ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

Daily Archive: 23/06/2019

Sunday

23

June 2019

0

COMMENTS

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

Best for:
People who enjoy coming of age stories that are (or try to be?) a bit edgier.

In a nutshell:
Marianne and Connell are classmates in a small town in London. His mother cleans her house. They do not run in the same social circles. Things transpire, and they grow up.

Worth quoting:
“Committee members of college clubs, who are dressed up in black tie very frequently, and who inexplicably believe the internal workings of student societies are interesting to normal people.”
“In school the boys had tried to break her with cruelty and disregard, and I in college men had tried to do it with sex and popularity, all with the same aim of subjugating some force in her personality. It depressed her to think people were so predictable.”

Why I chose it:
It’s being promoted in all the bookshops. The bookseller at the shop close to my work (where I tend to wander on lunch breaks at least once a month) claimed it was even better than her last book. I disagree.

Review:
Connell and Marianne are from different walks of life – his mom is a single mother who, among other things, cleans the mansion of Marianne’s family. Marianne’s father is dead, her brother is cruel, and her mother is uninvolved (and also possibly cruel? Unclear). They are both smart, and they become friends via hooking up. Then they part ways but reconnect in college. Each chapter is a skip in time (sometimes three weeks, sometimes three months, sometimes five minutes) and usually — maybe always? I don’t have the book anymore — alternates between the two characters. The bookseller described it as a ‘will they / won’t they,’ but it’s really a ‘they did, and probably will again, and is that a good thing?’

I get what the author was going for here, but I don’t think it worked for me. I’m not sure how one can successfully do coming of age across five or six years (instead of, say, over the course of one year of high school or college), but I don’t think this is it. By the end of the book I still saw the characters as teenagers playing at being adult, even though they did have very real issues and concerns. And even though the entirety of the book focuses on these two individuals, I don’t get a sense of who they are, really. Connell is meant to be deeply written, but I don’t leave feeling I know much about him. Marianne I felt gets a bit more development, but the way her story is handled seems almost salacious for the sake of being salacious. Which, I guess makes sense? I mean, I don’t know how else the author could have written those components, but they still didn’t work for me. Overall I’m disappointed.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it (to the vacation rental home I was in when I finished it)

Sunday

23

June 2019

0

COMMENTS

What I’m Reading – June 23, 2019

Written by , Posted in What I'm Reading

Concentration Camps in the US

“And then we started to pull the children who had been there the longest to find out just how long children are being kept there. Children described to us that they’ve been there for three weeks or longer. And so, immediately from that population that we were trying to triage, they were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming.” Inside a Texas Building Where the Government is Holding Immigrant Children (by Isaac Chotiner for the New Yorker)

“Parents and other adults in detention aren’t faring any better. In one processing center in El Paso, a cell designed for 12 people was crammed with 76, causing migrants to stand on the toilets for breathing space. Up to 900 migrants were held at another facility designed for 125. In another case, a teenage mother holding a sick and dirty premature baby spent 9 days detained without access to medical care for her newborn. They “wouldn’t give her any water to wash [the baby].” DOING NOTHING IN THE FACE OF THESE ATROCITIES IS NOT AN OPTION.” What Can You Do To Help Immigrants Whose Rights Are Under Attack? (Lawyer for Good Government)

“The baby, barely a month old, was wrapped in a dirty towel, wore a soiled onesie and looked listless, said one of the lawyers, Hope Frye. The mother was in a wheelchair due to complications from her emergency C-section and had barely slept ― the pain made it too uncomfortable for her to lie down and she was afraid of dropping her baby, the immigration and human rights attorney said. “I looked at that baby and said ‘Who does this to babies?’” Frye said. “They were being sadistically ignored.”” Teen Mom And Prematurely Born Baby Neglected At Border Patrol Facility For 7 Days (by Angelina Chapman for Huffington Post)

Reproductive Health

“Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) Director Dr. Randall Williams told reporters Friday that the agency would issue an emergency rule to relieve Planned Parenthood of the requirement. “In looking at what they are doing and the fact that they think that causes a burden for patients to do (the pelvic exam) twice…as a clinician who practiced for 30 years, I’m sensitive to that,” Williams said. Williams said the rule would allow physicians to conduct pelvic exams the same day of a surgical abortion.” Missouri backs off on rule requiring women get pelvic exam three days before abortion (by Crystal Thomas for Kansas City Star)

“It was excruciating. I wanted children, but I wasn’t ready, nor was I fully recovered. I was so grateful that Janak had survived, but I could not tempt fate again. It had to be my choice, because in the end, I would be the one to carry the fetus in my body, I would be the one to potentially face another emergency cesarean section, and I would be the one whose baby could suffer the serious, sometimes fatal consequences of extreme prematurity. I could not simply hope for the best — I had to make a decision based on the tremendous risks that had been clearly laid out for me. I decided I could not responsibly have the baby. It was a heartbreaking decision, but it was the only one I was capable of making.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal: The Story of My Abortion (by Rep. Pramila Jayapal for the New York Times)

Corporations

“The spread of Pride marches throughout the country galvanized the LGBTQ movement. As the fight for LGBTQ rights became more mainstream, corporations have latched onto Pride Month as a way of courting the LGBTQ community, an important source of customers and skilled employees. But do these corporations really support the LGBTQ movement? Popular Information has identified nine rainbow flag-waving corporations that gave $1 million or more to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle.” These rainbow flag-waving corporations donated millions to anti-gay members of Congress (Popular Information)

“These beliefs about Uber’s corporate value were created entirely out of thin air. This is not a case of a company with a reasonably sound operating business that has managed to inflate stock market expectations a bit. This is a case of a massive valuation that has no relationship to any economic fundamentals. Uber has no competitive efficiency advantages, operates in an industry with few barriers to entry, and has lost more than $14 billion in the previous four years. But its narratives convinced most people in the media, invest­ment, and tech worlds that it is the most valuable transportation company on the planet and the second most valuable start-up IPO in U.S. history (after Facebook).” Uber’s Path of Destruction (by Hubert Horan for American Affairs)

Misogyny

“But why would anyone do something so absurd? In my mind, I thought that an all-male photograph might not be the best optics for a bunch of rich tech entrepreneurs, especially during a time when women and minorities are underrepresented in the industry. But why would someone doctor a photograph for such a low-stakes item for Instagram and a lifestyle magazine? Was the photo truly manipulated to appear more diverse? Or was this simply a case of “Please photoshop my friend into this family picture. They took it.”” This Picture Featuring 15 Tech Men And 2 Women Looked Doctored. The Women Were Photoshopped In. (by Ryan Mac for Buzz Feed)

“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.” Hideous Men Donald Trump assaulted me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. But he’s not alone on the list of awful men in my life. (by E. Jean Carroll for New York)

“Of course, Biden’s intended audience isn’t the girls he’s supposedly addressing, but any boy, man, or potential authority figure within earshot of those girls. It’s a verbal elbow nudge signaling to the girl’s father, grandfather, mother, or brother that they’d better keep their daughter/granddaughter/sister on lockdown, or reap the heavily implied consequences. Meanwhile, at no point do the girls and young women Biden addresses have the agency to say whether they feel like they need protecting. It also unnecessarily suggests to them that their appearance, which they cannot control, will inevitably put them in danger.” Joe Biden Can’t Stop Using the Toxic “Lock Up Your Daughters” Joke (by Emma Roller for Slate)

Women’s World Cup

“Instead of Team USA being celebrated for what its players achieved, the victory became an opportunity to lecture these women on how to behave. That lecture is all the more galling given that, in March, the team filed a gender-discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The women are fighting, in the courts, for equal pay and respect—and, on the field, for the right to pummel their opponents and express themselves in a way that men often do. “Either way, people are going to say something,” the former women’s national-team forward Sydney Leroux Dwyer told me in a text message. Dwyer won the World Cup with Team USA in 2015. “You celebrate, you’re rubbing it in their faces,” she wrote. “You don’t, and you’re entitled or cocky.”” They Gave America 13 Goals—And Got a Lecture in Return (by Jemele Hill for the Atlantic)

“5. You should not celebrate the goals too much. Celebrate the first goal with all the joy you would show at the birth of a first child, then the second goal with somewhat less joy, then the third goal with a kind of annoyance. Upon the fourth goal, you should make a face like, “Is this happening? Bank error in my favor, I guess!” Attribute the fifth goal to God, or a higher power of your choice. After the sixth goal, take the whole team out and try to figure out what you are doing wrong. The seventh goal should be a mistake. The eighth goal should cause you to become enraged at the referee for allowing such a travesty to take place. After the ninth goal, grab the ball and shout at it. The 10th goal, if possible, should be in your own goal. There should be no 11th or 12th goal, let alone a 13th.” 13 goals for women who want to celebrate World Cup wins (by Alexandra Petri for Washington Post)

“I could not agree more with the gentlemen who dare to ask these questions – and not just so that I can buy time while I frantically locate the exit. Indeed, as part of this column’s tireless commitment to celebrating the underdogs, this week let’s redress the dangerous cosmic imbalance caused by the Women’s World Cup. Here follows a celebration of all the different guys who currently need to explain to you – at length – why they aren’t watching it. As always, you don’t have to be a woman to have met some of these men over the past week. But it certainly helps!” Pity the poor man who’s had the Women’s World Cup shoved down his throat (by Marina Hyde for the Guardian)