The Power of Attachment: How to create deep and lasting Intimate Relationships - Diane Poole Heller

 I think everyone should learn about attachment theory and how it impacts their life. That being said, I still can't see the difference between avoidant attachment and autism. It was described to me as nurture vs nature. But how many children have simply been labeled the wrong way? It just seems odd to me to have so much overlap. It's still important for everyone to know about though. I'm also pretty fond of the quote below.

- "The brain asks, "Are we ok?" Our body replies, "All I can feel is stress! Aren't we dying?" The brain figures, "I guess we are dying then. We must need to work harder."

Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Bk. 1) - Kevin Hearne

 This is a cool book. It's super similar in style to mine and I'm excited about that because the concept isn't too close but the feel is similar. I'm totally going to blast through all of these!

Fed Up. : Emotional labor, Women, and the way forward - Gemma Hartley

 Hooooooollllyyy cow! There is SO MUCH happening in this book. It's a must read for everyone, women so they don't feel they are isolated yelling into the void anymore and men to wake the fuck up. I believe this touches almost every person alive today in one way or another. I have bookmarked a ton of this book, so I'm going to try to pick the best parts to share with you, but I still think it's going to be a lot. 

- " It's no wonder that Nicholas Sparks novels have garnered so many movie deals and a multi-million dollar empire... He takes emotional labor to the extreme, and then hands the load over to the men. That's what young heterosexual women call romance.... Yet, even men who do perform emotional labor in the early stages of a relationship do so as a means to an end. For men, performing emotional labor isn't a reward in and of itself. It's how you get the girl or win her back.... It's above and beyond, and it's not meant to last forever. There's an expiration date on the demand for men's emotional labor in a relationship. Women, on the other hand, must offer it in perpetuity."

- "We can say we have "different methods" all we want, but isn't there a way to maintain a reasonable standard and divide the work? Letting go works, certainly, but I couldn't stop thinking that the onus was still on these women to make the compromise, to deal with the discomfort of things left undone. ... Why can't we ask our partners to rise to the occasion in a way that satisfies our needs, that gives us peace, that keeps us comfortable and happy? ... I was still stuck with these three choices, none of them ideal: Do it alone, be a nag, or let it go. The last option was supposed to be my golden ticket, but it felt more like another path to the same type of resentment."

- "After sending him back out to the store to return the book and figure out a better option, I reminded myself that this was his first time buying this sort of gift.... It wasn't simply that he didn't care about his nephew's present. He didn't know how to care about these things." All I can say here is WTF? Men need to be taught to care about their family?

- "The fact that men aren't expected to perform emotional labor may make their lives easier, but it doesn't necessarily make their lives better. Ignoring emotional labor makes men passive consumers of their own lives... "He shows up to a life I have organized," ... She wonders if he realizes, if it bothers him, that their children belong to her so much more than they do to him... I truly believe something is missed in simply showing up instead of actively participating. A lack of independence is shying away from emotional labor - a lack of say in your own life. If the spouse who does the bulk of the emotional labor dies, the other is left not knowing how to fully live. They don't have the same bonds with friends. I don't know how to maintain family ties. They don't even know how to prepare their favorite meals..."

- "I know I don't have to thank him for doing the dishes, but I worry if I don't show gratitude then he might just stop doing them. When do I get random gratitude for doing something that obviously needs to get done?" I struggle with this one myself.

- "Manservants aside, there are precious few jobs requiring emotional labor in which women don't make up the bulk of the workforce. That is because when mint perform emotional labor, it's a joke or an exception, not an expectation.... Their time and emotional energy and mental space has never and will never be considered a communal resource."

- " The most common request she sees made a female faculty? As student advisors. It is almost exclusively women who are tasked with the care work for thousands of students, a position that is seen as well suited to those skilled in emotional labor. It's impossible, or at least very unwise, for women to turn down such tasks, even though it derails their professional advancement."

- " The level of care and attention to detail that a woman's lens often brings to the table is invaluable in business negotiations, national politics, and household politics alike. Using the skill set of emotional labor wisely at all levels is simply good business. Caring leaders are good leaders. Their teams, their citizens, their peers are more motivated to work for them. Attention to issues that extend outside their own concerns make them exemplary. Their problem solving is more comprehensive, more attuned to the larger picture. We should want those at the top to be deeply invested in the comfort and happiness of those blow them, moving all of us towards a better place. ...In fact, a 2016 study from the Peterson Institute for international economics found that increased Gender diversity in the highest corporate offices led to a 15 per cent increase in profits."

- " In 2003, an experiment was conducted at Columbia Business School to gage how students perceived leadership in relation to gender. Researchers presented students with a case study about real-life entrepreneur Heidi Roizen, a successful venture capitalist who had leveraged her outgoing personality, as well as her large personal and professional network, to get to the top. But half of the students received the case study with a different first name: Howard. ... Students respected the accomplishments of both Heidi and Howard, but there was a disconnect in how they responded to them personally. Howard was well liked. Heidi, by contrast, was selfish and an undesirable colleague. Men can get to the top without offending others along the way because their accomplishments belong to them., however, are subject to the expectation that their efforts should always be communal always catering to those around them instead of working for their own success."

- " This is why when the best efforts fail and a sexual assault occurs, we look to the victim, not the perpetrator, for explanation. In the large majority of rapes - those perpetrated by someone the victim already knows - we ask if she was leading him on (Indeed, if her emotional labor went too far into intimate territory). We ask what she did to stop it from happening (could she have walked the fine line more carefully?). What she was wearing (was she playing the appropriate role in her appearance?). Scrutinize the emotional labor performed by the victim, because it is more socially acceptable to criticize the behavior of victimized women than it is to criticize men who are criminals."

- " Why is it always my responsibility to notice when something needs to be done? To delegate out that work or do it myself? Why is it on me to have the conversation over and over again, to bring up emotional labor and to guide my husband through it - an act that takes a great deal of emotional work as is?"

-" While we may be wedded to the idea that mothers or other female alloparents are the most natural nurturers for a child, the men of the Aka Tribe turned the biological debate on its head in how they raise their children. Hewlett noticed during his stay with the ACA that male breastfeeding (or at least using the nipple for comfort) was a completely normal way for men to comfort their babies when the mother was away. It wasn't unusual for men together for a "guy's night" and drink palm wine while cradling infants to their chests. Hewlett found that Aka fathers were within arms reach of their children 47% of the time - more available to their children than any other fathers in the world. There is no stigma attached to men slipping into the roll of primary caregiver, because there is no preconceived notion among the Aka that women should "naturally" assume that role. Intimacy between father and infant is the norm, just as intimacy between mother and infant is. Which begs the question of where we got our Western ideas about what is natural in the first place."

- " We were all born with a similar aptitude for emotional labor, but only half of us were trained in it as we grew up. That's not for nothing, and it's why, on the surface, it appears that women are naturally better at emotional labor than men. But these skills can be learned and honed. So long as we are willing to work together to create space for one another's progress, there's no reason why men can't rise up and claim emotional labor as their territory as well. They may, with time and practice, find the value in it as it opens a new side of the world to them, a new human wholeness that can help them feel more connected to their lives."

- "First, he feels like he does a lot (compared to other men, mind you, not compared to her). Second, he feels like if she needs the "help" that badly, she should simply ask him to do more. That's the one that always makes her furious, because he doesn't understand that asking is work. Actually a huge part of the work... for all our cultural conversations about men being less emotional and more level headed comment, women usually have to do a whole lot of tiptoeing around men's feelings while trying to get our point across."

- " When I look back at that argument, I can see clearly that we were talking about two completely different things: physical labor on one hand, emotional labor on the other.... I tried to explain how the mental and physical work of running our home and our lives compounded in such an exhausting manner. I wanted a partner with equal initiative. I couldn't continue to delegate and pretend that we were maintaining an egalitarian, progressive relationship. Diving up the household chores when I still had to remind him to do his share was not enough. That still left all of the emotional labor as my responsibility and that, I told him, was what needed to change."

- "The truth is that I don't need "help"- I need full partnership. There is a difference between the two. Helping means "this is not my job." Helping means "I am doing you a favor." Helping means "this is your responsibility." Helping implies that the helper is going above and beyond, while the responsible party is falling behind. why is only one of us responsible for our shared life?"

- " The workload men have started to take on in the home has increased considerably from one generation to the next, but the way this work is framed in men's minds hasn't progressed the same rate. Men feel like exceptional partners for doing less than their partners, because they subconsciously believe it's not theirs to do... When Rob was laid off of his job, it quickly became apparent that taking on a larger portion of the emotional labor was frustrating for him... he struggled to feel like his days held meaning, because the work he was doing was, well, mine. Women's work. real work. Valuable work."

Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And how you can make yours last! - John Gottman

 Super fascinating book and I appreciated the author sticking mostly with comments/assumptions that are quantifiable.  There's a little sexism/gender assumptions but he largely uses qualifiers to remind the reader that human behavior is never 100% anything, and certainly not when making the assumptions based on sex. I like that. This book was obviously written by an actual scientist.  Now, onto the juicy parts:

"Men, by and large, are reluctant to dive head first into emotional issues. But why? Much of the answer seems to lie in the vast gulf between what men and women learn about intimacy as children. In a nutshell, boys typically are not taught the skills necessary to navigate though the shifting emotional tides of a relationship, while girls are given intense schooling on the subject. Like a person thrown overboard without first being taught how to swim, the average men is understandably fearful of drowning in the same whirlpool of emotion that a woman easily glides through every day. Add to this some compelling evidence that men have a stronger physiological reaction to certain emotions than do women, and it becomes easy to understand why the world of feelings is, by and large, outside most men's comfort zone."

"Because men are so vulnerable to feeling flooded, a wife's criticism can easily cause the husband to withdrawal. The wife is then likely to interpret his response as a rejection of her because she doesn't realize that he's feeling flooded.  She couldn't imagine needing to withdrawal over such a minor criticism, even if she were a bit hurt by it. Not understanding the intensity of what her husband is feeling, his reaction seems utterly unreasonable to her."  (Remember that women aren't good candidates more major leadership positions because they are too "emotional"! /s)

"Because boys and girls are socialized in such different ways throughout childhood, each gender receives almost opposite messages about lovemaking. Boys learn to see sex either as pure pleasure disconnected from emotional commitment or as a vehicle for getting close to a girl. For many teenaged boys and men, there are no emotional prerequisites for having sex because emotional closeness is the goal, not the cause, of a sex act. In contrast, women by and large need to feel physical and emotional closeness and tenderness before wanting to have sex. Making love confirms intimacy rather than creates it for most women. I can't count how often I've heard women complain, 'He never touches me or say sweet things unless he wants sex.'.... Or 'I don't want him to touch my breasts or clitoris first thing. Even though I've told him this, he never remembers that I like to be caressed all over, hugged, kissed, massaged and cherished first. Otherwise, sex doesn't feel good, it feels invasive.' "

Why are people into that? A Cultural Investigation of Kink - Tina Horn

 I was expecting more stats, numbers and psychology. Instead this was more of an ode to kink, which is fine, but given the title, I expected an analysis of psychological cause or social analysis. The author did a beautiful job of making kinks sound appealing and does a beautiful job of being fair and honest, but it was more literary love and less hard science. I was looking for the hard science. That being said, there's a few good quotes and/or ideas listed below. 

- "In my rape fantasies, I'm not expected to be concerned with my partner's pleasure and there's liberation in that, too. The social contract, along with my body and dignity, has been broken, so I owe him nothing. Obviously, considering a partner's pleasure is a worthwhile goal and a necessary part of intimacy, and yet, an experience where you don't have to consider your partner's pleasure relieves you of the pressure to prioritize it."

And most importantly! These perfectly well written rules!

- "When making your way through the play space, be aware of the energy you project onto others' scenes. ... If you wish to watch a scene, keep a respectful and safe distance from the players. Do not crowd scenes while watching and do not join scenes without consent. Do not interfere in any scene without the prior permission of the players or touch any equipment that is not your own. I appreciated this protocol because sometimes parties will say, 'Just don't be an asshole.' Which I have found is not a deterrent for malicious or naïve assholes whatsoever."

Dry Humping - Tawny Lara

 Overall, I'd say this is a pretty good book to read regardless of your relationship with alcohol or current relationship status because much of the information given is applicable to anyone at any point.  I was particularly fond of the first part where the author emphasized dating yourself and learning to be able to sit quietly with yourself. I believe that if people were at peace alone, they would be much more capable of being at peace with others. 

There's also great relationship and sex advice for any state throughout the whole book. I would recommend this to pretty much anyone under 50, anyone single, anyone with questionable drinking/substance use habit for sure, but also most everyone else, too. 

The Bronzed Beasts (Guilded Wolves Series, Bk. 3) - Roshani Chokshi

 The last of the trilogy and while it was entertaining, I still don't think I'd recommend this to anyone. By the third one, I saw that the author was using a formula for these books and while the idea was fun, the characters were as polarized as ever, spent a stupid amount of time obsessing over each other and it was all rather predictable. Good ending though, which is very important in my opinion. 

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History - S. C. Gwynne

 "None of these failures could be blamed on the tangled government bureaucracy. They were the product of the endemic corruption and graft for which the Indian office had justly become infamous by the 1860's. The Indian Peace Commission on 1867 had been so scandalized by what they found out in the various agencies that they wrote, "The records are abundant to show that agents have pocketed the funds appropriated by the government and driven the Indians to starvation. It cannot be doubted that Indian wars have originated from this cause. For a long time, these officers have been selected from partisan ranks not so much on account of honesty and qualification as for devotion to party interests, and their willingness to apply the money of the Indian to promote the selfish schemes of local politicians."  As time went by, the agents proved stupid as well as corrupt."

This sounds stunningly familiar to something else happening in the government right now.... yea?

Current politics aside, this is a fascinating book into the western frontier, but I do feel it has perhaps aged poorly. I see it's only 15 years old, but the author sounds like books written longer ago, just grazing over the personal and emotional turmoil by these events for both sides and speaking rather degradingly about the Comanches specifically, from their polygamy and religious beliefs to their diet and personal hygiene. 

I do appreciate what these people were capable of, but again, the book seems to just gloss over some truly impressive feats or horsemanship. Maybe this would be better in a visual from of media? 

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah

 It's absolutely crazy that people have lived this way. South Africa's apartheid was simply the most insane thing a society put up with for so long. It's a great book and lots of fun! I would highly recommend this to everyone.

Bitterblue - Kristin Cashore (Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, Bk. 3)

 A pretty good book, a little too happy because nearly all people seem to have good intentions, but I enjoyed it. Will continue with others...

More Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis

 I liked how this book was organized by county and it gave a brief description of the history of the county before just jumping into the stories. I also enjoyed the fact that most of the places were described to the point that you could go visit them. I do wish there was more meat to the stories, but I know the author was working with only what she was told. 

Full Bloom in Texas: Planter's Guide and Photos - Allan R. Kuethe

 Mostly pretty pictures and not the helpful info about keeping these flowers in your garden like I was hoping. Eh, now I know my salvia does ok in partial shade, which may come in handy. 

It was all a Lie: How the Republican Party became Donald Trump - Stuart Stevens

 This was a pretty wild ride, which I think is best exemplified by the author better than I could do:  

- "Even when Mitt Romney stepped forward and called out Trump for what he clearly was- "a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University"-no other Republicans of note rallied behind him to speak publicly what most were saying privately.  How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don't. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren't deeply held. In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? Because it had always been about power."

- "So I launched my career in the party that prided itself on being the "family values" party. When pundits marvel that the Republican Party could accept a man like Donald Trump, who has five kids from three wives and talks in the public about having sex with his daughter, they're missing the point. Trump doesn't signal a lowering of standards of the morality by Republican voters. Instead, he gives them a chance to prove how little they have always cared about those issues. Trump just removes the necessity of pretending. "Family values" was never a set of morals or values that the Republican Party really desired to live by; instead, "family values" was useful in attacking and defining Democrats. It was just another weapon to help portray those on the other side as being out of the mythical American mainstream. I was an "otherness" tool . . . The entire modern Republican definition of the conservative movement is about efforts to define itself as "normal" and everything else as "not normal"."

- "The long list of high-profile evangelical figures who scammed the public and lived their lives exactly opposite of what they preached reveals the essential truth of the Moral Majority and the like efforts it spawned. in The Immoral Majority, Ben Howe, an evangelical who grew up in the movement, describes the long list of disgraced preachers as "figures who were cartoonish, dramatic, deceitful, wealthy, white, smarmy, judgmental, callous, and above all hypocritical Charlatans." This is about as perfect a description of Donald Trump as on can find. 

- "To understand how white evangelicals could embrace Donald Trump, consider him the ultimate white megachurch preacher. The congregation has been conditions to accept leaders who are lying, philandering frauds who live extravagant lifestyles far above their own means. But even the larger-than-life flaws and sins of these men - and they are all men - serve to convince the flock that they are unworthy to judge such men. Their followers proudly claim they favor "authenticity" as a virtue but are drawn to the most elaborately artificial of men who cosmetically, chemically, and surgically alter their physical presence as if to affirm they were of a different, more godlike persona . . . The very strangeness of the figures makes them harder to judge by the standards of normal human behavior. Their entire artifice is to appear abnormal and thus escape judgement. These men are "different" and should be judged differently."

- "Decency, kindness, humility, compassion - all touchstones of a Christian faith - have no value in today's Republican Party. All his life, Donald Trump has believed these to be weaknesses, and now that is the view of the party he heads." 

- "So what sort of signal does it send when a man as intelligent and thoughtful as Bill Bennett decides to contradict his entire body of work to support a man like Donald Trump? What value si left in the intelligent reasoning? Donald Trump didn't crash the guardrails of political and civil standards; rather, the highway officials eagerly removed the guardrails and stood by cheering as the lunatic behind the wheel drove the party straight off the cliff of reason.  When a Williams Collage and Harvard Law grad like Bill Bennett considers a man who found the nuclear triad a puzzling mystery in a primary debate qualified to be president, the idiotocracy is in full ascendant."

- Justin Amash (congressman): "Because you have to look at what you are doing first. You have to care about what you're doing. If you have a society where all we care about is that the other side is bad, and therefore we don't have to do the right thing, that society will break down, and you will have no liberty."

- In How Democracies Die, the authors described a set of four behavioral warning signs that can help us know an authoritarian when we see one. We should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.     ....(sound familiar?)

- The most distinguishing characteristic of the current national Republican Party is cowardice. The base price of admission is a willingness to accept that an unstable, pathological liar leads it and pretend otherwise. This means the party demands dishonesty as a trait of membership . . The vast majority of the Republican elected officials know Donald Trump is unfit to be president and pretend otherwise. 

- What does a center-right party in America stand for? Once this was easy to answer: fiscal sanity, free trade, being strong on Russia, personal responsibility, the Constitution. Now? Can anyone honestly define what the Republican Party stands for beyond "owning the libs"? Whatever that means. Can any governing party exist as a credible force with no defined principles? 

- Special interest groups are like terrorists: they test for weakness and exploit fear. What happened to the Republican Party is that slowly over half a century the kooks and weirdos and social misfits of a conservative ideology started discovering that they could force reasonable people to support unreasonable positions through fear. The transition of the National Rifle Association is a perfect parable: over  a couple of decades, it evolved from a gun-safety education organization to a thuggish gang that rewards those at the top with millions of dollars based on proven ability to muscle elected officials into doing what they mostly know is wrong. Today the leaders of the Republican Party follow Donald Trump's lead and routinely attack the foundations of law enforcement, from the FBI to the Justice Department to the judiciary. At first glance it seems stunning to witness a party that once defined itself as a "law-and-order party" take the same position as every drug dealer ...

- The evidence points to a major partisan asymmetry in the polarizations. Despite the widespread belief that both parties have moved to the extremes, the movement of the Republican Party to the right accounts for most of the divergence between the two parties. Since the 1970s, each new cohort of Republican legislators has taken more conservative positions on legislation than the cohorts before them. That is not true of the Democratic legislators. 

- But few if any Republican politicians will even broach the possibility of a tax increase. The result of this weakness will be generations forced to pay off the debt and interest resulting from the simpleminded conspiracy of the silence that is a central tenet of Republican politics.

The A List - J. A. Jance (Ali Reynolds Series, Bk. 14)

 My mother picked this book. It was ok. I don't think I'd go out and get another one, but it wasn't bad either. 

The Perdition Score - Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim Series, Bk. 8)

 If the author keeps killing off angels this fast, I'm not sure there's going to be any left! He also does a good job at making the reader really feel the loss of the MC's special skill. Looking forward to the next one!

polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy - Jessica Fern

 This book was kinda weird. It starts off with the author, a couples therapist, talking about what she saw missing from literature and her own experiences. Fair, that's a logical place for a book to start. Then spent most of the time talking about attachment theory, again, logical.  I actually preferred this part as it's not something I'd studied at all and appreciated how in-depth she got. It was very helpful. But then we start talking about poly and she just really insults it, degrades it, and goes on and on about how hard it is and really makes it seem like no one is happy.  She does a good job at selling monogamy except for the part where approximately 30%-60% of married hetero men will admit to cheating on their monogamous wives (who knows how many won't admit it, so one can safely assume the number is even higher). So basically, no one is happy in their relationships. Cool. Thanks for that.

Columbus Indiana's Historic Crump Theatre - David Sechrest

 This probably wouldn't be interesting if you weren't from the area and weren't familiar with any of the people or locations mentioned, but I am and, therefore, I did think it was interesting. A fun walk through history. 

Also, it's very possible that the first outdoor movie theater in the US was in Columbus, Indiana. 

Germanic Mythology - Bernard Hayes

 I was not impressed with this book. The organization is lacking, consequently it was hard to follow. I was also disappointed in that it spoke about Nordic, Greek and Roman gods more than the Germanic tribes of central Europe, which was the whole point of me reading the book. I know information on them is sparse, but I thought that's why the book was so small. There are many parallels between gods of these 4 regions, but when names were listed, I wasn't even sure who to attribute the names to. Back to the drawing board for this info I guess. 

Middlemarch - George Eliot

This book was so unnecessarily long! I can't honestly recommend this book to anyone except an individual bent on writing a book in the style of this age. However, that being said, there were a few amusing gems that seem to still apply today.

"Few men who feel the pressure of small needs are so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interested desires in a pretext of better motives. In these matters, he was conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny, and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions."

"He's a cursed, white-blooded pedantic cock's comb!"

"Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could not only chose his wife, but his wife's husband."

 "He had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk. A stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse."

We Should all be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 This is such a short talk, yet there's SO much in it! Every single sentence is a nugget of power. Every person on the planet should read this!

- In a literal way, men ruled the world. This made sense thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival, the physically stronger person was more likely to lead.  And men, in general, are physically stronger. (There are, of course, many exceptions.) Today we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person, it is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative.  And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved, but our ideas of gender have not evolved very much. 

- Gender, as it functions today, is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. 

- We teach females that in relationships compromise is what a woman is more likely to do. We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or accomplishment (which in my opinion can be a good thing) but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. 

- The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. 

- Boys and girls are undeniably different biologically. But socialization exaggerates the differences, and then starts a self-fulfilling process. Take cooking, for example. Today, in general, women are more likely to do housework than men, cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene? Or because over years, they have been socialized to see cooking as their role. I was going to say that perhaps women are born with the cooking gene, until I remembered that the majority of famous cooks in the world, that are given the fancy title of Chef, are men. 

- When it comes to appearance, we start off with men as the standard, as the norm. Many of us think that the less feminine a woman appears, the more likely she is to be taken seriously. A man going to a business meeting doesn't wonder about being taken seriously based on what he is wearing, but a woman does. I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. Had I had the confidence then that I have now to be myself, my students would have benefited even more from my teaching because I would have been more comfortable and more fully myself. I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femineity and I want to be respected in all my femaleness because I deserve to be. 

- I often wear clothes that men don't like or don't "understand". I wear them because I like them and because I feel good in them. The male gaze as a shaper of my life's choices is largely incidental. 

- Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general, but to chose to use the vague expression "human rights" is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending is was not women who have for centuries been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically being a female human. For centuries, the worlds divided people into two groups and then excluded and oppressed one group. it is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that. Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how  their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not naturally in charge as men. 

- Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can, and must, make it our culture. 

MaddAddam - Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam series, Bk. 3)

 This is the last of the trilogy, which I started a LONG time ago back when I lived in Florida. I had been meaning to finish it for a long time. I thought it was a very fitting end to the story. I enjoy the author's ideas about the future and when I started these books, the absurdity of the futuristic scenarios that she wrote about seemed quite silly, but having lived through the last 10-ish years (I started the book series longer ago than that), I have to sadly say that, honestly, I can totally see some of the worst ideas in this book believably coming to pass. I feel like it may have originally been written to be just so absurdly stupid, but now, especially with the currently political climate like project 2025, and the author's more famous book the handmaid's tale (also on my to-read list), I'm wondering if the author was just especially prescient about the worsening of humanity.  I don't know anymore! 

Killing Pretty - Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim Series, Bk. 7)

 Honestly, this one was kinda slow. I'm not sure if it was on purpose, but the MC loses his ability to shadow walk and laments this loss in terms of how it slows him down, consequently, I also felt like the book slowed down in keeping with this complaint. Was that the authors plan? Maybe, or maybe this was just a slower book. I'm also not super stoked with how it resolved itself. But don't worry, I'll certainly keep reading.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

 This was another "you should read" books, and going into it I was real worried it would be awful like Sula was, but I actually liked it. The MC, as well as pretty much everyone around her, shows wonderful growth and acceptance as a human being. It starts off a little rough, but the story is steady and keeps a good pace. It's pretty easy to follow while still being interesting. You do want the characters to be better. 

Straight - Chuck Tingle

 As far a Chuck Tingle goes, this is WAY more mainstream than his average stuff. I liked it over all. As far a zombies go, seems as reasonable as any other cause! I'm not sure I would recommend this book to anyone except those like me who enjoy the absurdity of all the straight people losing their minds for no real reason and going on a killing spree. It was fun though!

Standing My Ground: A capitol police officer's fight for accountability and good trouble after January 6th - Harry Dunn

This book was intense! It's another one I think probably everyone should read. The author doesn't hide his personal political preferences, but I believe he is completely justified in them, especially after what he went through and simply existing is an AA man in the United States.  It seems like, despite a very clear inquiry, many Americans either don't or refuse to understand what happened during the insurrection on January 6th, and this book lays out the officer's side clearly, as well as the aftermath. 

Doctor Sleep - Stephen King (The Shining sequel)

 I'm glad he wrote this book.  It was a pretty standard Stephen King book.  I really like the idea of following up to catch the young characters from one-off books many years later, just to see what happened. It was a fun book. 

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - Peter A. Levine

 So much of this seemed hokey and ridiculous, but I don't believe I've ever had any trauma, so I can't be in a position to say what does or doesn't work to resolve such things. There were some components that rang true to me, like allowing your body and mind to go through the innate actions of processing an event shortly after it occurs. This makes sense to me. But re-enacting the event with a different outcome does not because the thing still happened. I guess it works for the same reason placebos work. 

I thought there were some useful components to the book, but I don't know that it was worth all the hype. Much of it was devoted to examples. 

The Silvered Serpents - Roshani Chokshi (Gilded Wolves Series, Bk. 2)

 This book has some really cool concepts.  The characters are a little polarized. I know the author was really going for dichotomy, but it's a little overplayed sometimes. Otherwise, it's a good book overall and I look forward to the next one. 

Tripwire - Lee Child (Jack Reacher series, Bk. # 3)

 I realized I skipped one of these so I went back and caught it.  I'd been really enjoying these books so far, but now it seems that accidentally skipping this one was serendipitous. The MC's love interest in this book was the daughter of his former commanding officer, so she was off limits.  Ok, that's a fair stance. She was off limits because she was a child. Eh, he's young and in the military, it wouldn't be the first time a guy who's 19-21 crushed on a girl who's 17, right? That's a fair reason for a girl to be off-limits. The author could have made either or both of those arguments. But no! When Reacher says she was "too young" he was 24 and she was 15, but he "wanted her so bad". W. T. F. He then goes on to recount how she was skinny and gangly, so it's not like the child love interest even LOOKED like a woman yet! That makes it SO MUCH WORSE.  The rest of the story was honestly pretty good, but I never got passed the fact that apparently Reacher is a pedo now.  Totally soured the whole experience for me.  I'm not totally sure if I'll even continue with these. 

Memnoch the Devil - Anne Rice (Vampire Chronicles, Bk 5)

 This book seemed a little drawn out, but I still really liked it. God as a floundering cat (I meant to do that!) seems so much more logical than other versions I've heard. And the deification of suffering. And just not caring about humans.  All of that seems so much more plausible than allowing the evil to occur. I really like Anne Rice and would recommend everything from her I've read, just so long as you like the gothic horror style and enjoy sacrilege.