Reading Roundup January - March 2015

Lila (Gilead #3) by Marilynne Robinson (4 stars)

I started this with great trepidation, reading while peeking out from between my fingers. I think Gilead is about the most beautiful, perfect book that has ever been written, and I was just so worried that this would sully it somehow. I found Home nice enough but relatively forgettable, but this story is closer to Gilead itself. It was a great relief to me that this is a very beautiful book.

The initial challenge is for Robinson to convince us that John Ames and Lila Dahl could or would ever get married in the first place. In Gilead we know that Lila has had a rough life and, say, her grammar isn't all that one would hope for. In this book we discover, however, that her life has been about as rough as it could get. The gap between the life experiences of Lila and John is more like an enormous chasm. But I do think she pulls it off. I'm convinced that in their places in life, as different as they might be, they were united in their loneliness and having very little to lose. So they just took this enormous gamble that somehow God placed before them, and prayed and held their breath and hoped and tiptoed very carefully around, and very slowly this beautiful thing unfolded before them, and they really were married. And not lonely anymore.

The central question of the book is: why do things happen the way they do? There are many trite, comfortable answers that a preacher in a dusty small town in Iowa might give, but not the inimitable John Ames. He has devoted his life to struggling with the truth of things and the really hard questions, and it's a good thing. Because Lila's life is a direct refutation of anything trite and comfortable. One false move and everything would have fallen to ashes. But it does not. And it is a miracle, in its own small way.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (4 stars)

A really terrific overview of all fields of science - the history and where we are now in our understanding. It is funny and engaging and interesting. Bryson tells a great story, and the world and our discovery and evolving understanding of it are a great story to tell.

Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado (3 stars)

Sigh. I read this just wanting to love it. I'm one of those bleeding heart liberals who just love to find validation that the system is super rigged against poor people. I've led an enormously privileged life myself and carry all this guilt that I like to assuage by feeling empathetic towards poor people. Also, I really would like things to be better, so I try to understand what is really going on in our economy and society by listening to people who have had different experiences. I try. I wanted to read this and listen.

I learned a lot of things. I felt a lot of empathy. Truly, getting yourself into a terrible financial position, squandering opportunities for education and degrees, and then working minimum wage jobs is a bad gig, one you might never get out of. It sucks. Super duper bad. Tirado really hammers that home. She is exhausted and worn down.

But here's the other thing. After 200 pages I was like, "Where are the bootstraps?!? You're in a really bad position, granted. But ain't nothing going to change unless you change it, sweetheart." Really, I started thinking things like that, with condescending little turns of phrase even. I was startled. I wanted to introduce her to the parents in the book Kira Kira that I just read to my kids about a Japanese immigrant family that silently endured all manner of low wage agony (wearing diapers while working because they had no bathroom breaks, racism, etc) and doggedly save their pennies to eventually buy a house, etc. While reading the book you're like: stop it! Take a stand! But they cannot, so they do not. They keep their heads down and do their damndest to build a better life for their children. And then reading this, I'm like, perhaps a little more heads down, Tirado. Which is all ironic, right?

A big part of the book is Tirado justifying and explaining the poor economic and life choices that poor people make. For example, she smokes. She is irritated at the tut tutting that rich people do about all the sex poor people have when they themselves behave the same way. Drugs and alcohol, ditto. There is plenty of hypocrisy out there, no doubt. But I live in a middle class to upper middle class world myself, and I know a lot of people in this world. As it turns out, many of the people I know demonstrate an amazing amount of self discipline in their own lives. They actually do not abuse substances or sleep around, and they actually work pretty hard themselves. Not the demeaning low-wage type of work, but still pretty hard. I know several off the top of my head that in the last few years have worked full time while raising families and doing graduate school at night to improve their careers. I am a member of a book group full of really terrific women that I affectionately refer to as the "yuppie book group." The group consists of several lawyers, several business owners, and all manner of white collar workers. Conversation often turns to discussions of styles of yoga, wine, triathlons, Whole Foods, and dogs. You get the idea. At our last meeting before the holidays, everyone was there, and everyone was beat. These women are like the embodiment of "rich", yet they work harder than most anyone I know, and they have since high school. I think every single one (with one possible exception) came from modest means. They worked hard, got good grades, got scholarships and went to swanky colleges, worked summer internships, made connections, went to grad school, and then got to work climbing their ladders or starting their businesses. Their current stations are the culmination of decades of self discipline and keeping their lives together. Also, of course, much good fortune and good luck. Anyway, I thought of them as Tirado projected her ideas about rich people onto them. It didn't fit very well.

So anyway, I felt like this book didn't work for me, despite my inclination to be sympathetic. Yes, it opened my eyes to some things. I liked her explanation of payday lenders and why they exist. Employers who don't allow their employees to use the bathroom have a nasty thing coming because you know what they say about karma. Landlords who rent out terrible apartments that they won't repair suck. As do towing companies that extort money out of people. The benefits system can help but sure is a nightmare to navigate. The pernicious scheduling of retail jobs (last minute, might change) that makes arranging childcare or holding a second job nearly impossible is terrible (and getting worse, due to fancy corporate efficiency software). The healthcare system if you're poor is just shameful. There is just so much that conspires to make being poor truly terrible. It is good for Tirado to name those things that our society chooses to tolerate. It is not right.

But still, bootstraps. Sounds impossible, but how else?

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown (4 stars)

Such a feel-good, triumphant book! A group of hardworking, small town Western boys go and beat the east coast elites in rowing, and then go and beat the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics! Against all odds! And right under Hitler's nose! Hooray! Also, it is a great window into Seattle in the 1930s, and that time in general. The wholesomeness of it, in the middle of the hardness of it, is so refreshing. This is a bygone era, for sure. Hard times force you to sink or swim, and the boys in this boat swim just amazingly despite their very difficult early lives.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb (4 stars)

A fascinating inside look into a region of Pakistan and how the Taliban and government influences played out there. Spoiler: both are horrible. It is very sad for Malala and her family, who love their homeland. But if people are going to shoot you in the face, you just have to leave. I really appreciated the perspective of the Pakistanis when the US went in and got bin Laden. Some were embarrassed that the government had obviously been aware of him living a mile from their intelligence headquarters and had essentially been harboring a terrorist. Everyone was embarrassed that the US could fly in helicopters, perform the operation, and then leave, and only find out about it on the news the next day. Some people felt hurt that the US didn't trust the government enough to let them know ahead of time (ha!). Anyway, it is just very sad when a country is run and overrun by horrible, violent, crazy people. Everyone loves their homeland.

I felt a little unsure of how much of this book was Malala, and how much was the writer, and how much was her father. It is clear that Malala is a remarkable person in her own right - intelligent, articulate, passionate. And most everything she has to say sounds so pleasant and right and reassuring to westerners. And she states outright that she would like to be a politician. I don't doubt that she would love to go back to save Pakistan from itself someday, and this book is a first step. On the other hand, she's only 17. It is not hard to imagine her being influenced, if not outright manipulated, by other people. It is nice that her father seems like a nice guy; he certainly comes off well in the book. So it didn't raise any big red flags or anything. But still, it made me just a bit uncomfortable.

I wish her well. I wish every girl in the world access to quality education and the freedom to walk down the street on their own. I wish the worst for the crazy violent zealots who do horrible things in the name of religion.

The Bishop’s Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison (2 stars)

The most unfortunate thing about this book is that the writing is so clunky. I'm not a real fan of the mystery genre in general, and partly I think my distaste is a genre thing. But so little felt real to me. If she hadn't told me explicitly, for example, that two women were suddenly super tight friends as the result of interactions that I had just read about, I would never have known. And jarring things continually happen like someone gets out a pan to cook eggs, three lines of short dialogue are exchanged, and then the eggs are finished cooking. Or one really awful scene is when a husband tells his wife that he is dying, and there is absolutely zero emotional resonance or intensity. And then there is a climax that also has no intensity at all. It's just poorly written.

Also, Harrison has a really big ax to grind about gender politics in Mormonism. I'm pretty well with her, but even for me this book got a bit tedious. Also, she uses the most horrible possible manifestations of the gender thing that ironically weaken her case a bit because they are so extreme and thus easier to dismiss.

The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg (4 stars)

I can't really overstate how much this book upset and disturbed me. It's hardly a big reveal that life as a woman in Afghanistan is terrible, but this made the true nightmare of it come alive for me. It is like The Handmaid's Tale not in some dystopian future, but right now and for the last several thousand years, and really, in my own western culture up until a hundred years ago or so. I just felt this deep chill in my bones that as a woman I somehow barely escaped this horrible existence. I felt radicalized as a feminist. Women are people, and I believe that down to my bones.

This book explores a phenomenon that is apparently not uncommon in Afghanistan of dressing young girls as boys so they can live a fuller life, both for their benefit and the family's. The mother can go outside and do errands with a young boy along, or the daughter can earn money for the family, or she can go to school. It is, of course, tricky when she must transition back to dressing as a woman and essentially go to prison for the rest of her life. Some girls don't like that too much. But it doesn't matter, they are the property of their fathers, or perhaps their brothers if the father has died. If they don't wish to marry, their best bet is to get enough schooling fast enough so that they can earn more money through wages than by being sold as a bride, especially before their father dies and they are at the mercy of brothers. It is disgusting.

Nordberg does an good job of illustrating how the areas with the most horrible cultural and legal restrictions on women are those areas with the most influence from Zoroastrianism, and how most restrictions predate Islam. It is amazing and disturbing what damaging things culture can do when it appropriates religion to reinforce its norms.

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)by Jennifer Worth (3 stars)

This really is not as much about midwifery as it is about the public health system in postwar England, and the very very bad conditions that many people lived in at that time. People were poor, and England was bombed out and struggling, and on top of it some people, as people are wont to do, make bad choices that make their lives even harder. And other people are just lovely and radiating goodness regardless of their circumstances. I'm not sure I've ever read another book that discussed the details of bodies and fluids and smells more unflinchingly. Midwives, of course, are quite well acquainted with bodies and all that they entail; it was rather refreshing (if gross) to get such candid accounts of the reality of them. The most heart wrenching story isn't about delivering a baby at all, but rather the terrible story of an elderly lady and her descent into utter poverty that eventually landed her in the workhouse, which was hell on earth. (And: WHY was the workhouse so horrible?) It was a very, very sad story. I loved the detailed story of a breach birth and how the midwives manouvered the baby out. Overall, the book held together rather loosely and the stories were only vaguely related. It felt like a memoir that could have done with some editing and focus, although many of the details and experiences were interesting. Postwar England was a rough place, but it is nice to know that in the midst of it there were midwives dashing about on their bikes visiting people in their homes to provide them skilled medical care.

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky (3 stars)

If you really, really want more DFW, books like this are the only way you can get it. But if he were still around, this wouldn't be a book. It's an extended, unedited interview that Lipsky did with DFW for Rolling Stone over a weekend right at the end of his Infinite Jest book tour, and the article never made it into print back in the day. There are some interesting moments and DFW is fairly open about himself and his life. He's pretty overwhelmed at his newfound rockstardom and very worried that it will mess him up if he's not very careful, as his early success in college did. He didn't strike me as excessively likeable. He did come across as someone who takes his work extremely seriously, and who applied every ounce of himself to create Infinite Jest and was rightly proud of it. I don't know, this is an ok read. Raw article material is just waiting to be crafted and edited for a reason.