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.