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| Somebody got paid (too much) to write this book. |
It's an established fact that peanut butter improves any food it touches, but this might be the exception that proves the rule. PB&J deviled eggs sound like they were conjured from the depths of actual hell. Would you?
My librarian hackles are way up. It's the public library's whole purpose to provide diverse information portraying the spectrum of existence, thus making accessible as balanced a collection of facts as possible, and providing stories to serve as both mirrors reflecting one's own lived experience and windows into what may be. It's an individual or a parent's job to decide what media they or their children will ingest. It is not the job of a random smattering of non-library affiliated bigots to decide on everyone's behalf what kind of information or literature is or is not suitable for everyone.
Speaking of librarian hackles. They are real and reflexive, and it pains me to think of anyone playing rough with their library books. When it comes to your own personal books, you can get Anna Karenina printed on a roll of TP and wipe with each chapter as you finish for all I care (just take it easy and limit yourself to a couple pages a day, hemorrhoids are no joke). Mess with my library books, though? Nothing pains me more deeply than pulling a brand new book out of the book drop after its maiden circulation voyage to find that it has returned to mama soggy, gnawed upon, or coated in some indeterminate biohazard. At times like that, I think maybe Anne Carroll Moore had the wrong idea and children should be allowed nowhere near my preciouses.
Two important questions: Will you 'Roo? Did you used to, too? By the way, what were they thinking? They full on Weekend-at-Bernie's-voodoo'ed this product back from the dead and bothered to include those dusty-ass cookies that nobody likes instead of wising up and just giving us a tub of frosting with one of those tongue-lacerating cheese-spreading sticks from the equally nasty 90's era Ritz Handi-Snacks? Clearly, somebody in the marketing department really screwed the pooch when they failed to invite anyone with good taste and sense to their focus groups. Get it together, General Mills. Good effort, though.
Whenever a corporation bungles something related to race or gender in such a severe but ostensibly well-intentioned way, it's actually delightful. In a manner of schadenfreude, it's so satisfying to watch a bunch of ol' white dudes (I'm assuming here, but no diverse panel of thinkers would have thought this was okay) squirm a little and wish they would have asked for input from the groups to whom they were trying to pay lip service. Or, better yet, get some more People of Color and female-identifying humans up in those board rooms, babies.
Speaking of people who didn't ask for any input from the people they are claiming to represent!
This is the FANCY Kroger up the road. You don't wanna know what goes on at the Murder Kroger in my neighborhood.
This is a comforting reminder that even someone with such a powerful voice, so prolific and successful, sometimes struggles to get the words out and get them just right. And that just because she is prolific and successful and has a powerful voice, her opinions are her own and I am not wrong if my opinions are different. For example, Roxane Gay apparently really did not care for The Overstory, but I thought it was superb and so different from anything I've ever read.
Analog Reading:
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. I picked this up around Christmas and got distracted by a couple urgent library holds. Now that I've returned to it, I can't believe I ever put it down. Truthfully, it took about 50 pages to really get into the vibe and flow of the story, but it is rife with hilarious small details and it is shocking how closely this vision of a dystopian near-future from 2010 mirrors our current reality.
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