Lots of books

[oyceter]

Just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed today, and wow, it is a scary book, particularly because I am only about $1.50 above what the author was earning at Wal-Mart. And now I'm in a rather pissed off mood, which generally happens after I think about my finances too much. Or at all, come to think of it. So. The book itself isn't some grand sociological speculation on the lives of the working poor in America and how to fix the problem, or even much on what the problem is anyhow. There isn't that much analysis at all involved. Instead, it's a gripping, riveting, and very frightening look at Ehrenreich's attempts to live on low-wage jobs in three different places. She works as a waitress, a maid and in Wal-Mart, and she makes it clear just how hard it is to get by on those types of jobs without some sort of external help, be it holding down two jobs, relying partly on a spouse or family, etc. Some of the things she talks about with I remember from waitressing in Charter, esp. the general meanness toward the customers that can seep in, especially with difficult ones. And I was working with friends, without having management monitor my every move. Anyhow, it was a book that scared me greatly. Now just watch me give it to the boy to read... one can already see a giant political argument in the works.

Also read Why Is Sex Fun? by Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs and Steel fame. It was a fun, almost frothy non-fiction book... I find I'm reading a lot more non-fiction lately, probably because I keep running across fun looking ones in the bookstore. Generally, when I go to the library or to other bookstores, I make a beeline to the scifi section, but now I'm sorting through all sorts of books. Anyhow. It reads a lot like Guns, Germs and Steel in that Diamond makes me feel that all his arguments are quite logical, with the sort of fun, goofy voice that was in the other book. Why Is Sex Fun? is basically a look at the "weirdness" of human sexuality in terms of the animal kingdom -- our prediliction to have sex despite fertility levels, menopause, monogamy, and other such things -- and how evolution favored the traits that led to our sex lives today. Diamond occasionally risks falling into the biological determinism of the sexes trap several times in the book, despite his liberalism, but in general manages to stay out of the pit. I think while mostly the book is interesting, it loses ground whenever Diamond tries to apply the evolutionary causes of various traits to life today without addressing the issue of determinism (something that I felt he didn't quite address in Guns, Germ, and Steel as well).

Bought and read Anne Bishop's The House of Gaian, the last book of the Tir Alainn trilogy, mostly because I already have the first two. Unfortunately, the world of this trilogy isn't half as stunning or interesting as that of the Black Jewels trilogy to me, probably because I was fascinated with the way the Black Jewels trilogy took some very typical fantasy tropes -- levels of magic/strength, etc -- and turned it upside down by having an entire society devoted to the Darkness, etc. Unfortunately, the bad things about the Black Jewels trilogy haven't been changed in the Tir Alainn one, and the world that was so dark has also disappeared. Instead, we have what I fear is a reversion to the Mercedes Lackey type universe (sorry ML fans), in which the good guys wear white cowboy hats and are not only Good, but also Right and Nice (thanks to butterfly I think who came with the Terry Pratchett article on that). I felt the Black Jewels trilogy was able to somewhat sidestep this problem because the society in general there was so dark, and the characters of Daemon, Lucivar and Saetan weren't exactly pushovers. And while Jaenelle's court was a little too Mary Sue-ish, there was that feeling of overwhelming power and of danger. Here, though, the witches are in a fight for their lives (and are quite obviously in the right), while their main enemies are the witch hunters of Wolfram, who commit atrocities against women. People who don't help the witches are evil at worst, selfish and foolhardy and bitchy at best, and the ones who do help all seem to achieve a sort of understand (except, of course, for the times when a misunderstanding proves more fun... aka a brother is overprotective about his sister's new lover). And talking about it with Cyrus pinned my thoughts on it -- no one really grows, because everyone who we are supposed to like already is Good and Right and Nice (some less Nice). Although Cyrus may have liked this one better than the Black Jewels trilogy (Cy? Do you?) thanks to the completely undisguised hegemony of women in the latter. I feel this one is more carefully disguised, although, as you can tell from the villain, feminism isn't really a background issue. And while in principle I don't have a problem with this, having read waaaaay too many Robert Jordan/Tokien-esque fantasies in which females are either non-existent or horrible caricatures of themselves, I can see how this would bug people. I was much more able to see the female hierarchy in Black Jewels as an interesting what-if type society, although I can very much see an argument about biological determinism and etc. But then, there is so much of that in fantasy already (Elves, Dwarves, various stereotypes, etc).

Also saw Orson Scott Card on Thurs. and got two copies of Ender's Game signed (one is my old copy that's pretty ugly, one is shiny and new, to be kept untouched). It was rather odd. The boy though OSC sounded exactly like his books, while I was a bit surprised. Of course, it was also strange (kind of like meeting LJ people in real life) because I was listening to him gripe out loud about things he had written about in various intros and author's notes in his books. So much like for LJ people, in which my brain does things like, Oh look, Masq brought Harry Potter to the Board meet. I remember reading about the trouble she had in getting in, and feeling kind of odd bringing it up because of the cross of LJ and real life, my brain was compiling: ah, this spiel is from the intro of Pastwatch. Ah, I remember this from Shadow of the Hegemon. Ah, this is from the intro to "Blue Genes in Space" or a title like that. It's a bit odd, because I feel almost as though I've been picking OSC's brain for quite some time, while he quite obviously doesn't know me at all. He's much louder than I expected, and in general seemed personable, with a tendency to assume that he easily offended people. Course, I can see this reaction as happening because some of his politics/thoughts can be rather controversial -- America already in a long decline much like that of Rome, the wrongness of ultra-PC people condemning Columbus, war as a necessity (probably particularly controversial to people with very different interpretations of Ender's Game). I also was wondering if he ever got annoyed that everyone wanted to talk about Ender, despite the fact that he was out touring because of The Crystal City and the Alvin series, which he admitted as being the one he enjoys writing the most. Anyway, so my brain had tons of thoughts on public and private personas, and how the distance and the not-quite distance between an author and the people who read his/her books can be somewhat like the not-quite distance of LJ. Speaking of which, I am a little curious about the phone post thing, but mostly shying away from it. I think I write more intelligently than I talk, which is really saying something, considering the random, stream of consciousness nature of how I write. You don't want to hear me babble. Really.

Comments

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

It's me blathering again. Oh, wait...that was "prattling", wasn't it? :)

I thought Ehrenreich's book was an interesting idea but I had problems with the methodology of her research. She was always very careful to leave herself an out - not to mention the fact that she could simply leave/quit at any time anyway without having to deal with the ramifications of that decision like the people she was working with *would* have to. She made sure she had fallbacks or a pre-determined amount of extra cash with which to set up her next venture into the workforce. IIRC, she even took some time off from her "research" during the book. While I agree that the problems she highlights do exist and are very scary, I don't really think she understood them or the people beyond an intellectual "isn't this horrible?" kind of way. I found myself growing angry at her more than I found myself empathizing or agreeing with her because her attitude about the whole thing read to me as "Wow, isn't it sad that some people didn't have the breaks/money/family I did and they have to work these low-paying jobs? Let's watch and see what happens!"

[oyceter]

I've read a lot of reviews on Amazon that say the same thing about her methodology. And I do agree that she took the "easy" way out by leaving herself a car, starting money, and etc. I mostly liked the way she illustrated that these weren't easy jobs, and little things like the frustrations that build up. Plus, she did point out some things I didn't think of, like, how can you eat nutritiously or even cheaply when you don't even have a fridge? and all the little expenses that add up from not having a permanent place to live.

I thought her conclusion was a little too short -- I almost wish the first three chapters on each job had been the intro part of a much longer book replete with interviews and statistics. Plus, the brief bit on the workers rising up and rebelling sounded very out of joint from what her fellow workers were saying.