Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 This was another book club read for our team book club. I don't read much non-fiction, and I didn't know who Trevor Noah was before reading the book, but overall, I did end up enjoying this memoir. Trevor Noah, a successful South African comedian, tells the story of how in Apartheid South Africa, his birth was against the law. Noah explores his race and how that influenced his identity as well as the race of his mother, his father, and the rest of his family. He explores his relationships with his mother in particular, as she was central to his life, and ended up being shot in the head (but surviving) by his step father. Overall, this was a light-hearted take on the deep racial divides that existed in South Africa during Apartheid. I didn't know much about Apartheid going into the book, and I'm glad I was able to understand more of what South Africa was like during that time. Despite the serious topics that Noah touches on, domestic violence, abuse, race, the book does...

Tess Henry was an addict. But she was also a loving mother, and she also desperately wanted to get clean. Somehow, she ended up dead in Las Vegas, her body dumped in a dumpster just after Christmas. Tess didn't die of an overdose. Her killer hasn't been found. Finding Tess  by Beth Macy follows the story of one of the many people she interviewed for her book Dopesick . Macy follows through Tess's many attempts to get clean, to stop using heroin and prescription pain-killers (oxycontin). It also examines how hospitals, support groups, rehab facilities, and law enforcement all failed her. This book was eye-opening. Some have tried to call the opioid crisis a pandemic, but it always seems to fall on deaf ears. No one seems to want to listen or solve the problem. Meanwhile, many of the victims are not what we stereotypically think of as druggies. They're white, upper class, straight-A students, and athletes. This image doesn't fit the stereotype. It broke my heart to se...