2021 Reading Wrap Up

 

I made it through the LBJ series by Caro early this morning! What a way to close out the year!

Some of these are questions from Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks. She changed it last year. So I have added some questions that I liked from previous years and some of my own. 

For all my books with a bit of commentary, click the link HERE.

How many books did you read? 72

Which books would you recommend everyone read? 

NON-FICTION/HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY FAVORITES:

Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1954-1968

It is a huge investment of time, but it helped me understand the brave pioneers of the  Civil Rights Movement!

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 1

Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 2

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 3

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 4

These overlap with the Civil Rights Movement and the important role that Johnson played in it. It also helps you understand the race issues we have today and how our government works. So they are valuable to read for someone who wants to labor through them. What is funny is, as of last year, he still had 6 more years of Johnson's life, and Caro is 86 years old! He better get moving!

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

It made me want to move to Savannah, Georgia to meet the colorful people there! Berendt wrote this non-fiction to read more like a novel. I loved it. 

INFORMATIVE NON-FICTION FAVORITES:

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

 

Recommended by my two best friends who work with girls in this age bracket. 

The Body Keeps the Score

Wow! I was mesmerized by this. I have recommended it to many.

9/11 Commission Report (1000 Books To Read) 

Really thorough and informative. 

FICTION FAVORITES:

The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1000 Books List)

This was a sweet read and uplifting.

Which character did you fall in love with? The Warden! Honest and lovely man. 

The Bourne Identity (1000 Books List) 

Surprisingly liked it even though this is not usually my genre. This guy can write!

I Capture the Castle (1000 Books List)

Sweet read. 

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1000 Books List

Great read. It was a page-turner with fantastic writing!

I didn't really like any of the other fiction that I read on the 1000 Books to Read Before You Die List. I am in search of better fiction in the future. 

SPIRITUAL FICTION FAVORITES:

The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

Hinds' Feet( on High Places (Reread of an old favorite)

SPIRITUAL NON-FICTION FAVORITES:

SIX ORDER OF THE MUSTARD SEED BOOKS: The Vision and The Vow, Even the Sparrow, OMS Guide, The Lord of the Ring, Punk Monk ,and Sacred Rhythms

The Celtic Way

The Deeply Formed Life (Renovare Book Club)

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero (Preparation for a podcast interview I did)

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (For the Podcasts) 

 

Did you discover any "new to you" authors? 

Robert Caro - I read five books by him. They were all very long and very detailed. I feel like I know so much about Robert Moses and Lyndon B Johnson now! 

Taylor Branch (America in the King Years) - His books were long and well-researched. He has given a gift to the world IMHO.

Clarisa Ward (On All Fronts) - I loved her memoir about life as a world correspondent. I could not put it down. She is another braver person!

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward

Anthony Trollope - I have enjoyed the TV series made from his books. So I finally read one of his and really enjoyed The Warden.

What was your reading goal this year and did you have a plan, and/or follow rabbit trails or wing it? 

Followed Goals: Get through the Renovare Book Club, Order of the Mustard Seed Year of Preparation, Abiding Podcast Preparation, and 1000 Book to Read Before You Die Lists. I did decide to pick and choose which books I would read from the Book Babes Book Club due to my increased reading with the Abiding and Power Podcasts and Resource Development project. 

Where did your armchair travels take you? 

Mexico, England, Savannah, Georgia, Deep South, Johnson City, Texas to Washington, D.C., Kalispell, Montana, Wars all over the world, New York. All over the world with Jason Bourne!

Which books stood out, made an impression and/or stayed with you the longest? What did you learn from them? 

Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1954-1968

Taylor Branch's books were so instrumental for me in seeing an up-close and personal look at the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement! WOW!

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward

Which book had the most original, most unique story?  

The Story of My Teeth

It was very original, but I didn't like it! 

Which book made you laugh? 

I don't recall any that did this year! I need some more light-hearted ones for 2022!

Which one made you cry?

Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge - I was even physically ill at parts when I read what atrocities the people in the Civil Rights Movement endured. They were heroes! 

Which books did you like the least and why? 

The Story of My Teeth (see above) and 

At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien

Both were just really stupid. 

2666

Because it was just this long list of all these women who were killed. It got tedious to hear it over and over again. It made for a very long book, and it did not move the story along. 

Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector

 

A bunch of depressing stories about women! Hated most of them. Why don't we have more uplifting stories about the lives of women who live free and empowered?

Favorite Cover: 

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

 I thought my reading was done for the year, but I snuck in a page-turner and riveting story of espionage set in the late 50s, early 60s. Great read!

Notes from the Underground

This is the diary of a very unhappy man in St. Petersburg, Russia in the 1800s! Not my favorite Dostoevsky. 

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

 Boy, Bobby Kennedy was a MEAN person! Wow! I sort of got a negative impression of him when I read about how he was a "nothing burger" of empty promises and deceit in the whole Civil Rights Movement when I read the Taylor Branch series, Parting the Waters, Pillars of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1954-1968.

Despite my dislike of Johnson's character, the passage of the Civil Rights Amendment soon after he assumed the office of President at the death of Robert F Kennedy, was his crowning achievement. It is widely accepted that it never would have passed under Kennedy's leadership. Johnson was a master at negotiation and getting people to do what he wanted them to do. He also had compassion for the poor and people of color, having grown up poor himself. 

The Kennedy's were intellectual elites, and they were very condescending to this low-born Johnson. That made me sad. His high-brow aides called Johnson, "Rufus Cornpone." That is just plain elitism. 

Here are some quotes:

90

...therefore it was important not to let a conversation end until you learned what the man wasn’t saying until you “got it out of him.” Johnson himself read with a genius that couldn’t be taught, with a gift that was so instinctive that one aide, Robert G. (Bobby) Baker, calls it a “sense.”“He seemed to sense each man’s individual price and the commodity he preferred as coin.” 

808 

And from these descriptions, also, there emerges a picture of a Lyndon Johnson who was hard, tough, canny—tough enough and canny enough to transmute passion and empathy into the legislative accomplishment that had been so lacking during the past three years. When he had entered the Oval Office for his conversation with Johnson, Wilkins had not had much hope for the civil rights bill. If it passed, he felt, it might do so only in a drastically watered-down form. Kennedy, he was to recall, “believed that his package would have passed Congress by the following summer. I am not quite sure how much of it would have survived.” But by the time the conversation ended, he had been “struck by the enormous difference between Kennedy and Johnson.… Where Kennedy had been polite and sympathetic on all matters of basic principle, more often than not he had been evasive on action. Kennedy was not naïve, but as a legislator he was very green. He saw himself as being dry-eyed, realistic. In retrospect, I think that for all his talk about the art of the possible, he didn’t really know what was possible and what wasn’t in Congress.… When it came to dealing with Congress, Johnson knew exactly what was possible.… Johnson made it plain he wanted the whole bill. If we could find the votes, we would win. If we didn’t find the votes, we would lose, he said. The problem was as simple as that.” Wilkins had entered the Oval Office without much hope; that wasn’t the way he left it. 808

812

He wasn’t fooling them, wasn’t merely posturing. No television cameras had been present, no reporter taking down his words, when he had sat on the steps in Cotulla with the janitor Thomas Coronado. (Regarding his true compassion for the poor. Thomas Coronado was a man Johnson helped when he was a teacher among Mexican American kids.) 

945

“It is time … to write it in the books of law.” By the time Lyndon Johnson left office, he had done a lot of writing in those books, had become, above all Presidents save Lincoln, the codifier of compassion, the President who, as I have said, “wrote mercy and justice into the statute books by which America was governed.”

989

Schlesinger’s opinion of Johnson was to change drastically. By 1978, he would be writing, “For all his towering ego, his devastating instinct for the weaknesses of others, his unlimited capacity for self-pity, he was at the same time a man of brilliant intelligence, authentic social passion, and deep seriousness.…”

992

But the succession of Lyndon Johnson deserves a better fate in history. For had it not been for his accomplishments during the transition, history might have been different. Because the headlines in that first blizzard of news—PRISONER LINKED TO CASTRO GROUP; SUSPECT LIVED IN SOVIET UNION—have long been proven false or exaggerated, it has been easy to forget that for several days after the assassination America was reading those headlines, easy to forget the extent of the suspicions that existed during those days not only about a conspiracy but about a conspiracy hatched in Cuba or Russia, two nations with whom, barely a year before,

 995

By moving as quickly as he did, Johnson caught a tide, seized a moment, that might not have lasted very long. Caught the tide—and rode the tide, using its force as it rolled forward beyond the

996

These seven weeks, the seven weeks between November 22 and January 8, were therefore a period in which there took place in the capital of the greatest republic in the western world a remarkable demonstration of the passage of power, immense power—of its passing, in an instant, from one hand to another, and of its wielding by that new hand, in the first weeks after it closed on that power, with history-changing effectiveness.

998

"Almost at once, the whining self-pitying caricature of Throttlebottom vanished," George Reedy was to write. "During this whole period, there was no trace of the ugly arrogance which had made him so disliked in many quarters...situation brought out the finest that was in him.”

A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson

 

How lovely to take a break from reading a very long book about the power plays of three men at the top of the American Executive branch (The Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson - see next review) to the humility of loveliness of the man, Eugene Peterson. It was so life-giving to read about this man's life compared to the other three men!

This was a quick read, and I read it for the Renovare Book Club which I have been a part of since 2015 (I think). 

He overlapped so wonderfully with people like Pat Robertson! I had always thought he was a Presbyterian his whole life, but he was a Pentecostal during his growing-up years. That was fascinating. I loved how much he admired his mother and longed for a relationship with his father. I underlined several quotes and will put them here. 

It was a great read!

Burning in my bones Quotes

Paul Evdokimov “the immanence of God at work in creation.

 

Even after retirement, Don (Eugene’s father) worked real estate part time from a small office downtown. He was always tending to clients, always working the deal. Decades later, Eugene would experience this same compulsion to achieve, would recognize the menace this demand for accomplishment could cast over a life. Like his father, he wanted to win, to accomplish, to be respected as competent and successful - in the center of things. But Eugene, thinking back to the hole where a father's love was supposed to rest, would come to resist with fierceness the depersonalizing, relationship-killing effect that the American business model brought to his soul and to the church. Work and achievement could be a seductive addiction, as burning and deep as a bottle of Thunderbird. 21

 

That was Eugene the brother, naturally drawn to act in the presence of suffering.  27

 

"At one point in my life I realized that for some time (maybe halfway through high school and into university), she (mother)  treated me more like a husband than a son: confiding in me, leaning on me for emotional support. I just thought it was natural, what mothers did." 27

 

The tragedy revealed shadier parts of Eugene's family history, providing him one of his first close encounters with human complexity: We can be both good and violent at the same time. One person can bring both joy and sadness into the world. In high school, dreaming of becoming a novelist, Eugene thought Sven's story provided the material for an explosive book. While he never wrote a novel, eventually Sven's sad tale did make its way into his work. 29

 

Eugene's care extended beyond his biological family. When he was a teenager, Eugene's mother drafted him into visiting the elderly Sister Lydron from their church…Evelyn sent her son to check on the old woman, always with a casserole or cookies in hand. Eugene recounted, Once as I sat in her rocking chair, making small talk which I was never very good at ... she asked me to pray for her. I remember still the sense of "fit"-that this was what I was made for--that this is who I was at my core being. This intimate, unhurried relationship. This ease of prayer and presence. At a young age, Eugene felt these early stirrings of who he truly was long before he had any vocabulary to explain it. 30

 

Eugene dislikes school but loved books, and his curiosity was insatiable. 33

 

On one of these evenings, one of the seminarians asked him (Buttrick was a preacher who greatly influenced Peterson and Buechner) something to the effect of What's the most important thing you do for your sermon preparation each week?" Without hesitation, Buttrick responded, “For two hours every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I walk through the neighborhood and make home visits. There is no way that I can preach the gospel to these people if I don't know how they are living, what they are thinking and talking about. Preaching is proclamation, God's word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become gospel.” 74

 

Eugene needed a revolution. The place, as much as anything else, was a drain on the young seminarian's spirit. As stimulating and invigorating as his friendships, work, and classes were, Eugene longed for Montana's contours and natural beauty. New York did not speak the language of his soul. 90

 

The class sat spellbound. Impossible - one of their own disagreeing with the master. But Albright listened, stone still and pondering as Prescott politely walked through his objections to the argument. Then the room fell silent. The professor picked up his eraser and slowly wiped vast swaths across the blackboard "Forget everything I said," he stated simply. “Prescott is right." Eugene never forgot it. "The people who stand out in my life; he reflected, "are the people who don't flaunt what they are doing and aren't stuck on who they are." A man who could wipe away a little of his ego along with the chalk was a man to be respected.” Years later, Prescott Williams, an expert in biblical languages himself (and also someone Eugene admired for using his intellect with immense humility), would serve as an exegetical consultant on The Message. 96

 

And yet in response to these real enemies (people were obsessed with safety because of panic to nuclear attack) in their midst, the red binder (input from a church growth “expert” who said you should give people what they want and to run the church like a corporation) offered only vanity and emptiness. The community did not need a church to craft little programs to assuage their consciences or perceived needs for safety. It needed the church to invite people into a new reality ruled by the kingdom of God. Christ Our King needed to worship. With all this in mind, Eugene saw with a growing sense of both joy and desolation that what was most essential in all his work was the opening invitation he offered each Sunday- Let us worship God. 125

 

It was a time when pastors all over the country were abandoning their vocation to take up counseling. ”I could have ended up among them," he remembered long after. But his pastoral instincts led him to read deeply and widely in search of relevant perspectives for how to shepherd the whole human person. Eugene devoured the writings of Carl Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Erik Erikson, and Viktor Frankl, among many others. But there were two sides to this. All this knowledge played into the temptation Eugene

faced to be an expert, to be successful in his work. He began to notice a “latent messianic complex," where he was drawn to locate the emotional problems among those in his congregation and

then fix them, efficiently. These experiences taught Eugene to value psychiatry and therapy (an appreciation he never lost), but he did have to wrestle, coming to the realization that he was a pastor, not a therapist. 131

 

It had hurled him (Scottish pastor, Wilson) into a rocky ravine. “Those mountains are magnificent," he said, "but they have twenty different ways to kill you. Just like the church.”

 

Eugene couldn't shake that line. Weeks later, he called Wilson and explained his vague sense of the kind of pastor he wanted to be: slow, personal, attuned to God and to the lives of those in his parish. Eugene wondered if it was possible to transform from a competitive pastor to a contemplative pastor-

-a pastor who was able to be with people without having an agenda for them, a pastor who was able to accept people just as they were and guide them gently and patiently into a mature life in Christ but not get in the way. 142-143

 

Tom introduced Eugene to their waitress, Vanessa, a tired woman with sad eyes. As they rose to pay the check, Eugene stepped away to the bathroom. When he returned, he found Tom and Vanessa in an energetic discussion. Eugene grabbed a newspaper and a seat at the counter. As Tom and Eugene exited

the diner, Tom exuded vigor. "Eugene, did you see us talking, the way she was talking. that intensity? I wish I could do that kind of thing all day long, every day. Every time I come in here and there are no customers, she wants to talk about prayer and her life." "So, why don't you do it, have conversations like that?" Eugene asked. "Because, " Tom answered, with an edge, "I have to run this damn church."

 

Eugene shared Tom's story from the diner with his pastors' group and everyone immediately resonated with the suffocation of “running a damn church.” Together they determined that whatever else they might do, they would learn how to be pastors. 144-145

 

“[Dostoyevsky] wrote about the whole of human experience with such seriousness. There's no moralizing in Dostoyevsky, no preaching. He really does understand how faith works, how prayer works, how deceit works, how sin works. Perhaps the best thing about him is that he doesn't make it easy. You have to enter his imagination. In the world of spirituality and religion, reduction and oversimplification are just endemic, and the minute that happens, we lose our participation. We stand off at a distance and criticize and evaluate the options. Dostoyevsky doesn't much do that. He's not an analyzer. 172

 

Once, when a pastor asked him what he would say to evangelical pastors, Eugene's discomfort surfaced:

“I think the primary thing that I want them to hear is that they simply must quit taking themselves so seriously. Not taking the Lord seriously, and not taking their vocations seriously, but themselves. Evangelical pastors take themselves seriously, but they don't by and large take theology seriously, they don't take the Bible seriously, they don't take congregations seriously: theology is a means to an end, the Bible is a tool for teaching/ preaching, congregation is a raw material for programs and causes. But all of that destroys growth in the Spirit, growing up in Christ. We keep trying to do the work of the Trinity ourselves. And we are not the Trinity. I would want to tell pastors to quit being so busy and learn quiet, to quit talking so much and learn silence, to quit treating the congregation as customers and treat them with dignity as souls-in-formation. The primary thing that we are dealing with as pastors is the Word of God. And the primary stance we must learn both as pastors and congregations is to listen. There can be no language that works at all if someone is not listening. And since God is the primary voice in this gospel world, we pastors have to lead the way in listening, doing it ourselves and encouraging others to do it. By and large evangelical pastors are not deficient in energy or motivation or knowledge. But they are not conspicuously attentive, reverently listening to the voice/word of God and in being totally and personally present with the people we meet and serve. "Holy'" requires reverence, the "fear of the Lord" is the biblical phrase. A holy Bible requires reverent listening; and a holy church/congregation requires a reverent being present.” 238-239

 

“The controversy swirling around Rob Bell's book Love Wins is fresh evidence on how cantankerous the American church is. Because of the endorsement I gave to the book, people keep trying to draw me into the fracas. And a fracas it certainly is. How the so-called Christian community can generate so much hate is appalling. Haven't we learned anything about civil discourse? Will we ever? And it is so debilitating-we have this glorious gospel to proclaim and give away and we gang up against one another and throw dogma-rocks. 278

Call Unto Him

Call Unto Him by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

 So wonderful to be praying daily for my favorite part of the world! :) It has been a great year of prayer. 

The Bhagavad-Gita

 

I have read the Qu'ran and The Book of Mormon, but I had never read another religion's writings. So, this was interesting for me. It "has been an essential text of Hindu culture in India since the time of its composition in the first century A.D. One of the great classics of world literature, it has inspired such diverse thinkers as Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and T.S. Eliot; most recently, it formed the core of Peter Brook's celebrated production of the Mahabharata (book description on Amazon.com). 

It is the discussion between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide, Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Arjuna brings moral dilemmas and seeks Krishna's counsel. 

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book Three

 

I think I found some things to like about Lyndon Johnson!

1) Hardworking

2) Able to work with people from opposing views - he really was the MASTER of the Senate. (How he got to that position is the part I didn't like.) 

2) Civil Rights - the author thinks Johnson truly had a heart for the poor and for minorities to have equal rights. He was a major mover and shaker in the 1957 Civil Rights Bill.

Some of it was to get his name in the national spotlight, but it is suspected he really did care. 

This was a much more interesting book for me to read, primarily because of the part about Civil Rights intersection with the books I read about Martin Luther King by Taylor Branch earlier in the year. 

Now on to the LAST in this very LONG series! 

The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman

 

This is a Renovare Book Club read for the 2021-2022 season. I am looking forward to hearing the podcasts with the expert on John Woolman. Woolman (1720-1772) was a Quaker and early abolitionist during the Colonial Era. It is a quick read and gives a good insight into Quaker thought. Two of the women in the Renovare Book Club Small Group that I lead were raised in the Quaker tradition. So I am looking forward to the discussion. 

(I did not read Moulton's version - I listened to the Librivox recording of the Journal and found out what Major Essays he covers in his book and read them online. I am cheap.) 

 

The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life

 

For my podcast, I interviewed a man who was greatly influenced by this book. So I bought it to be better informed as I prepared the copy for his podcast. This book influenced this man to take an eight-day silent retreat, having never done a silent retreat of any length prior! WOW! It was a delightful interview. 

This is one of the lesser known books that has come out in recent years about the spiritual disciplines. I like how he gives the history and theology behind each of the practices. He adds Icons (still not sure about that for me) and the Labyrinth which I have not seen in similar books. 

The Boy, the Mole, The Fox, and the Horse

 I heard this mentioned in an interview with someone I saw (I cannot remember who), and it intrigued me. It is a lovely little book about friendship and "exploring the feelings that unite us all." I had the book sitting on my desk for a long time, and then someone in a retreat I was facilitating mentioned what an impact it has on her life. So I finally sat down and read it. Quick and sweet read. 

NASM Essentials of Corrective Exercise Training Second Edition

 As a NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT), I am required to recertify every two years through continuing education. I have always been curious about the Corrective Exercise Specialist. So I took the plunge and did it in about 19 days. It was a lot of review from my original certification, but it was good to get the refresher. I learned many new things that are already benefiting my students, and I am also benefitting! It was a lot of reading and studying, but it was open book. The only problem was that the course is all read online, and they do not send you the book. So it made it a bit more complicated when it came to the test, but I put all my notes up on the wall in front of me, and that was helpful. So, it is over, and I am now a NASM- CPT, CES, WLS, WFS. I love to learn! 

Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 2

 This book was hard to get through because, after Book 1 and II, I am convinced that Lyndon B. Johnson was a DISGUSTING human being who cheated and bought his way into Congress, cheated on his wife, bullied people. curried favor by using New Deal money to enrich people. Disgusting. 

In contrast, were people like Coke Stevenson, who was a moral and wonderful man. He WAS the person who should have been the Senator from Texas in 1948, but Johnson cheated his way into it. I wonder how many lives would have been saved in Vietnam if Coke Stevenson's challenges to that election had been accepted. 

DISGUSTING HUMAN BEING!!!! 

The Deeply Formed Life

 This was the fall book for the Renovare Book Club, and it was an excellent choice. I really enjoyed this book. I had just interviewed someone on my podcast about Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and read that book in preparation. Then I read this book within a month. Rich Villodas took over as lead pastor at the church where the author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality once pastored, and it was nice to hear his multi-cultural take on spirituality and mission. Refreshingly honest and very good! 

Charlotte Temple

Written in 1794, it was America's first best-selling novel in the earliest years of the Republic. So for that reason, it is an interesting historical document. It is a cautionary tale. It is no Madame Bovary, but it is a quick read so pretty painless to get through. It is a pretty over-the-top melodrama.

More about it here: https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/a...

 I read it for my Book Babes reading group, and I cannot imagine that they will like it. We will see. 

The Power Broker: Volume 2 & 3 of 3: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

 I finally finished this tome! Robert A. Caro is a very detailed and wordy person (see my review of The Path to Power last week), but I finished this. 

I have never been to New York, but I found myself looking up every site mentioned. It is a fascinating look into one man's vision for New York that did not always take people, and especially poor people into account. He had a vision for the automobile and highways and bridges. 

One thing that I did not like is that there was no mention of Jane Jacobs and her fight to save Greenwich Village and SoHo from the Lower Manhattan Expressway! That is what I DID know about New York and Robert Moses. I even went back to listen to the audiobook to see if maybe I accidentally hit a button that skipped that part, but I didn't. I found this article:

https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/entry/jane-jacobs-missing-chapter-robert-caro 

I have no idea why he would leave out such an important part because it was the first time the people had successfully fought him and saved their neighborhood! 

All that said, this is a story of power and about the MISUSE of public funds at the expense of the majority of the people to enrich a few. I am indignant! 

It is a long book, but I can see why it won a Pulitzer, but I also think Caro assumes motive a lot. I think he had some pretty big biases against Robert Moses, and he really trashed him in this book. There has been a resurrection of his reputation since the book was published in 1974. Time will tell. 

On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward

 Wow! I loved this memoir. She is an amazing correspondent. I had listened to her thoughts on Afghanistan during the chaotic pull-out in August, and it made me want to read this memoir. Then my husband read it and highly recommended it. 

It is so full of heart and love. Excellent in every way. 

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

 This is a very important book for people to read. I was first told about it by a person who is a counselor in a school and the rise of middle school girls who want to switch sexes, and how the prevailing winds are to let them do it without questioning. If they do a sex change, there are consequences. This woman has gotten so much flack. She is not "anti-trans," but she wants to see our society take a pause and not do irreversible damage. Much of it is political and a lot of bullying goes on. I was shocked at some of the laws that allow this without the parents' permission (especially in my state of Oregon). It is alarming. 

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power

 

This is a very LONG and DETAILED book of President Lyndon Johnson's growing up years in Texas to his life as a young congressman. 

I would love to say Johnson was a man of high moral character and integrity, but, sadly, I cannot. Are there any politicians who are not into power in the long run? Did he have any convictions about anything? He supported the New Deal until Roosevelt died, and then he didn't. He was just wanting to be president, and he would do anything to pave that path to power. One thing he did have: DETERMINATION, but to what end?

How appropriate that I would finish this book on the author's 85th birthday! 

I think Caro is fastidious and detailed about too much. His books would be much more accessible if he edited things a bit. (Do I really need to know every last detail about kerosene lamps in rural homes?) I will say that I learned a ton about Johnson and about the differences in the urban and rural areas in terms of basic necessities like electricity. It was shocking. 

This is only one of four volumes written about Johnson, and Caro has yet to write the final volume! 

. 

At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien

 

This was supposed to be a funny book, but I just didn't get half of what he was talking about. Maybe because I am not Irish? It was a CHORE to get through, and I don't know why it would be on the 1000 Books to Read Before You Die List. 

It is about a student, and he writes three stories that end up intertwining with each, and his characters rebel against him. It is supposed to be a "sophisticated example of metafiction," but I just found it to be really stupid.