Nudge

Last month, Washington State implemented the Plastic Bag Ban which prohibits single-use bags and charges a fee for bags if you fail to bring your own. During the pandemic, when bringing your own bag into the store was prohibited, I got lazy. But the prospect of paying 8 cents per bag was enough of an incentive for me to start bringing my own bags into stores again. Am I just cheap or is this a case for behavioral economics? I started with this list to try and find some answers.  

I ended up with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein mainly because my library app had it available. It turned out to be a good pick.

As with any book of this genre, I’m most taken with the real-world examples. I was fascinated by the choice architects chapter which focuses on how design meshes or messes with our human tendencies in decision making. Ever pull on a door that opens out? Ever turn on the wrong burner on your stove? I’m also amazed at how simple changes in things like metro maps or boarding passes can make big differences in efficiency and outcome. The authors also bring up our tendency to make big decisions through elimination by aspects. I recently saw this at play when I, I mean, my daughter was curating her college list.

Ultimately, I’m not sure how legislators decided on 8 cents as a tipping point. But for me, it was the nudge I needed. 

Vampires Suck

When the Twilight books first came out, my sisters were in their early teens. I remember they were so excited, they made t-shirts for the book release party at our local Barnes and Noble. One of them said something like “Bite me, Edward.”

Vampire stories have come a long way since 2005, as evidenced by the anthology Vampires Never Get Old by Natalie C. Parker and Zoraida Córdova. The stories in this collection feature a diverse cast of characters, united in their desperation to seek the possibility of escape through eternal death. At turns creepy and funny, this is one to enjoy not only in October, but anytime you need something to make your heart beat a little faster.

"Even his griefs are a joy"

I usually try to buy used books, but when I found out Amor Towles had a new book coming out, not only did I buy it in hardback, I pre-ordered it so long ago that its arrival was like an early Christmas present. Last Sunday morning, I finally found time to start on its 592 pages at breakfast. By bedtime, I was relying on a booklight to finish the last few chapters.

The Lincoln Highway, as you might suspect, is a road trip tale. After the singular setting of his last novel A Gentleman in Moscow, Towle’s scope of story (and cast of narrators) can at first be a bit disorienting. Emmett has arrived home after his sentence at a juvenile work farm to find out his family’s farm has been foreclosed upon. So he and his younger brother decide to make a new start in California. 

Before they can head west, however, what was supposed to be a brief detour turns into a destination. For in the best adventure stories, it’s the dragons to be slayed, not the princess to be saved, that keeps the reader hooked. 

Literary Executioners

Occasionally I think back to an essay prompt our teacher gave us in high school about measuring time. Some people might reference an event by who was president or pope, others might mark its relation as occurring before or after a traumatic experience (pre-COVID, anyone?). For me, I’ve always thought about time, both as a student and teacher, and even now as a parent, as a school year. September brings beginnings; May conveys closure.

I was pleased then, by the structure of Maggie Pouncey’s novel Perfect Reader which begins, as things should, in the fall. Flora Dempsey’s life in the city comes to a halt when her father dies, leaving her the executor. She returns to her childhood home of Darwin, where her father was president of the local college as well as a renowned literary critic. Just before his death, he’d bequeathed her a folder of his poems, which she hasn’t had the courage to read. As she tries to get his affairs in order, she can’t help but remember her childhood, and the move that prompted her parents’ divorce.

“On the day they moved to Darwin, Flora’s mother went shopping. She bought a rough-wooled cardigan and a white bumpy bedspread. She bought them, not liking them, because it’s easier to focus on disliking small, specific things than your life in general.”

Pouncey not only captures the spirit of each season in this small college town, but the various ways people cope with grief. Over the course of the book, Flora seems unmoored by the task ahead of her. But bolstered by renewed friendships, mornings spent reading poetry, and walking her father’s dog in the commons, she begins to see how life might just recommence.

we know where the boys live

When #metoo appeared on the scene, my daughter confided in me that she is always conscious of her surroundings, planning her escape route, how loud she would need to scream. Although I’m glad she can articulate that awareness, I’m devastated that her fears seem grounded in something much more concrete than the nebulous stranger offering candy from a van we were warned about when I was a kid. 

Revisiting that time in Vendela Vida’s new novel We Run the Tides, I realized navigating a teen girl’s friendship might have been more harrowing than our fears of kidnapping. Eulabee and her best friend Maria Fabiola attend an all-girls’ school in the Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Fransisco. They watch The Breakfast Club, wear Laura Ashley, play Centipede, and scale the cliffs of their local beach. When the girls disagree on an incident involving a man in a white car, Eulabee finds herself on the outside of her clique. When Maria goes missing, reports of her kidnapping rock the enclave. But Eulabee suspects the whole thing is a hoax and goads the police officers interviewing her:

“Have they ever made you feel uncomfortable?”

“Everyone makes me feel uncomfortable,” I say. “I feel uncomfortable right now.”

From adults who take advantage to awkward solutions to unwanted body hair, We Run the Tides captures the discomfort, and yes, even trauma, of being a teenager.

In the final chapter, Eulabee, now almost fifty, randomly encounters Maria at a seaside resort. She reminds us that we all still carry that thirteen-year-old inside. Along with her insecurities, fabrications, and longing to grow up.

Bookmobiles

The other day I came across a notice that our local library has an outreach service to deliver books to the homebound. This reminded me of a previous post from 2018 about other librarians going to great lengths to ensure their neighbors have books to read. 

Way back in September, this story caught my ear. It was about a group of librarians who ventured into the mountains of Kentucky to deliver books to families on horseback during the 1930s.  

Wanting to read more, I went to my local library (by car) and found three informative picture books, not only about those librarians in Kentucky, but about people all over the world dedicated to delivering books to those without easy access to a library.

My Librarian is a Camel: How Books are Brought to Children Around the World by Margriet Ruurs

From Australia to Zimbabwe, this 2005 book pairs photographs and maps with descriptions of books being delivered by boat, mail, bicycle, and elephant to remote areas.

That Book Woman by Heather Henson, pictures by David Small

Told from the perspective of an Appalachian teenager, this book shows how his attitude changes from cynical bemusement to gratitude for the passel of books the book lady brings.  

Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown, illustrations by John Parra

Also based on a true story, this book magically captures one little girl’s excitement when she sees two burros carrying “so many cuentos!” to her isolated village.

A Push

For the life of me I can’t remember any cutesy names for classes we took in high school. English in college was Lit Trad and the science classes for non-science majors were called names like Baby Bio. So I think it’s quite charming when my junior refers to her AP US History class as “Apush.”

Of course, junior year is a push. A push to start thinking about college. So when I’m not perusing college websites and helicoptering my daughter to start coming up with “the list,” I’ve been reading books about the admissions process, both fictional and real.  

Admission by Julie Buxbaum

Chloe is a senior, excited about her admission to her dream school. Sure, she did miraculously better on the SAT than she would have thought. Yeah, her essay was kind of meh. And maybe she shouldn’t have used that picture where she was really tan. When the FBI arrives one morning, she realizes all wasn’t on the up and up. Her mom, a B-list celebrity, may be headed to jail, and now Chloe’s a pariah on social media and at school. The question driving the action - Was Chloe complicit?

Blind Sight by Meg Howrey

Luke spends the summer in California getting to know his biological father. When he’s not running or going to celebrity parties, (yes, his dad is also a Hollywood actor) he’s crafting the perfect college essay.

The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore

Angela, a high school senior, wants nothing more than to be accepted to her dad’s alma mater, Harvard. Her mother Nora loves the adrenaline rush of her high-end real estate job, but doesn’t have enough hours in the day to attend to the stress of her oldest, the orthodontia of her middle, and the reading problems of her youngest. But slowly the secrets the parents have been keeping are revealed and the perfect life is no longer sustainable – if it ever was.

Unacceptable by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz

If the plot of Admission (see above) seems familiar, it’s because it comes straight from the true college admissions scandal promulgated by Rick Singer. Korn and Levitz explain how the parents, coaches, and teens themselves all play a role in exploiting the system. Following how the individual strands get woven together is almost as fascinating as watching how they unravel.