What are you reading - 2021?

[Yppej]

Biographies of Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Queens of the Resistance series. I don't care for some of the diction but the content is interesting.

[rosarugosa]

I just finished The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, at the recommendation of Kay and I loved it! It was one of those experiences where I opened the book and just sort of fell into it, if you know what I mean. It was a delightful, enchanted, fairytale of a book and I loved all of the characters and the sense of place and the nature in the wilds of Alaska. Thanks for the recommendation, Kay!

[Yppej]

A Bookshop in Berlin is my pick from this week's crop of books I started. It is nonfiction set in the days up to and during WW2.

[catherine]

In the morning, The Earth is Flat by Thomas Friedman and in the evening, the book that dado recommended, Forest Bathing by M. Amos Clifford.

BTW, I have been trying to reduce spending on my gazingus pin--books--but I couldn't resist purchasing a hard copy of Derrick Jenssen's new book, Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost its Way and What We Can Do About It. I'll report on it after I've read it. https://derrickjensen.org/bright-green-lies/

[pinkytoe]

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

[iris lilies]

I finished Hand to Mouth wondering what the author's real story was--the one that laid out why two able-bodied young married adults, at least one of whom was literate and capable of writing a book, with at least a few semesters of college, were reduced to working the bleakest of low-wage dead end jobs. That was never explained. So I cleansed my palate with Molly Fitz and her talking animals (including Pringle the raccoon), and added sone pathos with The Best American True Crime Writing 2005.

I feel like I might like Hand to Mouth as a snark read. There’s a small genre of those kinds of books and we’ve discussed them here over the years, which does not negate the real life situation of working class poor who live hand to mouth. But those folks usually don’t write a book because they’re too busy you know actually working. Often two jobs.


But the new “hand to mouth “idea is that legions of middle-class people with good incomes live that way. Again, hard to sympathize with them.

[GeorgeParker]

Hand to Mouth got absolutely horrible reviews on https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...-hand-to-mouth. I haven't read it, nor would I ever consider reading it.

My Credentials: 10 years as a shift manager at a hamburger and ice cream joint ($14,000/year). 8 years various warehouse and light assembly line jobs ($18,000-$20,000/year). 12 years working for one employer doing various warehouse jobs 40-60 hours/week ($19,000-25,000/year).

Keeping in mind that I'm single and that Texas and Oklahoma have a fairly low cost of living (extremely low compared to California or the northeast coast) I was never poor and never living hand to mouth, but I never had any extra money to throw around either. And when I think about the co-workers I've had over the years who really were poor (generationally poor) books like "Nickel and Dimed" and "Hand to Mouth" are an insult.

[GeorgeParker]

But the new “hand to mouth “idea is that legions of middle-class people with good incomes live that way. Again, hard to sympathize with them.

Yep. If they have good incomes and end up living hand to mouth it's usually buying too much house because the mortgage broker said they could afford it, buying too much car or too many fancy things because they want to keep up with the joneses, or some combination thereof. If they come from middle class families with middle class values, they ought to know better, but a lot of them don't.

[GeorgeParker]

Ref books about being poor and trying to get hold of the bottom rung, or any rung, of the corporate ladder. A nearby chain hamburger joint has a poster in their dining area that is probably intended now as a nostalgia piece, but it was originally intended to recruit potential employees without actually saying help wanted. It has a drawing of a smiling 1950s-style carhop and says "I started as a soda jerk, worked my way up to carhop, then bun dresser, and cook!"

{sarcasm) Yes sir. What bigger ambition could any girl possibly have than to work her way up to bun dresser, and maybe even cook! {end of sarcasm}

Ok, I'm being unfair. But at least most fast food places advertise that you can work your way up to shift manager (as I did) or even store manager. Otoh I have to wonder how many store managers actually get promoted from the lower ranks. At a fast food place where I use to work, I actually heard a recruiter tell a management applicant who had previously run a hardware store "I can teach you everything you need to know about the fast food business in two weeks, but I can't teach a fast food employee what you already know about managing people." So yeah, I'm skeptical about the whole thing.

BTW: I'm not picking on any particular fast food place. I'm just making fun of this poster.

[GeorgeParker]

In the morning, The Earth is Flat by Thomas Friedman

Actually it's "The World Is Flat" (oops) But I keep making that same mistake too.

I enjoyed that book a lot. Did you know he has a sequel: "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America" I haven't read it, but it should be equally good.