Just Add Glitter has an interesting concept: do a craft project by adding glitter. Of course, it gets out of hand. The moral is that if you have too much of a good thing you cannot see the real things that sparkle. A big plus for me is that the child does clean up in the end. This is a nice touch. Usually the mess is left for someone else or never mentioned. I think, while books should be fun, be sneaky and put a […]
Outdated theories about a culture of poverty in Appalachia, honed in the 1960s, had become popular once more thanks to Hillbilly Elegy.
What You are Getting Wrong About Appalachia – 4/5 Stars This short text on Appalachian issues is actually three essays about some specific topics currently floating about contemporary conversations. The tone of the three essays shifts from academic to polemic depending on the purpose and subject. So while the quote I use in the title might suggest, it’s not simply a reaction to JD Vance, but includes a takedown of JD Vance among other topics. The driving force behind this book has to do with […]
The young people think the old people are fools — but the old people know the young people are fools.
Murder at the Vicarage – 4/5 This novel is the very first Miss Marple novel. What I liked about this one is the same kind of thing I liked about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where Miss Marple is the detective and means through which the mystery is solved but she’s not the narrator and not even really much of the focus of the novel at all. In this novel the case is the murder of the local ranking military official murdered in a study […]
Lies, love, and facing reality
It’s Juneteenth, which makes an incredibly appropriate day to review Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley. This book was on my radar since it first came out in 2014, but it took a wee bit of time to actually find time to read it. (Seriously, on this site, I know I’m not the only one who’s reading list is longer than the time I’ll ever possibly have to read over the course of my entire life…) What first drew me in was that the […]