ASK Musings

Best for:
Anyone who enjoys complicated narrators. Anyone who has worked in an office setting.

In a nutshell:
Jolene is an office worker who gets caught doing something unprofessional. As part of her improvement plan, she’s accidentally given access to everyone’s emails and chats.

Worth quoting:
“There’s no way this reality was the intended human experience.”

“Nobody is immune to thinking they might be wasting their only life on a place that can toss you out without a second thought.”

Why I chose it:
Rare Birds book club choice.

Review:
As soon as I read the synopsis of this book I knew I was going to enjoy it, so I waited until I had a free afternoon. I started this book after lunch and literally did not stop reading it until I finished it. I can’t recall the last time I did that, but this book was such an interesting and easy read. The writing is fantastic – I laughed out loud multiple times, and found the different characters to be quite well developed. There were a few plot twists that might be slightly far fetched but nothing too beyond belief.

Jolene is working an absolutely fine, average office job in a Walmart-type corporate office. She’s miserable, still not working through some rough times from her youth. So she does something ridiculous: she writes snarky comments at the bottom of her emails, and then changes the font color to white so they can’t see it. Except one time, in an email to her main coworker ‘rival,’ she forgets.

HR is involved, and while some security changes are made to here computer as part of her … not punishment, but you know what I mean … she somehow ends up with super admin rights, and every email and chat message is BCCd to her.

Jolene learns what her coworkers really think of her, from the interpersonal thoughts to undermining her work, while also going through training with an interesting new HR guy, Cliff. With her job on the line, she decides to make use of this new information, to both improve her lot in the company while also possibly undermining others around her.

I think the main point this book makes, and makes well, is that we don’t know what anyone else is really going through. And it’s not to make excuses for poor behavior – and people in this book do face consequences for their actions – it’s to ask that we think before we act. That a lot of people are hurting, and that while work matters in some respect, it certainly isn’t the whole or even the main part of a person’s life. And we can’t excuse our own errors in judgment because we are going through things, but we can be kind to ourselves and seek to do and be better every day.

That quote up there is something I think a lot, especially these days, with so much going on in the world – “There’s no way this reality was the intended human experience.” Petty games, cruelty, fighting with each other, underpayment, no time for joy. And office work is a picnic compared to other forms of labor. It’s so frustrating to think about what life could be, but also inspiring to think about what life still can be when we care for the people around us.

Three Stars

Best for:
People interested in the history of hot dogs in the US, told through a sort of travelogue / memoir hybrid.

In a nutshell:
Author Loftus travels the US to taste all manner of hot dogs, while sharing the stories and history of those who sell them.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I adore Loftus’s podcast ‘Sixteenth Minute.’

Review:
I wish I liked this book more than I did. I only became aware of Loftus’s work this year, when her podcast ‘Sixteenth Minute’ was released. The podcast explores what happens to people who have become famous who didn’t really intend to (the title is a reference to 15 minutes of fame, and the theme song is a banger). I admire the way Loftus goes deep into topics others might write off as too fluffy, and she manages to find how something one might have scrolled past on TikTok represents a section of our culture today.

This book definitely shows some of her fantastic reporting – the way she talks about different hot dog institutions, exploring how they are part of their community, is where the book really shines for me.

The parts that don’t really work for me honestly I should have known better. The book is called Raw Dog, which as we all know has another meaning, but I genuinely thought it was just a sort of clever way to get attention for the book. But there is a surprising amount of sex discussion in this book, and I think it feels just so shoehorned in. I know way too much about young Loftus’s sexual history, and I really didn’t want or need to.

I absolutely appreciate that this book is, as many such books are, part memoir. There’s not really a better way of telling these sort of anthropological explorations of pop culture than via travelogue or memoir. I’ve seen it done well loads of times, and just a straight recitation of hot dog history would be an absolute snooze fest. And this book is not! And I’m sure loads of people will enjoy and appreciate the spin Loftus puts on the topic, but I genuinely don’t need to know that much about her sexual past, and I don’t think it works in this book. While writing this review, I thought about whether there was something here about internalized misogyny, where maybe I’m subconsciously judging a woman for being open about her sexuality, but no. I’ve reviewed books where men do this and it skeeves me out then, too.

And I don’t want to mislead potential readers – it isn’t on, like, every page. But I’d bet every chapter has at least one reference, and I just don’t think it was needed, and I don’t think it added anything to the book. It actively took me out of it repeatedly, so much so that it took me a month to read this audiobook, when usually I go through them in about a week.

But still, check out her podcast. It’s fantastic.

Four Stars

Best for:
People looking for some very basic info to kick-start their holiday planning.

In a nutshell:
Small basic book with information on Athens and surrounding areas.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I’m going to Greece later this year.

Review:
I’m lucky enough to be able to take a trip later this year, to a country I’ve never been to before. Most of what I know about Greece is from US pop culture, with a sprinkling of knowledge based on what I learned in my philosophy degree. It looks gorgeous, but it’s also huge. Trying to figure out where to visit in a country made up of so many islands and towns is a challenge, and rightfully the guide books about Greece are all huge. I had no idea where to start.

Because we know that no matter what we want to spend time in Athens, this book was a perfect starting point for us to get our heads around the many things there are to see and do in that city. I think most mini rough guides are set up the same way – it includes a brief overview of the area and a history, then a few pages on different arts of town. Then there is information on entertainment, sports, shopping, and kids, followed by longer sections on food and drink, travel essentials, and where to stay.

Obviously I’m going to do more research and look things up online, talk to folks who have visited, and think through the things that I’m most interested in any trip to a country I’ve never visited, but this book is a very handy, basic starting point.

Best for:
Young Gen X-ers and Elder Millenials.

In a nutshell:
People with a uterus will at some point stop getting periods, their hormones will shift, and some things will be a bit different. This book seeks to provide some suggestions, advice, and an overview of the research to help make this time (which can last many years) and beyond a bit more comfortable.

Worth quoting:
“Observe the sentences you say in your head and out loud, and be on the lookout for works such as ‘always,’ never’ and ‘everything,’ because they’re often a sign that you’re throwing around inaccurate generalisations that make a situation more extreme than it actually is.”

Why I chose it:
I am a Xennial woman. So … yeah.

Also, I read Hill’s book Period Power and found it to have some useful information.

Review:
This is a detailed book that appears to be very well researched, and I appreciate that. Until recently there seems to have been a dearth of information available for folks who get periods about that bit of their life (roughly 40ish years), and possibly even less on what happens when folks are no longer getting their periods. I recall ‘The Change’ being mentioned in a couple of films (Father of the Bride II stands out to me), and hot flashes / hot flushes mentioned as the primary symptom. But there’s so much more. Hurrah!

Like Hill’s previous book, there’s a lot of good stuff here, but also a lot that either isn’t relevant or is a bit too … woo-ey for me. The chapter on hormone therapy was useful, and one I’ll probably revisit. But equally interesting were her other suggestions for ways to protect against some of the possible negative issues associated with perimenopause and menopause, like loss of bone density, and sleep issues.

Overall I think we need more books like this that address something that half of folks will experience. I’ll hold onto this so I can refer back to it as necessary, and I’m glad I read it, but I’ll probably seek out other books on the topic so I can have more than one opinion on some of these issues.

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone who is still wavering on giving up Facebook and Instagram (and Threads, though does anyone use that?).

In a nutshell:
Corporations with this much power SUCK.

Worth quoting:
“It’s so ugly. What a thing to be responsible for.” Said in reference to Facebook helping elect Trump in 2016, but I think is a great statement describing the whole of Meta.

Why I chose it:
My sister-in-law mentioned she was reading it and it was interesting so I thought I’d check it out,

Review:
Oh Facebook. I hate how so many organizations use it for things that should be accessible elsewhere – using it as a poor substitute for an actual website. I hate that a few times I’ve had to create an account to access information, though I am happy that I was able to completely delete both Facebook and Instagram last year, and I’m not going back. Because I lived in Seattle, I’ve known a few people who have worked for Facebook, or one of their related apps. And I’ve never heard anything positive about the work environment. This things shared in this book, however, are another level.

Wynn-Williams pursued a job at Facebook. She had experience in diplomacy, and saw before most others how much Facebook would become intertwined with governments and policies. After a few tries, she was finally hired, and eventually led the Latin America and Asia (minus China) teams. She left in 2017, after being fired for ‘under performance and toxicity,’ which in the reality of this book, just means she reported her boss for sexual harassment and he retaliated by blocking her hires and undermining her work.

I think it’s been known for awhile that Marc Zuckerberg is a deeply problematic person, and Facebook is a deeply problematic company. He is rude to people who he doesn’t think can do anything for him, he’s amassed more wealth than any human should have, and it all started because he ripped off a website that rated women’s looks. That’s creepy, gross behavior, and now he gets to transfer that to whatever strikes his fancy (including exploring a run for president a few years ago). He’s shoved himself onto the world stage, and because of the power of unregulated social media that he controls, people pay attention to him.

And that kind of personality and power attracts similar people – ones who live to work, and who crave the power and control that comes with C-suite positions in multi-national corporations. In Wynn-Williams’s telling, it isn’t limited to Zuckerberg. Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote that pinnacle of white feminism “Lean In,” where she treats systemic issues as things to be sorted out by individuals, coming close to blaming the victims. During that book launch, for example, it is the women employees of Facebook who are tasked with supporting the book’s publicity. Not the men. Wynn-Williams also makes some accusations of Sandberg acting deeplyl inappropriate on a private jet flight. In general Sandberg comes across very poorly in this book.

There’s so much Wynn-Williams covers – not just about the awful policy choices Zuckerburg and company make (including Facebook’s complicity in the violence in Myanmar), but about the working environment. Sexual harassment that Wynn-Williams experienced, and received retaliation for reporting. The fact that she received a negative performance review the day she returned to work from maternity leave for not being reachable on maternity leave WHILE SHE WAS IN A COMA. That’s not a joke. The utter lack of care for the lives of the staff and contractors in endemic throughout the company – including a story about a woman literally seizing on the floor and staff just carrying on working and not helping her, and others having their safety put at risk in dangerous cities (including a staffer who was arrested because the country’s government said Facebook was not complying with the law).

It sounds like hell, and it is so gross that a company that is deeply embedded into society has such horrible practices. But I think one important take-away that is not really mentioned by Wynn-Williams is that this is not unique to Facebook. Large corporations generally treat their employees like crap. Senior leadership in these vast corporations are completely out of touch, and devote all of their life to a job, a job that is actively making the world a worse place. They don’t have hobbies, they don’t spend time with their families. They work, and they amass power and money, and they treat anyone who doesn’t also have power and money like they don’t matter. They look the other way when staff are being harassed, blaming or straight up disbelieving the victims. They say things publicly that they don’t back up in practice, and they put out statements defaming and gaslighting individuals when they share their stories (as, predictably, Meta did when this book was released).

I’d love it if everyone who could stopped using Meta’s products. But I also know that there are loads of other ethically questionable companies whose products we use, and who just keep on acting like corporate asshats because there is money to be made and power to amass. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I appreciate Wynn-Williams shedding light on the shit that this particular company has spread.

Four Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy more philosophical works of fiction. Those who don’t need every question answered.

** Spoilers Below **

In a nutshell:
Our unnamed narrator is a teen girl who finds herself locked in a windowless jail with 39 women. She recalls nothing of her life before arriving here, and this book follows her life.

Worth quoting:
“They’d wanted something all their lives, but now they had it, they didn’t recognise it.”

“What does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?”

Why I chose it:
This book, though original written in the 1990s, has been everywhere I look in the UK, so I finally decided to read it.

Review:
As I said above – spoilers. Because I want to talk about all parts of this book.

First off, we never find out the why of anything in this novel, and that is such strong choice. Much like some of my other favorite books where something unexpected and fairly inexplicable sets off the entire story, we never learn why the women (and the hundreds of others the discover over the years) were kept captive. We don’t know where they are, if they are even still on Earth. We don’t know what the incident was that led to their capture. And we don’t know how the hell the lights are still on after 40 some years…

The book is broken into three parts. The first is when this group of 40 women are living in the cage. The narrator talks about their daily life, and about how they have literally nothing they can do. They are watched by three male guards at a time, who do not speak to them. They are provided basic clothing, very basic food and cooking supplies, and bedding. They do not have privacy ever, including when using the toilet. This goes on for years, with no knowledge of why. So much of this section got me thinking about how one would survive when there is no understanding of why one is even there, and no contact with others. The cruelty of just keeping someone in a cage. It got me thinking about people put in detention in the US for ‘immigration violations’ – just stuck in a limbo where they have no idea where they might be kept, what will happen next. No way to fight back.

The second part comes when the women accidentally gain their freedom. A siren sounds and the guards bolt, and they just so happen to have been in the process of opening the cage for another reason, and they leave the keys. So the second part focuses on the women gaining their freedom, but realizing almost immediately that they are both all alone and that no one is coming back to either save or harm them. They organise themselves and realise that their basic needs will be met, as there is plenty of food to last literal years. But of course they explore, and eventually come across another cage. And another. And no guards. And no survivors, because no one else has the serendipity of the timing of the siren and access to keys.

The third part looks at life once the narrator is the sole remaining survivor. As she was youngest by a lot, over the decades the others die, eventually leaving her completely alone to wander until she, too, dies.

Author Harpman does an incredible job of telling all of this from the perspective of someone who has no frame of reference to ‘before times.’ She can’t read, she doesn’t know math, but more importantly, she doesn’t know human connection. She recoils from physical touch and don’t quite understand why people would be asking questions about things (in the beginning). Once she becomes closer to the rest of the women, the narrator starts to recognise the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. She is always wanting to explore further, walk faster. She wants to learn about the world before she knew it, but also learn practical things.

Once the last of her fellow prisoners dies, she’s excited to be alone, to have the full freedom she’s craved her whole life. And this all creates the space to ask the questions related to what it is to be alive, and what is humanity. Obviously humanity is cruelty, given the cages these women (and later, men, we discover) are kept in, and the fact that someone, or some people, created a world with nothing but these cages in bunkers underground. But humanity is also community, and having a purpose, even if that purpose is to find a way to pass the time before death arrives.

Is this a bleak story? Sort of? But it’s also a beautiful story about how people adjust to the life they have, and try to make the best out of it.

Four Stars

Best for:
Those interested in hearing the first-hand accounts of children who grew up in the realm of ‘Mommy Blogging.’ Those interested in how someone can recover from public and private emotional abuse.

In a nutshell:
Shari Franke grew up as the eldest daughter in the ‘Eight Passengers’ YouTube channel run by her mother, Ruby Franke. Ruby is now in prison, and Shari is telling her own story.

Worth quoting:
“In this family, the only safe emotion was no emotion at all.”

Why I chose it:
I was vaguely aware of the Ruby Franke situation, and recently watched the Netflix documentary about it (which Shari participated in). I thought it would be good to hear the story more directly from Shari herself.

Review:
Today is a bank holiday where I live, and I had no plans, so basically other than a break for a couple of chores that required my attention, I listened to this book all day.

Shari Franke is the oldest of six children, and the daughter of Ruby and Kevin (who Shari refers to by their first names throughout, and not as ‘mom’ and ‘dad’), originally known for their very popular YouTube channel that documented the lives of the Mormon family. However, as Shari details, the camera showed a very curated version of life, with Ruby in reality serving as a cold, narcissistic parent focused on making their family look perfect.

And while I think that’s what most folks are aware of if they know about the family at all, much of the focus of Shari’s book is on the abuse that followed even more intensely when Ruby got the family involved in ‘ConnecXions,’ a cult run by Jodi Hildebrandt. Yes, the recording and posting of minor children without their informed consent is creepy (and I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of those channels), but the bizarre controlling behavior stemming from Jodi’s cult is what ultimately leads to Ruby’s downfall and the breakdown of the family.

Ruby is a cruel woman, an abusive woman, and a controlling woman. She spoke to her children and her husband in such a formal, stilted way, weaponizing therapy language and saying things like she ‘invites’ someone to leave the house or ‘invites’ someone to do work on themselves. It’s disturbing, and I can’t imagine using that language to speak with someone one allegedly loves. And I’m certain that there are many parents like Ruby, who see their children not as individuals with rights and feelings and hopes of their own, but purely as extensions of their parents who should submit to their control in all ways.

So gross.

Shari has gone through a lot, but she speaks of it with such empathy and maturity. The final chapter looks at how Shari thinks Ruby got to be where she is, and it’s not a clinical examination, but one that shows Shari has so much compassion for others. I found it especially astute when she discusses what Ruby’s life might have been like if she hadn’t been told that the only avenue available to her was being a mother.

Shari’s maturity and compassion also shown by the fact that she doesn’t name her minor siblings, and doesn’t detail what Ruby did to them, because she wants them to have the control back over their own stories. She speaks with a maturity that I cannot fathom for someone her age who has experienced what she has. And I appreciate how much she relies on her faith. I am not a Christian, and I know that (like pretty much every religion), the LDS church has some serious issues, and even in the book we learn about times when the people in the church let Shari down, but clearly she finds strength, and comfort, and support in her experience of her faith, and that seems to be what kept her going through everything.

Best for:
Fans of the Hunger Games series.

In a nutshell:
This is the story of Haymitch Abernathy’s Hunger Games. The 50th one, the second quarter quell.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I heard good things about it.

Review:
I didn’t read the last prequel, and couldn’t get through the movie – I just didn’t find it to be a good film. Maybe the book was better? But when I saw that this was getting good word of mouth, I knew I wanted to read it.

I don’t want to spoil too much for those who go into it like I did – completely unknowing. But I do appreciate a few things. First, this book is still brutal. I don’t enjoy reading descriptions of the murder of children; Collins however manages to make those deaths serve the purpose of the book. The Capital is a cruel place, and the cruelty is the whole point.

I think Collins does a great job of developing Haymitch’s back story and personality. I get why the mentor version we meet is the way he is. And she also weaves in the stories of others we’ve met before, explaining some relationships and how people end up the way they end up in the later books.

The things that stood out the most to me were the discussions about what people accept, and when people fight back. There are conversations between Plutarch and Haymitch that are so relevant now. The US is dealing with fascism, children continue to be murdered in Gaza, and the UK just this past week had a horrible ruling that takes away rights of some of the most marginalised people in society. What are we willing to do about it? What can we do about it? Not just the collective we, but us as individuals? What sacrifices should we be expected and willing to make? And why do we have to make the sacrifices when the powerful are the ones making things so very bad?

It’s not a hopeful book in the traditional sense, but the hope in it comes from the community, and the ability for each person to play a small part, pushing towards a greater good. And this is not a spoiler – but obviously whatever Haymitch and his community work do in the 50th hunger games doesn’t stop them – there’s a 74th, and a 75th. But it’s a step. And an important one. Sometimes things don’t get better overnight.

Four Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy a little bit of science fiction and a lot of philosophy.

In a nutshell:
The UK government has a time machine, but instead of traveling into the future, they’ve decided to travel to the past to bring four people to current time to see how they can integrate into the modern era.

Worth quoting:
“Who thinks their job is on the side of right? They fed us all poison from a bottle marked ‘prestige’ and we developed a high tolerance for bitterness.”

“Fitzjames had once asked him how he could approach life-threatening peril and minor annoyances with the same mildness and he’d shrugged. ‘It doesn’t improve my mood to catastrophise, so I don’t.’”

“An underrated symptom of inherited trauma is how socially awkward it is to live with.”

Why I chose it:
I’ve seen it in stores, and then it was the choice for a book subscription I’m in, so figured it was time to read it.

Review:
Ah, what a great read. I read it while on vacation and so was able to inhale it over the course of just a few days.

The book is told mostly from the perspective of the narrator, who I’ll call the Bridge. There are actually five bridges, one assigned to each of the five people brought from the past, including during the plague in the 1600s, as well as the trenches of World War 1. The Bridge who narrates this book is assigned to Graham Gore, a naval man who died in an arctic expedition. Except before he can die, he is saved and brought to the near future, as part of a test to see how people handle moving through time.

The science fiction of it all isn’t the main focus of the book, which I appreciate. Instead, the focus is on all the different aspects of what it is like for people who are brought from their time to now. What are the ethics of this? How does it impact different people? And what happens to the relationships they form in their new reality?

I love books like this. It’s not the same, but it reminded me a bit of ‘The Measure.’ And the writing? The writing is SO GOOD. There’s so much humor, and also humanity, in Bradley’s writing. The ending wasn’t my favorite, which is why this isn’t five stars, but it’s not a bad ending, if that makes sense. Just took away a bit from the rest of the book. But still, so, so good.