The Unmaking of June Farrow: A Novel

The Unmaking of June Farrow: A Novel by Adrienne Young

The Farrow women seem to go crazy later in life. June does some research and tries to find out more about her family history. She discovers people with similar names that lived at different times in the past. She even discovers somebody with her name. Then she goes through the door. The Farrow women can go through the door to different time periods. They have three chances to do this, and then they are stuck. June ends up back in the 1950s in a time period almost a year after a different version of her had lived before. She was involved with the murder of a priest in the small North Carolina town. Others are trying to catch her, especially after she mysteriously disappeared shortly after the crime. Gradually some memories come back and others leave. She does something to unravel time that would thus end the curse of time travel in her family. This unraveling part is quite confusing, but so is just about any attempt to explain time travel. Somehow she overlaps history with a loop and things stop or something like that. There is still some weirdness with generations where younger generations raise older ones due to time travel and age differences. How does this work out with the unravelling? This is not very clear. While time travel is confusing, the challenges of "outsiders" in small southern towns is accurately portrayed.

Moo: A Novel

Moo: A Novel by Sharon Creech

I saw a different "Moo" book that looked interesting. That one wasn't available in audiobook format, but I stumbled across this one instead. In this book, a family spontaneously moves to Maine after having trouble finding jobs. After doing something mean to a weird lady, the kids are sent to help her on her farm. The animals are as eccentric as her. They work with them and have some success with the cow. They later gain respect for the lady as she moves on and neighbors go to help the farm. It is the "respect others" story mixed with "city people in the country".

Amelia Bedelia & Friends: The Cat's Meow

Amelia Bedelia & Friends: The Cat's Meow: Amelia Bedelia & Friends, Book 2 by Herman Parish

Amelia Bedelia is a kid. She doesn't get figures of speech. They find a cat. It gets stuck in a tree. The fire department helps get it down from the tree. They try to find a home for the cat and the fire department wants a cat. However, the cat disappears. It turns out the cat went home. They then get a cat from the pound for the fire department. These Amelia Bedelia books lack the charm of the earlier books.

Acts of Violet

Acts of Violet is an excellently produced audiobook. The novel centers around the life and disappearance of magician Violet Volk as told through past history and podcast segments. Each podcast is done like an actual podcast, complete with different voices being interviewed. It has the feel of a radio play.

Violet and her sister Sasha here daughters of Russian immigrants who grew up in suburban New Jersey. Sasha was also the more popular one. Violet retreated to magic. She became a super-famous, enigmatic celebrity magician who later pivoted into self-help guru. After a break, she appeared in a one-night spectacle. In the performance, she disappeared, never to appear again. A decade later, people are still trying to figure out what happened to her. A podcast host explores the story, connecting with many people that knew her. We also learn that her sister Sasha, while being the "normal" on also has occasionally found herself magically appearing somewhere else. Is it real life? Or is it fantasy?

The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life

People have devoted energy to spirituality throughout history. Science often considers this a wasted effort. However, new research has been showing the way that religion and spirituality provide mental health benefits. There is also a strong relationship between spirituality and depression. Being spiritual can help counteract the negative of depression. There also seems to be a genetic aspect to spirituality.

The concept of spirituality can be vague. It does not necessarily correspond with going through the motions at church. It involves living and experiencing the selflessness. There is also a difference between focussing on the goal-oriented nature of achievement versus submitting oneself to the spiritual. The first can lead to depression that one has difficulty overcoming on your own, while a belief in a higher power helps to provide more positive outcomes.

Related to spirituality to book discusses the importance of letting people express their feelings and think for themselves, even if that is not the clinical norm. There is often very different diagnoses for the same person by different professionals. Sometimes it works best to set back and let people work through problems themselves. Even if they provide unscientific explanations, these may be the helpful answers they need.

Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal

Operation Varsity Blues was the codename for the investigation into Rick's Singer's college admission business. Rich clients would make "donations" to his charity. In turn, money would flow to college coaches in order to get children marked as "athletes" for preferred admission to their desired colleges. 

Singer's business started off as a somewhat legitimate college admissions coaching business. However, he had experience coaching sports and desire to "win". He realized that sports provided a great route to admissions. While popular sports, such as football and basketball are heavily scrutinized, the lesser sports often go under the radar. Most Ivy League schools do not give athletic scholarships. However, they do let coaches flag priority athletic students. Some sports, such as sailing and rowing rely heavily on students with little experience in the sport. This allows students to be claimed as athletes without actually participating in sports.

The admissions ring also included additional "doctoring" of applications. There were a number of nefarious actions undertaken for ACT and SAT tests. At one time, they would just send somebody with a fake ID to take tests in the name of a student. However, photos and other security mechanisms made this more difficult. To work around it, they would buy off proctors in certain locations to allow tests to be corrected. They would also apply for disability accommodations to give them more time to complete the test. 

Applications would be written by Singer's team. They would write essays and even include fake information stolen from newspaper accounts of others.

The scheme unraveled due to an unrelated investigation into penny stock fraud. A witness detailed the bribes paid to a coach which eventually ensnared Singer. He cooperated with the government to expose his clients. Many plead guilty to crimes, leaving many wealthy leaders spending brief time in jail.

The sting seemed to ensnare a mixture of different cupabilities. Some coaches were freely greasing their pockets with bribe money in order to grant admissions ot unqualified students. Others seems to be innocently raising money for their program. The Stanford sailing coach accepted donations to the sailing program. His sport would typically look for athletic students without prior sailing experience. Though the program received donations, none of the donations went to the coach and none of the students were actually flagged and attended Stanford.

While the bulk of the scandal focussed on the nefarious activities of the wealthy and admission counselors, the college complex itself got off relatively scott free. Even worse, most of the students that got in via Singer were kicked out of the schools. (This despite the fact that they were succeeding academically and had little knowledge of the fraud used to get them in.) 

Universities themselves are perhaps the biggest fraud. They claim to be selling one thing at a price, but are really selling something else at a different price. Elite colleges are primarily selling a luxury good. The "ivy league" diploma is a status signal and a way to open doors to lucrative careers. They hope to receive significant monetary contributions to provide a four year "retreat" for the nation's rich and famous. However, they claim to be providing an egalitarian education for all of society. To help carry out this mission, they partner with the government to provide extensive financial aid for "disadvantaged" students.

Why all the subterfuge? Why not go totally aboveboard? Perhaps they just need to be like airlines and sell the same seats for different prices. Let students apply for the admission tiers. The $5,000,000 tier may be a lot less competitive than the $5 tier. However, by doing this, the university is more likely to pocket money from the wealthy without all the shenanigans. Instead of relying on test scores, the schools can focus more on actually knowing the students. Personal interviews can come in to the mix rather than SAT stores. 

The excessive professionalization of university sports is also a big problem. Football and basketball are practically farm teams for the professional leagues. There also tends to be more scholarship money available in sports than in other academic areas. This will continue to create much conflict in the university admissions. Is it time to disconnect sports from college? Or can it be scaled back to an extent that it is a useful form of physical education rather than an all-encompassing part of school?

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

The author acknowledges that there are very few biographies of George Washington written by women - and that these often focus on "female issues". Many of the biographies are big thick tomes written by men that go through all the details of Washington's life. There are also others that try to rip apart the "myth" of Washington. She has attempted to provide something different - a short, balanced history of his life. She goes through his entire life. However, the focus is primarily on his "public" life - as a military man and president. She provides context on some easy-to-shatter myths. (Wooden teeth would just not be practical; however, he did have really bad teeth.) Washington had no biological children, thus helping prevent dynastic succession. He was quite wealthy (in part through a familial pattern of marrying in to money.) However, his wealth was primarily tied up into land. He was a slave-holder. However, he advocated abolition of slavery in a "gradual" fashion. A sudden loss of property would devastate the economy. However, a slow freeing seemed feasible. (Personally, he didn't think he could afford to free his slaves during his life. He did grant slaves freedom in his will.)
As a military man, Washington was a rather poor leader at first. Though he gained experience as a British military leader. This probably helped him as he would eventually lead the rebels. As a president, he had wide-spread support among the people and founding fathers. However, his presidency would eventually strain his relations with many of the other founding fathers. And speaking of fathers, he is not known to have fathered any children. Perhaps this was an impact of the many times that he had been sick in his life.