Light At The End Of The Tunnel by Sallyanne Monti (Memoir)


In 1995, Sallyanne Monti was a 34-year-old mother of four, married to her husband of fifteen years, living on Staten Island, New York, an island in the Verrazano Narrows Bay. When by an act of fate and via a misdirected email, she met Mickey Neill, a 44-year-old human resources manager, married to her husband of twenty years, living 3,000 miles away in Alameda, California, an island in the San Francisco Bay.

The rapid progression of events that led to their whirlwind friendship would test the bonds of matrimony, sexuality, and love.

Amazon just delivered it today! The first pages really drew me in when I read it first on Bella Books and then on Amazon!

But first....The Power by Naomi Alderman

I finished The Push by Tommy Caldwell. Amazing person. Now I am reading Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold. I think I will shift gears to something other than rock climbing after this. They are so self-disciplined that they make me feel like a giant slacker. It is good to read about people living their best lives out in nature. I loathe mountain climbing stories. All ego and testosterone. And corpses. But these two rock climbing memoirs are the opposite. These two guys are so not ego-driven. Driven for sure. But totally different from alpinists. Not at all about conquest and mastery. More about perfection and growth. I have enjoyed these books.

I am currently obsessed with Audible books. I was listening to The Tale of Achilles by Madeline Miller and have found myself so emotionally invested in the two main character's relationship that I had to stop listening when I realized something negative was going to happen. It has been almost three weeks and I still can't get myself to go back. I went back to read some reviews of the book and found other people have experienced the same thing. Such a great book.

While I continue to avoid the above story, I am going to start her other book Circe.

I realized that when I read books I skip over parts where there seems to be a lot of description because I rush to get to the point (and inadvertently miss out on a lot of information), so when listening to someone read through it all, I find myself getting enveloped in the scenery I would normally ignore. It makes my hour commute to and from work fly by and I have less road rage. Win - win.

Eventually I want to get a welder, maybe next year, so I am reading about welding. It is so interesting how you select certain metals for specific tasks and why. It would certainly prove to be a handy skill around my house. Sometimes I have found myself hitting a brick wall when I am visualing a useful and fun project. You know --->>> "If I only had a welder ... " and of course
"knew how to use it."

This is a free download I found last night. It provides nice overview:

Hobart Filler Metals - Helpful Hints to Basic Welding

If any of you welders would like to provide me information or advice of any kind, please message me.
I thank you in advance. :)

For useless entertainment, I love Jonathan Kellerman books - the Alex Delaware series are the best.
This type reading is relaxing for me because I am not taxing myself to learn anything.

I should of read further........LOL

I just finished the audiobook Calypso by David Sedaris. I have never read one of his books because I love listening to him read his books. His voice adds a lot to the story that I fear I wouldn't get by reading them.

I am currently reading The Library Book by Susan Orlean. I would not have thought I would find a book about a library fire so interesting but something about the way she writes makes it enjoyable reading. Enough so that I want to check out her other books.

I have two other books to read which are Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I decided to check this out after watching the movie Bookshop and it is also mentioned in The Library Book. Also, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I just watched the movie which I found to be powerful and wanted to read the book.

Our library just started a "Lucky Day" shelf. You can't renew these books or put them on hold. I have had very good luck with the books and movies I have checked out from it.

I am on the waiting list for Michelle Obama's book Becoming. Nine people ahead of me.

I was disappointed in Song of Achilles. I was upset not with the heartbreak, but with the projection of current values and ethics onto Achilles and the Greeks. The author has a BA and an MA in Classics. So she did it on purpose, and I guess most historical fiction does that. But it bothered me. It reminded me of the endless number of undergraduate essays on Odysseus as a hero, droning on about whether his lying made him less heroic. The most cursory review of Ancient Greek culture would tell you that the Greeks thought that kind of tricksterish deception was admirable, the hallmark of a hero.

It bothers me watching Victoria, also. The fine ethical concerns the TV character debates would have been laughable to the real Victoria. It's entertaining. It's relevant to current questions we ask about leadership and politics, but it's absurdly irrelevant to Queen Victoria and the politics of her early rule.

I have Circe, but haven't read it yet. A friend tells me it is a much more satisfying book.

I'm halfway through Circe and I also think you will enjoy it much more.

Preet Bharara
 

Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts On Crime, Punishment, and The Rule Of The Law (March 19th, 2019; Knopf Publishers).

I've only had this book just a bit over 24 hours, and I'm on page 23 of Part 1. The preface, the introduction and the first few chapters explode at a breakneck pace, talking about the work of an prosecutor, his early days while in school, and the first few cases that dramatically impacted his life before he even became a prosecutor. I'm seriously glad I bought his book. It's simply the best book I've read in quite some time and will certainly be reading it many times over.

I've already underlined key concepts and phrases pertinent to current day political issues we read about in the news, and hear about via favorite media outlets (CNN, Politico, MSNBC, VOX, etc). Preet Bharara's book is outstanding. Even today, while reading from the book on my lunch hour, several passer's by (engineers) spied the book I was reading and asked me what my take on it was. They're buying copies of it, too. In fact, it won't surprise me at all if this book becomes required reading in several fields of study: Sociology, Communication, Law, Psychology, and Criminology.

Just finishing Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou.

I used to live in Silicon Valley and have strong feelings about the ethics of the tech industry. I hope not one of those TED Talk hypocrites ever uses the phrase "change the world" again. I was impressed by how many folk did quit Theranos, mostly, but not all, from the medical field. This is why the profit motive needs to stay out of medicine and law and education, etc.

When is that wretched woman going to jail? Fucking A. If she were a poor person of color, she wouldn't be tooling around SF with her new rich boy fiance telling everyone her husky is a wolf.

Theranos & Elizabeth Holmes
 

There is actually a film (which I have access to, but have not seen) called The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019), a documentary about "the story of Theranos, a multi-billion dollar tech company, its founder Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest self-made female billionaire, and the massive fraud that collapsed the company."

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley is airing on HBO too.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

In reference to above ~ I enjoyed reading Circe.

I am reading several things atm:

Journal articles on traumatic brain injuries

and

Journal articles on dissociative identity disorders aka (DID).

All very interesting

I just finished John Cleese's memoir So Anyway. The parts about his early life were great. I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a YA novel about a 15-year-old British boy who has Asperger's. I had to read that for a class, but I liked it. I've been rereading a book about WWII because the first go through I was so appalled I don't think I took it all in.

I can't recall what else. More classic mysteries, mostly Rex Stout.

Recently finished The Expanse (series), by S.A. Corey, Infinite Detail: A Novel, by Tim Maughan, A Stranger in Olondria: a novel, by Sofia Samatar, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer

Am in the middle of Indentured: The Battle to End the Exploitation of College Athletes, by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss and The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy Book 1), by Katherine Arden

This week i finished...

So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans--have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, by Kate Moore

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

So You Want to Talk About Race did not really teach me any facts that i had not learned reading Between the World and Me. The author also provided tips on how white people should discuss white supremacy with each other and i am going to have to assume those tips work on a time delay and do not bear fruit until the conversation has been over for a few months. My white people do not listen to me at all.

The Radium Girls was really good but very sad. Those "girls" were eaten alive with radium poisoning, with their bones crumbling inside their bodies, in constant pain, and they dragged themselves-- or had themselves carried-- to courtroom after courtroom seeking justice and compensation that was never going to help them even if they won. Eventually their bones were so brittle and their skin so weak that the court had to come to their homes. Even when they could not open their eyes or raise their heads from the pillow they testified, because they knew thousands of girls weren't sick yet, but would be.

I've been reading trash mostly. I read the Arrows trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. I'm sure I read it in the past, but I had forgotten it all. Good, but it got a bit old by the end as series often do.

I read Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan. OMG, they were bad, but I couldn't stop reading them. After I finished, that story about Yusi Zhao hit the headlines and made it more real. She's the young woman whose family paid $6.3 million to get her into Stanford in the college cheating scandal. Some of the details in the books could not be fake though. Way stranger than fiction. What a subculture. The books are occasionally very funny.

Currently reading Greek to Me: Adventures of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris and Pompeii by Robert Harris.

Seems like I read something else, but I can't remember. More trash, I am sure.

Fractured continent : Europe's crises and the fate of the West / William Drozdiak.
 

The dream of a United States of Europe is unraveling in the wake of several crises now afflicting the continent.

The single Euro currency threatens to break apart amid bitter arguments between rich northern creditors and poor southern debtors.

Russia is back as an aggressive power, annexing Crimea, supporting rebels in eastern Ukraine, and waging media and cyber warfare against the West.

Marine Le Pen's National Front won a record 34 percent of the French presidential vote despite the election of Emmanuel Macron. Europe struggles to cope with nearly two million refugees who fled conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.

Britain has voted to leave the European Union after forty-three years, the first time a member state has opted to quit the world's leading commercial bloc.

At the same time, President Trump has vowed to pursue America First policies that may curtail U.S. security guarantees and provoke trade conflicts with its allies abroad.

These developments and a growing backlash against globalization have contributed to a loss of faith in mainstream ruling parties throughout the West.

Voters in the United States and Europe are abandoning traditional ways of governing in favor of authoritarian, populist, and nationalist alternatives, raising a profound threat to the future of our democracies.

In Fractured Continent, William Drozdiak, the former foreign editor of The Washington Post, persuasively argues that these events have dramatic consequences for Americans as well as Europeans, changing the nature of our relationships with longtime allies and even threatening global security. By speaking with world leaders from Brussels to Berlin, Rome to Riga, Drozdiak describes the crises. the proposed solutions, and considers where Europe and America go from here. The result is a timely character- and narrative-driven book about this tumultuous phase of contemporary European history.

-------------------------

Fascinating book. Good for those with a rudimentary understanding of the EU to get current on what the EU is, what it is trying to accomplish, how it is trying to do it, and why it is facing backlash from the people of various countries.

This week i have been listening to

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer

No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

It really is a VERY THOROUGH record and a WILD RIDE. Hitler was not subtle AT ALL and never had anything going for him besides his ability to give speeches that stirred up the crowd. Which is all our current President ever had, so...

Confirmation Bias:Inside Washington’s War Over the Supreme Court, from Scalia’s Death to Justice Kavanaugh
 

by Hulse, Carl

The Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times presents a richly detailed, changing look at the unprecedented political fight to fill the Supreme Court seat made vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death—using it to explain the paralyzing and all but irreversible dysfunction across all three branches in the nation’s capital.



My only complaint is that he waited until way to late, the last few chapters, to get into the whole Kavanaugh debacle!

Ok currently in the middle of two books. One is book 18 of the Stephanie Plum series.

The newest one is called Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst.

It's a sci-fi, queer, romance mashup and I love it thus far.

Inspirational Female Role Models (news stories)
 

I've been browsing news articles about women in S.T.E.M programs: STEM is an acrostic based upon a multidisciplinary education approach for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

This summer, South Africa hosts the 2019 STEM awards for women who excel in STEM -- academically or in post-academic posts via organizations who employ women who excel in the field of STEM.

Article link found >HERE< (for those who might be interested).

Josephine baker
 

Hi everyone, am going to be starting this book soon. I haven't heard of her before, but her life and what she did sounds so inspirational.
Paris, 1925. Over the course of a single evening, the Mississippi-born dancer Josephine Baker becomes the darling of the Roaring Twenties. Some audience members in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees are scandalised by the African American's performance in La Revue Negre, but the city's discerning cultural figures - among them Picasso and Cocteau - are enchanted by her exotic, bold and uninhibited style. When her adopted country grants her citizenship in 1939, Josephine sees her fame as a means of helping the French resistance. She takes advantage of her globe-trotting lifestyle to pass on messages and to gather information. Years later, she is awarded the Legion d'honneur by Charles de Gaulle. In the 1950s, installed in a palatial 15th century chateau, Josephine adopts 12 children from different ethnic backgrounds. Her 'Rainbow Tribe', as she often called them, was a living, breathing symbol of a happy and harmonious multicultural society. In Josephine Baker, Catel and Bocquet paint a glorious portrait of a spirited, principled and thoroughly modern woman, capturing the heady glamour of 1920s Paris in beautifully expressive detail

I just finished The Honey Bus by Meredith May. I LOVED this book. I highly recommend it.

I am just starting Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.

I'm reading 'The Polish Officer". If you like suspenseful espionage filled stories set on the cusp of WWII ( or just beyond ) in Paris and in the backwaters of Eastern Europe, Alan Furst is for you. He's the best at evocative novels setting the tensions and the atmosphere of war in the shadows.. He really is very very good at it.

I've recommended his books to many people and never lost a friend over it . lol

Articles from the Journal of Homosexuality

From Obama's Summer Read Book List
 

Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin.

I finished Tales of the City and More Tales of the City.

Fun reading!

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward.

With ears:
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman

Acclaimed historian Amanda Foreman follows the phenomenal success of her New York Times bestseller Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire with her long-awaited second work of nonfiction: the fascinating story of the American Civil War and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle.
Even before the first rumblings of secession shook the halls of Congress, British involvement in the coming schism was inevitable. Britain was dependent on the South for cotton, and in turn the Confederacy relied almost exclusively on Britain for guns, bullets, and ships. The Union sought to block any diplomacy between the two and consistently teetered on the brink of war with Britain. For four years the complex web of relationships between the countries led to defeats and victories both minute and history-making. In A World on Fire, Amanda Foreman examines the fraught relations from multiple angles while she introduces characters both humble and grand, bringing them to vivid life over the course of her sweeping and brilliant narrative.

With eyes:
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, By Becky Chambers

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.

I went to Barnes & Noble, this afternoon, and bought two more books, which I hope are really, really good. One is from Obama's summer read list: The Nickel Boys (author: Colson Whitehead).

The other is a book called Evvie Drake Starts Over, by new author - Linda Holmes, who also is the host of an NPR pod cast -- Pop Culture Happy Hour. She also appears regularly on other NPR shows, including Weekend Edition, Before NPR, and All Things Considered.

I'm looking forward to reading both books.

This is for a podcast from "Levar Burton Reads". This may not be quite the place for it, but it was the best I could find.

This past week he read a short story, "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden. It turns out to be an endearing little love story between two women, that involves math. It's perfect for geeky nerdish girls like myself. And it left my little heart going "waaah!" when it was over.

If you get a chance to listen, it's worth sticking around for Levar's brief epilogue at the end. The whole story is only 40 minutes long, and it's definitely worth your time if you're a math nerd, or a romantic, or both. I've mentioned before that Levar really knows how to read a story, and it's as true in this tale as ever. Search for "Levar Burton Reads" wherever you find your podcasts.

I've not even opened up The Nickel Boys yet, but oh my gosh, the book by Linda Holmes is really good. I hope to finish reading it, by tomorrow. I don't want to spoil this book for any other reader, but the novel broaches subjects, for example, like performative roles people perform for their own sake or for the sakes of others.

I had no idea that Holmes would write about such things in her first work of fiction, but performative roles people play is not really any type of fiction.

It's an interesting field of study, for me, due to my communication studies background in Higher Ed. Role play, whether it's intentional or not, is one way human's communicate to others in performative type ways.

I like Linda Holmes first novel for the way she uses her novel's character narrative's as a way for others to explore the obscurity behind performative role play (why people mask their behaviors, etc).

I'm only half way through the Holmes novel, but I'm giving it the best rating possible because it's an very enjoyable and interesting story to read.