Welcome to Litsy!

I've enjoyed all of the books I read this week, but if I have to choose just one, Help Wanted it is! If I'd finished Moon of the Turning Leaves a day earlier, that would have been an easy pick for this week. We'll see if anything I read this week tops that title!

#WeeklyFavorites @Read4life

My mom and my brother both worked at a major discount retailer in a rust belt city for several years, and Waldman captures well the feeling of being trapped---by corporate indifference, by an economically bifurcated community, by the accident of birth and privilege---that those years highlighted for our family (and that led me to boycott the retailer for 25+ years and counting). This is a well written but depressing novel from the #ToB25 longlist.

📚 𝓑𝓸𝓸𝓴 𝓜𝓪𝓲𝓵 📬

I've been blessed to receive many wonderful books recently, including a copy of Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman, courtesy of Bibliolifestyle & W.W.Norton. Among numerous accolades, it was one of Barack Obama's recommended books last summer. I'm anxious to read this contemporary & timely story, and, in fact, I am recommending it to my in-person book club. The paperback edition was published 𝘍𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝟻, 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟻.

💼 The constant baby-sitting and cleaning up unnecessary messes that shouldn't be made if people planned better (I'm in Procurement).
💼💼 Tagged. The author works several different jobs (under cover, technically) to illustrate the living wage gap and how hard it is to get ahead and stay ahead financially. Great read.
@TheSpineView #Two4Tuesday

🍇 Dinnertime with my daughter 💕

🍇 🍇 Nickel and Dimed. A nonfiction book where the author goes under cover working minimum wage jobs (one of which is a server) to highlight the difficulties the poorer class faces in day to day life. Tagged.

@TheSpineView
#Two4Tuesday

I read this #temptingtitles #withmoney a long time ago and the impact has stayed with me!

@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

This answers the questions of why poor people make what others would judge as bad decisions. The author does a great job answering the questions from her own experiences. She makes the distinctions between poverty-stricken, poor and broke. A look at how our countries poor are judged harshly and even why, and how, our system could be better. I learned a lot from this and will be thinking about it for a long time. I highly recommend this one.

Published in 2014 after Tirado wrote a post about poverty on Gawker that went viral, she does a good job of explaining problems of the working poor in America, though her own situation was apparently not as bad as implied (which caused me to waiver on making this a pick). However, I saw a lot of truth in her depiction of low pay service and retail jobs and I do agree poor people are judged and treated badly in our society.

Finished this audiobook while making progress on a Xmas gift for my mom (she‘s into astrology & her sign is Cancer) #audiostitching #litsycrafters

I mainly enjoyed this book; I thought the narrator was excellent. So much privilege & seeming contempt for others, especially overweight people, though. I found many of the stats & facts uncomfortable and, no doubt, things are more dismal now than in the late 90s when Ehrenreich did her experiment ⬇️

RIP https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/02/barbara-ehrenreich-author-dies-nic.... “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”