Agorafabulous! by Sara Benincasa

agorafabulousAgorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom

Compelling memoir (and I don’t usually care to read them) about her “mental illness” but that phrase doesn’t quite express the reality of her terrifying experience with agoraphobia and panic attacks. Superb writing; hard to imagine being so open and bold about such a difficult internal conflict with her own brain chemistry and funny, poignant, and hopeful lesson. Anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts and other issues, please seek help. I am so glad she did and lived to tell the tale and dare to write about it.

 

Wrapped in the Flag by Claire Conner

wrapped in the flagWrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right (2013) covering the John Birch Society with their rugged individualist slogan of “less government, more responsibility, and — with God’s help — a better world” not withstanding that many people do not agree that their vision is the vision of what a better world would be for the majority of the people. That’s the problem with zealots, they are so sure they are right that they feel an obligation to impose their “right” beliefs on everyone else, facts be damned, or civil rights, or the law. Only what they want is what everyone gets.

Unfortunately for the author, her parents were true Bircher believers. She actually was in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. When she talked to her father about it, she reports his response as “Kennedy was a traitor. The Commies killed one of their own.” It is not really very clear to me why someone would buy into all the commie crap in the first place, but I guess McCarthy had really really convinced normal people they were everywhere. She says: “With the help of his arch-right-wing friends, in and out of the John Birch Society, Dad could recite a list of ‘dirty Reds,’ as he called them, who had gotten themselves elected president of the United States. From Franklin Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy to Jimmy Carter, the Oval Office had seen its share of Commie dupes, Commie sympathizers, and out-and-out Commies.”

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The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

shock doctrineThe Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein (2006)
(author of No Logo)

From the inner jacket blurb: “Klein traces back the intellectual origins of disaster capitalism back to the University of Chicago’s economics department under Milton Friedman whose influence is still felt around the world.” And not in a good way. This is the cabal that persuaded Reagan et al that trickle down theory was a sensible plan. Not sure if they did so maliciously or for fun, or just some esoteric playing but with real world consequences.

These events [like 9/11] are examples of what Naomi Klein calls “the shock doctrine”: the use of public disorientation following massive collective shocks — wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters — to push through highly unpopular economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out all resistance, a third is employed: that of the electrode in the prison cell or of the Taser gun. [from jacket blurb again]

It is a long hard read.  Descriptions of torture of prisoners is just one example. After the horrific photos were released and having been shocked to learn it was not Americans being tortured but Americans doing the torturing, I was dumbfounded. My dad was a bomber pilot in WWII and while the Geneva Convention wasn’t completely complied with, and he easily could have been killed, I don’t think I ever heard of Nazi’s treating POWs like we treated Iraq POWs. That is to say, brutally, lawlessly, and criminally. Yet Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld are free to enjoy doing a little painting or whatever enjoying the profit of the 40 million or more that Halliburton made for Cheney off the no-bid contracts for the war supplies. I would love to see an audit of there costs versus what they charged the government. I’ll bet it would show such blatant overpricing that it would even make Republicans cry foul.

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History of Beauty edited by Umberto Eco and On Ugliness

beautyHistory of Beauty is a heavy lift by many standards. Filled with sumptuous color plates (it is a Rizzoli book, enough said), and writing by Alastair McEwen, so maybe that’s why the edited by….never mind, argh.

Beauty is dissected and poked and rotated and placed in context and related contexts under your head will explode. It is a fantastic read if you only read one sentence at a time and mull it over, maybe reading it three times while you think about what was said. If the room you are in is very quiet, you might venture a paragraph, but not while hungry or tired or with an upcoming appointment.

The book begins with a lovely survey of various classifications of beauty through time, nude men and women of course were an easy find, plus Venus, Madonnas; I should have expected it after the male beauty included George Clooney under the “Clothed Adonis” category, but I did not and laughed out loud at the appropriate inclusion of a 1991 photograph of Madonna.

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Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Layout 1Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (“A new Vorkosigan Saga Novel”)

When I read my first Bujold I was swept away by the phrasing, the characters, the world she built, and especially the sly, dry humor. Miles Vorkosigan is one of the best characters ever created in science fiction. I especially liked Brothers in Arms because it has Ivan too. Not as fond of her other more fantasy series though. This one should probably not be read until you have read all the others in the series because the entire book is peppered with references to past anecdotes that were full stories but do not carry the same punch as it would if you knew the characters involved.

p. 128 Like an army in the Time of Isolation, this reduced them to scavenging for provisions from the nearby civilian population.”

This is a highly amusing and appropriate way to describe how Cordelia and Jole, after a night in a cabin, go to the neighboring cottage that let them borrow the cabin to stay overnight. What a colorful and charming way to say “They went and got some breakfast at the landlords,”

p. 135 He laid out the plates and her tea with his usual military precision and then stood back and cleared his throat in the time-honored signal meaning, I am about to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

 Isn’t that a great description! nothing  routine in the description of a routine. Serving food with “military precision” and instead of having Ryk simply say, “I have something to tell you” by coming at it from Cordelia’s perspective we get to know her character better, the dry humor, and the unspoken understanding between long time comrades.

Ghem Soren’s face pinched, trying to decode this; Kaya, sighing, translated, “That means no, Mikos.” Jole thought she knew very well it meant, Over my dead body,  but the lieutenant wouldn’t have been sent to him if she’d been as lacking in nous as some of the rank-and-file.”

Isn’t that great prose!  We learn that there are cultural differences that need requiring, diplomatically, and that Kaya has the respect and appreciation of her ability to grasp nuance. Plus the humor of the common but not truly serious phrase, over my dead body to most accurately establish his true opposition.

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