The Off-Putting, The Morbidly Fascinating, and the Fun

What I'm reading right now

It's a real mixed bag this week, folks. Hoo-wee.

1.) Social Justice Fallacies, Thomas Sowell, 2023

This book just came out. I learned of it via an episode of “Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson” which I was startled to find playing - loudly - in my living room one evening. This is an interview-format production of the Hoover Institution, where esteemed economist Sowell is, at 93, still a senior fellow.

You might guess by my gymnastic wording that I did not select this video myself. And you'd be right! See, I have this weird thing where I tend to watch stuff I think I’ll like.

So I was very surprised to find myself paying attention to the interview. Social justice fallacies? Hmm! I find myself eager to understand the ways in which privileged people have wrongly believed that America provides equal opportunity to all. But it sounded smart to learn what mistakes I might be making in my thought process - or, at least, what mistakes famously conservative Sowell might see coming from the left.

“Can we get it?” I asked Dave, about four minutes into the interview.

Utterly taken aback, he replied, haltingly, “If you - if you seriously want to read a Thomas Sowell book? I - I - yes. Yes, we can.”

My “Buy Now" finger was already itchy. I placed my order and waited for the appointed day - the book hadn't even been released yet. But my enthusiasm would wane, especially after actually receiving and opening the book.

No, one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this cover is especially bleak. And though it clocks in at a slim 201 pages, with 71 of those given over to index and bibliography, the text isn't what you might call "inviting.” It's dense. It's dry. It's depressing!

There's no introduction to help ease us into our lesson. There are, so far, no witty asides to help us stay awake. Chapter One, Page One just starts right in with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and keeps going arcanely like that until, after a painful hour and a half, I was dismayed to find I was only on page eight.

But! I do want to take it all in. I truly do want to marshal my ADHD brain and make it sit still at its desk, in its little magnet-school uniform, and learn something worth knowing.

So, Social Justice Fallacies: I’ll report back.

2.) People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, Dara Horn, 2021

I just realized this one might sound a little off-putting to you. Well, to me, it was fascinating.

It was to Dave, too. Novelist Dara Horn’s first non-fiction volume was, in fact, so gripping that it came to our house as a library book, but the information and perspective within proved so unique and important that we had to buy our own copy.

In this masterwork, Horn shows us episodes in history both little-known and familiar that demonstrate how hard it seems to be for the world to advocate for living Jews - while lionizing them (for better and, often, for worse) once they've died - preferably in a tragic way, en masse.

You'll learn, for instance, about the thriving Jewish community in the frozen tundra city of Harbin, China. It lasted for about one generation before tragedy struck. Today, there's one Jew left in Harbin, and he works his keister off trying to make sure the town's Jewish legacy isn't totally lost in translation.

You'll also be introduced to the deeply impressive and uncomfortable legacy of American hero and weirdo Varian Fry. He performed an incalculable service to humanity by traveling to Vichy France to personally ensure the safe escape of thousands of top European cultural figures from the Nazi regime - perhaps 4,000 people. Fry is one of only five Americans to be recognized after the war as “Righteous Among the Nations:" Gentiles who stood in harm’s way to help evacuate at-risk Jews. Yet, by all accounts, including those of Fry's children, he seems to have done it mostly for the pleasure of … hanging out with a bunch of (incidentally Jewish) celebrities.

This essay collection makes it easy to understand why the lip service we pay in the wake of a tragedy is never enough. I had resolved to find a way to do better - and then, the Israel-Hamas war broke out.

People love dead Jews, indeed.

3.) Chickens in the Road: An Adventure in Ordinary Splendor, Suzanne McMinn, 2013

Reading this book adaptation of a blog I’d forgotten I once adored was like diving into the clear, cold water of a pool when it's so hot that your skin is hot to the touch.

This charming memoir is almost too good to be true, like a Hallmark movie that's actually based on a true story. Almost! Suzanne McMinn was a happy suburban mom, a devoted wife, and a successful writer of romance novels - until, one day, she wasn't. Her husband informed her unceremoniously that it was over. Tale as old as time, right?

Except that, instead of scrambling to keep the house and working a reluctant 25 hours a week as a dentist's receptionist or whatever, McMinn reinvented herself entirely.

She took her children, left the Texas suburb where they'd been living comfortably, and moved “back" to the last place she knew that her roving military family of origin had roots: a campus of small farms in a very remote part of northern West Virginia.

She became a farm girl.

And suddenly, she wasn't just living in historic farmhouses and growing stuff. She was making her own cheese. She was canning and making candles. Good Lord, she was acquiring livestock and using it to make her food!

As McMinn upgraded her skills, she upgraded her residences, too, moving from a remote farm on knotty land that was only reachable by driving through three running creeks (!) to, finally, the gracious and gentle Sassafras Farm. Here, investments both literal and figurative have paid off, and she not only blogs about her journey and shares her many excellent recipes - she also hosts workshops for attendees to learn a little about her life and how they, too, might find meaning in homesteading.

Wow. I feel silly admitting it, but this is inspiring, OK? And it's empowering as heck. Plus, fresh farmhouse cheddar made right there on-site? Homemade raspberry jam? Big, delicious loaves of sourdough, bursting with the feeling that this kitchen, right here, is home, and is the source of everything you need?

I'm sorry … I seem to have gotten distracted! What was I saying?

Ah, yes: now, I'm not saying I definitely want us to move to a farm in West Virginia and make our own cheese. But somehow, I'm not not saying it?

If you talk to Dave, maybe feel him out a little for me, would ya?