Book Report

 

My rating system:
10 – life-changing, an all-time favorite
5 - average for what I read
1 – terrible; why did I finish it?

  

I still have  17 unread books at home, thanks mostly to Little Free Libraries.

 

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath - Basically the book is full of strategies to get people to see things differently and change their behavior. It’s fascinating. There are tons of examples and it’s never boring. I promise to re-read it if I need to convince people at work to make a change, or if I ever head up a nonprofit. As much as I liked it though, I have to also sidenote: I want to be a white, cis, straight male who gets to write a book and not have to think about privilege or social justice at all. Grade: 7

 

Reich Angel by Anita Mason – I bought and read this novel when it came out in the mid-1990’s, and figured that since it’s been 25 years and since libraries are closed, I’d give it another crack. I loved it the first time around. It’s historical fiction centering around Fredrika, a young German woman in the late 1920’s/early 1930’s who finds a way to realize her dream – becoming a pilot, even though that sort of thing was basically forbidden to women. When I read it in the 90’s, I was mostly drawn in by Fredrika’s story because she had such an unconventional career and she loved other women. Re-reading it in 2020, I’m more interested in Fredrika’s reactions to and life during Hitler’s rise to power. She never supported him and knew he was bad, and yet she never lifted a finger to work against him or the Nazi party either. Those parallels are chilling. I watch so many of my fellow Americans who I know dislike Trump and wish they’d just do….something. (Volunteer for a candidate. Get on a phone bank. Knock on some doors. Find a local group and go to some meetings. I’m an introvert and I do all those things). Some criticism I have of the book – there’s a side character named Ernst who’s in the novel a lot but I feel like his story just weighs the plot down.  I wish the author had kept the focus on Fredrika. Also – interesting note but I remembered the love story as being a much larger part of the novel than it actually was. Fredrika doesn’t meet the woman she falls in love with until about the last fifth of the book. It was still a very intriguing tale, worth a second read. Grade: 7

 

Would You Rather by Katie Heaney – A short, crisp, easy memoir. Heany’s in her late 20’s when she writes this. She’d recently published another memoir about how she’d gotten to her mid-20’s without ever having a boyfriend or a romantic relationship of any type. Here she describes how, after that first memoir, she realizes she’s into women and begins a relationship with one. I do love hearing about real people’s experiences with subjects like love, dating, and coming out. I related to the topic of her first memoir (which I never read, but she covers here) – feeling like I was the only person in the world who wasn’t dating anyone. (For the record, I think my first kiss was not till I was 20 and I didn’t have sex till I was 22. Heaney’s book got me thinking about that stuff, and how alone and sad I felt over it. Now I could care less, of course! I just wish I’d known back then that that stuff truly doesn’t matter in the long run).  With any memoir, I imagine it’s easy for the writer to get bogged down in the minutiae of her life - and there are a lot of little details of Heany’s life in here; I’m not sure how compelling a read most people would find this. But its subject matter kept it compelling enough for me. Grade: 5

 

The Actor’s Life by Jenna Fischer – One of the books I picked up at a Little Free Library and it was so good! The book is just a guide to how to work as an actor. Like where to go, how to get an agent, what a typical audition looks like, etc. I can’t say why but I was completely drawn in. Fischer makes it all really readable and enjoyable. Maybe it’s just fascinating to get such an insider’s view of a strange industry, one in which most people who attempt to break in never make it. I guess I enjoyed it partly because my favorite show The 100 is ending and I wonder what it’ll be like for the actors on it; this book helps me guess at what their lives of hustling for gigs must’ve been like before the show – and what they’ll be like now. At the end of the book, the author interviews a few other working actors. One was a popular character on Gilmore Girls (which I’ve never seen) for years but when the show wrapped up, he was unemployed for a long, long time before he landed a role in Guardians of the Galaxy. There are so many good anecdotes like this. Oh, the author was a main character on The Office but I’ve never seen The Office so I went into the book with no expectations. Grade: 8

 

Find A Way by Diana Nyad – Another great find from a Little Free Library. Diana Nyad was the first person to swim from Havana to Key West without a shark cage. And she completed it on her fifth try, when she was 64 years old. So this is her memoir. I loved it and was never remotely bored. Nyad survived multiple instances of sexual abuse and coming out in the 1970’s, then she went on to have many successful careers in sportscasting and motivational speaking. She never forgot her dream to complete the Havana-Key West swim and it is amazing that she finally did it. From reading the book, I get the idea that Nyad is kinda arrogant, but whatever I’m not here to judge the author’s personality. Her story is fascinating. Grade: 8