Tuesday, January 26, 2021

The Project (Courtney Summers)

I had mixed feelings about The Project by Courtney Summers. On the one hand, it was very well written and the characters well developed. On the other hand, I found it easy to put down, with a plot lacking in believability and without much of a payoff at the end.

Lo is seriously injured in the hospital, having just been in the same car accident that killed her parents. Her sister, Bea, keeps vigil, and then suddenly disappears to join The Unity Project. She leaves Lo in the care of their great aunt, but Lo is determined to find her sister and expose The Unity Project for the cult it is.

The Project is told in alternate timelines between Lo and Bea, and Summers does a nice job of paralleling the characters. But it just didn't keep my attention the way I was hoping it to.

MY RATING - 2.5

Saturday, January 16, 2021

The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager)

 Any book about writing will tell you that if you want to be a better writer you need to read more. In The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives, Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager interview 23 writers about their favorite books and which ones influenced them the most.

When I pick up a book by my favorite authors, I don't really think who THEIR favorite authors are as well. It was so interesting to read these interviews. Pearl and Schwager ask very interesting questions to authors like Donna Tartt, Jennifer Egan, and Richard Ford, who in turn, provide thought-provoking answers. At the end of each interview is a list of many of the books mentioned in the interview, making it easy to put them on your own reading list.

I came away inspired to read not only many of these authors' works but also the books they recommended. I, for one, wholeheartedly recommend this to those who love books about books.

MY RATING - 4

Sunday, January 3, 2021

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (Robert D. Putnam)

Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone drew critical acclaim for its research into the decline in civic participation among Americans. His newest book, The Upswing, takes his research on civic engagement and broadens it into a historical narrative of our nation’s progress and view of itself in the past century.

The Upswing focuses on a broad curve and trendline that he refers to as “I-We-I”. This trendline and curve is reflected in several indicators, from taxation to economic equality to progress in civil rights through the country to political partisanship. Putnam parallels historical events in each of these trends to show a broad narrative that the nation swung from a Gilded Age full of individualism and relatively deep partisanship to an era where the nation was conformist, community-oriented, and more egalitarian, before pivoting back into an era that is more individualist and more unequal economically. Putnam points out a number of events that drove these changes but does not suggest any one event as a trigger point for the changes, offering that the numbers of events happening in short succession would promote a turn in trajectory (the rights’ movements, Vietnam, and lowering of tax rates in the 1960’s and the Progressive Era in the early 20th Century).


Putnam, with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, offers some suggestions on how to pivot the current perceived nadir of American life into one that is more optimistic and better (more support of pragmatic reform, bipartisanship in political life, and the use of technology to foster group efforts to combat issues that face the country to name three). While the suggestions are shorter and broader than the research and evidence on “I-We-I”, Putnam does show a roadmap to how American can become a more united, community-oriented country in the decades to come. It may take more than the pundits and politicians among us to take that roadmap and make use of it.


MY RATING - 4