Just finished Born a Crime today. It was interesting.
Just finished Born a Crime today. It was interesting.
As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
Hillbilly Elegy was good, agreed. I found it useful to educate me about the strongly held values of a section of rural America. It was illustrative of what one solid stable person ( the grandmother) can do to guide the life of a child, up and out of poverty. But it also illustrated how their deeply held values ( fighting, blowing all their money at Christmastme, etc) keep them from middle class success.
The author mentions his mentor at law school who encoraged him to write the book. That woman is the Tiger Mom of the book fame.
I kid that I am part hillbilly because my grandmother was a Hatfield (you know the Hatfields and the McCoys? Yeah she was one of those people.) But My grandmother emphasized education for her 8 children and all of them graduated from high school but for one, and that was a decent achievement for that time.
I liked Hillbilly Elegy. One can see where bad decisions and lack of positive guidance can make or break the direction of a life. Both of my parents were "mountain-billies" so I always wonder who/what motivated them to gain higher educations and professional careers.
Confessions of a Sociopath - A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight Anonymous memoir by a woman who is an admitted and diagnosed sociopath, but leads a basically normal life as a law professor and even teaches Sunday School.
I had always thought that sociopath = serial killer, but turns out that even though their brains are different, that upbringing and other factors can mean they can function and even be successful in society. She also founded sociopathworld.com Pretty eye-opening, especially considering the stat that 4% of Americans are sociopaths.
There's speculation that sociopaths are over-represented in many fields, untroubled as they are by empathy and related impulses.
Even though she is a plagiarist I decided to give Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times a try and so far I like it.
I started reading Death With Interruptions by Jose Saramago. I am only on page 22, but so far it is good. He is snarky and zinging governments, churches, businesses, and the regular folks too.
It is a zippy read in that very "Saramago" style.
The premise of the story seems to be that on January 1st no one dies anymore.
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