Category Archives: reading

Revisiting a Rant: The Reading Police

reading,

I have always been a reader. I have written about reading often on this blog. My primary message is that reading is in the eye of the reader: you should feel comfortable reading what you want, when you want and how much you want. And, just in case that’s not incendiary enough, here’s more fuel for the fire: you are welcome to count audio books as reading.

I am poking the bears that are what I have taken to calling the reading police. Similar to the craft police, these social media monitors set themselves up as judge and jury for other readers. One of their main tenets is that those of us who often read 100 books or more a year aren’t really reading in the way we should be.

Here’s my rant from December 2023 where I confronted the reading police for the first team and wrote my own manifesto for readers.

Dolly & Gloria

advocacy, books, politics, reading, thinking out loud, ,

Gloria Steinem’s death came just a few days after that of Dolly Parton. They seemed to be two women who spun in very different orbits. However, their lives intertwined in a way that shows that feminism is more complex than the anti-woke crowd would have us believe.

Ms. Magazine republished Steinem’s 1987 tribute to Parton, the year the latter was named of the magazine’s Women of the Year. (Days later, the same magazine published a tribute to its founder.)

I encourage you to read both articles. For me, the most powerful statement is Steinem’s simple but powerful definition of feminism: “If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.”

I think Steinem gets it right and it is simple. Everyone gets to discover and embody their unique power. Create a life that makes sense for them as individuals. Define themselves in ways that make them feel whole. That’s it: no one is forcing anyone to live as a trad wife or a childless cat woman. Have babies, don’t have babies; get married, don’t get married; work outside the home, don’t work outside the home. You get to choose.

If early feminists were evangelical in their quest to get women out of the home and into the world, it was because of the context of the times. Women were ruled by men in their personal, professional and financial lives. Opportunities to work outside the home were limited and often ended upon pregnancy. Even as late as 2008, I had a man tell me that, if he was able to provide continuing grant support for a project, he would probably only be able to keep on my male colleague since he had a family to support. I was married without children at the time so I suppose he thought I was working for fun even though I was actively consulting and finishing up a doctorate.

I was born on the cusp of the first and second waves of feminism. One of the best books I’ve read that shares the experiences of my mother’s generation is The Book Club for Troublesome Women. Here’s my review from LibraryThing:

“The Book Club for Troublesome Women showed up in my Hoopla recommendations. Four women in the new suburbs of Northern Virginia come together to read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique even as the world and their lives are changing irrevocably in the early 1960s. Bostwick’s story was heart wrenching in many ways as we see women belittled by the world, and in many cases, their own husbands. But Bostwick also explores ideas about how the enforced roles of women required enforced roles for men who may not find bread winning to be their real desire. Of course, there are pretty petty men as well, and I found myself shouting “a*****e” a few times along the way.

She weaves history into the story as the women in Concordia, Virginia, were right on the doorstep of the March on Washington and lived through the assassination of Kennedy. We see them grappling with their changing roles, coming to understand the importance not just of friendship but also mentorship. And, I am a huge fan of Katherine Graham who shows up as herself and provides some support for one of the characters in the novel. It felt a little “Forrest Gumpy” but helped underline the turmoil of those years.”

We grieve the loss of these women. We watch in horror as their work is belittled and dismantled. So, we do what people have always done: we pick up the mantle and march on. Labor Day is a great day to write a letter to your legislator to let them know where you stand on the issues.

July Reading

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I have been seeing lots of fun collages of book covers showing what people read during the month and decided I needed to make one for July. Not surprisingly, I headed to Canva where I found a plethora of reading tracker templates. They all made it easy to copy, paste and resize the book covers that I already had saved in my LibraryThing thread.

I like this but would like to include a little more data. One template included five stars that could be filled in. I also want to add a headphones icon to indicate audio books. I usually listen to one or two each month. I think I can make the book covers into links. And, I recognize that it is not at all accessible. I have listed the books below this post and linked to their pages on LibraryThing.

There’s always next month!

The image is a bookshelf with nine book covers:

The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge

A Train to Moscow by Elena Gordokhova

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol 1 by Beth Brower

Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

The Widows’ Guide to Murder by Amanda Ashby

Lilith by Nikki Marmery

Hidden in Smoke by Lee Goldberg

The Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald M. Stern

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

Hot Takes

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I am working on a longer post about my recent road trip read, Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule. But, I didn’t want to miss a few quick items that might be of interest.

    While there is some question as to whether the examples in Alanis Morissette’s song, Ironic?, are actually ironic, there is no question that the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma has provided a classic example. The first act of his new Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism is to force schools to show his prayer video to every student, teacher and parent. Most schools have refused and the Oklahoma Attorney General has said he overstepped his bounds. (His one concession was that he only encouraged, rather than required, the students to pray with him.) I hope the teachers tasked with teaching irony as part of the Oklahoma standards take note.

    Search, by Michelle Huneven, uses the story of one Unitarian Universalist congregation’s search for a minister as an exploration of the relationship between community and organization. Since the narrator is a food writer by day, the novel is full of wonderful descriptions of meals and includes recipes at the end. The book is funny, poignant and authentic, based on my own experience with the UUs, and, I should say, with other community focused organizations. Decision making becomes more challenging when it has to be made by people who supposedly share certain values and have equal say over the process and outcome. Huneven also explores the changing landscape of churches as they struggle to connect with younger people while maintaining the shared history and culture.

    Astrologers have been excited about today’s big move: Pluto, planet of death, destruction and transformation, moved from Capricorn, where it has been for 16 years, into Aquarius where it has not been for 200 years and where it will stay until 2043. Big changes are coming according to People magazine. We have to look at the abyss before we can rebuild the world. My astrologer of choice is Chani Nicholas, in case you were wondering. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the Age of Aquarius. But I’m including the song anyway for your enjoyment.

    Ending the Year With a Bit of a Rant

    reading,

    I will spend time today wrapping up my LibraryThing thread for 2023. I am part of a group that sets a goal of reading 75 books each year and sharing that reading and more with the group. Many of us, especially those on the mostly-retired end of the spectrum and old enough to be past the “guilty pleasure” syndrome so we read what the heck we want, read many more than 75 books. I will top out at 170 this year with about 40 audio books included in that number.

    So, here’s my rant: scrolling social media (tell me again why I do that??), I happened upon a book guy speaking out strongly against setting quantitative goals for the new year. It meant you weren’t reading deeply or well, obviously skipping blissfully along on a diet of cozy mysteries and celebrity memoirs, and, in his mind, that was wrong. You were supposed to read the way he read, savoring every word, digging into every nuance, connecting with the author in deeply meaningful ways. Otherwise, could you really call yourself a reader?

    I had the same visceral reaction to his remarks as I did when the William & Mary undergrad in the course I was teaching reacted with disgust at my professed joy in reading the Twilight series. But, rather than listing my bona fides the way I did with her, I will simply say this: you be you. Read whatever and however you want. Feel free to use your platform to tell us how much you get out of it. Feel free to even encourage us to try it. Feel free to ask us to share our experiences. You might be surprised with what you learn. But, please, stop short at judging us and our reading preferences and styles based on your experiences.

    It is a practice that can be applied in many area of our lives. Share your experiences and the lessons you’ve learned that you think could help others. Then, stop, right at the cliff’s edge of “if you don’t do what I suggest, then you are bad/wrong/dumb.”