Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "skinny, luminous peoples" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," and hides Entenmann's cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow.
My Thoughts:
I love the Great Courses. They are easy-to-understand ideas about all sorts of things. One of their recent courses is Looser's course on Jane Austen. It is fantastic! If you love anything about Jane Austen and her works, this is a must watch/listen. She breaks down each work, her juvenilia, her novella, and unfinished works, and letters. She talks about history, manners, her present-day authors, customs, and manners of her time. I already want to listen again to keep up this knowledge. It made me want reread all of her works this year and branch out into some of her unfinished works...
The Great Courses: Myths, Lies, and Half-truths of Language Usage by John McWhorter (2012)
My Thoughts:
McWhorter entertains us with all sorts of ideas about language and how it has been used, how it changes, and how it's being used today. I always enjoy all his courses and books on language.
The U.S. may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviet space program that made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. It took years to catch up, but soon NASA’s first female astronauts were racing past milestones of their own. The trail-blazing women of Group 9, NASA’s first mixed gender class, had the challenging task of convincing the powers that be that a woman’s place is in space, but they discovered that NASA had plenty to learn about how to make space travel possible for everyone.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
Publisher's Summary:
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities; who have been dismissed as autistic or retarded, yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human.
My Thoughts:
While I truly appreciate what Sacks was trying to do here...I think this was one of the first books of this kind of nature, at least in this format and being super readable for the lay-person...but his style was off-putting for me. He waxes philosophical on his patients and his patients end up being fodder for his musings. I do not assume that was what he meant to do. But it is how it came off for me and it was very off-putting. His patients all suffered from some very serious conditions and his descriptions came off a bit trite and "no big deal" but look what I learned about being human! Like I said, I think it's a tone thing. Plus it was originally written in the late 70s and early 80s so there are a lot of references to insensitive to our modern-day thinking about people with disabilities...Which I can overlook, but the style...it was a rough read for me. I've hear his other clinical tale books are a lot better. So I'll try him one more time...
Read this for my 2021 Nonfiction Challenge disease prompt
The Great Courses sounds quite educational & good listens. I have only listened to the Oliver Sacks autobiography On the Move (from 2015) which sounds like it was quite a bit better than his Hat book you mention. I can see why it was off-putting. Perhaps later in life he was more sensitive to what he was trying to say? I still can't say I know enough about his work or books.... but just a bit about what he did. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I've heard. And I even read the short bio his partner did after he died; it was lovely. And I've enjoyed his articles, and podcast stuff and of course the movie Awakenings when it came out. I do need to try another book and hope this one was a fluke!
DeleteI'll have to get Stay Curious for Gage!
ReplyDeleteI think he'd really enjoy it!
DeleteI have to check out the Jane Austen course!
ReplyDeleteYes do! You will love it!
DeleteSuch an interesting mix of nonfiction, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete