Finished This Week

 

Spoilers for The Little Bookshop on the Seine – I wanted to like this book but I realized that I had missed the point.  I thought we were firmly in the “woman realizes she has horrific boyfriend who undermines her confidence so she gets rid of him” plot until the very end of the book when they suddenly reaffirm their love for each other for reasons that absolutely baffle me.

What Am I Reading?

 

 

DNF This Week

I’m a big fan of debt free living.  I especially like memoirs from people who have achieved this creatively.  But this guy….  He basically was a middle class white dude who coasted on that until his junior year of college.  Then he decided that he liked learning and wanted to keep going to school and learning things.  He doesn’t want to be tied down to any job that he could get with a liberal arts degree.  He wants to be free.  So he goes to Alaska and works a low pay job that provides room and board.  He throws all his money at the debt from his student loans.  That’s all fine.

The problem is that he is callous to anyone who isn’t him.  He talks about one guy in Alaska who he knows is beating his Native girlfriend every night.  He mentions it casually like it was the color of his hair.  There is no attempt to help her.  Eventually the guy gets fired when he beats her bad enough to make her bleed from her ears.  The author recounts this in a section that talks about why people were moving on.  There is no compassion for her. 

He talks about people pouring water on sleeping sled dogs at night in the Arctic as an example of people being weird.  His friend from back home sends emails about having to work in “the ghetto” with a “stereotypical black man”. 

Yeah, DNF.   I did have an absolutely lovely time reading the 1 star reviews on Goodreads of this book.  They are hysterical.  Click on the picture to go there.

What Am I Listening To? 

“In celebration of the one-year anniversary of Women’s March, this gorgeously designed full-color book offers an unprecedented, front-row seat to one of the most galvanizing movements in American history, with exclusive interviews with Women’s March organizers, never-before-seen photographs, and essays by feminist activists.“