Lovely One--#31 finished

 This is a memoir by Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.  A really interesting life and read.  I really knew nothing about her before reading this & now have great respect for the work she has put in to getting to where she is at.  She had some struggles like any working person with education, family life, etc but that has helped develop her to who she is.  I think she brings a great perspective to our court.  Really glad I read this.  Had started it in Feb during African American History month & finished during Women's History month, figure sort of appropriate.

There are 10 WL for this book in PBS but no hurry to post it, will sort of be a keeper for now.

Guts--#30 finished

This is a book by TV actress Kristen Johnston, of 3rd Rock from the Sun fame and later Mom.  She is also an accomplished stage actress too and some films but those 2 are the ones I know her from.  This is her story about her life and addictions and how while in London getting ready for a stage performance her guts literally exploded.  She was layed up for weeks & then months and even after that was done she had to take steps to address her addictions.  While writing about this it is both a little shocking & humorous.  It is a quick and easy read.  This was written in 2012 so before her time on Mom too.

I have posted it on PBS & is the only copy in system so might get moved at some point.

The Hermit King--#29 finished

 This story was written in the 1980s but is about a time in the 1940s in Alabama.  Two young kids around teenagers are at small town for a summer.  They boy lives there with his mother that can barely function and his grandma that runs the house.  The girl is a little older and has been sent there by her father to live with two older unmarried aunts.  The girl's mother had passed away and father needed someone to help out in raising her.  The two become friends and get into mischief there.  A blow up causes them to run away into the swamps.  A good story, at times a little tough to read because times were changing, I guess they are always changing to one degree or another but in the south right after the war was a time.  There are other short stories at the end of this book too, interesting from what I remember.

I have posted this book on PBS & is only copy so could move at some point.  Funny enough that I had posted this book earlier on PBS for probably a year or so & never got requested.  When I was cleaning off my bookshelf I saw it again & figured I would read it this time & so here we are.

The Chaos Agent--#28 finished

This is the next in the Gray Man series, Court and his Russian girlfriend Zoya are in hiding & traveling in South & Central America when they get pulled back in.  The action this time is with leading AI scientists being assassinated.  Basically comes down to a big time AI expert, multi-billionaire wants to change the world and thinks he has developed the perfect learning AI and wants it to take over.  It is building a robot army that it can lead and while this expert guy thinks he could still control it, he really cannot.  Court, Zoya and a bunch of US commando types invade the Cuban compound and save the day.  Still good action and interesting storyline.  Zoya is captured and taken by Chinese operatives at end so setting up the next book.

There are 22 WL for this book so I will post & mail off, will try to do so with the earlier one too that I still have.

Nomadland--#27 finished

This is the book that the movie was based off.  I saw the movie a little more than a year ago and really enjoyed the movie.  I have had this book for a year or so too but just now got around to reading it.  While the movie was visually appealing it was harder to show how many people this really involved--at least from my memory.  I remember it mostly about a few people that keep meeting up and their difficult circumstances.  In the book, there are more people you learn about and can extrapolate beyond them to the hundreds or thousands more out there at this time.  This is a few years removed from the 2008 financial crisis, it sounds like many lost jobs and struggled for a couple years before they had to sort of pack it in & become these nomads on wheels.  Really interesting reading about how they have learned to survive.  I would like a sort of followup if possible about what happened to them now years later.

The other thing this book made me think about & it touched on it at the end is the great wealth disparity in our country.  It is sort of in the background throughout the book like whenever Amazon is mentioned and how poorly the employees are treated and paid but because of desperate circumstances there are plenty of people wanting these jobs.  While thinking about Amazon being owned by one of the very richest people on our planet.  Also mentioned is that one of the Amazon workers feels most of the stuff they are stocking is throw away items that will be in a landfill within a year--just a very sick thought on our out of control consumerism.  A couple mentions of not buying big box/internet stuff & instead looking to mom & pop type places was nice to hear as well.

There are 7 WL for this book on PBS but might go to my loan out to friends pile to see if anyone else would be interested.

Wicked Women--#26 finished

The rest of the title: Black Widows, Child Killers, and Other Women in Crime.  I thought this would be a little more in depth about a few truly wicked women but was instead more chapters about the above list and with a paragraph or two about different women in the category.  Not really that interesting.  There was some discussion about sentencing of women vs men but even that was more just a discussion that really hashing it out.  It is an older book too, published in 2000 so that also factored into my feeling that was I am just not sure how much of this is still accurate today.  Oh well.

I have posted it on PBS & it is the only copy so maybe will get requested, will see.

Big Vape--#25 finished

This is about the rise & fall of Juul, of e-cigarette fame.  It starts with the founders of the company at Stanford graduate level business school with both being smokers and talking about how they didn't like the non-cigarette options on market.  They did a paper and and kept going developing a product and continuing to develop and modify it.  Their first product was Pax and basically became a marijuana vap while Juul became the nicotine vap.  As I am not a smoker, I really didn't know much of anything about all this.  Juul was huge for a couple years but as the company expanded/grew beyond the leadership's ability to control this problems came.  Advertising that matched cigarette ads from the '50s to '70s when big cigarette companies got in trouble targeting youth, was a big one for Juul.  Quality control, pissing off the FDA, use of influencers, teenagers using & abusing their product, other companies copying and taking market share on their pods with different flavors, the problems were numerous and company generally did poor job of responding.  Company took big investment for major cigarette company was a big change and this basically handed over the company to them but was needed to actually solve the problems.  Some cashed out big but Juul as company kept shrinking.  I wikipediaed it & company still there but vaping not as popular anymore so no longer a big deal I guess.  Really interesting story with plenty of what ifs that author touched on as well.

I have posted it on PBS, it is only copy and since such a good read I think someone will find it and request at some point.