Books

Paroles de Bonheur

Read: Yes – If you speak French
Difficulty: II
Quick Review: A small book with a big, bright dose of happy!

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Whenever I go to used bookstores, I like to look in the foreign language section. Books in French and Russian can be hard to find; especially ones I would like to read. I was in Kaboom Books, here in Houston, when I found this bright, little book.

Paroles de Bonheur can be translated as Words of Happiness. What isn’t there to like?

At only 57 pages long, Paroles de Bonheur is about as fast of a book as you can imagine. The pages are filled with quotes about happiness by famous people. Only three quotes are not by francophones, and those were translated into French, of course.

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Every pairing of pages includes a quote and an illustration. I’m always drawn to bright colors, so this obviously had my attention from the very start. The quotes are well picked out

I love reading in French. I don’t do it as much as I would like. This is the perfect book to read when I’m missing the language. The quotes are beautiful, and it’s a reminder of how the language flows.

Title: Paroles de Bonheur
Editor: Albin Michel
Illustrator: Yves Got
Publisher: Pollina
Copyright: 1997
ISBN: 9782226090171

 

Books

Get Money

Read: Yes
Difficulty: II
Quick Review: Kristin Wong writes about finances in the most approachable way possible. She doesn’t overwhelm you or make you feel stupid while comprehensively covering everything from basic savings to investments and taxes.

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I can’t recommend this book enough. Especially for the millennials who are entering and working through adulthood. I was lucky enough to have parents who taught me about finances, but, in adulthood, I have realized so many of my peers have not been so lucky. Which is a shame because money is a huge part of our lives… Usually something we struggle with because it’s money or we don’t have enough of it or whatever.

Kristin Wong has tons of experience with money because she writes about it for all the biggest outlets and she’s also human. Money is scary. Money can be depressing. Money can seem like a distant dream belonging to our favorite Instagrammers. She is unafraid to talk about the nitty gritty details without dumbing it down or making it too hard to understand.

Balance. The overarching theme of Get Money is balance; balance between savings and living. From the beginning of the book, Wong talks about the Oh Shit Cycle; us adults out there adulting are probably over familiar with this cycle of blame, shame, and a bit of depression. Wong gets to the real point of money, it’s personal. How we spend, save, and look at money is different with each person. She is consistent in pointing out in order to put your finances in order, you must look inward to your motivations, which takes time and work.

Money is rough, but it is a part of life. It is part of friendships and relationships. Who we are is intrinsically linked with money. Wong understands this and so much more. She gets money. No pun intended. She wants her readers to understand money and the choices they have. Banks. Everyone needs one. What we don’t realize: we have options. Wong wants her readers to know they have options. She does not want anyone to be blinded by their fears and reservations of money.

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Things included in Get Money that you need to know/Reasons to buy her book: a) credit scores are confusing b) taxes c) compound interest for the good and the bad d) savings e) IRA, 401k, what? f) debt g) financial advisers h) negotiating incomes/interest/anything. You need it!

The book is organized into three sections covering about every aspect of money issues normal (non-financial sector) people need to know. There are work spaces throughout, so you can make plans and complete the exercises. If you’re awkward or shy like I am, Wong includes advice and scripts for calling to negotiate with insurance companies, banks, etc. She gamifies money/reading into levels, so you can level up instead of dealing with boring old chapters. Advice from other financial experts is scattered throughout, as well as, outside information and resources. If you’re wanting to put her words to work and use it as a guide to getting your money in order, it’s not a quick read. Although, I would suggest reading it all at once, and then going back using it as a personal game plan.

Kristin Wong is competent, funny, motivating, helpful, understanding, and human. I don’t want financial advice from someone scary, and she is anything but scary. Her book is fun to read and informative. Everyone and anyone can learn something from her.

Memorable Quotes:
“If you’re bad with money, take solace in the fact that you’re not stupid, you’re just human.”
“Sticking to your budget is really about sticking with your goal.”
“Sex is an awkward topic, but based on my experience, money is leaps and bounds more taboo.”
“If you want to stick to your budget and goals, learning to spend consciously, with a purpose, is a must.”

Title: Get Money; Live the Life You Want Not Just the Life You Can Afford
Author: Kristin Wong
Publisher: Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780316515658

 

Books

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

Read: Yes
Notable: New York Times Bestseller
Quick Review: A look into the collecting, conserving, hiding, and rescuing the most important manuscripts documenting African history, literature, culture, life, philosophy, science, religion and more.

Abdel Kader Haidara is not a name most of us are familiar with. Joshua Hammer reveals the heroic efforts of Haidara and his team to save not just once but twice the illuminating manuscripts documenting a little known history of Africa in his third book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

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Africa has a reputation for not having a history because it lacks written documentation of their vast and varied history. Haidara began a journey in the 1980’s to contradict the stereotype of a dark continent. Timbuktu was the center of scholarship in Africa for centuries. Out of fear from jihadis and colonizers in the past five hundred years, those who possessed valuable manuscripts began hiding them in order to protect. Haidara spent years accumulating these precious manuscripts that had been buried, hidden, and even forgotten. In the early 2000’s, Haidara gained recognition for his conservation efforts and building a large library to house his family’s manuscripts. In the 2010’s, Al Qaeda began moving into the region and took over Timbuktu. In order to protect the manuscripts, Haidara moved them into private homes before smuggling them out of the city. 

The book is split into several chapters alternating between Haidara’s story and the terrorist activity in the region. The sections describing the terrorist activity are very dry full of facts. The area has been a hotbed of religious extremism for centuries, so the information is incredibly important. A lot of the names and events are familiar because they were mentioned in the news at the time but never went into in any detail.

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Hammer does a great job in relaying the emotions the citizens of Timbuktu went through during the Al Qaeda invasion. He relays a great deal of information in a concise package. There is a lot of cultural, religious, and regional information, which he describes to those who may not have a knowledge of Northern Africa. It is well written but a tad dull. 

Fun Fact: Bouctou means: the woman with the big belly button. Tin means: well. The Tuareg tribe was a nomadic tribe. In the twelfth century, they found an area with good water. When they described the area to others in their tribe they said it was the Tin of Bouctou or the well of the woman with the big belly button. Over Tin Bouctou evolved into Timbuktu.

Fun Fact: Hammer refers to the kidnapping of 276 girls. Alexis goes deeper into the subject in her debut work A Moonless, Starless Sky. A great book also dealing with extremism in Africa.

Memorable Quotes:
“The confrontation between these two Islamic ideologies-one open and tolerant, the other inflexible and violent-would bedevil Timbuktu over the following five centuries.”
“He was particularly interested in manuscripts that contradicted Western stereotypes of Islam as a religion of intolerance – pointing with pride to Ahmed Baba’s denunciation of slavery…”

Title: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Author: Joshua Hammer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9781476777412

 

Books

The Last Black Unicorn

Read: Yes
Length: 288
Quick Review: She is hilariously funny and heartbreakingly honest in a memoir about her uphill battles to a little bit of money, fame, stability, and happiness.

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I had never heard of Tiffany Haddish until Christmas, which is unsurprising since I live under a rock. She knocked my socks off in Girls Trip. I just had to read her book.

I read The Last Black Unicorn last night in one sitting in under a few hours. She is funny finding the humor in some of the darkest hours of her life. I can completely identify with her sense of humor. She used laughter as a survival and/or defense mechanism. Comedy was her way out of a life that could have ended in a million different ways of bad.

Haddish doesn’t shy away from the dark in her life with a cut and dry style. Her life is filled with concepts and feelings so many struggle to name and describe, but she lays them out in the world. Her childhood was filled with an abusive mom, an absent father, foster care, sexual abuse, physical abuse, homelessness, racism, depression and more. She was able to use her talent for entertaining to gather every experience and hardship and rise above. She succeeded when everything in the world was against her.

I knew she had had a rough childhood. I knew she was a comedian. Most comics write over the bad stuff with a sense of humor. Haddish wrote funny, but she also did not gloss over or try to make things funny that cannot be funny. She embraced the hard.

Haddish writes the way she talks. Her voice is evident throughout the entire novel. It’s hard not to feel a certain camaraderie because she’s talking to you. Allowing you to enter her internal dialogue and love her flaws and quirks and insecurities. She comes off as this confident woman, but under all the self-assuredness, she is still fighting to prove and explain her existence to everyone and herself.

I just want to give her hug. I don’t know if she likes hugs, but she deserves all the hugs.

Memorable Quotes
“Hurting myself made them stop hurting me and care about me.”
“I was eighteen. To survive, I had to quit comedy.”
“I wanted to be in the gang, because I felt like then I’d be a part of something.”
“When you ruin a black man’s shoes, you never know what’s going to happen.”

Title: The Last Black Unicorn
Author: Tiffany Haddish
Publisher: Gallery Books  (Simon & Schuster Inc. )
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781501181825

 

Books

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

Read: Yes
Length: 224
Quick Review: Issa Rae has entered our homes and hearts as the quirky, awkward, lovable, black girl through her YouTube, writing, TV show, and more. Her book makes her even more relatable.

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I am behind on the times, so I discovered Issa Rae about four months ago when I binge watched Insecure. I immediately fell in love with her writing, acting, and message. As a self-proclaimed bookworm/nerdy girl, I could completely relate to her bathroom mirror pep talks and internal dialogues. The cover of her book intermittently popped up on my Instagram feed since I started, and after watching her show, I put two and two together. So I ordered her book.

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl is honest. One of the more, honest memoirs. She tells things straight (as straight as personal memories can be). Her sense of humor drenches the novel with gripping laughs. She is self deprecating in the way only someone who is truly comfortable in their awkwardness can be.

Rae pulls you in with her familiarity and wit. The words “black girl” in the title lead me to believe the book would be fairly politically charged. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Rae has her moments of political and cultural commentary, but for the most part she just tells her story, which being a black girl is a central element. Blackness is a central theme throughout her book. She emphasizes the importance of not having a black cookie cutter because one size does not fit all.

At only 200 pages, it is an incredibly quick read definitely worth your time.

P.S. Issa Rae… I LOVE Tootsie Rolls. Like really love Tootsie Rolls. I was the kid that dove for them at parades. Thinking of which, I was the only kid diving for them at parades. I have also dated Asian men. I had never thought of it until you brought it up… but I guess there is a correlation. Which means! Like Asian men, Tootsie Rolls are under-coveted.

Memorable Quotes
“The gamut of “blackness” is so wide.”
“Black women and Asian men are at the bottom of the dating totem pole in the United States.”

Title: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
Author: Issa Rae
Publisher: Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781476749075

 

Books

You Can’t Touch My Hair

Read: Yes
Length: 285
Quick Review: Robinson writes her funnily serious memoir about comedy, culture, and being a black woman in America.

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Phoebe Robinson isn’t afraid of being funny or getting honest about the realities of blackness in America. Within the first five pages, she had me laughing, but then sobered me up by talking about police brutality towards black men and women, the dream of living in a postracial world, and Obama’s optimism sparking resistance if not regression in regards to race.

If you can’t tell by the title You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain she talks about black hair. I was blessed with a black roommate my freshman year of college, who explained so many things I, as a white lady, did not understand about black femininity. Black hair is not white hair, not even close. Care, styling, perception, and more is vastly different than white hair. It’s important to understand these differences WITHOUT touching a black girl’s hair. Just don’t.

Miss Robinson is an absolute feminist. I loved reading her opinions. There was one moment of utter worshipping at Miss Robinson’s feet when I read: “But in all seriousness, the infantilization of women perpetuates inequality, and when that is conflated with sex, it’s easier to reduce women to objects and strip them of the power they have over their bodies.” Yesssss. This is such an important concept to understand and have articulated. It is especially true for black women throughout history, but it is true for all women. This statement stopped me.

You Can’t Touch My Hair is honest, funny, sobering, and quick. I couldn’t put it down. Her prose and ability to draw the reader in is fabulous. I can’t wait to watch her career grow especially in these changing times.

Known as @dopequeenpheebs in the Twitter and Insta-sphere, she proves herself a queen in her memoir. Queen of pop culture. I’m about a century behind in pop culture, so I found myself with an open Google page 96.461% of her book. Basically: Thank you Phoebe for helping me learn about the world I live in! Also… Thanks for the thumb carpal tunnel.

Complete sidenote. If for some reason, Phoebe Robinson reads this. I’m from Iowa! You said Bumblefuck, Iowa. There are tons of Bumblefuck places. Iowa is totally underrated. Nebraska (outside of Omaha) is Bumblefuck. Montana, North Dakota. Tons of Bumblefucks!!! My hometown is Ames Iowa. George Washington Carver worked and researched at Iowa State, which is less than ten blocks from my front door just pass the horse stable. He is the reason everyone loves peanut butter.

Memorable Quotes
“why Forever 21’s adult-sized leggings are so small they could double as condoms for sea turtles.”
“I also love that when other people see you on boats, they think your life is literally cunnilingus from unicorns”
“I just kept this reoccurring conversation going in my head throughout my time in high school, hoping that one day, I would go to bed, wake up,  and magically do something, anything, different with my life.”
“but black women have their own unique battles, a Molotov cocktail of racism and sexism.”
“I felt like I wasn’t being me but a version of me that was as nonthreatening and inoffensive as possible. But that’s the thing. Being true to oneself shouldn’t be considered threatening.”

Title: You Can’t Touch My Hair; And Other Things I Still Have to Explain
Author: Phoebe Robinson
Publisher: Plume Books (PenguinRandom House)
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9780143129202