Greetings friends!
So I just came across a reading challenge going on over on Booktube this month where you dedicate yourself to reading nonfiction. How did I not find out about this sooner?!?! I love reading nonfiction, but the majority of the time, I’m grabbing fiction, so this is a perfect time to catch up on some of those books that I just haven’t gotten to. This event is hosted by A Book Olive and Non Fic Books, so please go and check out their channels for more information.
The challenges for this year are:
- New
- Fascinating
- Important
- Controversial
For three years, the author traveled around the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us, only they made a joke on social media that came out badly or made a mistake at work and once their transgression was revealed, collective outrage ensues. The next thing they know they’re being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, and sometimes even fired from their job.
Shame has become a form of social control and this is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws, and the very scary part we all play in it.
When the author was 30 years old on an assignment to review a play at a college theater, she was held at knife point and raped by a stranger who had grown up five miles away from her. Once her assailant was caught and sentenced, Joanna never spoke of the trauma again, until 21 years later when her daughter was about to go to college. She resolved then to tell her children about her own rape so that they could learn and protect themselves, and she began to realize that the man who assaulted her was one of the formative people in her life.
Setting out to uncover the story of her attacker, Connors embarked on a journey to find out who he was, where he came from, who his friends were, and what his life was like. What she discovers stretches beyond one violent man’s story and back into her own, interweaving a narrative about strength and survival with one about rape culture and violence in America.
I’ve also got Hillbilly Elegy on hold at the library, so if it comes in early, I’d like to get that read too.
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class.
That's What She's Reading 