Books, NonFiction

Laura Lippman’s Feminist Revolution in My Life as a Villainess

Worth A Read Yes
Length 384
Quick Review Laura Lippman has made a career creating villains and taking them down in her novels. At sixty years old, she has found herself a villainess. The real, living breathing kind.

My Life as a Villainess by Laura Lippman is a fantastic memoir. | Skirt | Top |

Laura Lippman is a badass and proves it on every page of her memoir, My Life as a Villainess

At sixty, Lippman loves herself; that—in and of itself—is a feminist revolution and reason enough to be deemed a ‘villainess.’ She knows it and doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth of being a woman daring to age instead of keeling over dead at 29, “Every day, everywhere I go, the culture is keen to remind me how repulsive I am.” The level of transparency she takes on is incredible. Tackling womanhood head on and all that it encompasses, age, money, body image, career, marriage, motherhood; nothing is off limits, and she does through humor and razor sharp observations, “People talk about the White House distracting us, nothing has distracted me as much as this stupid battle with my weight and my looks, both of which are fine.” Honestly, though, if women (as a whole unit) focused more on the White House/Congress/Policy/Anything and less on contorting our bodies into unrealistic and often hostile conflicting expectations, we would get so much shit done. Lippman knows this and gets even more pointed about it the further on you read, “What would happen to the global economy if all the women on the planet suddenly decided: I don’t care if you think I’m fuckable.”

Motherhood is often looked at as a necessary milestone to leveling up to real womanhood. *cough* *cough* Crap. Sorry was that unladylike? I don’t care. No matter how a woman chooses to live her life, as a mother or not, she will never do it right or well enough in the court of public opinion. Lippman became a mother at 51 and that journey came with its fair share of trials and tribulations. She doesn’t shy away from the role money played in becoming a mom later than most. Her transparency about the fact her family’s hard work led to the financial ability of being able to create a family on their own terms is admirable. She doesn’t apologize for having money or using it to become a mom, nor should she. Women are often pressured to apologize for anything and everything especially when it pertains to taking control over their own bodies, desires, and motherhood. 

Lippman is going through life on her own terms and experiencing it through the lens of a funny writer with a legacy of talented writers, her father being a journalist. Menopause and social opinion of menopause does not escape her scrutiny, “Menopause doesn’t make women want to die. It makes other people wish we would die, or at least disappear.” With a journalist’s background, she did her research. Humans and pilot whales experience menopause. Why? There is no answer or reason that science has come up with yet (which is another topic entirely: the lack of female research and representation in scientific data and interest, but I’m off topic now), but Lippman has her own theory, and you’ll have to read her book to find out what it is. You’ll enjoy it, unless you have no sense of humor.

It’s not all fun and games. Lippman takes on topics of being a bad friend, her competitive streak, and sexual harassment. These are all things humans and women struggle and live with daily. One of the most poignant and moving moments is when Lippman writes, “It was never about what I was wearing. It wasn’t even about me. That was the hardest lesson to learn.” It’s advice I have given in my own words to many women and girls. We are women. We are strong. But we exist in a world that does not respect our right to exist. The world tears us down and makes us small. The act of being ourselves, taking up space, and living our lives is an act of rebellion. It is the essence of being a villainess. 

I strive to be a villainess in my own life… and hopefully the world. | Skirt | Top | Sunglasses |

My Life as a Villainess is a documentation of Lippman’s journey to being a self-assured and confident woman with a whole lot of life behind and ahead of her. All the while telling her story, she dares the reader to ask themselves: What do I want? What do I really want? Whether it’s food, a career, children, travel, money, whatever. Ask. What do I want? What does my body really want. What does my mind want. All the time. Never cease asking or growing into the villainess every woman should strive to be: an authentic version of our truest selves.

I strongly recommend every woman who isn’t going to die before their teenage years come to an end read this book. Women and girls need to see strong, unapologetic, successful, interesting women, who have created their own paths in life, and Lippman is just that. She’s not perfect. In fact, she’s a mess, which makes her more relatable and worthy of being a role model. My Life as a Villainess is a phenomenal memoir about existing as a woman in the world.

Memorable Quotes
“If grudge-holding count for cardio, I’d have run the equivalent of many Boston marathons by now.”
“That’s the final step in accepting one’s gorgeousness. You then have to concede everyone is gorgeous.”
“Social media can take a friendship only so far.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: My Life as a Villainess
Author: Laura Lippman
Publisher: William Morrow (HarperCollins)

Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 9780062997333

Books, NonFiction

Humanization of Donald Trump in Mary L. Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough

Worth Reading Yes
Length 225
Quick Review Trump governs one of the most powerful countries in the world. His niece, a clinical psychologist, posits he doesn’t deserve any of the praise he’s garnered for himself. 

Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump in front of Air Force One.

Mary L. Trump is the oldest of Fred Trump Jr.’s children and Donald Trump’s only niece. With a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and a lifetime of anecdotal experience, Dr. Trump explores the complicated familial history that made the youngest Trump, an undiagnosed yet dangerous narcissist with complex pathologies, in her book Too Much and Never Enough; How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man

Before becoming president, Donald lived a life of luxury, but that luxury masked a childhood and life filled with too much and not enough. Donald is one of five and the second youngest child of Frederick and Mary Anne Trump. He, like his four siblings, had a difficult childhood. Their father was cold, domineering, and manipulative, and their mother lacked warmth and had little role in the two youngest Trump’s lives. He, like his siblings, suffered from emotional neglect, causing a lifetime of irreparable damage.

Too Much and Never Enough is more than Donald’s story. It is the story of Dr. Trump’s family, her father, herself. She humanizes Donald by giving context to his inexplicable behavior. His personality, though outlandish and atrocious, is explainable. There is a reason Donald is the way he is, “Child abuse is, in some sense, the experience of “too much” or “not enough.”” Dr. Trump contextualizes childhood development and attachment and how everything went wrong in his particular situation, “…Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.” Donald didn’t experience this abuse in a vacuum, it went back generations and existed for all the children in varying ways and was passed down to the next generation and experienced by Dr. Trump herself. As he grew older, Donald lashed out more and more as there was “… an increasing hostility to others and a seeming indifference to his mother’s absence and father’s neglect. … With appropriate care and attention, they might have been overcome. Unfortunately for Donald and everybody else on this planet, those behaviors became hardened into personality traits…” Into adolescence and adulthood, these traits would affect everyone in his orbit and eventually the globe as he took on one of the most powerful political positions. 

Family dynamics affected Donald, but they affected everyone else in the family as well. Dr. Trump wants her family’s story to be told. Her father passed away a disinherited, family disappointment at 42 from alcoholism. Family dynamics affected Dr. Trump. Even though she was born into a family worth multi millions, she had plead for college tuition. Of all the people in the world, Dr. Trump has as many if not more reasons to eviscerate Donald, yet she makes it known from the beginning that she is not writing this for financial gain but to elucidate Donald’s pathologies for the world at large. Though I believe her motivations, the book still feels rushed. Spreading the word before the campaign or a combination of capitalizing on it, means redundancies and a little bit of the “not enough.” Given more time, the narrative could have been improved. 

Donald, like every person, is a culmination of everything he endured and survived. Dr. Trump humanizes him through reasoning. She provides excuses without releasing him from culpability because he is an adult responsible for his actions. She repeatedly bolsters her arguments through facts, statistics, anecdotes, and quotes. What could have strictly been a family tell-all is a well researched look into her family’s history. 

Air Force One in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from my airplane window.

Dr. Trump never refers to Donald as Uncle or president. He is always Donald. The entirety of Too Much and Never Enough, she keeps her family at a distance and only refers to them by their first name. When she does to their relation, it is solely to contextualize who they are to her and within the family. 

There is a sense of humor to Too Much and Never Enough. In the chapter titled “A Civil Servant in Public Housing” or the phrase: “Unfortunately for Donald and everybody else on this planet, those behaviors became hardened into personality traits…” Dr. Trump finds a way to lighten the mood, even if it’s just for a moment. 

Diagnosing Donald is impossible. Dr. Trump begins Too Much and Never Enough by saying she can’t diagnose him because it would require a battery of tests and cross-sectional diagnosis that he would never sit for. Through reading, you can get a sense of what she believes his diagnosis could be if he would ever admit he has a problem. 

As infuriating as Too Much and Never Enough is, it is a lovely book about the horrible Trump family. Their failures, shortcomings, and history. For Mary L. Trump PhD, it is a story of overcoming and succeeding. Donald Trump is one of the most dangerous and powerful men in the world, but at the end of the day, he is a man who has suffered greatly. 

Memorable Quotes
“The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.”
“It’s difficult to understand what goes on in any family – perhaps hardest of all for the people in it. Regardless of how a parent treats a child, it’s almost impossible for that child to believe that parent means them any harm.”
“Nothing is ever enough. This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved. So he must draw you in if he can by getting you to assent to even the most seemingly insignificant things. … Then he makes his vulnerabilities and insecurities your responsibility: you must assuage them, you must take care of him. Failing to do so leaves a vacuum that is unbearable for him to withstand for long.”
“Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Too Much and Never Enough; How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
Author: Mary L. Trump PhD
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 9781982141462

Books, NonFiction

From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey Stein

Read Yes
Length 330
Quick Review From the Corner of the Oval is the story of Beck Dorey-Steins experiences in the White House under the Obama administration as a stenographer.

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Reading From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey Stein | Cold-Shoulder Shirt | Hot Pink Skirt | Blue Suede Shoes | Fossil Watch

I wasn’t sure what to think of when I picked up From the Corner of the Oval. The cover is hot pink and blue, but it’s a political memoir. What? Those don’t go together unless you’re the fictional character Elle Woods. Beck Dorey-Stein is definitely not Elle Woods, but she belonged to the political sphere and the bright color wearing crowd.

Dorey-Stein begins From the Corner of the Oval as a tutor at a private school in DC. She had no idea what she was doing or where she was going, but she wanted it to not be in Washington DC. One day, she replied to a Craigslist ad, which ended up being a job as a stenographer in the White House. As a stenographer, she accompanied the president on trips around the country and the globe catching rides on Air Force One.

There is no way you can read Dorey-Stein’s words and not see her honesty. She’s sharing her life in the White House and her personal life as they bleed into one another. She makes mistakes, but she doesn’t try to hide them. She lets her humanity shine through without being apologetic for the choices she made. It’s the clarity that makes it a good and entertaining memoir to read.

The prose is fun to read. There are a ton of quotable moments, but I failed to jot them down. She has a witty way with words. She finds the humor in the unfortunate events that transpire.

It’s a great read. Not at all what I expected from a Capital Hill memoir, but Beck Dorey-Stein explains the color choice on the cover of From the Corner of the Oval through her flamboyant personality on every page.  

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Quick Review
“…and as on so many other nights, it’s like I’m not there.”
“The world is what you make it.”

Title: From the Corner of the Oval
Author: Beck Dorey-Stein
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525509127

Books, NonFiction

Well-Read Black Girl

 

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Well-Read Black Girl | Black Dress | Sweater | Hat | Boots | Socks

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review Glory Edim is the amazing woman behind the Instagram @wellreadblackgirl. I have been obsessively following her since I started my blog. Her book is a testament to the importance of books.

Well-Read Black Girl is a book of essays about reading journeys by amazing black women from a variety of backgrounds compiled by Glory Edim, the creator of @wellreadblackgirl. It is beautiful. Literature is white-centric. As a girl, I read books and new they were about girls who looked like me. To be honest, I didn’t really read books with people who don’t look like me as the main characters until I was in high school. There aren’t that many of them. For a huge swath of the population, they don’t see themselves in the pages they read.

The authors of the essays talk about finding their reflection in the books they read within the pages of Well-Read Black Girl. The books they talk about are meant for the world, but have unique meanings to each woman. They searched for themselves in books like we all do. For them, it was harder because literature rarely tells their story. These are the essays about the books that changed them. We all have that book, I think.

I honestly don’t want to go into too much depth about the book because it’s so fabulous. You should take the time to read it. The essays aren’t long, so you can enjoy them with a busy schedule. I will be returning to the book often because it’s inspiring.

I truly loved reading this. There were names I knew and names I am not familiar with, but I’m going to try and broaden my horizons more. Several books and authors are mentioned in several essays. The fact this is so prevalent goes to show how few options there are for and about women of color. In fact, the books the essays discuss are the same books that touched me deeply.

My favorite thing in Well-Read Black Girl are the book recommendations. There are several lists of books for and about black women throughout. It also compiles all the books mentioned throughout the pages. There are so many good books mentioned and several I still need to read.

I can’t recommend this book enough!

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Memorable Quotes
“I suddenly understood that her story was part of the larger story of Black womanhood and survival.”
“We are not looking for anyone else to give us validation; because we have one another.”
“Mom raised us more like cactuses, rather than orchids.” Gabourey Sidibe

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Title: Well-Read Black Girl; Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
Author: Glory Edim
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9770525619772

Books, NonFiction

Impeachment

Read Yes
Length 192
Quick Review I probably recommend everything Jon Meacham touches. Impeachment is a tiny book jam-packed full of interesting facts about a well known word yet unfamiliar process.

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Impeachment

Impeachment is a word thrown around often lately in the United States. The political climate makes a tornado look calm right now. In Impeachment by Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, Timothy Naftali, and Jeffrey A. Engel explore the evocative word in the Constitution, history, and looking towards the future.

Impeachment is split into four main parts plus an Introduction and conclusion. Jeffrey A. Engel explains the historical context of impeachment in the first part of the book. The Constitution lays out the foundation of impeachment. The founders or framers were hesitant to give any one person an exorbitant amount of power in order to avoid monarchy issues. George Washington was the perfect choice for the first presidency because he displayed “virtue enough to withstand the lure of tyranny.” He was chosen to set an example for all who followed because honor dictated his every move. He would always act in the best interest of the country, “Washington’s sense of duty eventually overcame his desire for tranquility.” I found this section to be the most intriguing because it is the foundation for all actions following. Jon Meacham examines the impeachment of Andrew Jackson. To oversimplify history: he was impeached because a) he wasn’t Abraham Lincoln b) he didn’t play nice with the other political party. Richard Nixon was covered by Timothy Naftali. I think that can easily be summed up by Watergate. Oh, and he quit to save face. Peter Baker discussed Bill Clinton lying about an affair.

 

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Impeachment

There has never been a president ousted from office. Nixon would have been, absolutely; however he quit before that could happen. There have been three impeachments. Because impeachment basically means trial. Common misconception.

I really enjoyed reading Impeachment. It’s always interesting to read collaborative works. The voices change with the authors, but they all work together to create a cohesive piece. These four men are wonderful writers and historians. I, of course, do enjoy their slant.

In the conclusion, there is a decent amount of discussion about the possibility of Trump being impeached. At the very least, there is acknowledgement of the word being thrown around heavily in the last election and current presidency. There is an under current of the thought that a vote on November 6th is a vote to impeach Trump or not.

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Memorable Quotes
“Those who study history are also destined to repeat it. But we are less surprised.”

Title: Impeachment; An American History
Author: Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, Timothy Naftali, Jeffrey A. Engel
Publisher: Modern Library
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781984853783

Books, NonFiction

Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies

Read Yes
Length 256
Quick Review A collection of women’s stories and experiences with feminist ranging from hopefully to angry. Curated by Scarlett Curtis and in partnership with Girl Up. You can’t not feel empowered reading it.

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Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies by Scarlett Curtis in Austin, Texas.

I knew I would love Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and other lies, an incredible anthology, as I read the first essay by Evanna Lynch – aka Luna Lovegood – talking about cats and period panties and the fear of bleeding on someone’s couch. Honestly, who hasn’t been there? There is a vivid authenticity coursing through the pages with the strongest potency of passionate women.

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Feminists Don’t Wear Pink by Scarlett Curtis at Grafitti Park in Austin, Texas.

The pink cover is just the beginning of tearing down ill-founded preconceived notions about the hairy, man-hating feminist ogres instilled in our psyches by the patriarchy. Every contributing author has her own feminism just as unique as her. One thing is clear, their feminism is as unboxable as the universe. Some like pink, others like pants, some dream of being mothers, some just want careers. In their own way, they are working towards equality and opportunity for everyone to live their lives to their own drums.

Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and other lies contains a multitude of essays with a variety of lengths, narratives, messages, tones, and more. Each woman tells her own bit. Some women are joyous and other are angry while others find humor in what others some describe sorrow. Feminism has as many emotions as people do with just as much complexity. Contributing authors range from the incredibly famous to advocates to the unknown working behind the scenes. Emma Watson, Keira Knightley, Jameela Jamil, Claire Horn, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, and so many other incredible women. Each woman has an incredible voice filled with experience and brilliance. I loved every moment of reading.

With the holidays coming up. I highly suggest stuffing this pink treasure into the stockings of the girls and women you love most, and also the males should read it too. Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and other lies is a really wonderful and inspiring book.

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Memorable Quotes
“Does femininity impede feminism?” Evanna Lynch
“14. My religion mandates sexual satisfaction from my partner. What does yours do?” Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
“We have a lot of work to undo…” Jameela Jamil
“Learning to have sex from porn is like learning how to drive from The Fast and The Furious.” Jameela Jamil
“Women hold up the whole world.” Akilah Hughes

Title: Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and other lies
Author: Scarlett Curtis
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781984819178