Sunday Salon: November 8, 2020

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz runs The Sunday Salon. 

Books read over the past week:   

 

• Hell and High Water by Keenan Powell
• Come on In edited by Adi Alsaid
• Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

Challenge progress 2020

• Big Summer Book Challenge--5 books total (completed)
• Literary Escapes Challenge--28 states and 28 countries total
• Mount TBR Challenge--75 books total
• Popsugar reading challenge--37 books total
• Social Justice Challenge--13 books total
• YA Award Winners--9 books total

My life outside books:

What a week of emotional ups and downs! Yesterday, for Biden supporters like me, was such a relief. I received texts, phone calls, and messages from friends and family in the US, Europe, and the Middle East who are all so relieved. Seeing video of fireworks in London, church bells ringing in Paris, people dancing in the streets, and more. It really was like a world reaction to a dictator being brought down. Astonishing!

I watched three movies this week: Moneyball since it's leaving Netflix at the end of the month and I'd never seen it. I liked it. I also watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 because it's an era that has always held interest for me. We have a number of family friends who were at the University of Chicago at the time and friends with the defendants/involved in SDS so I've heard lots of stories over the years. The movie was good; the way Bobby Seale was treated just made me so mad!

But the one I watched that had the biggest impact on me was Social Dilemma (the video above is the official trailer). It's interviews with all these white guys who were instrumental at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. and how these companies manipulate us. I knew it was happening, but this documentary really lays it all out. It's really interesting and disturbing at the same time. I immediately went on Twitter and unfollowed a bunch of people so that my feed is now full of books, education, and equity instead of politics. I already don't log into Facebook anymore so that's good. Anyway, I highly recommend this documentary.

 

The third movie was Social Dilemma, a documentary about social media, its hold on us. I also finished Endeavour, the series I've been watching on the treadmill each morning. My new treadmill show is Homeland, which is really good so far though, as usual, I am irritated that it centers on Middle Easterners as terrorists, as if that's all they are.