I really wanted to like this collection of essays. Maybe I have just read too much by Coates in the last couple of years, but I just didn't find enough new here to draw me in.  It feels like he is rehashing the same handful of brilliant ideas and thoughts that were new and intriguing five years ago. 

I was particularly disappointed to see a discussion about Bill Cosby with barely a nod to putting Cosby's rhetoric on race in the context of his being a serial rapist.  To talk about him as contributing to the race conversation in this country without grappling with the fact that the vast majority of his victims were white women is unfathomable to me.  I know that this is a complicated fact that doesn't fit in with the history of false allegations against Black men, but if you are going to talk about Cosby's influence on conservative Black thought around how Black men need to take responsibility for contributing to their own oppression, ignoring the misogyny of Cosby's entire life outside of his onscreen Dr. Huxtable persona felt like dodging the most important conversation.  Moreover, Coates is definitely up to the challenge of dealing with the nuance of the Cosby case and I left this section of the book somewhat aghast at this dodge.

So, the book got off to a rough start for me from which I never fully recovered.  He complained about the Obamas not providing him a lot of interview time and about their watered down politics.  Again, nothing new to see here, but rather as rehashing of the same critiques he has previously written about.

Not recommended.

This is a short story from the free Audible collection about an attorney who represents famous men accused of sexual assault and harassment.  Not exactly a twist ending, but more of a shift in understanding and perspective was interesting. I found the quick pace and character development to be a refreshing change from what I have been reading lately and I was quite surprised to find that I liked it and wished it was more of a novella than just a short story.

(An unexpected) Recommend.

This is a short novel that was a relatively quick, though pretty discouraging read.  Even having traveled in Japan, I have to say that I never gave much thought to the homeless population there or to Japanese poverty in general, so this book about tragic loss and the harshness of life on the streets there had me thinking about how I somehow missed all of that while I was there and I haven't seen that topic come up in general.  There is nothing uplifting or heartwarming in this book, but it is captivating.  

Recommend.

This is a powerful read, interspersing the history of American slavery with the Holocaust and the caste system in India with the author's own personal experiences of discrimination in a way that provide a unique perspective on how race in the US can and should be look as in terms of being a caste system.  The rise of Trump and Hilter, the use of legal systems, and the ways in which people in the middle caste go along with the system, is researched and presented with nuance and insight that I find often lacking in the current wave of anti-racism books.  This one is worth reading. There is some graphic violence, but it doesn't feel like it is there just for shock.  Instead, it is used to accentuate a point for comparison.  She makes lots of good point and highlights a lot of historical facts that, while I may have heard them before, were brought together in ways that made me think about many issues in a fresh way.

Recommend.

In the spirit of Jack Kerouac and Robert Pirsig, this is a road trip book about a guy out driving his motorcycle across the country.  As with both of those books, the narrator isn't responsible or even tired to anyone and so the storyline feels self-centered and narcissistic, even while the backdrop of traveling is compelling. I particularly loved Paert's descriptions of places he has been, as a lot of the places he goes, I have been, often during the same time period that he was there.  

Unlike On The Road or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the reasons for Peart's trip are front and center.  Following the death of his daughter in a car accident and then his wife to a broken heart that was diagnosed as cancer, her consciously sets out to manage his grief by focusing on the road in front of him, from Quebec to Vancouver, all over the west, then through Mexico to Belize and all the way back again.  You can see him staying connected to friends and family, even while traveling in an era without internet and cell phones.  

The book is at its best when he actually writes the book, as opposed to the times when he includes lengthy passages from his journals or letters he wrote at the time.  Those were sometimes repetitive, sometimes unpolished, particularly in the last part of the story.  I wish he had gone back and wrote those from scratch because the earlier parts of the book were so much better.  I found myself liking the times when the story was meta, as he contemplates possibly writing a book in the future about a particularly event or feeling and how he might portray it in the future when he looks back.

I didn't know who Peart was and I still don't think I could name or recognize a singled song by RUSH, but apparently, Peart was their drummer, so perhaps this might make the book more enticing for fans as well.  If it weren't for his self-awareness of his privilege in contrast to his grief, this fact would have made the book less appealing for me. But, there is something powerful about the grief of a parent, even when couched in the life of wealth and fame, and that adds to the story here, rather than detracts.  I'm not recommending it to most people, though, because of its lack of polish as it doesn't feel finished.  Instead, it really felt like he got tired of writing and just filled pages at the end with these letters and journal entries.

​No recommended.

Coming at the time that I was being vaccinated and re-emerging into the world, this book about the author's chronic illness and depression that caused her to leave her career and take stock of her life while not doing all of the things that she was used to doing resonated on many levels.  She weaves stories and facts about winters throughout the story, playing on the metaphor of her illness being a time to hunker down and survive.  I found the narration about her own life to be exhausting, depressing, and uninspiring.  Exactly the opposite of what I was looking for and needing after the exhaustion of my own forced isolation and winter.  But, many of the pieces in here that she writes about wintering were inspiring and lovely.  Her prose is wonderful.  Things like hibernation, trees shutting down for the winter, and most especially the cultural practices of the northern most communities to prepare for and survive the winter were interesting and definitely left an impression on me and felt pertinent to the pandemic situation for sure.  Overall, though, the book was written by someone in a depression, in many ways justifying checking out of life and isolating themselves from connections in a way that I can't relate to and found, well, too sad.  I didn't find a story of resilience, rejuvenation, or hope, as described on the book jacket description.  Not recommended.

This is basically a memoir that tracks Melinda Gates' growth as a philanthropist and from that perspective it is fairly interesting.  Her shift to the left and willingness to tackle more complex problems over time is a fairly predictable reflection of the stereotype of privileged do-gooding.  As she visits places where they fund projects and connects with, particularly women, she sees a reflection of the sexism and misogyny in her own sheltered and mega-wealthy American life.  The book is written before the pandemic, but the insight into this type of giving, done in a thoughtful way that unfolds in a ways that I appreciate, is useful in thinking about how the Gates and Dolly Parton, among many others I am sure, funding the vaccines and in some respects made me rethink whether government could have done some of the projects they are working on, let alone whether it could be done better by government.  There is a lot of power in having the kind of funding that the Gates Foundation has.  It made me wonder think about the giving being done by the right and how that is also influencing communities.  

Ultimately, if you are at the beginning of your journey of recognizing systemic sexism and how that plays out across the world, then I think you might find this book worthwhile.  Similarly, if you are interested in how the mega-rich philanthropists can be moved to support programs that destabilize patriarchy and empower women, then you find also find the book worth your time.  In general, though, I found a lot of her analysis to be trite and basic and her arc of development to be more predictable than compelling. 

​Not recommended.