by Melody Warnick ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016
Well intended but unsatisfying.
Don’t like where you live? Socialize. Volunteer. Make lists. Or you could just move.
It was the fact of yet another move that prompted this book, if in a roundabout way. Recounts freelance journalist Warnick, relocating from Austin, Texas, to the cold, rainy hills of southwestern Virginia stirred up some hard thoughts about place and community, thoughts that became harder when circumstances did. “Life in a smaller town was supposed to be simpler, but nothing was easy, not even the easy stuff,” she writes. It wasn’t just finding a new dentist and picking out a pediatrician, but also building friendships and connections to the place—a challenge that all too many of us know, since, by the author’s reckoning, the average American moves about a dozen times over a lifetime. So what to do? Warnick alternately goes deep, quoting from the eminent French philosopher Simone Weil on community, and shallow, making all-too-obvious true/false where-you-are lists gauging such matters as “I like to tell people about where I live” and “I hope that my kids live here even after I’m gone.” It’s the simplifying to the point of simplistic stuff that’s maddening about this book, which has plenty of promise but not much in the way of execution. For instance, it may appeal to the privileged person who feels a little bad about the homeless guy down the street to give some thought to the negatives about where you live, but “volunteering for a gardening club…or starting an afternoon ballroom dance program at the local YMCA” isn’t likely to ease the hardships of the homeless. There are many other recipes geared for do-gooder gentrifiers and lots of checklists, cheerleading, and the patently obvious (“Volunteering is, by definition, the thing we don’t have to do”), but as to anything truly useful—well, for that, you’ll need to move on to another book.
Well intended but unsatisfying.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-42912-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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