Thoughts While Reading

From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein

“In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein was just scraping by in DC when a posting on Craigslist landed her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travelers–young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a consummate DC insider, and suddenly, the political became all too personal.“

OMG why did I do this to myself? This is a story of a stenographer in the Obama White House.  It should be interesting. She sits in on meetings about super important stuff.  She records and then transcribes later.

What this book actually discusses is her horrific private life.  She spends a lot of her off time on work trips drunk and cheating on her boyfriend with the most disgustingly slimy fellow.  This goes on for years.  She destroys relationships with her boyfriend and her female friends.  I spent most of this audio wondering how anyone could be this stupid and if I was this stupid would I write about it for the whole world to know?  Totally should have DNFed it hours before it ended but I wanted to know if she ever got around to fixing herself. 

In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu

“The New Orleans mayor who removed the Confederate statues confronts the racism that shapes us and argues for white America to reckon with its past. A passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate.“

This was more interesting but the title is misleading.  It only talks about the removal of Confederate statues at the beginning and very end.  That section, especially the violence against companies who might have bid on the removal contracts, kept my attention.  Most of the book was talking about the rest of his political life.  It reads like the book of a person who is considering running for higher office.  He doesn’t admit to many mistakes at all, even in the response to Hurricane Katrina.  I took that whole section with a grain of salt.