Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, by Kelly Weill - Used or new @ SecondSale.com Conspiracy theories help us feel safe by providing an explanation for things that feel incomprehensible and beyond our control. Daily Beast journalist Kelly Weill takes a deep dive into what I think must... Continue Reading →
21 New Release Favorites of 2021
Eking in at the veeeery last minute, I've compiled my new release favorites of 2021. Let's dive in! Unsurprisingly, nothing surpassed Elissa Washuta's White Magic for me. This memoir-in-essays is like nothing I've ever read before, although I've come across a lot of memoirs that attempt similar things less successfully. This uses a blend of... Continue Reading →
Nonfiction November Week 2: Book Pairings
Katie at Doing Dewey is our Nonfiction November host this week, and here's our prompt: Week 2: (November 8-12) – Book Pairing with Katie at Doing Dewey: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you... Continue Reading →
The Under-Explored Topic of Returning Home
Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From, by Kamal Al-Solaylee (HarperCollins, September 7, 2021)Buy it used or new at SecondSale.com Immigrants, no matter our origins and skin tones, share a common delusion: we think we take pieces of our homelands with us and leave parts of ourselves behind whenever we choose or... Continue Reading →
Recent Current Events Nonfiction: Pandemic, Plague, and the Dying Days of Trump
I'm still slowly trying to get back into the writing-about-books swing of things! Did I mention we moved New York apartments the month before moving German apartments? Yeah, I'm still fucking exhausted. And I've been reading a lot more slowly but still reading, and although I have no brainpower for full reviews, here are some... Continue Reading →
13 New Nonfiction Titles Still to Come in 2021
With the year half over, let's see what new and wondrous upcoming nonfiction we have to look forward to in the coming months! Here's what I'm excited for: The Icepick Surgeon : Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science, by Sam Kean (July 13) - Beginning "with Cleopatra’s... Continue Reading →
Conning Culture: Hype in the Social Media Age
Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following The story of the Fyre Festival, which saw Instagram influencers tricked into promoting a music festival on a private Bahamian island with luxury accommodations, gourmet dining and a picturesque setting, only to turn out to be a few rain-soaked tents... Continue Reading →
Two Social Sciences: Middle School Trauma and Mediocre White Guys
My reading lately has been heavily gearing towards pop science and medical and social science topics. These two deal with very specific breeds of evil: mediocre white men who think they deserve the world at the expense of people of color and women, and the middle school experience. Both are atrocious in their own special... Continue Reading →
The Damaging, Disturbing Effects of America’s Ubiquitous “Raunch Culture”
Review: The Pornification of America, by Bernadette Barton Welcome to raunch culture in the 2020s — when the United States has devolved into a Hustler fantasy. Naked and half naked pictures of girls and women litter every screen, billboard, and bus. Pole dancing studios keep women fit while men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on... Continue Reading →
The Ominous Ripple Effects of the Gender Data Gap
Book review: Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez I use gender data gap as an overarching term because sex is not the reason women are excluded from data. Gender is. [...] The problem is the social meaning that we ascribe to that body, and a socially determined failure to account for it. Caroline Criado Perez's... Continue Reading →
Insights and Introspections From a Former President
A Promised Land, by Barack Obama Is it even worth reviewing former President Barack Obama's book? What can I add to any discussion? It sells itself; you probably already knew before it came out whether you would read it or not. I struggled with whether I had anything meaningful to say about it, or if... Continue Reading →
New Looks at Europe Post-Communism
Book review: Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism, by Slavenka Drakulic What a weird day to be writing about a book on democracy in Europe, as it teeters precariously in the United States. But I think Americans would do well to consider democratic processes and totalitarian histories in Europe, because it's abundantly clear that... Continue Reading →