The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

 Here we have another book that I somehow got through all of school without reading.  This one is a long-term classic and it is referenced often not only in media but in government related affairs too, so it was a pretty obvious one to put on my list.  I'm glad I finally got around to it.

This book was fascinating and anxiety-inducing and great, up until the last few chapters that devolved into some sort of communist manifesto.  As immigrants who don't understand the trap, you are filled with dread for all the MC's.  Everything goes wrong in all the predictable ways and the author has done a wonderful job of capturing the suffocating helplessness of their plight and those like them.  This is not a happy book, but I still think everyone should read it!  It is amazing how far we have come as a society!  

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Sinclair wrote this book to open the eyes of the established Americans to the unfair struggles of the poor and newer immigrants.  Apparently, no one gave a shit about poor children drowning in mud or women needlessly dying in childbirth or unemployment leading to death, but the horrors of the food impurities stuck because those people had to eat it.  They didn't care about the problems that didn't touch them.  While it wasn't his goal, I'm very happy that no longer have to worry about rats dead of poison being swept into the sausage machine. There was considerable good that came out of this incredibly long expose, even if it wasn't the outcome the author intended.  This book was the reason we created the governmental oversight in food and drugs so every American should read it. 

Changes - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 12)

 My first knee-jerk reaction to this was, "Oh no, this is going downhill."  It was that internal groan of "why do children have to be a plot twist?"  As a general rule, any time surprise children show up, it's bs.  

Oh, how convenient!  You have offspring that, despite never having met, you feel suicidally protective over for no reason and completely without bonding.  But you never had to be bogged down with the actual work and sacrifice that leads to caring about a child's well-being.  (Let's be honest.  There are people who do raise their own children and still don't care about them.)

The whole plot is basically the child has to exist for the MC to give a crap and do something about it.  Then "for her own good" the child is shoved off in some unknown corner of the world where the MC still doesn't have to do any of the actual work to raise it and you know she will come back in 5-8 years as a teenager full of angst/rage/confusion about where her real parents are, bla bla bla.  

I hate children as plot devices so much.

1776 - David McCullough

 Every American needs to read this book.  It is an amazing trip through the American revolution in only the year 1776.  The war for freedom went on a long time, but several of the battles in this year were important in getting the message to Britain that the Americans were serious.  Up until the end of this year, the king and parliament thought it was just a small uprising, even after Bunker hill.  

But the reason I so highly recommend this book is the details.  You have heard of these battles in your boring high school history class, but the details are what bring the story to life and a HS class just doesn't have time for that.  Knox dragging 60 cannons from the Canadian border to Boston, Greene running out of a snowstorm on Christmas taking the Hessians by surprise, Washington pushing his men so deftly that the British estimated he must have 14,000-20,000 men in the American army when they really had only 8,000.  All of those fantastic and amazing stories get lost in the speed with which the material is covered in an American history class, so revisit that time.  You will come away with a much great appreciation of everyone involved in that whole time period.

Stock Market Investing for Beginners - John Josefh Mallardh

 A great overview but I was definitely left feeling like I needed a lot more details on each topic before jumping into it myself.  I guess that makes this book a good place to start when you're considering investing options.  

Click, Click, ChaChing!: Learn the best and easiest way to build a passive income in 2020- Raphael Leonardo

 Despite the horrid title, this book was a reasonably interesting and diverse in its topics.  I think the author's varied approach was honest and the potential negatives were addressed even if the plus side was over emphasized.  The author focused more on methods that seemed more likely to be successful like online stores and advertising as opposed to barely mentioning blogging or selling photo, which makes sense if the purpose is to create revenue.  I'd say this is a good book if you just want to think of what's out there for you to try, but there are no secret details that will really help get your head above the rest.  

A Curious History of Sex - Kate Lister

 This was a fantastically fun book and I would highly recommend it for most people.  Of course, there is no way that one book can cover all of the history of sex, or even all of a single category.  But the author takes you on a lively trip through time regarding some of the most scandalous aspects that humans have created.  A few random bits to give you an idea of what to find in this book:

The word whore has only recently been associated with prostitution and for most of its existence simply meant a woman who had sex with anyone not her husband, but was still considered one of the greatest insults.

The word cunt is the oldest word in English for female genitals.  It is believed to originate from the same root as the word cunning.

Women riding bicycles was considered the highest of offences during the Victorian era. You could see their ankles!  They didn't squeeze themselves ill in corsets while riding!  It gave them freedom where they couldn't be watched by society!  Horrors!

People seem to have forgotten that if you don't have access to abortion and birth control, women will still get rid of unwanted children, including leaving them to suffocate in the outhouse. 

Once upon a time, the worst thing you could say were things related to religion, like "God's teeth", then it switched to things related to sex, like "fuck", and today the worst cuss words are shifting to things related to racism.  That's about 1000 years of bad word evolution right there.  Very interesting because the shift was so fast that there are people alive today who remember how horrible it was to say "fuck" not that long ago while they heard things like the N-word pretty regularly.  Those have now completely switched.

This book is littered with euphemisms for all manner of sex related acts and parts including the year they were first documented in print.  I loved learning the dates of when such terms came into common useage.  

Turn Coat - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 11)

 I think this might be my favorite of the Dresden series so far.  Nothing terribly convoluted and no cheap hero-randomly-gets-saved-from-insurmountable-odds-by-luck bs.  We have a defined bad guy who's hiding in the shadows, so you know what's going on but not who.  There was one obvious "twist" but otherwise a fantastically well played book, peak chaotic good action.