We are never meeting in real life

We are never meeting in real life: essays / Samantha Irby, 275 pgs.

After choosing this book based solely on the cover (something I explained here), I read Irby's previous book while I waited for this to come up on hold for me.  This one is just as good as the last.  I laughed out loud several times, once scaring my own cats when I could not easily stop laughing. Irby continues to tell it like it is, she does not sugar coat, she does not care if she offends you, she does not care if it embarrasses you because it certainly doesn't embarrass her.  In other words, Irby is everything I admire.  This book has some great insights, some absolutely profane disgusting stories, and something else.  After years of dating men, she found the perfect woman and married her.  Keep up the good work Samantha, I'm already ready for your next book.

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures: the American dream and the untold story of the black women mathematicians who helped win the space race / Margot Lee Shetterly 358 pgs.

This book is a fabulous history of the women who worked during the war and longer at the government agencies working on aeronautics and space travel.  In the "old days" computers were the people who did the calculations necessary for the research done by researchers and engineers. These people had to be excellent mathematicians and have exacting standards.  Many of them were African American women with advanced degrees who had been working as school teachers...one of the few jobs readily available to them. These women relished education and were looking for ways to ensure their kids could get as much as possible.  The civil service job paid a lot more than teaching.  I can understand why this must have gotten snapped up by Hollywood by the first person who read it.  The book tells a great story of the people who were instrumental in the technological advances made since WWII in flight and space exploration. Very inspirational.

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly, 346 pages

Well, most of what this book is about is right there in the absurdly long subtitle, so I won't try to retell the tale too much. What I will say is that this very necessary book deftly illuminates the careers of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, as well as NASA's countless other black female mathematicians, balancing the math and science with the social and cultural setting in a completely approachable manner. It's a fascinating story that was begging to be told, and I am so glad that Shetterly wrote this book. It's only fault is that it wasn't done years earlier, because this is information that every kid should grow up knowing.

(Side note: there's a heck of a waiting list for this book, thanks to the acclaimed film based on it. Should you want to try a different method of experiencing it, Hidden Figures is available as a downloadable audiobook on Hoopla, where there's no wait whatsoever.)

Another Brooklyn

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, 175 pages.

I read this last year after hearing a lot about it and the seeing the author at Lit in the Lou in October. I just read it again for our February book discussion.  The discussion was interesting and enjoyable.
Here is what I wrote last year:
Woodson's Another Brooklyn is a beautiful and heartbreaking story about growing up someplace else with someone else, leaving behind people and places that were the most important to you. It is August's story, when it is just her and her brother, and her father. Each night she tells her brother that their mother will join them in Brooklyn tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It becomes a story August shares with Sylvia, Gigi, and Angela as they grow up together, inseparable, and then apart. Woodson limns life's loss, loneliness, and betrayal in this spare, beautiful book.
If you were lucky enough to see the author at Lit in the Lou on Saturday, she even told you how to read this book, "the white spaces mean your supposed to stop, take a breath, think about what you read. The italics mean pay attention.' This turns out to be very good advice for reading this book.