The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy

I read this review/profile of The Rules Do Not Apply in The New York Times and reserved it at the library right away. Memoirs are a guilty pleasure for me, and especially gossipy ones about someone my own age, living in places I've lived, struggling with problems I've struggled with myself. The self-focused preference most kids have for reading about kids their own age and gender has, I guess, never left me. So I read it, fast. I don't want to give away the details of the story but it was a juicy diary. But it felt somehow unfinished. Too much like reading someone's diary, not enough narrative motion, not enough about the characters, and maybe not enough gossip. I've loved other memoirs much more.

That said, I do love the cover and the Jennifer Reese signature pink & red color combo. And can we all agree that she looks quite a bit like Annie Parr from Roco Dance?

Aristotle's Way

Aristotle's Way by Edith Hall

Yesterday, I gushed to the senior Reese like a mad person about how much I loved this book. I listened to it and got many, many ideas about how to enhance my life. From how to approach friendship (you give a friend two chances to hurt you -- but never three), how to spend leisure time, the nature of the good life, how walking aids thinking. Amazing how Aristotle's ideas speak to us today.

The book itself is very easy to read. Not stupid, but definitely designed as self-help for people who might think they're too good for self-help. I'm not one of those people. I unashamedly love self help books. This was a good one.

I am wading to the end of The Bostonians.

The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater

I read this for the mother/daughter book club I belong to with my 13 year old Stella. It is the true story of a crime committed against a non-binary youth by a black male youth in the Berkeley/Oakland area of the San Francisco Bay Area. Good, but not great. It provided a useful education about terms (asexual, pan romantic, etc). It alternated between points of view, and I kept thinking at any moment it would veer off the rails and become very political, either about the hate crime, or the unjust juvenile justice system for black youths, but it pulled those punches and I liked it better for it.