NYC meetups and two books
Aug. 28th, 2007 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedBack in New Jersey again. My brother just left for college with all the silverware, plates, cups, pots and pans, etc I brought back from Michigan, which of course he was welcome to though I kind of wanted to keep them as a symbol of my resolve to some day move out of my parents' house. -_- Oh well.
In other news, I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cynic_in_charge in New York last weekend! We got lunch then went to the Met then met serendip and hemlocke and some other people for dinner, all her suggestions. I'm afraid I was a little out of it since I'd stayed up most of the night before reading *cough*, but I still had a great time. Apologies to Eve et al. for being a bore if I was one. Eve doesn't smile as much as the constant XDXDXDs might lead one to believe, but she really is a brat, just like she claims. *g* Here's hoping we can meet up again sometime.
After dinner I crawled up to Dyckman Avenue to seefalxumbra and asprosdrakos in their new apartment, which is absolutely amazing. Antique bathtub, beautiful wood floors, high ceilings and decently sized rooms (though the kitchen is a bit small). I'm a little jealous. Some other friends of theirs from Mount Holyoke whose livejournal names I don't know were also there, and we talked and watched DVDs until 1:00am, at which point I would have had to run to catch the last train, so I stayed the night instead. I really want to do this again sometime too -- but in this case I don't have to hope, it WILL happen. <333 V, good luck with the job hunt!
I finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon on the train ride out and back, but I don't think I can bookblog it other than to say OMG AMAZING and READ IT RIGHT NOW. About a crippled cousin and an angry cousin who make comics together in 1930s New York City. The comic is called The Escapist and the book is about the things both cousins are escaping from -- in Clay's case, being gay, and in Kavalier's case, having family in Prague who are in danger of being annihilated by Hitler. Very very very good book. It's especially awful and frustrating when Kavalier rages against current events and current apathy and you realize it's 1939 -- another two years until the U.S. even enters the war, and another 4 years after that before the war will be over.
The book contains an amazing amount of historical detail but is set in an alternate timeline, and you can sometimes see places where Chabon threw his hands up in the air and started making it all up -- but he's good at making things up, so except for a very few places, the invented detail feels as real as any of the actual detail. (Hard to tell the difference, in fact.) My only other "complaint," I guess, is that the main characters are in some ways overdetermined -- by the time Kavalier arrives in New York City, he has the skills of a stage magician, an escapist, an amateur radio operator, and an artist, and all of these skills get used at some point in the novel -- but hey, this is fiction. Though the combination was so good I had a little trouble believing it, there's nothing wrong with a little transparent plot construction.
In summary, <3s all the way. Recommended if you like reading about comics or about gay issues or about Jewish issues or in fact, just recommended period.
I also read The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America by Daniel Brook (Yale grad) a few weeks ago. The Trap is a short, easy-to-read book that combines history with a lot of interesting personal examples. Brooks isn't really saying anything new or beyond common sense but he brings together a lot of disparate information and says it well, plus quotes extensively from other people who also say it well. I really enjoyed the book since 1) it was well-written and easy to follow and 2) it was about me.
The book discusses rising income inequality in the United States as not just a problem for those who find themselves trapped on the bottom half of the divide, but also for recent graduates from top universities who find themselves "forced" to work long hours in the private sector at jobs they really don't like, just so they can afford a basic decent lifestyle in certain (insanely expensive -- prices driven up by the super-rich) parts of the county. The basic argument is that education debt, health care expenses, and the costs of getting married/buying a house in a nice neighborhood/putting the kids through college make it really hard for most graduates to go into the public sector, even if they really want to.
I couldn't really find any fault with the author's arguments, but this might only be because I am ignorant. Well, one problem is that last week, for example, when it looked like whole sections of the financial services market might collapse under their own weight, an argument that we should fight for a more equitable income distribution because the current system leads low job satisfaction for privileged members of the upper middle class seemed kind of quaint. XD; In effort to be more critical, I submitted it to the Yin test: What would Yin (my friend the econ major who works as an analyst in Philadelphia) say about this book? I think he would complain that the author only focuses on U. S. policies, as if it were solely Reagan's whim that destroyed FDR's New Deal, and that you have to look at world economic conditions to see how much the redistribution of resources from the public to the private sector was necessary, even if it did lead to some people making out like bandits at the expense of many others (which I think he would argue, is not necessarily a bad thing).
In summary, recommended to recent U.S. college graduates who won't roll their eyes at a book that is all about the problems faced by America's second most privileged tier (after the heirs and heiresses).
In other news, I met
cynic_in_charge in New York last weekend! We got lunch then went to the Met then met serendip and hemlocke and some other people for dinner, all her suggestions. I'm afraid I was a little out of it since I'd stayed up most of the night before reading *cough*, but I still had a great time. Apologies to Eve et al. for being a bore if I was one. Eve doesn't smile as much as the constant XDXDXDs might lead one to believe, but she really is a brat, just like she claims. *g* Here's hoping we can meet up again sometime. After dinner I crawled up to Dyckman Avenue to see
falxumbra and asprosdrakos in their new apartment, which is absolutely amazing. Antique bathtub, beautiful wood floors, high ceilings and decently sized rooms (though the kitchen is a bit small). I'm a little jealous. Some other friends of theirs from Mount Holyoke whose livejournal names I don't know were also there, and we talked and watched DVDs until 1:00am, at which point I would have had to run to catch the last train, so I stayed the night instead. I really want to do this again sometime too -- but in this case I don't have to hope, it WILL happen. <333 V, good luck with the job hunt!I finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon on the train ride out and back, but I don't think I can bookblog it other than to say OMG AMAZING and READ IT RIGHT NOW. About a crippled cousin and an angry cousin who make comics together in 1930s New York City. The comic is called The Escapist and the book is about the things both cousins are escaping from -- in Clay's case, being gay, and in Kavalier's case, having family in Prague who are in danger of being annihilated by Hitler. Very very very good book. It's especially awful and frustrating when Kavalier rages against current events and current apathy and you realize it's 1939 -- another two years until the U.S. even enters the war, and another 4 years after that before the war will be over.
The book contains an amazing amount of historical detail but is set in an alternate timeline, and you can sometimes see places where Chabon threw his hands up in the air and started making it all up -- but he's good at making things up, so except for a very few places, the invented detail feels as real as any of the actual detail. (Hard to tell the difference, in fact.) My only other "complaint," I guess, is that the main characters are in some ways overdetermined -- by the time Kavalier arrives in New York City, he has the skills of a stage magician, an escapist, an amateur radio operator, and an artist, and all of these skills get used at some point in the novel -- but hey, this is fiction. Though the combination was so good I had a little trouble believing it, there's nothing wrong with a little transparent plot construction.
In summary, <3s all the way. Recommended if you like reading about comics or about gay issues or about Jewish issues or in fact, just recommended period.
I also read The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America by Daniel Brook (Yale grad) a few weeks ago. The Trap is a short, easy-to-read book that combines history with a lot of interesting personal examples. Brooks isn't really saying anything new or beyond common sense but he brings together a lot of disparate information and says it well, plus quotes extensively from other people who also say it well. I really enjoyed the book since 1) it was well-written and easy to follow and 2) it was about me.
The book discusses rising income inequality in the United States as not just a problem for those who find themselves trapped on the bottom half of the divide, but also for recent graduates from top universities who find themselves "forced" to work long hours in the private sector at jobs they really don't like, just so they can afford a basic decent lifestyle in certain (insanely expensive -- prices driven up by the super-rich) parts of the county. The basic argument is that education debt, health care expenses, and the costs of getting married/buying a house in a nice neighborhood/putting the kids through college make it really hard for most graduates to go into the public sector, even if they really want to.
I couldn't really find any fault with the author's arguments, but this might only be because I am ignorant. Well, one problem is that last week, for example, when it looked like whole sections of the financial services market might collapse under their own weight, an argument that we should fight for a more equitable income distribution because the current system leads low job satisfaction for privileged members of the upper middle class seemed kind of quaint. XD; In effort to be more critical, I submitted it to the Yin test: What would Yin (my friend the econ major who works as an analyst in Philadelphia) say about this book? I think he would complain that the author only focuses on U. S. policies, as if it were solely Reagan's whim that destroyed FDR's New Deal, and that you have to look at world economic conditions to see how much the redistribution of resources from the public to the private sector was necessary, even if it did lead to some people making out like bandits at the expense of many others (which I think he would argue, is not necessarily a bad thing).
In summary, recommended to recent U.S. college graduates who won't roll their eyes at a book that is all about the problems faced by America's second most privileged tier (after the heirs and heiresses).