Thursday, May 30, 2019

Book Beginning: What a Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING



The courtroom holds a palpable edge, even before the judge takes the bench and trial begins.

What a Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath by Karen Stefano. Karen Stefano's new memoir is the riveting story of her own attack as a 19-year-old college student and her latent PTSD over 30 years later.

As a lawyer who represents sexual abuse and assault survivors, I am fascinated by her story because she went on to become a criminal defense attorney, often defending men accused of crimes as horrible as the one committed against her.



Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.


MY FRIDAY 56

I speak the words that mark my own self-betrayal. "I'm fine," I say.


Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Author Interview: Mitchell L. Stevens



My policy of reading books my friends write means that every few years I read a book about education policy by my high school buddy, Mitchell Stevens,who is now a professor at Stanford University. I read and learn about subjects I never thought about before. His book about college admissions was fascinating. And his first book, one about homeschooling, was also really interesting.

Mitchell’s latest book, Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era, looks at how US universities face the need for a global perspective in the study of economics, political science, and sociology.


Mitchell recently talked with Rose City Reader about his new book and the whole idea of "area studies" for those of us unfamiliar with the term.

Can you explain, for non-academics, what your book Seeing the World is about?

It’s an investigation of how universities organize research and teaching about the world beyond US borders. Universities have a big management problem: their ambition is to shepherd the “universe” of knowledge but of course there is no one or best way to do that. So they are constantly tinkering with how to carve up the world into chunks of curriculum and scholarship. What do you do with Africa? Do have a department of Africa? A program on African studies? Do you carve up the study of Africa by topic (history, economics)? Or region? Pre-colonial and postcolonial? Again, there’s no right way to do this, but intellectual styles, priorities and politics change over time. So too do the patrons of universities. Patrons are a big, influential deal.

What does “area studies” mean?

Speaking of patronage, area studies are a product of the Cold War, when many agencies of the US federal government as well as major philanthropies were eager to develop what the government called “strategically useful” knowledge about regions of the world that were especially important for US geopolitical interest: the USSR and Eastern Europe; China; Latin America; Africa. With this financial support universities created programs in “area” studies, each focused on a different region of the world. Many of these programs are still funded through Title VI of the Higher Education Act – the omnibus funding legislation of the US Congress.

Who is the audience for your book? Who do you hope will read it?

Our first intended readers are academics who do area studies and the academic administrators who manage these programs. Virtually every university of ambition is trying to be “global” – but how to do that? And how is it to be done in light of this Cold War legacy that carved the world up geographically? Do those regions still make intellectual sense? If not, what should replace them?

But we also wrote the book to be accessible to anyone interested in higher education. The people we spoke with – 73 seasoned academics – are very articulate and candid. We quote them at length throughout the book’s modest length.

What will readers learn from your book?

They will learn about just how competitive and status-conscious the US academic world is. And how deeply invested academics are in their own scholarship and prestige. And how articulate and often funny academics can be. And how different social scientists (economics, political science, sociology) are from humanists like historians and literary scholars.

What is your professional background? How did it lead to writing a book on global perspectives in university education?

I’m a sociologist. I study the organization of universities and how their leaders get what they need – money, authority – from governments and how they compete with one another for students, faculty, and prestige. It began with my prior book, Creating a Class (Harvard, 2007), which is about selective admissions. Universities are absolutely fascinating to me. They reward and exhaust whatever critical attention you give them.

Please tell us a little about your co-authors. How did the three of you come to collaborate on this project?

One of those great serendipities. Cynthia Miller-Idriss studies German nationalism; we had offices next door to each other when we were both at New York University. She got tapped by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to develop this project with Seteney Shami, who is an anthropologist of the Caucasus and overseas the Asia portfolio for SSRC. That organization was instrumental in inventing area studies in the 1960s. Cynthia and Seteney were kind enough to let me join the project in light of my knowledge of US higher education. And here we are.

What did you learn from writing your book – either about the subject of the book or the writing process – that most surprised you?

I learned that how academics carve up problems really, really matters for the kind of knowledge you get. For example, if you put all of the people who study China via Mandarin language and culture in a different academic unit from the people who study China via statistics, you’re going to get very segregated knowledge and risk reciprocal incomprehension among the different kinds of experts. Unfortunate and inefficient, but universities do it all the time.

What do you like to read? What books are on your nightstand right now?

I’m reading Anthony Jack’s ethnography of low-income kids at elite schools, The Privileged Poor (Harvard, 2019). Also Buying Gay (Columbia, 2019), a fascinating social history of the physique mail-order industry in the 1950s and 60s and its remarkably germinal place in the history of lesbian/gay rights, by my friend David Johnson. Also Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson (Harper/Collins 2019)

What’s next? What are you working on now?

I’m trying to figure out how and why the US federal and state governments built the largest and arguably most productive higher education system the world has ever seen in the brief period between 1945 and 1980. It’s a much harder puzzle to work out than I had imagined – Seeing the World got it started.


THANKS MITCHELL!

SEEING THE WORLD IS AVAILABLE ONLINE, OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOKSELLER TO ORDER IT.


Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Teaser Tuesday: Mortality with Pronoun Shifts: Poems



The Muddy Fork of the Sandy River
is cloudy green-brown with fine silt
a glacier scraped off the mountain.
Where the log bridge washed out
and the trail ends in water,
you cannot tell how deep it goes
or where the footing lies if there is footing.

-- from "Crossing the Muddy" in Mortality with Pronoun Shifts: Poems by Don Colburn, which won the 2018 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Book Beginning: Beyond the Ripples by Dede Montgomery

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING



The bottle was partially hidden, stuck in a snag of some fallen cottonwood branches.

-- Beyond the Ripples by Dede Montgomery. Various characters are brought together when one finds a note in a bottle in the Columbia River. Beyond the Ripples is a story of small town secrets, family dramas, and life choices that pulls you along from the first page.




Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.


MY FRIDAY 56

She was glad she needn't worry about Tony dropping in. He was one to run when the going got tough.


Thursday, May 16, 2019

Book Beginning: Things That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING



"What's on your mind back there?" Dad asks, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

Things That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava. Ahava won the EU Prize for Literature for this book about three people whose lives are changed forever by random events – a block of ice falling out of the sky, winning the lottery, and lightning.

It looks great and it will count as a Finnish book for the European Reading Challenge. I don’t think I’ve read a Finnish book before.



Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.


MY FRIDAY 56

When Dad howls, his voice comes from the pit of his stomach. Dad's back bends and he starts shaking in time with his crying.




Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Teaser Tuesday: Yeshiva Girl by Rachel Mankowitz.



Before the arraignment, before I even knew for sure that my father would be arrested, I'd written to Jake about how my father became religious to hide his real self. And Jake wrote back that his parents "probably became religious to hide, or change, who I really am too."
-- Yeshiva Girl by Rachel Mankowitz. Narrator Izzy is a teen age girl on Long Island who's life turns an unexpected corner when her father is arrested for sexual assault of one of his student -- charges Izzy believes are true.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Mailbox Monday: Memoir and Poetry

A memoir and a book of poetry came my way last week. What about you?



What a Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath by Karen Stefano. Karen Stefano's story of recovering from a violent sexual assault in college and the PTSD she experienced even decades later has a particularly interesting twist -- she went on to become a criminal defense attorney who defended those accused of crimes as horrible as the one committed against her.



Phoenix: Transformation Poems by Jessica Goody. This new book of poetry is on tour now with Poetic Book Tours. Check back here for a review on June 30.




Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Book Beginning: The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING



This was the first time she had broken Papa's rules. Romy's throat tightened as she fingered the refugee pass in her jacket pocket and stepped closer to the ghetto's checkpoint.

The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning. This new book goes back and forth between Shanghai before WWII, and the friendship between a local Chinese girl and a Jewish refugee, and 2016 Australia and Shanghai, when a granddaughter returns to dig up family secrets.




Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.


MY FRIDAY 56

When the lawyer had left, Alexandra weaved among the crowd carrying plates of food. The living room was filled with synagogue members, former colleagues, and friends from the local Austrian and Polish clubs, some of whom had started to wander out through the French doors into the garden.


Monday, May 6, 2019

Mailbox Monday: Beyond the Ripples and Howard Jacobson

Two new books came my way last week. What books came into your house?



Beyond the Ripples by Dede Montgomery. Described as "a multigenerational mystery," this new novel brings together a cast of small town characters connected by a note found in a bottle in the Columbia river. It sounds like a Pacific Northwest version of a Maeve Binchy book and I can't wait to read it!



Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It by Howard Jacobson. I've enjoyed a couple of Jacobson's novels, so grabbed this collection of his newspaper columns on a whim.




Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Book Beginning: Blackthorn by Judy Nedry

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING


Hot, dry, dusty, and wonderful! It was everything Sage Blackthorn had hoped the Pendleton Round-Up would be. 

-- Blackthorn by Judy Nedry. That's a good way to start a book -- everyone loves the Round-Up. Let 'er buck!

This new "gothic thriller" is set in a crumbling old resort in the Pacific Northwest. What a page turner!





Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.


MY FRIDAY 56

She forced herself to focus and brought herself back into the room. "Granny, are you OK?"


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