by Jan Dutkiewicz & Gabriel Rosenberg

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/feed-the-people-review-in-praise-of-the-supermarket-be2d9d10

A food book with a twist, geared towards improvements to the food system that can scale and actually make a difference. There’s a guilt-inducing chapter about going vegan. There’s a chapter about school lunches and SNAP programs. There’s a chapter about unionizing food workers that I mostly skipped through. There’s a chapter about ditching the demonization of “ultraprocessed” food. The vegan half of the two-writer team really wants us to embrace meat substitutes, which of course are “ultraprocessed.” I’m just not sold on that. 

by Caro Claire Burke

This was fantastic. It’s about a woman who is a “tradwife” “influencer” on Instagram. She pretends to have a perfect life with six kids on a ranch in Idaho. Then suddenly she seems to be time-warped into what life would REALLY be like for her if it was 100 years ago. And then…

by Jess Walter

A book club pick which I didn’t like. It was violent and ugly. One of a genre that I call the “Isn’t Everything Terrible” genre.

by Robert Polito

This was a truly good book about the less-discussed second half of Dylan’s career, each chapter focusing on a different album, show, or event. The book manages to be dense without being boring or unreadable. It reveals enough about the author to avoid feeling cryptic and impersonal; but it is not SO much about the author that you feel he’s lost the thread of what the real topic is supposed to be.