Books – Page 14 – …on the B.L.

Queen Meryl by Erin Carlson

September 24, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 320
Quick Review Meryl Streep has the most Academy Award nominations of any actor ever. There’s a reason for that, and Erin Carlson dives into the why in Queen Meryl.

Reading Queen Meryl by Erin Carlson in Houston, Texas. | Dress | Shoes | Watch |

Happy Publication day to Erin Carlson and Queen Meryl from Hachette Books. I like Erin Carlson as an author; I like Meryl Streep as an actress. The combination makes for a great and informative read.

Meryl Streep has become an enigma. She is probably one of the greatest movie stars to have ever lived. With 21 Academy Award nominations, it’s hard to argue the contrary. She has had her critics, like all great artists do. Through it all, she has brought characters to life on the stage and the silver screen. She has not let age or Hollywood hold her back from telling complex stories with grace. Erin Carlson brings this magnificent woman to life in her latest book Queen Meryl.

Beginning in Meryl’s formative years, Carlson looks at what transformed Mary Louise, the girl, into Meryl, the artist and actress. Carlson follows Meryl Streep’s career from stage to film, documenting the most important phases in her career and life. Meryl Streep has spent her career choosing films with care to tell women’s diverse stories. From Kramer vs. Kramer to Out of Africa to Silkwood to Mamma Mia to The Devil Wears Prada and so many more.

Carlson allows Streep a voice by quoting her often throughout Queen Meryl. Pulling from speeches, history, friendships, interviews, and more, Carlson creates an image of the woman and the artist fighting for visibility and change through her work and activism. Streep is funny and self-deprecating while still exuding assuredness.

Queen Meryl includes breaks for history lessons, speech snippets, critical responses, and more. The book also includes sketches of Streep throughout her career before every chapter. A few iconic photos are used at key points. Each chapter begins with a memorable quote from the movie Carlson will focus on during that chapter. It is obvious that Carlson is in awe of the legend and the woman; her ability to speak directly to the reader about her own emotions is a good pairing for the seemingly warm and hilarious Streep.

I highly enjoyed reading Queen Meryl by Erin Carlson. I have loved Meryl Streep for as long as I can remember, but there was so much I didn’t know about her life and career. She is inspiring as a person and activist. I hope the world remembers her as the complex and interesting woman Erin Carlson paints her to be.

Memorable Quotes
“Allow me to describe the plot of this 1977 gem of a movie that you should drop everything (except this book) and watch immediately…”
“Despite her perfect image, Meryl wasn’t immune to insecurity – especially during dark nights of the soul when the mind tends to ruminate on uncertainty, regret, and rejection.”
“Meryl avoided doing films that sexualized her or made her a prop to a male lead.”

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Title: Queen Meryl; The Iconic Roles, Heroic Deeds, and Legendary Life of Meryl Streep
Author: Erin Carlson
Publisher: Hachette Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780316485272

Books, NonFiction

Motherland by Elissa Altman

September 22, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Absolutely
Length 272
Quick Review Elissa Altman and her mother have always had a trying relationship. Altman explores their history in order to come to peace with and understand it.

Reading Motherland by Elissa Altman in downtown Houston. | Skirt | Watch | Top | Shoes |

Mother daughter relationships are hard under even the best of circumstances. When someone puts pen to paper about it, you know it is even more fraught. And usually the mom is dead, but Elissa Altman writes while her mother is still living. Motherland is, at its essence, an exploration of addiction and recovery and living with it.

Moms are hard. I probably have a skewed perception because I have struggled with the mom relationship since I became a cognizant person. Motherland resonated with me on a very visceral level. I finished it in a few hours without getting up to even refill my teacup.

Elissa Altman is a lesbian woman raised by starlet mother in New York City. (Her father was supportive and present and seems like a really good dad and person, but this story isn’t about him.) Her mother had a career in entertainment before meeting her first husband and having a child, Altman. For the rest of her life, she would remind everyone of who she used to be, all while reminding her daughter what she had given up for her.

From the start, it is wildly apparent the relationship between Altman and her mother is unhealthy under the best of circumstances. Her mother never made the shift in her mind that her days on TV were no longer. She lives as if the idea of her past self is all she was, is, and ever will be to the point Altman states, “She was a myth I searched for and never found.” Oh my god that sentence cuts me to the quick.

“It was not the alcohol to which I was addicted; it was she…” About going to AA without an alcohol addiction.
A lot of I loved you the most did everything for you what has anyone else done that I didn’t and couldn’t do for you
It feels like my mother
“The belief that whatever she was dishing out. I somehow deserved.”

Memorable Quotes
“Like the Centralia Mine fire, my mother and I have been burning for half a century.”
“It had been a choice: my mother’s life, or my own.”
“No family likes having a writer in their midst, says a close friend. … No family ever says Yay. A writer.”

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Title: Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
Author: Elissa Altman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780399181580

Books, NonFiction

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

September 16, 2019September 16, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 432
Quick Review The world is full of inequity. Some is intentional. Some is unintentional. Data bias affects women significantly from getting around to being diagnosed to just being inconvenienced. Data is blind, especially when the data doesn’t include women. a

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez | Jeans | Shirt

My best friend told me about this book because he read it and was impressed. I was impressed he picked up a book about women’s issues. He’s no mysoginist; he’s just a man with interests lying elsewhere.

At its core Invisible Women is about discrimination. The data gap may not be malicious or even something done on purpose, but it exists and perpetuates gender inequality around the world in small and big ways most people have not or will ever contemplate. I have lots of feelings and thoughts on Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women. I’m impressed. She pulls from a variety of sources on a variety of topics from snow removal to the lack of inclusion in medical research. I can only imagine the amount of information and studies she left out of the book, but she chose things of seeming inconsequence to things of extreme consequence. The bottom line:

Women are other.
Humanity suffers.

There were so many insanely great quotable moments in the book: Most of my notes are just quotes. I’ll include all of the ones I jotted down at the bottom because they’re just too good. Invisible Women can be completely summed up in this quote on how the data gap “is simply the product of a way of thinking that has been around for millenia and is therefore a kind of not thinking.”

I loved every part of this book. She writes on topics I honestly had no idea about: how snow removal is inadvertantly keeping women from succeeding. She also discusses topics I knew about but hadn’t though of in terms of gender equality: gendered language uses the male form as the default, but nongenderized languages don’t have better equality. To gendered discrimination I have personally experienced: medicine is not geared towards women, making them a priority, or taking their pain and symptoms seriously. (Had a listened to one asshat doctor who didn’t believe me or take me seriously, I would have died.)

Honestly, I would love to discuss all of the points Criado Perez makes in Invisible Women. If you have an interest, hit me up. I’m always up for a gender discussion.

Criado Perez does a great job presenting the data and mostly the lack of data. She makes her points. She rarely includes anecdotes unless those anecdotes were included in studies. She bases all of her arguments in fact, leaving feelings and emotions behind. I, personally, love an emotional ploy. I, also, understand it’s not what fuels change on a systemic level. Criado Perez keeps herself out of the book. She’s acting as an information conduit. Her personality and opinions seep through in small ways. Her phrasing and occasional parenthetical statement packs a punch making it both interesting and a tiny pull at the emotional strings. She has a sense of humor to her writing, and I caught myself giggling more than once.

Caroline Criado Perez has a way with words in Invisible Women. She is persuasive and interesting. One of the more important quotes is the very last sentence of the book: “All people needed to do was to ask women.”

Memorable Quotes
“the chroniclers of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall.”
“Men go without saying, and women don’t get said at all.” hit me in the feels
“it matters when women literally can’t get said at all”
“Women have always worked. They have worked unpaid, underpaid, underappreciated, and invisibly, but they have always worked.”
“When it comes to the tech that ends up in our pockets (I’m ever hopeful)”
“We lack consistent, sex-disaggregated data from every country…”
“we continue to rely on data from studies done on men as if they apply to women.”
“And as an added bonus, not forcing women to march in time with men has not, as yet, led to the apocolypse.”
“Different sex: totally opposite result.”

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Title: Invisible Women; Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Author: Caroline Criado Perez
Publisher: Abrams Press (Abrams)
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781419729072

Books, NonFiction

Thank You For My Service by Mat Best

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes: Entertaining and Honest
Length 240
Quick Review Mat Best was a Ranger before contracting and becoming known for his youTube channel, tshirt/whiskey/coffee companies, oh, and he made a movie. He’s entertaining as hell in his book Thank You For My Service.

Best is a badass, but I belong to a Marine family. | Thank You For My Service

As military adjacent, I’m interested in military nonfiction and memoirs, but as a critic I’m always wary because I’ve read some racist bulshit masquerading as war memoirs. Mat Best does a better-than-most job at balancing the realities of war with humanity in Thank You For My Service.

Best was a Ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment for five active military deployments before working and deploying multiple times as a private contractor. While working as a contractor, he created a youTube channel capitalizing on his creative side to document his time, opinions, and experiences as a member of the military. The channel lead to a partnership, which created a tshirt company, whiskey company, production company, a movie, and a coffee company. He’s kind of a jack of all trades, it seems.

The military is a completely different way of life. It’s hard to understand if you’re not in it. Even as a milso, it’s not my way of life, but I am more familiar with it than others. If you’re not into a morbid sense of humor, don’t read Thank You For My Service because that’s a huge part of the narrative and the military. Jokes and rude humor are essential. To be honest, the book would be super weird if he didn’t include dark jokes. Best redacts certain words, even whole sections of text, to maintain anonymity and secrecy. This underpins the fact he had a dangerous job, and even though he’s cracking jokes, people’s lives are at risk every moment of every day.

I decided to pose with Thank You For My Service by Mat Best at the Aviation Memorial on MCAS New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

War is war. People killing people. War memoirs tend to dehumanize the enemy in a plethora of ways. It’s part of the job, and it would be hard not to when you see your friends and colleagues dying. Best doesn’t sugar coat the feelings he had in theater, but he also makes sure the reader knows on the other side of his gun are people. The fact he didn’t use racial slurs impressed me. He does er on the side of “kill the enemy,” but that was literally his job.

Best is confident, funny, and smart. He writes about his experiences leading up to enlisting, deployments, Ranger school, loss, getting out, private security, joining and being a private contractor, and figuring out his life. He doesn’t shy away from discussing what he went through getting out of the military. Being in his early twenties but feeling disconnected from his peers. So many military guys feel this way when they get out after their first enlistment.

He and I, I am sure, have a lot of differing opinions, but he’s also a person I would have a ton of fun grabbing coffee with or joking over a bonfire. Throughout Thank You For My Service he emphasizes the sense of community he had in the military. It’s true, whether you’re in or military adjacent, when you meet someone who is military, you have something to talk about or bond over.

Memorable Quotes|
“Thinking you’re going to die and wanting to die are totally different things. I didn’t have a death wish. It’s just that, in my experience, the more you deploy and face the dark realities that exist in life, the more comfortable you become with the idea of death.”
“…being immersed in Ranger culture for four straight years had affected how I saw the world and, more to the point, how the world saw me.”

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Title: Thank You For My Service
Author: Mat Best
With: Ross Patterson and Nils Parker
Publisher: Bantam Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781524796495

Books, NonFiction

Escape from Paris by Stephen Harding

September 1, 2019August 30, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 288
Quick Review Joe, an American soldier, and Yvette, a young French woman in the resistance, fall in love at Les Invalides under the most unusual circumstances during World War II.

In front of The Water Wall in Houston, Texas. | Escape from Paris by Stephen Harding | Dress | Purse | Shoes | Earrings |

Escape from Paris | Dress | Shoes | Purse |

Available October 8, 2019

The world has an obsession with World War II. It was a new kind of war revolutionizing economies and industries around the world. The devastation and impact it had is still remarkable. With so many history books, novels, documentaries, TV shows, movies, and more, it can be easy to forget the individuals impacted by each decision, battle, success, and failure. People won the war. People lost the war. People lived lives during the war. Stephen Harding puts faces to these stories in Escape From Paris.

Harding focuses on the 94th Bomb Group, a United States Air Force unit based in England flying missions over Germany and France.

I’m going to be completely biased, I found the French part of this story far more interesting than the American aspect. This has nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with my personal interests. As a francophile and history buff, I am drawn to the French bits.

Joe is an American, who enlisted in the Air Force when the war began. His bomber went down over Northern France during an air raid along with several other planes. Most did not survive, but Joe and several other did. Finding the resistance they ended up in Paris at Les Invalides.

Georges and Denise had been the caretakers of Les Invalides for many years when the war broke out. They joined the resistance along with their daughter, Yvette. There were resistance groups working separately and together throughout Europe. This family was in a unique situation as “the “caretakers of Invalides” literally carried the keys to what was arguably one of the safest hiding places in the country” because Les Invalides had been taken over by the Germans during the Occupation, which, counterintuitively, gave this family more freedom to aide the resistance effort while housing and hiding soldiers. It was a dangerous and brilliant plan due to the fact “the Germans never thought to search what they assumed was a completely secure facility.”

There’s a love story in Escape from Paris, but I find it the least interesting bit about this book because personal taste. I did find it a little redundant because Harding felt the need to continually point out that this is a love story and that it’s not just about war, it’s about love too. I get it. He’s building up the human aspect of the story, but it’s not that interesting. The repetition borders on frustrating. The humanity is abundantly clear in his portraits of the people inhabiting this story. They lived lives before, during, and after the war. These were people who loved each other and their country. They fought in any way they could to protect what they believed in. The love story is sweet, but it’s the least impactful part of the story. If it wasn’t in the title, I probably would have forgotten it was in the book. Joe, Denise, Georges, and Yvette were incredible and brave people standing up for what they believed in.

Escape from Paris is riddled with historical facts, airplane terminology, logistics, and more. If you’re not familiar with these terms and this kind of history book, you’ll want Google handy. I enjoyed reading this interesting and well researched book. It’s definitely one to read if you like WWII.

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Title: Escape From Paris; A True Story of Love and Resistance in Wartime France
Author: Stephen Harding
Publisher: De Capo Press (Hachette Book Group)
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780306922169

Books, Fiction

The Travelers by Regina Porter

August 30, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Definitely
Length 320
Quick Review Starting with a bang, Porter dives into America’s past and complex issues with racism, classism, feminism, and all the other -isms as two families intermingle from the 1950’s to the last years of Obama’s presidency.

Reading *The Travelers* by Regina Porter in Old Town Spring, Texas. | Dress | Watch |

Regina Porter knows how to write. Her skill is on full display from the very beginning of The Travelers. This is an impressive piece of literature in and of itself, but the fact it is her debut makes it even more momentous. Simultaneously concise and epic, Porter packs a punch with every character and plot line. A story that is sure to leave an impression on anyone who picks it up.

With a huge cast of characters, The Travelers does its readers a favor by including a cast and familial context before the intricately woven plot begins. Convenient for reminding myself who’s who in the milieu without having to backtrack, I appreciated it..

Porter dives into the plot and complexities of relationships and humans search for answers with “When the boy was four, he asked his father why people needed sleep. His father said, “So God could unfuck all the things people fuck up.”” Two sentences. A striking way to start a novel that lives up to and surpasses the promise of its first impression. Spanning seven decades, The Travelers explores the realities of living in the United States through a variety of lenses and eras as two families come together.

This is not an easy book to read. It challenges readers to follow along a journey mired by stark realities. As chapters change so does the perspective, characters, era, setting, style, and tone. It’s a chameleon of a novel; changing drastically to fit the characters, situations, and times. There are no good characters or bad. Although, there are a few who fall much further on the wrong side of bad. Flaws and brilliance are present in each character. Instead of relying on tropes, The Travelers snapshots people’s lives to depict the greater faults in American society not just historically but currently.

People are not one thing. They are not just black. Just white. Just gay. Just rich. Just a father. Just an anything. Being human means being many things all at the same time and experiencing events in very unique and personal ways. We walk through life as a culmination of all our identities and experiences commingling simultaneously. Porter does not dilute her characters. They are not just white, mentally ill, black, veteran, sister, mixed, lover, poor, victim, straight, abuser, rich, gay, etc. She allows them to be many things concurrently.

The real triumph in The Travelers is Porter’s resistance to explain. She does not water down her stories or characters or layers by telling the reader how to perceive it. She lets it play out and leaves it. She has a straightforward yet nuanced way of writing. As in life; she allows the reader to infer and interpret what happens outside the line of sight. Readers are used to having a degree of omniscience, but Porter doesn’t allow this.

As a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, Porter delivers one of the most believable literary sexual abuse encounters I’ve encountered. I admire her dedication to tackling often misunderstood and misrepresented atrocities with sincerity and tact. It’s a hard line to walk, and she does it well.

This is good Literature. With a capital L. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop has a reputation for excellence. It has earned this reputation because Regina Porter and writers of this caliber called it home for a time. It is an incredible program, and I’m not just saying so because I grew up in Iowa.

The Travelers is one of the most affecting contemporary novels I have encountered.

Memorable Quotes
“You can’t see the end in the beginning. So play it safe and get the beginning right.”
“But we inherit it. Don’t you want to know what makes them tick?”

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Title: The Travelers
Author: Regina Porter
Publisher: Hogarth
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780525576198