I’ve beensitting on this review for a couple of weeks, struggling to know what to write. The book won the Man Booker prize, which often means a challenging read. After reading the book I watched an interview of Beatty to get a sense of what he was like. He was charming, yet deflecting. I read another interview and found that he truly focuses on the craft of writing. He’s not prolific. But the attention to every word is evident in The Sellout. The book begins […]
A Woman’s Self-Willed Journey
I love Gloria Steinem. She’s been a feminist presence for most of my life, and has always been a reminder that equality isn’t given it must be taken. Through all the criticism and crap that has been thrown at her she remains positive. She is a dreamer and a realist. Having spent her life crisscrossing the US and parts of the globe she has learned patience, humor and understands the fundamentals needed for change. In My Life on the Road, Steinem reveals that her […]
So you wish you were a professional (fill in the blank)
This book is great for tennis buffs. Having played tennis and enjoyed professional tennis for many decades, I can’t say whether this one would interest non-tennis fans. That said, Agassi isn’t a self-aggrandizing jock, he’s an interesting guy. Open begins during one of Agassi’s last matches. After more than two decades on the court he hates tennis, he always hated tennis. What? A man with a career Grand Slam, former world number one, hates his sport?
A Colorblind Society is an Unjust Society
Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer and law professor at The Ohio State University. Alexander first encountered the idea of a racial caste system when she saw a poster stapled to a telephone pole declaring that “The Drug War is the new Jim Crow.” At the time she thought it was hyperbole. After working in the criminal justice system for several years, her thinking had evolved from the system has a problem with racial bias to believing that mass incarceration is a “well-disguised system […]