Friday Reads: The Woman in Me

 This week's Friday Reads is a bit predictable; Kelly tells us about her recent audiobook listen, The Woman in Me by Britney Spears. 

As a woman who was born in America in the 1980s, I am legally obligated to read Britney Spears' just-released memoir, The Woman in Me, and to give you my opinion about it. 

I grew up in the woods listening to country music, so I missed a lot of the Britney hype at its zenith, but I do have fond memories of bopping to "One More Time" in my Girl Scout leader's minivan. Even I, however, knew that Britney was a phenomenon; there was Britney Spears, and then there were all of the other female singers. Many of them would even make caustic references in their own songs and interviews about the impossibility of being held to her standard. 

Britney's memoir reveals that a lot of that image was smoke and mirrors, and that all of the pop-princess success came at an impossibly steep price. The book's juicy "reveals" that have made headlines are shocking and heartbreaking, but I was most saddened by the way she described her day-to-day life under her father's conservatorship. The monotony and degradation of that existence sounds unbearable, and I have so much respect for what she endured to maintain the "privilege" of time with her children. 

I don't have any formal psychology training, but it doesn't take any to recognize that she has been though a lot of trauma, beginning in her early childhood. While I believe that Britney is telling her truth, I'm not sure that all of it is the truth. And honestly, I'm not sure how much that matters. What is clear from public record is that, over and over again, the people closest to her viewed her as a meal ticket rather than as a person deserving of love and respect. I truly hope that she is getting the therapy, love, and support that she needs as she tries to pick up where she left off in her late teens and works on becoming her own woman.

Friday Reads: Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Happy Friday! Interim Library Director Adam Pellman's book this week, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer, is about the real-life monsters who have been the creators of some of our most-loved works, and how we as fans struggle between our love of the art and our repulsion by the creators' other actions. 

Particularly since the advent of the #MeToo movement, and the rise of so-called "cancel culture," I think that many of us have found ourselves in a situation where we've learned that an artist (actor, singer, writer, director, painter, etc.) whose work we love has been accused, or even proven, to have committed some terrible act, and we've had to suddenly ask ourselves difficult questions about our relationship to that artist's work. Is it still okay for me to like this art, even if I now despise the artist? If I do still like it, does that make me a bad person? Is it truly possible to "separate the art from the artist," or is that just wishful thinking?

This book, by critic and memoirist Claire Dederer, dives deep into all of these questions, and more, embracing all of the complexity and nuance of this dilemma that many fans must face. At its core, the book addresses one question: How do you balance the greatness of the work against the badness of the deed? Dederer is clear right from the start that her goal is not to offer a definitive answer (as she notes, there's no magical calculator that lets you plug in one value for artistic greatness and another for deed heinousness, and then tells you which one trumps the other). Rather, her goal is to explore in depth what it's like, and what it means, to grapple with this dilemma. Each chapter focuses on a different facet of this issue, allowing Dederer to explore all the sticky elements that make this such a complex topic. Does our conception of what it means to be a "genius" lead us to be more forgiving of bad behavior among those artists who have earned that descriptor? How does gender play into this dilemma? Does a monstrous act later in an artist's career retroactively stain all of their earlier work? Dederer is a brilliant writer, and it's a real pleasure reading her insightful, funny, and sometimes self-critical examination of these questions.

Friday Reads: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

 Happy Friday! This week, Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever wants to tell us about the audiobook she's been listening to recently: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling.

This book sat on my Audible wishlist for a year or so before I finally decided to give it a listen. I don't remember howI first heard of it, but I do remember that the title made me laugh. In 2004, a group of libertarian-minded people identified the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, as the perfect location for a libertarian society. They spread word of their plan through websites and message boards, and soon liberty-lovers from around the nation began moving there with the intent to vote out the existing local government and to install no government at all in its place. 

Unfortunately for the libertarian colonizers, however, Grafton was already home to an impressive population of particularly bold black bears. The bear situation was not improved by the sudden influx of people living in the woods and disposing of their garbage in any manner they chose. 

The book is filled with memorable characters, both human and ursine. In the audio version, the narrator's deadpan delivery adds to the drama and hilarity. We meet a woman known as Doughnut Lady who began feeding doughnuts to the bears several times a day. We learn about an eccentric preacher from decades gone by who built a towering outdoor pulpit to preach above the treetops. My personal favorite anecdote so far is about an old farmer and her guard-llama, who gave one cow-hunting black bear the butt-kicking of its life. 

I expect this book would be enjoyable for people from any political orientation who appreciate oddball history and dry humor. And bears. 

Friday Reads: Dandelion Wine

Most people have heard of Fahrenheit 451, but today Interim Library Director Adam Pellman tells us about one of Ray Bradbury's other books: Dandelion Wine.

 

I first encountered Ray Bradbury's stories as required reading in high school and college, and he's been a favorite of mine ever since. I've read most of his story collections, and novels like Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes still stand out as classics. For some reason, it's taken me this long to get to one of his most beloved books, Dandelion Wine, his semi-autobiographical novel about a childhood summer in a small town. This feels like the perfect time for me to read it. With school back in session, I need something to help me hold on to these last summer days, and this book fits the bill.

The novel takes place over the course of the summer of 1928, in fictional Green Town, Illinois (a setting modeled after Bradbury's own hometown of Waukegan). While the narrative returns time and again to the activities of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his brother Tom, many other townspeople get their time in the spotlight, and Bradbury does a marvelous job of fleshing out these characters, even if it's only for a single chapter. As much as he excels at capturing the rhythms and concerns of childhood, Bradbury is equally adept at fashioning the town's adult citizens, whose joy, sadness, fear, hope, and reminiscences create such an affecting collective portrait. As grounded as much of the novel is, there are still the darker elements and sense of magic that I often associate with Bradbury's work, whether it's the brothers' fascination with a fortune-telling arcade automaton, or the series of local murders thought to be carried out by an otherworldly creature known as the Lonely One. It's been a real treat to revisit Bradbury's work after such a long time away.

Friday Reads: Major Labels

Our newly-minted Interim Library Director, Adam Pellman, has a Friday Reads for this last Friday before Fall Workshop! Today he tells us about his experience reading Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh.

I've been a casual music listener for most of my life, and my listening habits tended to be limited to classic rock or whatever happened to be on the radio in the car. It's only been over the past five years or so that I've made a conscious effort to expand my musical horizons, seeking out genres I had ignored in the past, and discovering new and old music by artists with whom I was previously unfamiliar. On the recommendation of a colleague, I even started a listening project using the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die album generator website, which randomly assigns an album each day for you to listen to, based on a list created by a panel of music critics. That's why this feels like the perfect time for me to read Sanneh's comprehensive and accessible book, which is essentially a history of American popular music since 1970. It's given me a lot of context to keep in mind as I listen to a new album from the list each day. Sanneh, a longtime music critic, draws heavily from contemporary criticism and journalism in music publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, Source, and Creem, in addition to offering his own analysis and bits of autobiography, discussing, for example, how he fell in love with punk and hip-hop in his youth, or writing about his adoration of country music.

What I really love about this book is the way Sanneh dissects music culture, often drawing parallels between genres that might not seem obvious. As Sanneh writes, there's a sense of identity or culture associated with genres like punk and country, and terms like "rock 'n' roll" and "hip-hop" often evoke ideas of a certain lifestyle apart from the music itself. Musicians and fans embrace the distinctiveness of a particular genre and its cultural identity as part of its appeal, so when an artist or even a whole genre begins to have mainstream success or "crossover" appeal, that feeling of distinctiveness or specialness begins to fade. And yet, isn't greater success and broader appeal the goal of most musical artists? This tension is inherent in all of these genres, leading to constant evolution and the advent of new subgenres or strains like heavy metal, outlaw country, hardcore, trap, and house music. The book is a welcome reminder that music can be something we connect with on a deeply personal level, yet simultaneously something that can give us a real sense of community.

Fall 2023 Library Newsletter

The Library's Fall 2023 Newsletter is live! Check out the big changes happening at Reeves. https://mailchi.mp/bafa.../library-newsletter-summer-8290399

Celebrating David's Retirement

Today we celebrated David Stanley's 26 years of service to Seton Hill as the Director of Reeves Memorial Library. Dr. Stanley will be retiring at the end of next week and will be sorely missed by many on the Hill! (For those attending Fall Workshop, he does plan to attend the reception honoring retirees at the end of the second day.) Please join us in wishing him the best!