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Sunday Salon

The fireworks seem to have calmed down in my neighborhood this week--I'm almost afraid to write this lest I jinx it. Since they started on Memorial Day, I was not hopeful they would end with the Fourth of July, but they do seem to have slowed down for now at least. Hopefully, they emptied their stashes on the Fourth. My poor puppy hid under the couch in the basement for most of that night; we could just barely see his snout. My other dog will bark back, but she doesn't really care that much.

In terms of reading, it's been a somewhat productive week. In terms of writing, less so.

Reading This Week

  • I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell for one of my book clubs. I've never read a Malcolm Gladwell book before, although I've heard of him. I also did not realize he was half Black, as he alludes in the book. I thought he was White. The book is a set of premises with an extended parade of supporting anecdotes, some of which were more interesting than others. The premise that snap judgments can sometimes be just as valuable as well-researched decisions makes sense to me, as does the corollary that sometimes snap judgments can impede the decision-making process. I do wish more police departments would take this kind of training into account. It doesn't matter how many times you tell people not to be racist, if they're not consciously racist. The decision-making process needs to be slowed down so people can make conscious decisions and/or people need to practice making snap judgments involving race, crime etc. outside of life/death situations and need to form unconscious positive associations with peoples of different race, which takes time and has nothing to do with how good people's intentions are.
  • I also started reading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while. I've also never read Baldwin before, and wow, his writing is incredible. It's also an interesting book to read from the perspective of time. The edition I'm reading is from the '90s and the back cover claims the protagonist is "caught between desire and conventional morality" and calls it "a highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart." Y'all...it's about gay love. I wonder if the back cover would be similar today. I think not. I bet it might even use the word "gay," although it's not clear if David, the protagonist, and his lover, Giovanni are gay or bisexual. They have both been with women, David is actually engaged to a woman in the book, but that may be because of social expectation. It's also surprising to me that Baldwin, a gay Black man, decided to make his protagonists explicitly White (David is a blond American; Giovanni is Italian), but perhaps he thought they might be more sympathetic to a White audience that way. 

Watching This Week

  • This week, my husband and I watched the new Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound, about a U.S. Navy convoy crossing the North Atlantic in 1942. Needless to say, it was not my choice of film, but we agreed it's definitely an under-dramatized aspect of World War II. I didn't know 70,000 some men were lost to German U-boats before they even reached England.
  • I started a new background binge sitcom on Netflix, Young & Hungry, about a private chef who's also in an increasingly annoying will-they or won't they with her boss,and there are so many racist and sexist stereotypes in this show, but also the protagonist is really cute, and food, so, I'm not proud of it, but it's an easy watch. Sigh. 

Writing This Week

  • I have made some progress (over 1k words) and am increasingly almost finished with my novel, which is probably why I'm dragging my feet even more because *REVISIONS ARE SCARY*.

Comments

I'm glad to hear that you are finding James Baldwin's writing to be so good. I'm interested in reading Giovanni's Room, and I'd planned to read it this month during Paris in July, but I'm having trouble reading fiction right now. I think I will go ahead and request it from the library, and give it a try. Maybe my trouble is with reading disappointing fiction.

I find Gladwell's books provocative. They often go against what appears to be common sense.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the new Tom Hanks movie. Tom Hanks is the sort of person I'd like to have as captain of my ship, I think.

I read Beale Street by Baldwin earlier this year and thought it was a toned down version of The Hate U Give. Baldwin was definitely before his time. I will look for the Hanks movie. We can't find anything we like to watch. Nothing too serious is all I ask so the Hanks movie might be too much for me. My Sunday Salon
The fireworks here have calmed down too! I still hear them every night, but they don’t last for hours. I guess the virus is stopping the neighbors from driving to Wyoming every few weeks to buy more. The fireworks they like are illegal because of the fire danger, so they have to drive to other states to buy them. Have a good week!

Aj @ Read All The Things!
I read Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers recently, some of his points were interesting,

Wishing you a great reading week
Judy Krueger said…
I have read a lot of Baldwin. Currently reading his biography and learning what he went through to get all his books written and published. He is one of my favorite black authors.
Good luck with revisions. They are scary, but necessary (as I always try to remind myself...)
Thanks everyone! Great to hear more good things about Baldwin; I will definitely be reading more of his work!

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