This is a fascinating look inside the Trump administration. Very fun and very apt.
This is a fascinating look inside the Trump administration. Very fun and very apt.
Updated my challenges for this year (to date), and this is where I‘m at!
It‘s doable, I think, maybe.....luckily there is some overlap with a few picks because I‘m trying to pick books from my TBR pile to fill categories in the other lists.😬
But if I really want to get there, I‘m going to have to get more serious and follow less shiny new reading distractions... that‘s going to be a tough one.
Wish me luck when I stop by the library later. 🤭
bailedBoring.
Readers who enjoyed this book (as well as those who didn't) should read "The Good News Club" by Katherine Stewart. But unlike The Family, Stewart's book is actually worth reading.
pickThe first 2/3 of this slim book covers the history of England in Ireland, including the partition into North and South, which was entirely for economic reasons, with religious sectarianism used as the excuse, and grim reading it makes for an English person with a heavily edited version of history received from 70s/80s school and media. The last 1/3 gives Foot's outline for British withdrawal. Post-Good Friday Agreement, it still seems reasonable.
Book is down for now... #warren2020
As another Brexit deadline looms, and with the status of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland being crucial, a book written in 1989, pre-Good Friday Agreement, might feel somewhat dated, but as the possibility of opening old wounds seems significant, understanding how deep the wounds run might be useful. I'm *really* hoping that the fragile peace in Northern Ireland is not sacrificed on the altar of vain ambition.
(Photo of Paul Foot)
This is what she found romantic: a father who gives his teenage daughter a purity ring only to take it back on her wedding day and hand it over to his daughter's new husband, her vigininity passed from man to man like a baton. Therein lies the paradox of the purity movement. It's at once an attempt to transcend cultural influences through the timelessness of scripture, and a painfully specific response to the cultural revolution.
(VAT stands for Values Action Team, a Senate caucus that gathers on Tuesdays before the Family cell meeting. Everything that is said is strictly off the record, and even the groups themselves are strictly forbidden from discussing the proceedings. The VAT is a war council, and the enemy, says one participant, is "secularism.")
I‘m currently reading this one. This book explains so much about the radical right, which is documented on Jim Crow laws. The author is a historian who has researched this so well, and has presented it in an easily read book. As a political wonk myself, I‘m really enjoying it. I do have to put it down periodically so not to throw it it in anger. Not yet finished, I still am recommending it.
