Always be a first rate version of yourself...: American Politics

What's Going On Here?

There are SO MANY wonderful book review blogs out there and I can't compete with them, that is for sure. So this is not a book review blog. This is just a way for me to organize what I have read so that I can be better at matching the right book to the right person. The blog title comes from the brilliant mind of the most talented woman who ever lived, Ms. Judy Garland. The full quote is, "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else." That is what I hope to do here and in ever aspect of my life.

Showing posts with label American Politics. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Complicated

Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America is a complicated book for me. Some have criticized it because they consider it to be anti-Trump. Well, I don't think that anything can be too anti-Trump. So that wasn't my problem at all. I found this article, written before the publication of the book, about Arnade's photography, some are included in the book, as the book is a compilation of the work he was doing and posting/publishing during the process.
So I have some reservations...but I am more in line with this review from one the best journals out there.
And so I did give it five stars.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Light My Fire

Nothing to See Here was just excellent. So real and so surreal. I didn't want it to end! Unexpected and hilarious and painful, just like real life!

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Hey, YEAH! Why is that?

Totally hilarious. But MORE! I know W. Kamau Bell from CNN and I think he is brilliant and bold and yes, hilarious. Face Full of Flour was all of those things and more.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Inspiration

I am embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with Jackie Speier, author of Undaunted: surviving Jonestown, summoning courage and fighting back. What makes this especially embarrassing is that she is a US Representative, a woman of faith and has a very accomplished past, present and future. This was such a great book and I can thank my dear friend for telling me about it and I guess I can also credit an incident that pretty much scarred me for life.
Sometime after December 4 in 1978 I saw this at my grandparent's house and read the article. TV news wasn't like it was today and I didn't know about Jonestown, before or after the mass killing on November 18 of that year. Plus I was 7.
It was my memory of this article and this horrific event that made me want to read the book and the book is not just about Jonestown, not at all, and I am so glad because I really, really am glad to have read this book. Rep. Speier is a true role model and I listened to the book and she read it which was even more inspiring. It is another hopeful book for dark times.
While the book is so much more than the title, which to me, made it seem like it would be mostly about Jonestown, I think it was a good idea to have Jonestown in the title because it may draw some readers that way and it is so worth it.