WHAT I'M READING V. 32

I'm back from Miami! It was glorious. It was worth the difficulty it is of catching up at work. I miss it already, but I'm also so happy to see my girls again. They were so sweet when I got back and they haven't stopped giving me hugs and kisses. Speaking of catching up (this is Sloane's favorite phrase these days), I've been meaning to do one of these posts for a while! I read a GREAT book while I was in Miami that I can't wait to share about - I'll include that the next installment.

The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

I can't remember how I came to read this one, but it's no surprise  - it's a book about another personality framework! I'm always interested in habit making and this one touches upon how the way you respond to expectations can determine every aspect of our behavior, including making better decisions, forming habits, and meeting goals. She describes four different tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels (I'm a Questioner). It wasn't revolutionary, but yet another way in which to think about behavior - mine and others around me - and think more deeply about what motivates a person.

Hillbilly Elegy by 

This is a memoir by J.D. Vance, who grew up in a poor Rust Belt town and ending up becoming a marine and Yale Law School graduate.  I had heard this book was intriguing for the way that it allows a look at the struggles of America's white working class, and offers an insider perspective on a demographic of our country that has "been slowly disintegrating over forty years." It was recommended to me saying that this book became popular because it could help explain how Donald Trump came to be elected president. I think it was a good book, and a interesting look at a specific group of the poor white of this country, but I was also finishing up "The New Jim Crow" at the time, and I couldn't help compare.  I did think this book gives insight into a perspective that is not readily available (only presumed!) and I was most intrigued by his explanations of how he came to regard education as social capital. His descriptions of how class differences create an information gap that might make "cultural immigrants" of those crossing of economic lines resonated with me too. It's worth a read if you're interested in getting a look inside America's white working class.

Hallelujah Anyway by Anne Lamott

I love this book. Lamott shares about mercy as radical kindness - for others, as well as yourself. She weaves this book out of her vulnerability, her questions, and stories and parables throughout the bible that have spoken to her in dark times.  She talks about the importance of asking for mercy for ourselves after facing the great big mess of ourselves, and then how it is up to us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy everywhere around us - "When we manage a flash of mercy for someone we don’t like, especially a truly awful person, including ourselves, we experience a great spiritual moment, a new point of view that can make us gasp. It gives us the chance to rediscover something both old and original, the sweet child in us who, all evidence to the contrary, was not killed off, but just put in the drawer."

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is my second book by Ta-Nehisi Coates (the other being "Between the World and Me", which I really liked) and I appreciated this one as well.  It's a collection of long-form essays that he wrote for The Atlantic (and you can still find them online), and they are a well thought-out foray into the complexities of race and touches on things like: how a contemporary black person regards the Civil War, how for all of Malcolm X's "prodigious intellect, he was ultimately more an expression of black America’s heart than of its brain", how the myth of “twice as good” that makes Barack Obama possible might also be what smothers him, the black family in the age of mass incarceration,  how the significance in reparations lies in the chance to see ourselves squarely, and a look at Obama's eight years as president through the lens of race.