeek!
Check it out here!

Quarantine Day in the Life

I was thinking, this is a pretty unique time in the world. And I feel like I'm never going to forget the weird feelings and the strange desolation that this time brought,but I know I'm going to forget what happened on a day to day basis. I'm not interesting or thoughtful enough to keep a diary, so I thought I would put a typical weekday in the blog for future Wesley with a bad memory :)

7:09-isham - Wake up, dink around on phone

7:20am- Actually get carcass out of bed, put on work out clothes

7:25am-8:10am - Talk to Josh, tell the dog she's pretty, maybe walk or feed her depending on what Josh hasn't done and then go downstairs to our creepy basement to work out. I found a good app for a leg workout but it's an ass kicker so I do that ever other day. On the off days of that I get on our ancient treadmill that we got from Saint Vinny's for like $20 or do yoga or whatever. Working out keeps me from feeling too sloth-y and it's about the only time during quarantine I get to be by myself, so I'm taking it!

8:20amish - Queenie and I go upstairs and shut ourselves in our home office and start our day. Our house is like so many other houses right now with more than one member working from home. Josh interacts with his students through their virutal learning in the morning from the living room downstairs. Because Josh is a notoriously loud talker and he has to take a lot of calls and his computer beeps alot (all things that Queenie hates and makes her anxious) she comes upstairs with me. We close the door and put on some music (lately it's been a lot of cello music or the Chernobyl soundtrack) and try to drown him out. If this day happens to be a Monday I consult my list that I made on Friday of things that I need to do and make sure nothing has changed. I also make a sign that goes on the door of all of the times that I will be on phone calls/Zoom meetings so Josh knows not to barge in or if he is upstairs he knows to be quieter. Then we work.

via GIPHY

10:15am - About this time I realize that I need a break. And that I smell from my workout that morning. Time for a shower break! Queenie curls up on the bathmat and it's super cute but she also gets dripped on because she's between me and my towel.

12:00pm - Lunch break! Sometimes I get really luckily and I do virtual lunches with friends, or sometimes Queenie and I break out of our almost soundproof fortress of calm and productivity and eat with Josh.

1:00pm-3:55pm -  Workworkwork (while trying to be consciousness about getting up to stretch and walk around and take a few breaks. No one is trying to come out of quarantine with a bad back). Queenie usually ditches out during this stretch since Josh isn't being as loud during this part of the day. And I'm just not that entertaining!


4:00pm-4:10pm - Quick dog walk and talk to Josh about dinner. We try to switch off a little bit but he is our primary cook. Especially because he has shorter work days than I do these days.

4:15pm-4:45pm - Quick sprint to the end of the day. Make a list for tomorrow, answer some last emails, tidy up so I don't come into a pigsty the next morning, log off sign out stop thinking about work for the rest of the day because work/life balance is important. 

The rest of the evening is some combination of: eating dinner, trying to talk myself out of eating too many snacks, working on a craft (crosstitch and coloring have been favorites lately), reading (though this has been hard to do lately, I don't know why. It's like my attention span is too short or I'm too fidgety . I don't know), watching tv with Josh, doing a zoom meet up with friends, social distancing with our next door neighbors who are always trying to get me drunk with them and I'm like "but I have to work tomorrow" and they are like "oh but really?" (they have a large patio and we bring our own chairs and sit at least ten feet away from them. We are being very safe), putting on lotion, washing hands, talking to the dog, walking the dog and then finally going to bed.

Book review: "Sovietstan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan" by Erika Fatland.

I know I am in for a treat when my friend Soulmate Sarah puts a link on my facebook page and says "BOOKCLUB?" Sovietstan was such a book. We both have a love for the slightly more obscure European countries - I lean more eastern european and she leans a little more central Asian/south eastern european but this book had something for both of us. And even if you don't have a strange niche like Souldmate Sarah and I do, I still think this is a book you could enjoy! These countries are often punchlines, if thought about at all - and most Americans can't even find them on a map but they are intriguing enough to fill several books.The countries that the book covers are: Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. 

Here's some interesting tidbits from the book:

• Even though we tend to lump all of the "-stan" countries together they are incredibly different from each other in so many ways (geographically, politically, economically). Turkmenistan is 80% dessert, Tajikistan is 90% mountains. Kazakhstan has become super wealthy due to oil, gas and minerals. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have dictatorships on par with North Korea but Kyrgyzstan people have deposed to presidents.So, let's not lump.
• Ashgabat in Turkmenistan has the most marble clad building per square kilometer in the world. (The people at Guinness say so).
• The losses that Kazakhstan had during WWII fighting as part of the Soviet Union were monstrous. 10% of the Kazakh population died in connection with "The Great Patriotic War" a loss comparable to Germany's.
• There are 1400 leftover Soviet nuclear warheads in Kazakhstan - making it one of the world's nuclear powers...which is...weird.
• At anytime between 1 and 2 million of Tajikistan's 8 million residents is in Russia working and sending the money back home. Not much work to be had in Tajikistan.
• Kyrgystan is the only post-Soviet country in Central Asia where a sitting president has stepped down of his own volition

There's also a chapter about bride kidnapping - which is awful and terrifying and messed me up for days. 

This was a really interesting book that expanded my knowledge of this part of the world exponentially. Special shoutout to my local public library who didn't have this book and ordered it to have in the collection specifically for me :) All the heart eyes.

Book Review: "Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History's Greatest Buildings" by James Crawford

This book will have a special place in my reading history as the first book that I started and finished during quarantine! I might have to make a special shelf for that on my goodreads page :)

This books is large, more than 500 pages but chapters are shortish and self contained. They are also in chronological order so you could do some skipping around if you would like and it won't hinder you. It starts way way back in the day with the OG of doomed architectural projects  - Tower of Babel and  ends (almost) with the World Trade Center/One World Trade. (Hello all the feelings on that chapter). If you're like "Wesley, Im not a structural engineer - I don't care about i-beams and load bearing walls" I would say do not fret my friend, it is a book more focused on the historical than the logistical and engineeri..cal.

Here are a few of my favorite tidbits:

- The Russians took a bunch of artifacts from the excavation of Troy in Turkey at the end of World War II as trophies, you can find them in the Russian State Museum.

- So many interesting facts about the Library of Alexandria: if you were coming into the city and you had a book you had to immediatley report to the library and if they didn't already have that book you had to hand it over. They would copy it and you would get the copy back and they would keep the original. Which is such a hard librarian flex. I hate it but respect it haha.You gotta have a plan if you want a copy of every book ever made, right?

-Did you know that a "milestone" is a symbolic central point of a city from which all of the distances within the city is measure from? Like if I was like "how far is it from Rome to Florence?" the distance is measured from their milestones.

-St Paul's Cathedral is the first English cathedral to be completed within the lifetime of it's original designer

-The guy who designed the Bastille in Paris was it's first prisoner - accused of, among other things, sexual acts with a Jewish woman

-There's a whole chapter on Panopticon prisons and it's bananas

-If you look at Berlin from space you can still see the divide where the Wall was - some will say it's because of the different street lamp lights, some will say it's because of standing economic differences #probsboth.

I really liked this book, it was a good friend during a weird time. 4 out of 5 stars!

Rapid Fire Mini Reviews #???

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - I can see why so many people like this book. 80s nostalgia, a likeable protagonist, big faceless corporations are the bad guys, good world building. I also thought I was the only person who ever saw Ladyhawke, a personal favorite, until this book so #solidarity.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu - This is a great little short story collection, with the connector between them all being something of the Asian variety. Set in Japan, a Japanese spaceship, an Asian folktale, Asian mobsters, etc etc. The titular story had me with tears in my eyes, eating my lunch at work. I want a paper menagerie to play with!

Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach - Interesting setting, ok plot, underwhelmed by character development which made it hard to get invested in the characters.

The Pyschopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson - If I had been more on the ball this one would have gotten full review, but I had to get it back to the library before I got around to writing the review. Whoops! I LOVED this book, and I can't wait to find more books by this author. It scratches that Mary Roach itch for me :)

The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature's Greatest Monsters by Andrew McConnell Stott - This book was too much "oh my gosh, these people are ridiculous and make all of these problems for themselves while hurting everyone around them. Gosh, are they awful" and less "so, you want to hear about "Frankenstein"? Though I did pick up some tips on how to be an efficient grave robber, so that's helpful. If you are looking for a book with scandal and intrigue, this may be the book for you!