If my father's wildest dreams came true...

My youngest brother and his fiance would both be doctors in our hometown's medical centers, get married,* settle down in a very nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

My sister and her husband would leave New York City and move back to our hometown, get a job at the local medical center's rehab department (my sister) and financial department (my brother-in-law), live in a nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

My other brother and his wife would find jobs in the IE branch** of a big tech company such as Apple  (my brother) and local medical center's pharmacy (my sister-in-law), move into a very nice house five minutes or less from my parents' house, and give him grandchildren.

I would allow my father to set me up with a nice young man he met at the gym or Sabbath school, and we would get married and move into a charming house in our hometown five minutes or less from my parents' house, where I would work for the local university or public library (and my husband would probably be a doctor at the local medical center), and give him grandchildren.

We would all be very entangled in each other's lives, have a weekly dinner, and go on vacations together like the Modern Family family.

*this is already happening obviously 
**does not exist

Book review: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

trigger warnings for mentions of domestic violence, rape, and racism

I got Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe during my thrift store haul a few months ago. I had read something online that said it was a great book about women's friendship, or something to that effect. I had mostly enjoyed the movie Steel Magnolias, so I thought I'd give this a try.

Well, it was different. FGTatWSC has two main storylines. The primary one is set in modern times (the 1980s) and is about Evelyn, a depressed middle-aged woman with an unsatisfying life, becoming friends with an elderly woman, Mrs. Threadgoode, at her mother-in-law's rest home, and this friendship gives her a new outlook on life. Mrs. Threadgoode is originally from a small Alabama town by the train tracks called Whistle Stop, and she tells Evelyn all about the town, its varied and sometimes kooky inhabitants, and the Whistle Stop Cafe. Her stories make up the second storyline, although we also get some omniscient narrating going on, as the storyline contains things we know Mrs. Threadgoode couldn't know.

Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode are the two main characters of the modern-day storyline, and the Whistle Stop Cafe's proprietresses, Idgie and Ruth, are the two main characters of the Whistle Stop storyline, which takes place from the 1910s to the 1950s or so. Idgie, who grew up with Mrs. Threadgoode, is a tomboy (read: butch lesbian) who decides to never wear dresses again at age 9 and falls in love with older, new to town Ruth as a teenager. Ruth, afraid to be gay/sin, leaves Whistle Stop and goes back to her fiance and marries him, breaking Idgie's heart in the process. The husband turns out to be a sociopath serial rapist and seducer who domestically abuses and rapes her, so she leaves him and gets back together with Idgie, and they open up the Whistle Stop Cafe.

The Cafe cook is Idgie's old nanny, Sipsie, who is African American. Her family is described to us just as much if not more, in some ways, than the white families in Whistle Stop. Since this the American Southeast in the early 20th century, there is of course a ton of racism. While I appreciated that Ms. Flagg fleshed out the African American characters instead of leaving them to be invisible background characters, which often happens with domestic help in this era, I could have done without being told how some of them died, and many of them experienced horrible yet unsurprising racism. Many white townspeople didn't like how Idgie and Ruth fed hobos, but they really got mad when they fed Black people (not even in the cafe but out the back door), and Idgie and Ruth had to stand up to the KKK a few times. There was some parsing of different attitudes held by Black people as the Civil Rights Movement progressed, such as looking down on their elders who had worked for white people.

All in all, this was a very interesting account of Southern small-town life and a lesbian love story. I was surprised by how many townspeople knew about Idgie and Ruth's real relationship and were fine with it (the others just considered them good friends). While I didn't talk about Evelyn much, I really identified with her despair and rage, including how she often imagined herself as a superhero, killing all the bad guys in the world. The eighties truly were similar to today, politically. I liked that she found the confidence to take charge of her life. There is also a riveting murder mystery with a twist ending, and recipes of some of the foods mentioned! I recommend this book if you can handle sad stories and everything that goes along with stories set in the American Southeast in the 20th century.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: late October-early November
From: thrift store
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

Book review: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I have owned Me Talk Pretty One Day (MTP1D) for several years, ever since my creative writing teacher in college made us read from it for class. I've since read two other of Sedaris's books, and while he's a talented writer, I no longer find him as funny as I used to. Like I said in a previous review, I just have less tolerance now for what older white cis men have to say about race, etc. His essays are generally rather amusing, but there is a lot there that would be considered cringy rather than funny, in my opinion. I think his essay about being addicted to drugs would be a useful one for teachers of college and possibly even high school students; reading about a detoxing and desperate Sedaris inhaling every particle on his floor in case he had dropped some drugs is enough to take away their glamour and danger.

My favorite essay has to be about how his father was obsessed with his daughters being thin and beautiful. It is of course horrifying and depressing, considering at least two Sedaris sisters became a drug addict and developed an eating disorder, respectively, but it's also kind of comical to read. Sedaris had this great, wry line about how he, the son, could have been eating mayonnaise out of the container with a serving spoon and his father didn't care, but if one of the girls gained a pound, the father acted like her life was ending and harassed her into dieting.  It sounds pretty depressing but it was hilarious to read how Amy, who today is a famous actor, got her own back.

The title, in case you are wondering, comes from an essay where Sedaris shares what it was like to learn French in a beginner's class with other expats from around the world. Anyway, MTP1D is worth a read, but check it out from the library.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: early September
From: thrift store? don't remember
Format: paperback
Status: giving away