Since I sadly can’t really remember the last time I read just
for fun (do any other English majors feel like they stopped reading for fun
when they started college?), this week I have two books to share: one that I
just finished for another English class (which Lexi is also in!) and one that I
started reading over a month ago for a book club at work and I keep swearing I’m
going to finish it but have not actually gotten around to doing that yet.
The first book is The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
(a.k.a. Brian O'Nolan), which we’re currently reading in Patrick Mullen’s Crime
& Comedy in Irish Lit class. If you’re a fan of absurdism (I am not), this
book is for you. Although I will say, without spoiling anything, that it has a
surprising ending that I absolutely did not see coming and that made me like
the book a lot more. But basically if you want to hear about a nameless narrator
who committed a murder and then starts seeing dead people, visiting eternity with policemen,
and hearing a lot about people becoming bicycles and bicycles becoming people,
then by all means give it a read. It reminded me a lot of Cat’s Cradle by Kurt
Vonnegut, which I have to say I also didn’t like very much. Maybe this is an
unpopular opinion, but I tend to find absurdism annoying.
The second book I’m reading—although I’m not sure I can
really claim to still be reading it at this point—is Evicted: Poverty
and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. Desmond tells the stories
of several individuals and families whom he spent time with and got to know as
he observed how poverty, unaffordable housing, and lack of tenant rights
affected their lives. One of the most fascinating aspects of the book, in my
opinion, is that some of the people he spent time observing were the landlords
who were economically exploiting their tenants, so you really get a deeper
understanding of the thinking and lived experiences on both sides of the
equation and the ways in which this oppressive system functions in particular.
I worked at a nonprofit consulting company for my last co-op, and this was a
book that we read to discuss at a roundtable-type event since it pertained to
some of the areas of work that we focused on. I have to say I recommend this
book really highly—it wouldn’t have necessarily been something that I might
have picked off a shelf myself, but I’m glad I was introduced to it at work and
got the chance to read (most of) it. It is truly heartbreaking and eye-opening.
Even as people working in the nonprofit sector who aren’t ignorant to the
oppressive and problematic systemic power structures built into our society, my
co-workers and I learned a lot from this book. I would really really
recommend anyone giving this a read, but especially anyone interested in the
social sector or human services. It’s one of those life-changing
books that truly alters how you look at the world.
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