Books that make me feel like an old lady
Jun. 21st, 2024 03:28 pmThe politics book club decided to read Rebecca Solnit’s The Mother of All Questions, one of three books of Solnit’s essays that’s been sitting on my shelf since early in the Trump administration.
This book is mostly essays published around 2015 or so, and I’m pretty sure I’d read a bunch of them when they were first published. They’re still fairly solid essays, but for most of the book the overwhelming impression I had was that of experiencing A Blast From the Past. 2015 was almost ten years ago! Things are different now! The progress we thought we were making then has not always gone in the directions we thought they would! It was really quite an experience, revisiting all those news events.
Overall the essays were quite good but as a single book it’s a bit repetitive and uneven. I think it’ll engender some fruitful discussion but it might also engender a lot of “Oh my god, remember…?” type of commentary and I might be the one making it. I’ll try to prepare myself to do better than that.
This book is mostly essays published around 2015 or so, and I’m pretty sure I’d read a bunch of them when they were first published. They’re still fairly solid essays, but for most of the book the overwhelming impression I had was that of experiencing A Blast From the Past. 2015 was almost ten years ago! Things are different now! The progress we thought we were making then has not always gone in the directions we thought they would! It was really quite an experience, revisiting all those news events.
Overall the essays were quite good but as a single book it’s a bit repetitive and uneven. I think it’ll engender some fruitful discussion but it might also engender a lot of “Oh my god, remember…?” type of commentary and I might be the one making it. I’ll try to prepare myself to do better than that.