Books - Kate Degelau-Pierce

Love and understanding

What’s it about?
Far from the Tree is, to summarize, about parenting difficult/different children. The author posits a construction. Vertical identity is the culture you get from your parents; horizontal identity is the culture you get from the world around you. But what happens when your child has a drastically different horizontal identity? Each chapter looks at family units who are dealing with a radically different horizontal identity: deaf children born to hearing parents; autistic children; prodigies; children who choose lives of crime; there are more. It’s a sympathetic look at how parents and children navigate figuring out who they are as individuals and who they are in relation to each other and the outside world.

Why should you read it?
It is long (700 pages). You should read Far from the Tree if you have children or want children. It’s not going to give you parenting tips, unless you want to be hammered over the head with “your child needs to feel safe and secure and loved so DO THAT” and “find meaning in your parenting to be happy.” These are lessons so global as to be almost useless. But it does help you understand differences in the world – all the examples about Deaf culture or how the world treats transgendered kids illustrate that everyone does have the same basic needs: to be loved and accepted. (I did skip most of the chapter on kids conceived in rape. I couldn’t deal with 50-60 pages continually recounting women at their most vulnerable.)

Overall, a thorough book that’s worth your time.

Real world? What real world?

What’s it about?
The Rosie Project is a cute little beach read about a professor with Aspberger’s syndrome and his hunt for a mate. It’s told from his point of view; Rosie is a PhD student he crosses paths with. He starts to help with her project, and ends up having fun.

Why should you read it?
You should read The Rosie Project on vacation somewhere, as a further distraction from the real world. It’s not going to change your life, but it will entertain you for a few hours. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. You can also admire the fact that it’s written with an autistic person as the main character – something you don’t find every day. (Diversity in fiction is important!)

All science, no philosophy

What’s it about?
The movie version of The Remains of the Day is an elegant but sad love story between the butler and the housekeeper of an English estate between WWI and WWII. The butler’s uncompromising standards and obsession with his work doom their romantic relationship. The book version is an entirely different story. The attraction is still there, but it is secondary to the main plot. That story is about how the butler’s uncompromising standards and obsession with his work make him unable to hold his own opinions about literally anything else. Between the wars, some British, including the butler’s employer, Lord Darlingon, were trying to appease the Nazis. All the butler is able to do is go about his work. In this case, there is a conference between the Germans and the Brits in the house; it ends badly.

Why should you read it?
See, now this is a book about an awful yet sympathetic person that was a delight to read. Kazuo Ishiguro writes divinely, you sympathize with the butler who wants to do his job as best he can, and you see the German-British relationship for the tragedy it was. You might even mourn the end of the British Empire. While the book was entirely different than what I expected, I still enjoyed it.

Ugh, no

What’s it about?
I don’t know. Awful people doing awful things.

Why should you read it?
You shouldn’t. I read the first fifty pages – my rule is that I have to get through the first fifty pages, after that, I can put the book down and never return. The people were terrible; look, I don’t have to like the main characters of a book, but I have to identify or admire something about them. I did not care. I knew something horrible was going to happen and I didn’t care.

I happily bailed on this one.

Kim Gordon is cooler than you

What’s it about?
Girl in a Band is about Kim Gordon’s life. Who’s Kim Gordon? She was the bassist for Sonic Youth, but the book doesn’t talk a huge amount about Sonic Youth. It’s about her childhood in Los Angeles; her years as a visual artist in 1980s NYC; it covers a bit about her marriage and the band and how some of the main albums were created.

Why should you read it?
Because Kim Gordon has her shit together. She is cooler than you because she has lived and spent time figuring things out: what kind of artist she wanted to be, what kind of parent she wanted to be, what was best for her. Reflecting on the book, I also think writing this might have been a way for her to define herself outside Sonic Youth and her marriage (since she is recently divorced). Who is Kim Gordon if she isn’t Sonic Youth? To clarify: the first draft might have been uncertain. The version that I read wasn’t. She has a clear sense of who she is and what she thinks and she is communicating that to you.

I want to be Kim Gordon. At least a little bit.

Spoilers, sweetie

What’s it about?
A God in Ruins is a kind-of sequel to Life After Life. If you’ve read Life After Life, you might wonder how a follow-up could be possible. Before I read the book, my hypothesis was that she’d just chosen one of Ursula’s lives and gone with it. (However, my inability to remember what, exactly, happened to Teddy by the end of Life After Life was frustrating.) This book is about Teddy, Ursula’s younger brother. It’s a profile of his life, his wife’s, and their awful daughter. There are two grandchildren as well; they turn out ok. These are not spoilers – the book isn’t told in chronological order. In fact, there was a point towards the end of the book where I was wondering how on earth the grandchildren ended up as healthy as they were.

Why should you read it?
Because Kate Atkinson is a good author. This is a wonderful story; it’s about so many things. Themes of nature and how the world changes in the 20th Century, personal choice, and how we think about our lives and the people in them. I would definitely recommend A God in Ruins to anyone who liked Life After Life.

Marketing Guidelines

What’s it about?
The title says what it’s about: how to market your non-profit organization. It hits online hard, but I was also happy to read about different audiences: donors, volunteers, and the people you’re helping. All are important.

Why should you read it?
Well, are you marketing a non-profit or a small business? Are you trying to get some message out into the world? The Non-Profit Marketing Guide has great tips on things like content calendars and social networks and how to craft a story in three paragraphs. Not to mention that hope is an emotion that gets people to donate. Fear works too, but people get tired of fear – hope creates long-lasting support for your cause. Overall, it’s a book full of tips. Definitely a professional book, not a for-fun book.

Old Europe

What’s it about?
The Guns of August is about European politics leading up to WWI, and the first month of the war. I did not know most of it before listening to the book – Germany’s inferiority complex; the fact that Belgium was supposed to be neutral; how fashion was deemed more important than effective military in France (the French didn’t want to give up their stylish army uniforms, despite the fact that they made them easy targets for the new rifles); and I certainly didn’t have any clue about the personalities behind any of the politics and policies and decisions. The Guns of August did a great job at bringing the story of how WWI happened to life.

Why should you read it?
The Economist wrote an article a couple of years ago, arguing that you could see parallels between pre-WWI Europe and the current rise of China. I had no idea whether or not it was true, given how little I knew about pre-WWI Europe. The Guns of August is the classic aimed-at-the-general-public tome for learning about the subject – it won a Pulitzer in 1963, when it was published, and it has come recommended to me by two different people on two different sides of the country. The author does a great job of making the generals into real people; the personal and professional conflicts affect battles and strategies, and she turns what could be very boring history into a good listen. (I got the audiobook version of this book, too. The speaker/reader was very good overall, but the accents were delightful. I should note that I listened to a different version than the one I linked to. I’ve no idea how that reader does.)

Another Sci Fi Classic

What’s it about?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an absurdist take on the end of the world. It’s also a sci-fi classic. There’s been a movie version and a radio play. The second and third books in the series were good, the fourth book was decent, and the fifth one is eminently skippable. But those aren’t this book. This book is about Arthur Dent. His house gets torn down and then the Earth gets blown up. His friend Ford turns out to be an alien who can help him get off the planet seconds before the disaster. They end up having a big adventure, heading off to a planet that builds other planets – Magrathea. There’s also a depressed robot. You know, for laughs.

Why should you read it?
I’ve read THGTTG so many times, I can’t articulate anymore what makes it good. I can tell you that this time we listened to it. We were road-tripping to Yosemite for a vacation, and I found an audiobook version read by Douglas Adams himself. I grabbed it, figuring my eleven-year-old was ready. She thought it was weird and funny, and promptly grabbed the book off the shelf when we got home. (This is a parenting win, in my book.) The tale is a classic, and the author did a wonderful job reading it.

A building with a long history

What’s it about?
The Colosseum is an entire book about the building in Rome. The book covers the building from before it was built – back when the land was a pond in Nero’s palace – through the gladiatorial games of the Ancient Roman empire to its repurposing in the middle ages for various purposes and finally to the tourist attraction we have today.

Why should you read it?
The Colosseum has had a remarkably long life that covers a wide swath of history. It is fascinating, to me anyway, to read about the repurposing of private land (Nero’s palace) into public land (the Colosseum was open to everyone) as a political tactic, even in ancient times.

The success of the film Gladiator shows that we are still fascinated by them – Hopkins and Beard go over the lives of actual gladiators, discussing how often they fought, how likely were they to live, how they fit into the economy as a whole. It should be noted that there is no record of Christians being put to death in the Colosseum – those were stories put about after the end of the gladiatorial games.

Into the middle ages, we see that it was treated a bit like a quarry. Many stones were removed to build other, more immediately necessary buildings. It was also used as a place of business by various people. In the 1800s Lord Byron wrote verses about it and archaeologists began to study it. It’s apparently interesting to botanists as well; there are unique plants that grow in the Colosseum. Who knew?

Overall, if you’re planning a visit to Rome and want to see the Colosseum, I’d recommend reading this.