Non-Fiction of the Week 14 January 2024

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

My nonfiction read this week will be an Obama 2019 read, How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. It takes social media obsession to task, and encourages readers to reconnect with 'real-life' interests like art, birdwatching, or, you know, interacting with :::gasp!::: real people, face-to-face.

So what non-fiction is everyone else reading this week?

[Journeyman]

1. "The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896" . . .

by Richard White, Professor of American History at Stanford University.

This is the penultimate volume of The Oxford History of the United States.

I wish they had been published in order, or the series complete before I began, as the bouncing about from era to era hasn't been a serious detriment but it would have been nice if I'd been able to follow the history in chronological order.

Edited to add: The final volume, which will cover the period from 1896 to 1928, has not yet been announced.

[txwhitedove]

2. On Monday I finished Matthew Perry's "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing." Oh dear,

Last edited Sun Jan 21, 2024, 04:40 PM - Edit history (1)

if you loved Matthew on Friends, then I do not recommend this book or my review. Yes, it's a memoir and he admits to severe addiction, but depressing and the witty man comes off too sarcastic and selfish. The writing is actually good but redundant. I got mad/sad several times and had to put the book down. For example, if being an unaccompanied minor traveling to see a parent was life alteringly horrible, then I should write a book about being stuck and forgotten in a bus depot in Tulsa, OK, but hey I pulled up my little girl pants, looked up the # for my mom's apt manager and called them. FInally somewhat redeeming in the last 50 pages, but almost a preface for his death. Sad, sad, so sad.

PS, at least he had a dad to visit.