Reviews with TLC

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker wasn't exactly what I expected. It took me several pages to reconcile that the book wasn't what I thought it was going to be, but once I did I found it very interesting and rather helpful. It reminded me a lot of my days as part of a committee organizing a  writers and readers conference. I couldn't help but compare and contrast our efforts with her recommendations. Parker made me alternately wish I'd read this book back then and feel proud of the work we did. That said, I could imagine how some of the things Parker suggests would feel contrived to guests and even to hosts even those who were genuine in their efforts, particularly at parties. Maybe this comes from my upbringing where gatherings, or get-together as we called them, were much less formal by design and people appreciated that informality. It also reminded me of parties I attended where there was so much structure, no one seemed to have an...

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark came to my attention via recommendation. It's not a book I would've normally chosen to read. (please keep that in mind as it might affect my review.) It took me a bit longer to read Life 3.0 than I expected. Life 3.0 starts out strong with what feels like the start to a Sci-Fi book or movie. The story pulled me in more than I expected it to and set my expectations for what was to come. Parts of the book were incredibly interesting. Some parts included conjecture almost to the point of distraction. Then there was the technical stuff that I struggled with a bit at times. It's amazing to think that a book published in 2017 could already feel a bit dated and yet also still feel so relevant. The book poses some very important and interesting questions we need to consider as AI becomes increasingly part of our lives. He doesn't seem to offer answers so much as encourage the reader and all of humanit...

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine explores the way we process grief and the expectations society puts on grief and the grieving.  Devine uses her own experience with grief and people's response to her grief as a foundation for examining how society treats the grieving. She discusses how we often view grief as a problem to be solved and how hurtful that attitude can be.   Devine spends quite a bit of time exploring the idea that everyone's grief is different. She emphasizes that everyone has the right to grieve in the way that best works for them.  I vacillated between finding  It's OK That You're Not OK  very insightful, somewhat short-sighted, and occasionally contradictory.  As I read, I kept wondering why and how we continue to get it so wrong since everyone grieves at some p oint in their life and everyone seems to know we're doing it wrong, at least when experiencing grief them...

Below is a post from one of my other blogs, Write with TLC , that I thought might also be of interest to readers here. Here are my thoughts on banning books... Banning books has always seemed beyond ridiculous to me. What is the point? Ending knowledge? Ending points of view? What if the book you love is the one on the banning block? Does that change things? T he idea behind book bans is to silence those with messages someone doesn't like. I have often wondered what would happen if someone turned the tables on them.  I recently saw that someone decided to challenge the book bans in their state by using the criteria in them to request the Bible be banned from a library. The official who wrote the book banning bill whined that wasn't what he intended, but let's be  clear the criteria fit. I guess that answers the question. And, this wasn't the first time the Bible has been caught up in these kinds of bans... Just  Google it .  The thing is, and this is what they count ...

We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal  by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a beautifully designed and inspiring guided journal/workbook for exploring feminism and the role feminism plays in an individual's life as well as in society as a whole. I often found that the questions I most dreaded answering were the ones that brought me the most insight into not only my own struggles with feminism but in the messaging of feminism and even anti-feminism to some degree. Exploring the platitudes that often popped into my thoughts and how those platitudes became so much a part of the lexicon helped me find a deeper relationship with my feminism. Many of the exercises helped me better integrate feminism's role in the wider struggle for equality. We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal inspired me to examine my own inner struggle with feminism and reminded me of the importance of speaking up for equality whenever I can however I can. I highly recommend We Should All Be Feminists: A...

Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward is a short, easy to read primer on writing about people and cultures by using ROARRS (Race/Orientation/Ability/Age/Religion/Sex) responsibly and respectfully.  Writing the Other strives to give authors the confidence to be more inclusive in their writing to better represent society as a whole. As someone who has worked hard to be inclusive in my work for a long time, I bought this book hoping to find some tidbit that might enhance my work but quickly discovered I'd already done the work in the book.  Some parts of Writing the Other seemed a bit outdated, which is a reminder that things change over time and also that authors will get things wrong as well as that what is acceptable in one time period isn't in another.  Writing the Other  offers a useful starting point for writers striving to get it right when talking about other ethnicities, cultures, societies, identities, etc . Check back s...

So... My Life by Bill Clinton is one of those books that I moved around in my to-be-read pile for years. Yes, you read that right, years. I long wanted to read it in an attempt to better understand what happened when his presidency because his presidency changed the way I view both Democrats and Republicans, but I kept putting it off for a multitude of reasons. I wanted to read it to understand his point of view, particularly about his presidency. Clinton's telling of his life before his presidency is more interesting and more detailed than I expected.  As verbose as he is by his own admission, I often felt like what he shared walked a fine line between emotional detachment and overly emotional. I felt like I got some insight into his presidency as well as his life leading up to his presidency, but the details seemed to obscure the person behind the persona. Some of the paragraphs just listing things that happened during a month felt a bit mundane. His descriptions of his rel...