ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

Monthly Archive: June 2021

Thursday

24

June 2021

0

COMMENTS

Broken (In the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson

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Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of amazing, absurd stories. Fans of sincerity and genuine kindness.

In a nutshell:
The Bloggess returns with her third (I think) collection of essays, which run from tears streaming down your face funny to deeply moving.

Worth quoting:
So much, but audio book, so I didn’t get a chance to write them down. The very last line of the afterward of the audio version, however, was perfect.

Why I chose it:
I’ve read her previous books, and I love listening to her read her own work. She has a fantastic delivery style.

Review:
I utterly adore reading what author Lawson has to say. She has experienced life in such a different way than I have – and yet I always feel like I can relate to what she’s saying. I read her first book as an audio book, but her second as a standard book. For this one I’ve gone back to reading her via the audio book, because it’s just so damned delightful. Hearing someone with her talent read her own stories brings an additional level of humor, joy, and emotion.

In terms of funny stories, for some reason the chapter on the six times she lost her shoes while wearing them really stands out. It’s absurd and hilarious and something that doesn’t make sense when you hear the title, but by the end, it’s like ‘of course.’

The most memorable essay for me is the letter she wrote to her health insurance about their repeated denial of coverage for the medicines that are literally keeping her alive. It is heart-wrenching and infuriating and not at all unique, given the utterly broken for-profit health insurance system in the US. Hearing her read out all the hoops she is required to jump through, while ill, to get the treatment she needs covered by her insurance (and not always being successful at that). I feel like it should be read at every Congressional hearing where universal health care is debated.

This is an extremely wholesome book that also happens to use the word motherfucker repeatedly throughout. That’s how gifted a writer Lawson is.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a Friend

Sunday

20

June 2021

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COMMENTS

The Home Edit: Conquering the Clutter with Style by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
People who like to look at interior design porn. People who want to organize. People who have some measure of disposable income.

In a nutshell:
Joanna and Clea share their organizing philosophy, room by room, and share some gorgeous photos of different options. Also some famous people’s pantries.

Worth quoting:
“We know you’re fantasizing about all your dry goods in pretty jars — and they’ll get there! — but first, be realistic about your time, experience, and abilities.”

Why I chose it:
I binged The Home Edit on Netflix over the last couple of weeks and needed to get the book.

Review:
I am an extremely organized person. Seriously, probably one of the most organized people I know.

And yet …

Moving house in the middle of the pandemic meant that things just got shoved pretty much anywhere. And because my partner and I rent a place in London, it came partially furnished. On the plus side – we have loads of storage, which is rare in the UK. On the negative – there’s literally no rhyme or reason to how we unpacked. And one of the closets – affectionately dubbed ‘the murder closet,’ because, trust me it’s creepy as hell – has a lot of the landlords items we don’t need (this place used to be an AirBnB).

So, I’ve purchased and read the book, and am slowly making my way through my house. Yesterday, I worked on what has become my home office. I edited out a lot of things I didn’t know I had still kept (shoved into one of the fabric cubes I bought when we moved in, in an attempt to have some sense of order), figured out what (if any) organizers I needed (finally got a monitor stand!), and will finish up when that stand arrives this week.

Today I moved into our bedroom. I’ve not yet tackled the wardrobe, but I have taken a go at our nightstands and a couple of other areas in the room where things are stored (a function of using other peoples’ furniture). I also did tackle the murder closet, and while it’s not going to show up in Style magazine any time soon, I think I’ve worked out a system that will work for us.

Joanna and Clea are not Marie Kondo, but they’re not in opposition to her. They just go a bit further in directing the reader as to how, once they’ve pared their belongings down to things that we need or that spark joy (as Ms Kondo would say), we can keep them organized in both a visually pleasing and a useful way.

The authors are also funny. Their little quips here and there make reading a book on organizing entertaining. The only drawback is that their solutions require a lot of containers and dividers and while those items are not exorbitantly expensive, they can add up, and may not be accessible to everyone.

Look, there’s so much going on in the world right now. Is having an organized home the priority? Nope. But I think better, I manage life better, I just exist better when my shit is organized. And this book is helpful.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a FriendThe Home Edit: Conquering the Clutter with Style

Sunday

6

June 2021

0

COMMENTS

The Lies You Told by Harriet Tyce

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone who likes a little private school intrigue, and who also has the stomach for some seriously cruel

In a nutshell:
A mother returns to where she was raised, with her daughter in tow. Things have changed … or have they?

Why I chose it:
Part of a paperback sale, and it looked pretty intriguing.

Review:
Sadie has fled the US – and her husband – with her 11-year-old daughter Robin. Due to some cruel pre-death machinations by her mother, Sadie is able to live in her deceased mother’s home, and must send Robin to the same private London all-girls school that Sadie attended, or else lose the home. Sadie doesn’t care much, as she just needs to get away from her husband (why, we don’t find out right away).

Sadie finds work as a barrister thanks to help from her best friend, but find the mothers at the private school to be extremely snarky and rude. Their daughters are also icing out Robin. This goes on for the first quarter of the book or so, and it’s distressing to the point that I almost stopped reading. I don’t mind some cruelty in a book so long as the instigators get their comeuppance.

I’m glad I stuck with it though. Eventually something happens that brings Sadie and Robin into the Mean Girl mothers’ good graces. Sadie continues work on a case defending someone who may have been falsely accused.

This book is just under 400 pages and I finished it in one day. It’s a quick read, and interesting. There are twists, things you can see coming and things you can’t. And it has a very interesting and satisfying ending.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a Friend

Saturday

5

June 2021

0

COMMENTS

What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Best for:
White people looking for perspectives on the best ways we can effectively dismantle white supremacy and the institutions connected to it.

In a nutshell:
Author Dabiri shares her thoughts on where some of the current anti-racism focus is misdirected, and offers alternatives.

Worth quoting:
“What we do require here is an understanding, not so much of an intersectionality of identities, but an intersectionality of issues.”

“My fear is that much of the anti-racist literature is an iteration of the same process of maintaining and reaffirming whiteness.”

“What would be truly radical would be to sound the death knell for the fiction that white people constitute a race and that this race is imbued with any ‘natural’ abilities unavailable to others.”

“Language is of course not irrelevant, but the capital B – while coming from a place that understandably is attempting to confer more status on to the world ‘black’ — seeks to reinforce a way of seeing the world that we should be disrupting and unraveling.”

Why I chose it:
It sounded interesting.

Review:
The back cover pretty much tells prospective readers what they can expect:
“Stop the denial. Stop the false equivalencies. Interrogate whiteness. Interrogate capitalism. Denounce the white saviour. Abandon guilt.”

Dabiri is not so much interested in how white people can be ‘allies’ as we’ve come to know the term. She wants us to work to build coalitions. Think about Fred Hampton, and how he got different groups to all align in the Rainbow Coalition – Black Panther Party, Young Patriots Organization, and Young Lords. Groups that today we might look at and think all have different interests, but the reality the systems of capitalism and white supremacy is fucking all of us over. We all have an interest in dismantling those systems. And it’s not about white people feeling ‘sorry’ for people not racialised as white, or guilt over it.

I also appreciated Dabiri’s discussion about race and the challenges with leaning into the separate ideas of race when it is a fully social construct; specifically how a lot of the anti-racism work that is out there today is focusing on emphasizing difference without (white) people really fully understanding what it means to be racialized as white. I especially felt this after having just read Angela Saini’s Superior.

This is one of those books that needs to be read multiple times. There’s so much here, even though the book itself is a relatively short 150 pages. But Dabiri doesn’t need more space – she makes her arguments strongly within the brief but full chapters.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a Friend

Saturday

5

June 2021

0

COMMENTS

The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy essays and memoirs from celebrities.

In a nutshell:
Actress and performed Casey Wilson shares stories from her life – mostly adulthood, though some from her childhood.

Worth quoting:
That title and the origin behind it – I like it a lot.

Why I chose it:
Famous woman memoirs, read by the author, is my jam.

Review:
I generally have enjoyed Wilson’s work when I come across it. I don’t recall much of her from Saturday Night Live, but I did love Happy Endings. She seems like a nice person, and she definitely tells a good story.

She also, by her own admission, seems like she’s kind of a lot to deal with, if her chapter on her interactions with her husband are anything remotely similar to how they interact in real life. But at the same time, like, so what? Her family and friends love her, and she seems like she’s figured out where she belongs in the world. If she is ‘a lot’ by my definition, who the heck cares?

I can’t relate much to her in most ways – she’s got children, and she experienced the unexpected death of her mother at a pretty young age. The latter especially appears to factor heavily in her life, and many of the stories she tells involve her working through that.

I can relate to her need for sugar, however. So I’m sitting with that for awhile.

This was enjoyable to listen to on my morning runs, and I’d recommend it for anyone who generally enjoys this genre.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
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