'All My Rage' by Sabaa Tahir

All My Rage, Sabaa Tahir (4.0)

I found this book quite thought provoking and moving. It is filled with many tragedies (the trigger warning at the beginning is not to be ignored). The story focusses on the lives of two Pakistani kids growing up in a small town near the Mojave dessert. One born there after his parents left Pakistan for a job in California and the other brought over by an uncle after an earthquake devastates her village and kills all her family. The best parts of the book focus on how they hold on to each other and their shared culture. There are many beautiful passages concerning language, food, prayers and family. My main issue with the book is the number and variety of the incidents. I do believe people have multiple issues and tragedies, but this was all over the board – alcoholism, child molestation, Islamophobia, drug abuse, domestic violence - no one is unscathed. Ultimately, even with the deluge of problems the characters face, the author instills some optimism, which I really appreciated as the reader.

'Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door' by Christopher Mims

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door, Christopher Mims (4.0)

While much of this book was familiar to me, given my background in Supply Chain, I feel it’s important for consumers in the US to read this and understand the journey of your Prime 2-day deliveries. The author follows a USB drive manufactured in Viet Nam to a final destination somewhere in the US. While Amazon gets the product to the final customer in 2 days, the overall journey takes weeks. While I did get tired of the comparisons of shipping vessels to the Empire State building, the size and complexity of much of our logistics network are unknown to most. I particularly enjoyed the chapter discussing the details of the ships arriving into the Port of Long Beach and the harrowing job of the pilots who bring all the ships into their docks. Even given our advanced GPS and navigation, a person familiar with the port needs to ‘jump’ onto the ship to help steer it in safely. I was fortunate in one of my jobs to get a tour of the HQ of the Port of Long Beach and was so impressed with the automation. So many moving pieces to get the right truck bed off the ship and ready for the truck to pick up. Mims also paints a depressing picture of the dehumanizing Amazon has done in its warehouses. In many ways, the sooner they get to complete automation, the better. Sadly, it appears much of the negative impacts on its workers are driven not by the drive for lower costs/efficiencies but by the metric of 2-day shipping. Do we really need everything in 2 days? 

'We Are What We Eat' by Alice Waters

We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto, Alice Waters (3.0)

Given my feelings about fast food, I was quite sure this book would appeal to me. Ms. Waters discusses the various reasons many people value fast food while elucidating the fallacies to those thoughts along with highlighting the benefits of ‘slow’ food. Many readers have pointed out that she is assuming everyone has access to local organic food and she does address this. I was less concerned with that but did feel the audience who would benefit from reading this are the least likely to. Not a lot of new info for those of us who avoid fast food, but I did enjoy a reminder of why eating seasonally is important and tasty! I immediately pulled up my winter Swiss chard recipe.