White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo has come up a few times at work lately, so I decided to check it out to see what it's all about.

Diangelo is a white woman who is an academic and lecturer on topics of racial and social justice.  She wrote White Fragility to show white people the defensive mechanisms they use to perpetuate racism.  White people (particularly in North America) are born into a racist society but are not taught how to engage in discussions of race.  So when they are challenged, they use certain defense mechanisms to effectively shut down the conversation and conserve the status quo.  In her time as a lecturer and consultant (Diangelo has given many workshops on white racism), she has seen the same behaviours again and again.  White Fragility serves to examine those behaviours, showing them to white people who may be completely unaware of them and their impacts, so everyone (white people and people of colour) can start having the difficult conversations that need to happen in order to create a more just society for all.

I admit, I was a little skeptical when I first took White Fragility out. But almost immediately I found it very interesting and informative.  White Fragility does specifically deal with people in America, so while her points are still pertinent to us here in Canada, I personally would have been more interested in seeing more illustrations of how things function here too (and not just specifically looking at the United States).  I was also a bit annoyed that through most of the book, Diangelo used examples from the workshops she has run because I would have liked to read a little more about her own personal struggles with addressing racism, too.  So I was happy to see that she turned more to herself in the final chapter.

All in all though, I think that this is a very important book that white people (particularly those living in North America) should read and consider (although it is by no means perfect, as I think this review on Goodreads by Pococurante does a good job pointing out).

Beat the Bank

My mom recommended that I give Larry Bates' Beat the Bank a read after she heard about it on Twitter.  I had it on hold at the library, but the book was super overdue so I thought it wasn't coming back and bought it on my Kindle.  The book did end up showing up, but I just sent it to the next person who had it on hold and read the version I bought on my Kindle.

Beat the Bank is very similar to a lot of the other books I've read on personal finance.  Bates recommends investing in low-cost index ETF's rather than the much higher cost mutual funds that Canadian banks offer.  The majority of the book was dedicated to showing just how much money you lose out to what he terms "Old Bay Street" (through the fees they charge that many investors don't really understand).  For that reason it's a very informative book.  But because I've already read several other books on personal finance, nothing that he said was really new to me.

That being said, I still enjoyed reading it.  I've found personal finance books to be rather interesting to read. In the case of Beat the Bank, because it's so modern, I enjoyed reading about his breakdown of "New Bay Street" - the robo investors and other tools that have popped up with much lower fees than traditional banks.  I also really liked that he walks you through the process of buying stocks and bonds; I don't remember any of the other books I've read actually doing that.  So Beat the Bank really is a great book for beginner investors. :)

(I'd also like to note that I spoke with someone else at the library who read Beat the Bank, and they really enjoyed it.  They said that for a book on financial planning and personal finance, it isn't boring at all, so I definitely think Beat the Bank is a great place to start for beginners and people who think financial books are boring!)

Oh, and I definitely liked Bates' brief discussion on financial plans.  It isn't a long discussion, but he talks about the importance of having some sort of target that you're aiming for.  Life changes and your target may change along with it, but sitting down and coming up with something that you're working towards is always a good plan.

So that was Beat the Bank.  I'm glad I read it, because even though I'm familiar with a lot of the things he mentions, I still learned some new things. :)  I think the next financial book I'm going to read is going to be A Random Walk Down Wall Street (that was recommended to me I think in one of the other books I read), but it's going to be a bit before I get to it!

Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway

A friend of mine was giving away free books and I took them because I really like books.  The free books ended up being self-help books, and I figured that after taking them I should probably read them.  So I started with Susan Jeffers' Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway.

The premise of the book is that everyone feels fear when trying new things.  But successful people don't let that fear stop them - they feel the fear but do whatever it is anyway, learning and growing from the experiences. 

The first few chapters were great, following along with this premise.  The later ones started getting a bit harder to follow though, as the book moved away from talking about fear and more towards talking about your higher self.  I had a hard time getting through the book as a result (I almost didn't finish it just because I was really losing interest in it).  It was also a bit difficult to rate on Goodreads - originally I would have rated it higher than the rating I ended up deciding on.  It's too bad because the first few chapters were rather interesting.

I did take a few notes though from the book, so overall I don't regret reading it. 

Getting Pumped! An Insulin Pump Guide for Active Individuals with Type 1 Diabetes

I've had Michael Riddell's Getting Pumped! An Insulin Pump Guide for Active Individuals with Type 1 Diabetes for probably around a year or so.  It's one of those books that I really wanted to read (and needed to read), but I just kept finding excuses not to.  But after a rather difficult week where I haven't been able to exercise pretty much at all due to low glucose levels (and with the long weekend coming where I want to exercise a lot), I thought that now was the perfect time to finally read Getting Pumped! (and hopefully glean some tips to help me survive the weekend).

At 96 pages, Getting Pumped is a very quick read; it's also written in very plain language, which adds to the ease (although there are some concepts that took me a second read-through to understand).  It starts out by explaining how diabetes affects the body, then goes on to show some strategies you can use while on an insulin pump (and preferably with a continuous glucose monitor) to make it through aerobic and anaerobic exercises.  It's also got profiles of nine athletic individuals of various ages living with diabetes, and some very interesting notes on some lesser-known diabetes champions.  Riddell has Type 1 diabetes himself, so he adds some sidebars with his own thoughts from living an active life with diabetes.

I was a little bit confused as to who the audience for the book is (beyond the obvious of a person with Type 1 diabetes who has an insulin pump).  There were some sections of the book that seemed written for parents of children with Type 1 diabetes, and others where it seemed to be aimed more at teens (the chart showing a starting point for ex-carbs only went up to people who are 60kg, so that seemed aimed more at teens, too).  But one of the profiles featured a sixty year old man with Type 1 diabetes, so I'm not entirely sure.

I also noticed that when Riddell was talking about running a temporary basal (the background insulin) for exercise, he didn't actually say when to stop it.  But he's included an email address at the beginning of the book, so I'm going to message him and see what he says.

Other than those rather minor things, I think that Getting Pumped! is a fantastic resource for people on an insulin pump who want to live a more active life.

Editing Made Easy

I woke up early this morning and couldn't sleep.  So after tossing and turning for awhile, I decided to grab a book and start reading.  The book I chose was Editing Made Easy by Bruce Kaplan; I picked it up from the library because I wanted to brush up on editing.  Editing Made Easy looked like such a short, easy to read book that I thought it was a great place to start.  And it turned out that in this case, looks didn't lie: I finished reading it after only a couple of hours of reading (and taking notes).

Kaplan covers the basics of copy editing.  His goal is to make your writing, whether it be newspaper, a nonfiction book, a blog post, fiction, or whatever else you're writing, effective and simple.  He gives examples of common writing problems and shows how to fix them.  Some of the chapters are basically just lists of words, so those ones weren't fun to read.  But otherwise this is a great resource that you can read cover to cover to learn more about editing!

Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy

I bought Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy many years ago, whne I was in school. I wanted short stories to give me a break from reading psychology text books. Life didn't exactly turn out how I'd planned, so Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy (and most of the other anthologies I bought at that time) remain on my bookshelves (and on The List). While looking at my books, trying to decide what to read after Empire of Sand, I thought I'd give this a whirl.

The premise behind Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy is fun: this is supposed to be an anthology of stories dedicated to the bad girls of fairy tales and mythology, because "bad girls have more fun" and they "have their real world competition beaten, hands down, both for outrageous behavior and for sheer, unmitigated gall" (those quotes come from the introduction by editor Denise Little). Unfortunately the vast majority of the stories in this volume didn't live up to Little's hype. 

It started with "Shall We Dance" by CS Friedman, which was an odd little tale about a bewitching mystety woman who preys on alpha males, making them into shadows of themselves before abandoning them for the next alpha. This one was odd because the mystery woman spoke no words (the story was narrated by a guy who saw her destroy his friend), but it did have a bad girl. Then we had "Bitter Crowns: a Tale of Crownland," which was the first story that left me wondering why it was in this book. The story is about a female lawgiver who travels around and dispenses justice (rather like a Herald of Valdemar); she encounters a serpent from her past who traps women in trees so they can create blood fruit for it. While interesting, there were no hags, no sirens, and no bad girls. This happened again and again, with tales that either had no bad girls, or bad girls who were really good girls doing bad things. Of the 20 stories in this book, only about 5 of them had an actual bad girl doing bad things. The winner on that score waw probably "Black Annie" by Jean Rabe, a brutal tale of a hag who slaughters a village because they killed a cat in an attempt to lure her out. 

The stories I enjoyed were "The Light of Ra" by Phaedra M. Weldon, which was about Isis, Set, and Osiris, "Mother of Monsters" by Greg Beatty, which was said to be one of the really good stories of this volume by other reviewers, "Lilith" by Peter Orullian, another one listed as really good, and "Heart of Stone" by Scott William Carter, which tells of how Medusa learned to love. 

I know that anthologies are really hit and miss, but I found it to be a real slog to get to the better stories in this volume. I almost didn't finish reading Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy because it was such a slog. But I made it through, and now I can finally cross it off The List for good).

Empire of Sand

I saw Tasha Suri's Empire of Sand at work the other day.  It sounded really interesting, so I decided to give it a read. 

Empire of Sand is the story of Mehr.  She is the illegitimate daughter of an Ambhan Governor and an Amrithi woman.  Her mother was exiled when Mehr was younger and her father married another woman who disliked Mehr almost immediately because she visibly looks Amrithi.  The Amrithi are outcasts, considered to be barbarians by the Ambhan, I think mainly because their culture is so different: the Amrithi are nomads who dwell in the desert and are descended from the daiva.

Mehr lives mainly in solitude, taking comfort only in the times when she is permitted to visit her younger sister, Arwa.  Arwa doesn't visibly look Amrithi, so their stepmother has taken it upon herself to raise Arwa in ignorance of her Amrithi heritage (which Mehr insists on practicing - her father, out of guilt, allows her to continue her practice).  So Mehr spends much of her time dancing the Amrithi rites her mother and later her friend Lalita taught her; the rites bring her joy.

A dreamfire storm is approaching Mehr's home soon (dreamfire is the manifestation of the Gods' dreams - the Gods are slumbering under the desert).  Her teacher promises that they will dance one of the rites together; Mehr is excited because it is the first time she as ever been able to.  But when her teacher fails to appear, Mehr leaves the house to look for her.  When the storm surrounds her, she pleads with it to lead her to Lalita; she finds only Lalita's friend and guardian Usha dying instead. Once the storm passes, Mehr is found by her father's guards, but disgraced because she is wearing no veil.  Her father tells her her actions will have consequences, and so she will be forced to marry.  While Mehr has never wanted to marry, especially someone from another province because she does not want to lose her Amrithi heritage, she at least will be given the choice of who to marry: this choice is the only one permitted to Ambhan women - the choice of whose burdens to share; it is a choice that the Ambhan take very seriously and is respected by all.  And while Mehr is part Amrithi, she is also part Ambhan, and so this is a choice she will have to make for herself.

Unfortunately Mehr's actions during the storm draw the attention of the Maha, the spiritual leader of the Ambham Empire (and the first Emperor who has been alive for many generations).  He has been searching for Amrithi with the gift and Mehr has revealed herself to have it.  His mystics arrive and inform Mehr that the Maha has a possible suitor for her.  Everyone knows that Mehr is not being given a real choice, that if she refuses the Maha he will have her family killed.  The nobles are angered, and her father wants to spirit her away to another province, but Mehr insists on accepting the match to protect her family, especially her sister.

And so she is married to Amun.  Unexpectedly, the vow is a physical thing on her skin - that is why the Amrithi make no vows (and why Mehr's mother refused to marry her father).  Vows are true binding things to the Amrithi - going against a vow will physically hurt you (and can literally kill you).  Amun has been bound to the Maha, and was instructed to lie with Mehr so that she would be bound to share his burdens (which are whatever the Maha demands); hating that Mehr was given no choice in the matter, Amun chooses to fight the vow subtly - they lie together but do not have sex to seal the deal. 

Mehr is brought with the mystics to the Maha's temple.  Everything she ever knew and loved is forcibly ripped from her (and even her culture in many ways - Mehr was raised as an Ambhan noblewoman, which meant she wore veils like armor - here her face is always bare for all to see).  The only constant is Amun, who Mehr learns is not at all the animal the other mystics treat him as.  She learns that the two of them are required to perform the Rite of the Binding, which is how the Maha has been living so long (and making the Empire prosper) - he channels the dreamfire through his Amrithi servants and uses his mystics to direct the dreams of the Gods to favour the Empire.  Mehr dares to dream of escape, for both her and Amun.  But Amun is truly bound to the Maha, and has no idea how long he can fight his vow and keep Mehr free.

Empire of Sand was awesome!  I particularly loved the worldbuilding - it's based off of Mughal Indian culture, I believe.  I loved how the Amrithi vows worked, too.  And also the Rites, how they were dances. 

I also quite liked Mehr and Amun.  Even though she felt very out of place and at times useless, Mehr helped Amun dream and hope again.  I started out not sure how to feel about her (she talked about using people a fair bit, but she was also raised in a very bad situation with her stepmother before moving into an even worse situation under the Maha, so it was kind of understandable).  In the end I thought she was a very noble woman who had grown a lot into a better person.  Amun had a rather quiet and understated character, but that was okay because it was him.  He had a subtle humour, which I loved, and was just a perfect match for Mehr in so many ways.  I really enjoyed reading about their adventures.

One thing that made me kind of shake my head (although this wasn't exactly a bad thing), was how the "bad guys" of the story were: they treated both Amun and Mehr as tools and as subhuman.  The Maha and one of his female mystics, Kalini, were particularly bad for that.  I wonder how the story might have been had people been kinder to Mehr?  If the Maha hadn't taken great pleasure in making her fear him?  Or if Kalini had encouraged Mehr to make friends (particularly with her sister, Hema?)

Overall, I loved reading Empire of Sand.  Between the worldbuilding, the characters, and the story itself, it is a fantastic book that I cannot recommend enough!