Category: Nonfiction

From My Balcony to Yours

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

No one expected 2020. No one expected a global pandemic. No one expected lockdowns and stay at home orders and endless days of quarantine. In From My Balcony to Yours, Nino Gugunishvili reflects on the early days of when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. She talks about kinship and loneliness and isolation. She explores social media and television and all of our great plans for the hobbies we were going to learn in quarantine and totally didn’t. In essays spanning March 2020 through September 2020, Gugunishvili shares her personal stories of living through the era of the coronavirus in America.

What I loved most:

If I’m going to be honest… I was a little nervous to read this book. The pandemic has just been such a weird time, and I didn’t know if I would like bringing myself back to the early days of when everything was so up in the air. But it ended up feeling really cathartic to remember back to March and April and the first stay at home order and how far we’ve come since then.

We’re sitting in our homes, glued to our phone and computer screens, holding our breaths and waiting for what’s going to happen next. What’s the plan? What’s the scenario? What’s the future? For how long are we going to stay home? When is the self-isolation going to end? We need to know because we think we can control when we know, and when we handle, we can plan, and planning means going back to normal. But what if all this Coronavirus story is about shifting the focus and not being so obsessed with planning and controlling and wanting to know what’s next? What if it’s all about enjoying what we have right now, at this very moment, and not worrying about the future? Not worrying about what we weren’t able to do because of the pandemic, but enjoying what we did nevertheless while our plans were ruined?

From My Balcony to Yours, pp 16-17

I mean, isn’t that beautiful? I’m HERE for finding the good in every situation, for taking the time to breathe and reflect and choose to look at positives.

Read this book if you like:

Reflecting on current events, growing, positive mindsets, genuine feelings, vulnerability

Book details:

  • Author: Nino Gugunishvili
  • Publisher: Self-published (Holla for authors making books happen on their own!)
  • Date of Publication: October 14, 2020
  • Interest Level: Adult

I received a free copy of this book from the author, but all the thoughts in this review are my own. I only write about books I enjoy, and was not financially compensated for this post.

Let the People Pick the President

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

Let the People Pick the President has a subtitle that sums up its content well: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College. In this insightful book, Jesse Wegman explores the system that we use for electing the highest leader of the country. Although mayors, governors, senators, and other representatives are chosen by popular vote, the president is elected using a complicated system of electors based on, but not proportionally representative of, a given state’s population. Through an examination of the creation of this system at the time of the country’s founding, to a discussion of the current implications of the way the system works, Let the People Make the President presents a convincing case for moving to a popular vote election for president of the United States.

What I loved most:

Let’s be real here… does anyone actually understand the electoral college? Before reading this book, I was confident that I could explain the general way the electoral college works to a first grader… but also confident that I couldn’t explain satisfactorily to a high school student why two out of the last six presidents did not win the popular vote. The concept of a popular vote made sense to me, since it works for literally every other position we elect in this country, but I didn’t understand the electoral college enough to be able to make a solid argument for abolishing it. Wegman makes this seemingly-complex topic accessible to a wide audience. Even if you are pro-electoral college, this would be an interesting read for the exploration of the Constitution’s creation alone. It’s definitely worth your time!

Read this book if you like:

Politics, thinking through long-standing ways of doing things, democracy, learning from history

Book details:

You Ought to Do A Story About Me

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

Ted Jackson is a photojournalist. In 1990, he was working on a story about people experiencing homelessness. When he encountered a man sleeping under the bridge, that man said to him, “You ought to do a story about me.” Jackson had heard this statement a million times, but indulged the man by asking why he should have his story shared. The man responded by telling Jackson he had played in three Super Bowls.

You Ought to Do a Story About Me shares the story of Jackie Wallace, former star of the NFL. It explores his life, from his childhood through his football days, before going into the circumstances that led to his addictions and eventual homelessness. This would be a great book for people who are avid sports fans, as a lot of time is spent discussing Wallace’s football career. It would also be an interesting read for fans of psychology or sociology.

What I loved most:

One of my favorite things of all time is exploring why and how people become the people that they are. I’m fascinated by life circumstances, and how they impact cognitive patterns and the decisions people make. By the measures of our current society, Wallace had “made it”. He was a professional football player. He was living the dream. To go from the peak, the glory, to sleeping under a bridge, is a fascinating transition. I also appreciate that Jackson addressed some cultural/societal factors that impacted Wallace’s circumstances, in addition to discussing Wallace’s choices.

Read this book if you like:

Psychology, sociology, football/sports in general

Book details: