#VERYFAT #VERYBRAVE by Nicole Byer

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book pretty much does exactly what it claims it will do: presents a brave and frankly not-so-fat Nicole Byer in a bikini - and then another, and another. And another! And she looks great in most of them, a bit weird (and usually intentionally so!) in the rest, although my personal favorite was the picture at the very end of the book where she was laying down in a simple dress, and looked awesome. The fact that the author has the cutest face does not hurt these images one bit. I don't know how old she is, and it doesn't matter; all I can say is that whatever age she is, she looks half that age because of her face.

This book had no intention of offering advice on diet or healthy eating, and maybe it ought to have. That clearly wasn't the author's intention, but part of having a positive body image - of loving your body - is knowing that you're not only comfortable in your own skin, but that you're taking care of that skin and whatever's in it whether you're #VERYFAT or #VERYTHIN or anywhere in between. In a study of almost 6,000 Coronavirus patients, ones with poor outcomes nearly always had underlying conditions, and 41% of those fatalities were at least in part because the patient was obese. Body positivity is the only smart way to go, but that doesn't mean becoming willfully blind to health considerations.

But this book is unashamedly about bikinis, how to buy them, how to wear them, how to mix and match tops and bottoms, with a few hints and tips about getting the best fit, and handling idiots who think it's their duty to comment uninvited on others, but mostly it was a string of photos of the author sporting various items of clothing, nearly all of which were varieties of bikini (but not string bikinis!).

There were some oddball instances of confused text, most notably when I read: “...sliding her vagina down my face” but this isn't what happened. I promise you it was her vulva she slid down Nicole's face, not her vagina. It was sad that Nicole was grossed out by this, but not by the possibility of garnering an STD from this stranger with this uninvited sexual contact.

I could have done without so many four letter words, so be warned there are multiple ones in here, and I'm never comfortable with the use of the word 'bitch' which can strangely e both and endearment and an insult, so for me, that was over the top, but apart from that I think this is an amusing book. The author has a great sense of humor. It was fun, entertaining, and educational, and uplifting, and I commend it was a worthy read.

Feminist City by Leslie Kern

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Feminist City isn't an interesting sci-fi novel, but a non-fiction book about how cities are not designed with women in mind. I agree with that thesis as it happens, having read material on this subject before. This is why I requested this book. It never hurts to learn more, especially if you're interested in female issues and especially if you're a novelist who's always open to ideas for plots or at least ideas for how to make characters who are a different gender than your own seem more lifelike, realistic, motivated, and perhaps having issues to pursue!

This take on cities is a very personal view, and I have to say that the author went off on tangents that for me, didn't serve her main argument well. For example, at one point she devolved into discussing how movies don't tend to represent female relationships. I'm like what? The thing is that after rambling about this and even mentioning a couple of movies that do represent them, the author then got into a prolonged ramble about some TV shows I've never heard of that represent female relationships pretty well. I'm like: are you not undermining your own claim with this?

And what does it have to do with your thesis about cities not being female-friendly? I don't mind it when authors mention stuff tangential to their main thrust, but a digression like this seemed to be an extended reminiscence about her own favorite TV shows rather than anything that materially contributed to her argument. And lest it be forgotten, TV and movies are not reality, even when they're called 'reality shows'. In fact reality shows are the precise opposite of reality. They're as artificial as it gets.

The author lives in Canada so maybe these are Canadian TV shows or maybe they're just shows I never had an interest in. She seems to be forgetting that unless the movie topic is specifically about female friendships, the writer and director had no reason to go out of their way to tell a story about such things because the movie's story is about something else.

Despite her claim, there are in fact many movies that do have female friendship represented in them not as the main plot, but as an included element. Also there are many movies about female friendships. The author, despite writing a book herself, seems to be unaware that there's a whole genre of novels precisely about female friendships! I guess she doesn't read much fiction, but Netflix has a bunch of movies about female relationships and friendships, so I don't get this fruitless digression into fiction when she's supposed to be making a case for a real world issue.

Another thing that struck me as odd in a feminist book was her digression into the topic of the 'Flâneuse'. I'd never encountered this name before, but it's a French word that describes the kind of person who has sufficient idle time on their hands that they can perambulate the city, exploring it and people-watching. I've never been a fan of pretentious French words being introduced into the lingo, but this one is quiet ancient. The original term was Flâneur, and I while I understand that in the ancient past, a term specific to a woman was routinely coined, particularly in a language that absurdly insists that inanimate objects have gender, I don't get why this was perpetuated by a writer of a book like the one under review here. Nor do I see why a woman can't be a Flâneur and leave it at that.

To me it was disturbing to find a female author of a book, and especially a book decidedly aligning with feminism, seeking to employ a female version of the word. If we're about equality, shouldn't one word serve all genders? It's the same case in Hollywood: why actress and not actor for all? We don't call a female doctor a doctrix! We no longer use aviatrix! Why perpetuate the erroneous idea that a female needs to be singled out a special case? Now I'm digressing! I freely admit that this is a pet beef of mine, and fortunately the whole book was not like this.

For me the author was at her best when relating, anecdotal as they were, stories of contending with urban environments while also contending first with a pregnancy and then with a baby on board - that is, onboard a carrier or a stroller. This was in London where the deeply subterranean underground railway, aka 'The Tube' was effectively inaccessible to anyone with a perambulator and pretty much the same even with a stroller. The fact is that the London Underground is a resistance movement: it's antique for the most part, and resists change for a variety of reasons.

Women were largely unseen and herded, back when most of it was built, and while that's no excuse to persist with that idiocy today, it has to be said - given how old the system is - that perhaps it's harder than it might seem to upgrade it appropriately, which is why the inaccessibility problem persists. Not that I'm trying to justify it; it needs to be fixed, not just for moms, but for people who have disabilities. And fear of heights in some London stations (just kidding)! To me it seems that the real problem is that these things cost money, and the will to make those expenditures is lacking among authorities that are largely male, white, and not sporting any differently-abled status. Once that complexion is changed, the rest ought to follow. I hope.

One thing in this discussion of the London tube was when I read (of the author's experience while pregnant): "This was most obvious to me on the Tube, where I was rarely offered a seat during my rush hour commute." While I understand that pregnancy involves carrying around extra weight and fatigue along with a young life, at times the author seems like she's equating being pregnant with being an invalid! This seems as unkind as it is inaccurate. Not every woman feels disabled by her pregnancy. Some do, and clearly there's an issue here, but the wording might have been less ambiguous.

Clearly there ought to be an offer of a seat, leaving it up to the individual to accept or decline as she sees fit. But I didn't see how this was so much an issue with cities not being designed for women. I mean it's always possible to await the next train since they run so frequently during rush hour, and get in there ahead of the crowd to find a seat. To me this seemed much more of a societal issue, with people in general largely being selfish despite attempts by the news media to show how kind we are. If we were truly that kind, it would hardly be a news item now, would it?!

I went into this book thinking it would answer a question that's asked in the book description. I know authors typically don't write these descriptions any more than they design the covers, but it was a question I would have liked to have had answered. The question was "What would a metropolis for working women look like?" and the problem seemed to be that this book isn't an organized journey through the issues, laying out the problems and supplying answers, or at least offering suggestions toward answers. This book is more like a collection of essays and it's a bit repetitive and lacking in substance. It's more like an impressionist painting where I'd have preferred - on this occasion - a photograph, and for me it really didn't get where it ought to have been trying to go - where it suggested it would go.

The problems with cities were highlighted here and there such as for example, the aforesaid lack of elevators on London's underground system, and the sparsity in the design of public toilets (where these can be found and even if they are in good condition). Some of the issues were less about the design of cities and more about societal issues, such as the idea of "A place where women can walk without harassment." No design of any city is going to prevent this as long as men think women are property, possessions, playthings, or people who are to be treated like juveniles. Even the most perfectly designed city will be nightmarish if it's populated by a significant assortment of jerks and dicks.

One of the ongoing problems with cities and one which was not addressed here is that cities are not communities no matter how well they are designed. No matter how much, say, New Yorkers (or alternatively the media) like to pretend their city is a community, it's in actual fact a large, impersonal city and most people are out for themselves, attending to their own plans and business, and with little time to consider others. This is normal in cities.

That's not to say it's right or that it can't be better, but it is the status quo. Something that would improve the situation would be to design cities not as cities but as conglomerations of small communities, wherein the community is more like a village while still being part go the whole, but even Cuomo's fine words about looking toward an improved future, post-covid 19 (assuming there ever is a post-covid 19) are going to lead nowhere without serious infrastructure changes and attitude modifications. Some systems can be improved, but unless you knock down the whole city and redesign it from the ground up, it will never be ideal.

That doesn't mean there's no room for improvements or that we cannot make cities better even as they stand, but the problem is that there are many interests in the city, and cities have grown the way they have because of those interests, most of which are about making money, not about making sense. None of this was addressed in this book, which in the end was much more a collection of personal anecdotes and ideas about problems than it was about how to get there from here.

It was a bit rambling and a bit repetitive, and overall, I was disappointed in it. Thus I'm unable to commend this as a worthy read because it doesn't really deliver on what it promises. It takes one or two interesting steps in that direction, but it's a long journey and this doesn't cover anywhere near enough of the distance there to make for a satisfying read.

I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas by Lewis Black

Rating: WARTY!

This was a comedian's take on Christmas and it was therefore supposed to be funny, but it was entirely the opposite: tedious, obvious, and not remotely funny. I skipped the middle completely and listened to a bit on the end while I was on the way back to the library to drop it off, and the guy seems to have majored in name-dropping in comedy school, because he was talking about a USO tour and he made no attempt at humor. All he did was drop names, so I dropped him - back into the library return box.

I love my library, but it recently lost yet another audiobook I dropped off in the box. As with the previous three occasions, I was the one who found it - for the fourth time on the library shelf, evidently put back there without being checked back in. Now I wish it had been this one they lost. I would not have gone looking for it!

Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex

Title: Tales from the Secret Annex
Author: Anne Frank
Publisher: Random House Audio Publishing Group
Rating: WORTHY!

Read by Kathe Mazur

This review is one of a brace of forays into World War fiction which I undertook this month. The other is A Very Long Engagement which I have to say right now sucked. Anne Frank can write. Kathe Mazur did a decent job of reading this, but Anne Frank wasn't an American. I think it would have been more respectful to have had someone who actually sounded a bit like Anne Frank to actually read her words.

I never read Anne Frank's diary, because I know the ending. I felt a bit differently about this volume. The original title of it is, in Dutch, Verhaaltjes, en gebeurtenissen uit het Achterhuis beschreven door Anne Frank which translates, literally, to Bedtime stories, and events from the Rear Case described by Anne Frank.. Why it was changed, I do not know, but that's the USA for you. No one knows better than we do, obviously....

Annelies Marie Frank was a young German girl of Jewish ancestry who was born on 12 June, 1929 in Frankfurt. When the Nazi's came to power, her father Otto moved the family to Amsterdam. It wasn't far enough. Otto Frank had started a business, and in preparation for the Nazis invading the Netherlands, he arranged for his business to be held under a non-Jewish friend's name.

When the Nazis did arrive, he and his family, with a few other people: the Van Pels family and a dentist named Pfeffer, went into hiding in a hidden part of the factory, the entrance to which was concealed behind a bookcase. I have no idea if this is from whence the 'Rear Case' of her title is derived, nor do I know why people chose to change her own title. That, to me, is disrespectful.

For her thirteenth birthday in 1942, Anne was given a distinctive checkered autograph book she had expressed a liking for in a store. She chose to use this as a diary in which she recorded some of her innermost thoughts and observations. In addition to relating tales of school life, she recorded her observations on her family and family life as well as the others with whom she was so effectively incarcerated. Only a month after she began to write, she and her family were forced into hiding after her sister Margot was ordered to report to a labor camp.

This was where she kept her diary and where she also started writing essays about things which had caught her lively imagination. She continued writing until August 1st 1944. Just three days later, some low-life scumbag betrayed her family, and all of them were imprisoned by the German police.

The family was quickly split up, with Otto being separated from the females. After some considerable time enduring the privations of Nazi imprisonment, her mother, Edith, was informed that she and her daughter Margot were to be sent to a labor camp. Anne was not in a fit medical condition to go, having a severe skin condition by then, but Edith refused to leave her, so all three stayed behind. Edith eventually starved to death having passed on all her food to her daughters. In March 1944, just a month or so before the camp was to be liberated by advancing allied forces, first Margot and then very quickly after, Anne, died from starvation and illness, probably typhus - another of some 17,000 innocent people who fell victim to it in the camp at that time.

Anne's diary and short stories, and the first five chapters of a novel she had begun, were all that is left to us of a young, smart, talented, strong, and inventive woman who was opinionated, feisty, and a really talented writer. Her stories were full of observations, insights, humor, and candor and would have shamed many a modern female young-adult writer. Nazism robbed the world of this talent as it robbed us of six million other people, all of whom had a contribution to make.

Annelies Frank's story isn't the only one, but it is one of the very few we have come down to us in such a very personal and heart-rending manner. There were literally millions of people whom the Nazis slaughtered wholesale, men, women, and children. Indeed, Anne herself only escaped the gas chamber because she had turned fifteen just two months before her capture. The gut-wrenchingly sad thing is that the gas chamber might have been merciful compared with what she had to endure afterwards: being ripped from her father, then from her starving mother, then from her only sister, before finally, she found a release from her pain and misery in death, just a three months or so shy of her sixteenth birthday.

List of Contents of Bedtime stories, and events from the Rear Case described by Anne Frank

• Was There a Break-In?
• The Dentist
• Sausage Day
• The Flea
• Do You Remember?
• The Best little Table
• Anne in Theory
• The Battle of the Potatoes
• Evenings and Nights in the Annex
• Lunch Break
• The Annex Eight at the Dinner Table
• Wenn die Uhr Halb Neune schlägt dreißig (If the Clock Strikes Nine Thirty)
• Villains!
• A Daily Chore in Our Little Community: Peeling Potatoes
• Freedom in the Annex
• Kaatje
• The Janitor's Family
• My First Day at the Lyceum
• A Biology Class
• A Math Class
• Eva's Dream
• Roomers or Renters
• Paula's Flight
• Delusions of Stardom
• Katrien
• Sundays
• The Flower Girl
• My First Interview
• The Den of Iniquity
• The Guardian Angel
• Happiness
• Fear
• Give!
• The Wise Old Gnome
• Blurry the Explorer
• The Fairy
• Riek
• Jo
• Why?
• Who is Interesting?
• Cady's Life

Each of these is an essay on life in the rear case, or it's a short story, and these are found in increasing numbers in the latter half of the book. They're smart, inventive, engaging, and very well written. Anne began writing a novel during her time in the rear case, titled Cady's Life which was never to be finished.

At some point I will buy the complete works of Anne Frank, and I will back-fill the above list with some brief details for each entry. Until then, I urge you to read this and remember Anne Frank and six million others like her.