"Don't fake it till you make it, fake it till you become it."
Amy Cuddy
Presence
"Stand up straight."
Grandma Liz
What is presence, and how do we get it? This are the questions that Amy Cuddy seeks to answer in her book Presence. The answers she comes up with and the way that she presents them is entirely different than what I expected. I was expecting just another self help book that went into dominant posturing and tips on how to speak, but what Cuddy is talking about is something entirely different. Using tons of research, she looks into how posture can effect the brain, and how we can change that posture in order to bring our "biggest selves" to our biggest challenges. It was fascinating.
Cuddy examines the ideas of "power" and "presence" from several different angles. She looks at how differences in power effect peoples relationships (employers and employees), why the imposter experience is so widespread, and why post traumatic stress is so debilitating, and then examines how and why power posturing effects the body, and how it can be actively used to treat several different problems.
Throughout the entire book she does this compassionately with a wonderful dose of humor. She explains complicated neurological ideas very simply, and never stops asking questions to push her research to the next step. A great read for anyone who has ever dealt with anxiety, imposter syndrome, depression, fears of public speaking and so many more things. At the very least, check out her TED talk. You won't be sorry that you did.
"The dissonance they produce is not due to their being false, but to their being too accurate." Carol J. Adams The Sexual Politics of Meat
The Sexual Politics of Meat, by Carol J. Adams, is an extremely interesting book. It's well written, a feminist-vegetarian critical theory, which are two things that I didn't think were linked. This book was fascinating, and, truth be told, it got under my skin a little. Truth be told, it got under my skin a lot.
In the book, Adams examines how culturally ingrained misogyny is related to our cultural obsession with meat and masculinity. What is more masculine than eating a bloody steak? and a salad for the lady, please. It examines a history of vegetarianism among civil and sexual rights advocates, breaks down several of the arguments for and against vegetarianism, and looks at several examples of sexualizeing animals and animalizing women that are present in our culture. It extremely well done, so much so that it has me convinced.
Anyone who has ever wondered why eating a steak is manly, or why women who have been sexualized us metaphors of animal products do describe the experience should read this book. Everyone should read this book. It's changed my life, though I find it extremely difficult to talk about. So read it, and message me what you think.
"As it happened I did not grow up o be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow."
Joan Didion
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
I am convinced that Joan Didion has said the things she has said better than anyone whohas ever said them or ever will be able to say them. Her prose was beautiful, her composition spectacular, and her voice incredibly unique.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays by Joan Didion. They range in subject from a murdering housewife to trips to Mexico, from John Wayne to the San Francisco drug culture of the 60's. She approaches all of these subjects with honesty, wit, and insight, and casts them onto paper masterfully.
Most of the pieces are centered around the idea of the 'American Dream,' what it was, where it went, and the lengths that people will go to find it, all the while questioning its existence and, if it ever did exist, whether it was a dream worthy of our desire.
I really liked this book. I thought the essays were masterfully done, and they were arranged in the perfect order in this book. Her prose is unlike any I have ever read before. Its lyrical, almost meandering through her thoughts, and then towards the end of each piece she ties her thoughts together in a way that is always poignant. If you haven't read it you should. I feel like this is one of those books that everyone should read at least once. Especially if you have lived in the west, or have ever contemplated the american dream.
"When Li Du finally went to sleep that night, he dreamed of being lost in a library whose books were spinning stars that would not remain on their shelves. They moved around him in bright circles and arcs, so that he did not know where he was or how to find the volume he sought."
Elsa Hart
Jade Dragon Mountain
I don't normally read mysteries. I often find that I'm extremely disappointed if I can guess the ending, I generally don't respect the characters on an intellectual level (after Sherlock Holmes, everyone else is so-so), and I often feel like I'm reading the script to a blues-clues episode. This was not the case with this book. It was extremely well written. Elsa Hart blends a spectacular cast of characters in this mystery set during a tumultuous China in the 1700's. Mixing several different characters from several different countries, it draws on the clashes that arise when two countries with different customs meet and have difficulty communicating.
Our hero is Li Du, an exiled librarian traveling through the outskirts of China. In the town of Dayan, just south of Tibet, a Jesuit priest is murdered in the magistrates house, days before the Emperor will visit and summon an eclipse of the Sun. Li Du must find the killer before the eclipse and salvage his honor, if he fails the disappointment of the Emperor could be fatal. Through the story he encounters a fantastic cast of characters: a storyteller from Egypt, or perhaps Arabia, a merchant from the Dutch East India Company, a nervous botanist, and a mistress that is as cunning as she is beautiful.
I really liked this book. The characters were fantastic, the use of place and historical political tensions added to the story, and the plot kept me guessing (there is a fantastic twist in the last twenty pages). I highly recommend this book. Something light and fun while still being engaging and exciting.
I don't read a lot of poetry, though I love hearing poetry read to me. I have a hard time finding the beat, the rise and fall of the tones, the pauses. I'm much better at listening to it. It helps when you know the person who wrote the poetry. In your head you can hear their voice, where they would place the pauses, and it helps the words hold their shape in the air.
That is how it was with this collection by Joel M. Jones. Joel comes into the bookshop often. He is one of those fantastic customers who makes a point of knowing your name, and having fantastic conversations about books, and meaning the question when he asks how your day is going.
This collection of poetry covers a vast range of subject matter, from the desert and a sense of belonging in the landscape of the south west, to academia and the strange disjoint between the hopes and dreams of teachers and students and the bureaucracy that finds its home in the system, to his birth and his fathers death. He talks about all of these things elegantly and poignantly.
I really liked this collection, though it seems weird reviewing poetry. It seems so personal, it feels much like having an opinion on the tragedy of a friend, or the joy of a sister. While the writing style can be separated from the events depicted, they are intertwined, and shouldn't be divided.
"One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others."
Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Contrarian
I have never read Christopher Hitchens before. I'd heard his name often, he has been mentioned in many of the books I've read, and is often portrayed as an asshole (I can see where people who say that are coming from). And seeing as I've been shaking the table a lot recently, and have been having a very hard time dealing with some of the injustices of the world, I figured Letters to a Young Contrarian would be a good place to start.
This book took me a bit to get into. Hitchens can be a bit of an ass. But once I got past that I really enjoyed it. It is written as a series of letters from Hitchens to a young man, outline different ways to deal with controversy and confrontation. He talks about how its okay to feel like you are beating a dead horse, because if the issue is important you do not want to give up on it. He talks about how there will be people who disagree with you, after all it wouldn't be controversial otherwise.
For the most part, it was well written. And it was reassuring to know that its okay to have backlash for standing up for something that you think should be obvious to others. I recommend
"Not long ago, I wrote an article about being young and female in Lagos. And an acquaintance told me that it was an angry article ant that I should not have made it so angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We Should All Be Feminists
A few days ago, I reposted an article on Facebook. It was an article on the subtle forms of discrimination, things that women experience often at the hands of wonderful, if sometimes thoughtless men. "8 Ways Men Don't Realize They Are Subtly Shaming Women." It's a good article. It points out things that many women experience and, sometimes, often, explaining why these behaviors, while seemingly harmless, aren't okay. The post got many likes, from both men and women. But it had some unintended reactions.
Two men, men that I knew personally (not just 'facebook friends') and thought highly of commented on, commented in negative ways. The first commented with "If you're offended by the way a large group of people (i.e. "males as a gender) speaks, the problem is not without, but within." This worried me. This man was telling me that my experiences in which I was treated as 'less' and many women who have had similar experiences with subtle systematic discrimination that the problem was all in our heads. This very behavior, is a large part of the problem, this writing off and discounting our experiences as women as 'inadequate.' I proceeded to call him out. Another man, one that had worked with over the winters responded, "This is a double-edged sword. Alleviating all woman or any victim of any and all responsibility to predict, prevent, or even subconsciously invite abuse, is to reduce them to hapless, incapable creatures, and in fact, re-victimizes them. Woman can think for themselves and don't need terms like 'internalized misogyny' or 'privilege' to victimize them and make it seem otherwise."
This astounded me. The response in itself seems absurd. The responsibility for any action should not fall on the subject. It is not the oranges fault that it is peeled by the child. It is not a mans fault if he is shot in a theatre. It is not the elderly couples fault if someone breaks into their house and steals their possessions. It is the child who peels the orange, the shooter who shoots the man, the burglar who robs.Why then is it deemed okay for this faulty logic to be used in cases of women? Why is it that when a women is raped, the question is always asked "why didn't she take the precautions to avoid the situation?" "Why was she walking home alone at night?" Why is it okay for the statement to even be thought "She must have been asking for it?"
These questions are not okay. The fact that society thinks that they are just shows the underlying assumption that women are, somehow, inherently guilty. This is absurd. It is not a woman's fault if she is raped, any more that it is the mans fault that he was shot, or the oranges fault that it was peeled. This same logic follows to small infractions, that happen and happen often.
The conversation digressed from there, and you can read all of it in the picture, but this was the part that really bothered me. This inherent blame of women, this very blatant discrimination. This idea that I was thought of as inherently less than these men due to the nature of my gender, regardless as to my skill set, my intelligence, my various merits. This idea that no matter how 'good' I was, I would
always be less. That I would never be an equal. And while this is something that I had experienced countless times at the hands of strangers, it was something entirely knew to experience this behavior and judgement from people who I had thought of as friends.
"The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are."
We Should All Be Feminists is a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and is adapted from a TED talk of the same name. I fled here after this interaction in order to find a better vocabulary to express how I felt about this interaction, as well as to find community and comfort in reading the writing of someone who has experienced the things that I have felt, especially after I had been told that it was all in my head (you think I wouldn't be bothered being told that I'm crazy, or on my period, or hysterical, for being upset at poor, but socially acceptable, behaviors in others, but I have this irrational need to be liked). This speech is phenomenal.
Everyone should read this book. Everyone.This book is so important that every 16 year old in Sweden was bought a copy. It is only 48 pages long, so there is no excuse not to read it, and if you don't want to read it you can watch the TED talk. In it, Adichie talks on the effects, and absurdities, of sexism, and outlines the reasons that everyone should be a feminist. She talks on the effects, how it would be beneficial to not just women, but men as well. She explains why sexism is bad for not only women, but for men as well. And she does so extremely eloquently.
Sexism is something that almost all women, on all continents and in all cultures, will have to face. The few who don't are extremely lucky. It is not, however, a problem that we have to live with. It may be our culture now, but "culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture." We must do better. Cause were we are now is not good enough.
"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."
Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air
Death is something that is always present, but something that we never want to think about. When it does present itself, it often seems like a slap in the face, especially when it seems sudden, "before ones time." Paul Kalanithi examines our relationship with death, in the medical field and in literature, in his book When Breath Becomes Air.
At the age of 36, Paul was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer months before the completion of his training as a neurosurgeon. This book, published by his wife after his death, chronicles his journey, from his undergrad studies in literature to Stanford medical school to being a patient himself. He discusses the difficult decisions he made throughout his life: his choice to study and be a doctor, to strive to connect with his patients on a deeper level, to have a child with his wife even if there wasn't infinite time. He does this eloquently and thoughtfully, looking deeply into how we handle morality in our lives all the while facing his own.
This book was fantastic and sad. It was fantastically sad, and sadly fantastic. Well written, thoughtful. Kalanithi captured the essence of the human struggle, and he did it with compassion, logic, and love for his friends and family. This book was beautiful.
What is presence, and how do we get it? This are the questions that Amy Cuddy seeks to answer in her book Presence. The answers she comes up with and the way that she presents them is entirely different than what I expected. I was expecting just another self help book that went into dominant posturing and tips on how to speak, but what Cuddy is talking about is something entirely different. Using tons of research, she looks into how posture can effect the brain, and how we can change that posture in order to bring our "biggest selves" to our biggest challenges. It was fascinating.
