I am just not a fan of books that read like independent short stories that then more or less, eventually, come together in unexpected and unforeseen ways at the end.  This, similar to The Overstory that I read last month, does just that.  It feels like a trick to me or like the author is trying to hide the ball too much in hopes of surprising you with how things end up all coming together in the end.  

That said, this book had a lot to love in it.  Most of the stories were really interesting and some were extremely powerful, even though there was never a clear beginning or ending for any of them.  I found the struggle between the generations of feminist/humanist characters to be crafted in a way that gave depth to the second/third/fourth wave feminists conflicts.  I loved one quote from an octogenarian where she talks about "your non-binding people" (referring to non-binary folks) to be part of a sweet scene where the old guard is wanting to turn things over to the new, even while cringing at another second waver insistence that a cis and trans women's experiences are so divergent as to need separate spaces.  She had been such a radical voice decades earlier and yet could not grow and change with the evolving culture.  

Another thing I loved about this book is that it is about radical Black British feminists, a contingent I don't think I have ever read anything about.  The last part includes trans and non-binary voices with characters who are not one-dimensional. The author doesn't shy away from adding depth with characters who make poor life choices, but who are nevertheless presented as whole and complex people.

Recommended, despite the format not being at all my favorite.  

​This was recommended by Gretchen.

I saw Shamus Khan talk at OSU last week and was intrigued enough to get the book and read it.  I am going to start by saying that these authors were very clear that they are not attorneys or psychologists and that they do not come from backgrounds working in the field of sexual assault.  And this definitely shows when they venture into making recommendations, but I am going to set aside that very small part of the book, which leaves something like a bad taste in my mouth, but not enough to outweigh the rest of this book which is absolutely spot on and articulates some thoughts about campus sexual assault and dating violence that really need to be disseminated.

Last year, I highly recommended Untangled for anyone raising teen girls.  This book is a really important companion to that and I highly, highly recommend this book for everyone parenting a teen or young adult.  I am not exaggerating when I say that. It isn't like What To Expect When You Are Expecting, where everyone said you needed a copy and sure, it was helpful, but not in a way that actually impacted how you parent.  This is something that will probably change how you talk to your kids about sex and it will help you frame and rethink about the role sex played in your life when you were younger.  This book is as much about consensual sex as it is about rape.  While there are certainly descriptions about sexual assault throughout the book, there are also a lot of descriptions of hook-ups and consensual sex that are well worth reading.  I particularly appreciated having examples of (young) partners talking about how they manage their sex lives with someone who has experienced child sexual abuse or sexual assault.  This is a topic that virtually no one ever talks or writes about.

My favorite takeaways:

1. We have to rethink how we allocate space on college campuses.  Freshmen are in dorm rooms with roommates where they have no privacy. Older students are more likely to have singles, apartments, or live in fraternities where they control alcohol (they can acquire it & have a place to hide drinking it) and space.  Dorm living does not allow for private or semi-private spaces to hang out with friends other than in a bedroom.  Think about it: If you want to sit and just talk, what are your options? A hard desk chair or the bed. No wonder everyone ends up on the bed.
2. Despite the claims made by some of the younger generations that we are "post-gender," women continue to date older men so that as they age through high school and college, the pool of available partners decreases, while the pool of on-campus partners for men increases.  It is still common for first year women to "date" juniors and seniors and uncommon for older women to "date" freshman--and by "date" I really mean hook-up with.
3. Banning parties with alcohol in sorority houses controlled by women continues to put the control of alcohol and space in the hands of older men.
4. We have to do better culturally to respect Black women's bodies.  100% of the Black women in the study had expected unwanted sexual touching or sexual assault.  ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.  
5. This book contains the most complete insight into sexual assault within the Queer community that I have seen.  It is very powerful and provides a lot to think about. I am looking forward to a lot of my friends reading this so we can talk about it more.
6. Kids go off to college with projects--career projects, academic projects, and sex projects.  We as adults have to find a way to talk to them about the role that they want sex to play in their lives, not just about the mechanics of sex and sexual health.  Progressive sex education should (and doesn't) talk about the role of morality in the context of a healthy sex life.  When asked what sex is for, they are almost universally flummoxed by the question.
7. The vast majority of parents across the political spectrum are in serious denial about the amount of information our children are getting from internet porn and how this has changed the landscape of the type of sex that teens and young adults are having.

I highly, highly recommend this book not only adults who are parenting or working with youth, but also for students in college or going off to college.  I'm revamping my class on intimate violence soon and am going to replace some of the assigned readings from Missoula and Fraternity Gang Rape (yes, I am still having students read a couple of chapters from this) with parts of this book.  It is exceptionally good.  Read it right now.

This book was recommended by Ryan, who recommended The Girls of Corona del Mar, which I absolutely loved.  I knew that Ryan would have a hard time recommending something I liked nearly that much.  Indeed, he tried to suggest The Brother's K, which I read several years ago and really liked.  (Not loved, the way I loved The GoCdM, but still a good read.)  So, I went into this book expecting it to be fabulous. However, this story, like many novels some of my favorite people love, had not a single character that I liked or related to.  When this happens, I have a hard time getting into the book.  I felt bad for not liking the main character, who so obviously hated himself so much.  It was painful to be in his head, with all the internalized homophobia/biphobia, lack of any ambition, and inability to have empathy for anyone else.  This book is like the bi version of Straight Man, which suffered from a similar issue.
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So, sadly, no recommendation on this one.  However, the audio version has an essay by the author about writing the book, which I did quite enjoy.  

.Things I thought I knew before reading this book, but definitely know beyond doubt now:

1. I do not like books that are just a compilation of blog essays. If you are going to use your blog to write you book, for goodness sake, edit them so that the book is not repetitive.  In the blog world, it is probably fine to revisit part of a previous story since your readers read the previous version months or years ago, but when I am reading your book, I promise I was paying attention the first time you told the story. I don't need to hear slightly different versions multiple times. This is what an editor is for.

2. I rarely like books read by the author.  This was no exception.  I did not enjoy her voice. I get that Judah loved the singing intros, but I did not.  On high speed, they were just extremely annoying.  

3. I am not a fan of the emerging I'm-so-crazy-laugh-at-me genre. As any follower of my book reviews knows, I do not shy away from books about hard stuff. I am drawn to books about trauma and survival, in just about every format.  But, this book (like its precursor Furiously Happy) never has a poignant moment. It just goes from one high pitched, non sequitur to another. I understand her point is probably an attempt to convey how her post-trauma, OCD, high anxiety, ADHD, hypochondriac brain functions, but somewhere in there I would have liked an occasional pause to acknowledge some deeper meaning.  She flies through life events that have obviously left her with deep wounds without ever stopping to reflect on them. I believe that even the worse things in life, like multiple miscarriages, childhood (maybe) abuse or neglect (it is hard to tell if what happened to her was abuse or neglect and whether she thinks they are because the way she tells the stories, she never puts them in any larger context that might help situate them), and debilitating neurosis can be told with humor, but to be told only with humor feels hollow and like a waste of time.  As an after-thought, she throws in an epilogue that briefly more or less says that her quirks have made her who she is and that she's glad she's been able to make it a good life, but I found it without depth or insight. It was way too little, way too late.  Again, maybe fine for a blog, but not for a book.

4. I have a really hard time with books by authors with eating disorders who are supposedly in recovery, but who continue to body shame themselves and others, perpetuate diet culture, and glorify thin bodies.  No where does she even acknowledge that this is an issue and it appears that she is doing this unaware of the impact it is likely having on readers with body image issues or eating disorders. She also says things in this flippant way that are at least marginally homophobic, racist, and just plain hurtful to some groups of people. She doesn't seem to have any self-awareness around this and I was disturbed that while it appears this is part of her stream-of-consciousness mental process, it seems like once she put it down on paper, proof-read it, and then talked to her editor about it, she might have decided to change it.

 Not recommended.
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​Recommended by Judah: Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. I have it on Audible.
Leah: I listened to Furiously Happy over the summer and loved it. I’ll have to add this one to my own list now!
Judah: Furiously Happy is an all time favorite. This is her first. It's more family stories. She does this annoying singing to intro the chapters but it's legit so funny I cried.
Leah: hahahahaha sounds right up my alley.

This is an intense novel.  I am reminded of the book challenge I did a few years ago where one of the categories is a book with an unreliable narrator.  This is the perfect book for that, way better than whatever it was that I read for it.  

The women characters in this novel are all strong and flawed, the way all survivors of intimate violence are in the real world and we don't really see it until the well into the book, too, which I love.  It is a complicated narrative of survivors helping survivors (and victims) and how they bring their own history to this endeavor.  Their own unresolved wounds end up hurting themselves, even while they reach out to help others even under the hardest of conditions.  This is different then the men. Although there are only a male characters, they are mostly flawed in the way that hurts the women in their lives.  But I loved how these big histories were not the story at all, but rather the backdrop to a well written tale of fortune telling, witches, and the bond between women.
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I'm recommending it, but with a serious content warning. I don't usually do that, even for books about abuse. There is nothing graphic in this book at all, but the chilling revelations are enough that I would expect most people to find the ending deeply disturbing.
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Recommended by Annaliese: The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, on Audible. Or I have the hardcover, if you ever want to borrow it!

I have to preface this review by saying that I have been a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan for years.  I read this book in just a couple of days while on a trip to the Bay Area.  As expected, it is enthralling, insightful, and hard to put down.  I was intrigued by so much of the material, particularly the material about topics on which I would not consider myself an "expert."  But, here's the caveat.  He covered two topics about which I know not just more than the average reader, but about which I know a lot more than the average reader and probably more than the author and his coverage of these topics left a bitter taste in my mouth.  The topics: child sex abuse and campus sexual violence. 

I found Gladwell's premise regarding child sex abuse to be completely misplaced.  This is a book about what happens when we misjudge strangers and he treated the topic of child sex abuse in the context of the Larry Nassar case as if it belongs in a conversation about strangers.  Nassar is the doctor who sexually abused dozens (if not hundreds) of competitive gymnasts and other girls for decades. But, Nassar wasn't a stranger at all.  He was known to the girls, their coaches, and their families.  He also sexually abused neighbors and other girls who were not his patients, all of whom knew him and whose families knew him.  Many knew his wife and children, as well.  To even stretch the theme of the book a little bit so Gladwell could discuss Nassar's case within the context of this theme is a dangerous perpetuation of the persistent myths around sexual abuse.  Every time we talk about "stranger danger" in the context of child sex abuse, we shift our collective gaze away from the people we know are committing the vast majority of abuse: friends, family, and trusted adults in children's lives.  It is irresponsible of him to include that material here.  If the book were called, "Default to Truth," then I might not have had as much of an issue with it, but it isn't and throughout the book he comes back to this idea that Nassar got away with sexual abuse on a large scale because he was a stranger.  He extends this to the Penn State/Sandosky case as well and that also was not the case.  Nothing about those cases has to do with "talking to strangers," but Gladwell seems so intent on tying them together that it becomes obvious that he does not actually understand child sex abuse at all.

Second, his discussion of the Stanford rapist, Brock Turner, was similarly irresponsible.  His discussion about the impact of drinking and trauma on memory does nothing other than to undermine the credibility of every sexual assault victim, whether they were drinking or not.  Moreover, his advice, (that college women need to be told they should drink less so they are less vulnerable to rapists who drink a lot) is full-on, old-fashioned victim blaming.  He essentially chalks campus rape cases up to "misunderstandings" and "miscommunications" about "sex" and while he thinks we should feel "sympathy" for the women who have these experiences, his take-away from the Turner case, no matter how well written and superficially reasoned, is that someone should have told Channel Miller to drink less.  To support his premise, he focuses at length on Turner's testimony in court and Miller's lack of memory of the incident.  It isn't until he draws you into the analysis that he wants to make about alcohol impairing your ability to judge a stranger's intentions that he bothers to mention that Turner told police a completely different story than he told on the stand. No where does he suggest that if Turner wasn't a rapist, drunk or sober, that Miller would have not have been raped. He seems to accept Turner's position at trial that drinking and hook-up culture was to blame for Turner's assault on an unconscious woman in an alley behind a party.  

My take away from these two sections was that Gladwell might be smart and he might mean well, but he is not versed in the movement to end sexual violence.  He does not have a grasp on the nuances of grooming children or targeting women necessary to write for a large audience about these topics. It was a huge disappointment to realize that this might spill over onto other topics he has written about in the past, which is a bummer because so much of what he has written in other books has resonated with me.

This revelation that Gladwell is not rooted in the anti-rape movement in a way that lends itself to a nuanced and complex conversation on the topic impacted how I viewed the rest of the book, perhaps nowhere more so than where the book starts and ends, with Sandra Bland's case.  Initially, I was drawn into his thesis that the officer, Brian Encinia, and Bland were both at fault because they both made assumptions about the other because they were strangers and because neither of them were the type of person who would "default to truth."  After I finished the chapters on Nasser and Turner, though, and Gladwell circled me back to the Bland case, I was in a different frame of mind.  Now, instead of buying Gladwell's conclusions, which I will admit I did hook, line, & sinker in David & Goliath and Outliers, I no longer assumed he knew anything about things he didn't know about.  Indeed, I think that in a misplaced, "journalistic" effort to appear neutral, he gives the Encinia too much of a pass.  It made me think that as a man not rooted in the movement against sexual assault, that maybe he was similarly unable to write about other topics, either.  It really undermined his credibility for me in general, which, at the end of the day, was a huge bummer.  I suppose that when we are talking about hockey player birth dates and the number of hours it takes to be an expert and when entrepreneurs were born, then it doesn't matter if you understand the implications for vulnerable populations.  But, if you are going to talk about sexual violence and you have the stature, following, and respect that Gladwell has, then you ought to make absolutely sure you know the implications of what you are doing.

Not recommended.
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​Recommended by Marty: Talking to Strangers

So, 2019 was not a good year for memoirs.  It seems like I read so many of them and that the vast majority of them were just terrible.  When this one was recommended to me by my college friend, Nancy (a different Nancy than the one who would have loved The Overstory), I was not excited.  In fact, at first I thought this was the book by Malala Yousafzai and that it was going to be a canned story designed to play on your emotions, like the Coke or P&G commercials that come on during the Olympics.  So, image my delight when this book was absolutely none of those things.

This is a story about a survivalist, Mormon family living in Idaho that not only didn't educate their children, but didn't even get them birth certificates.  A story about harsh child abuse and neglect, the complexity of what love looks like in that environment, and the iron will of a girl determined to survive it.  The longing to belong, even to the dysfunctional, vengeful clan she grew up in was conveyed with such raw emotion that at times I gasped out loud when something unexpected happened.  

It is also a story about mental illness and the toll this takes on children being raised by parents with bi-polar disorder, paranoia, and unresolved childhood trauma.  The isolation of this family, who live near Ruby Ridge, waxed and waned, but the mistrust of government and anyone who did not believe as they did left lasting scars on the children that play out in a variety of ways.

The book is exceptionally well written.  I cannot overstate how well plotted it is and how vivid the tales and characters are.  The author's thinking errors are unusually pronounced, but she recounts them without self-pity or self-aggrandizement.  One thing it does particularly well is to remind us as teachers not to write off a student who appears unprepared for the task of high education.  

Spoiler alert: My favorite scene is when the author/narrator moved abroad at one point and she realizes that the reason her father is so freaked out by her leaving is less about his concern that a woman is getting an education and more about his worry that when The End of Days comes (with which he is obsessed and has spent his entire adult life preparing for), he will not be able to drive to get her.  He has enough gas stored that he could pick her up anywhere in North America and bring her home, but he wouldn't have a way to get her home from across the water.  My second favorite scene is her in class asking what the word Holocaust means because she had never heard it before, then going on to study Jewish history at Oxford just a few years later.

Highly recommend.
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Recommended by Nancy: I’m not an avid reader like you. I also mostly loved Educated by Tara Westover, but I suspect you have already read that, too. For better or worse I don’t invest time in mediocre books so I check reviews before I dive in
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