Jenkins - Daisy Jones and The Six by Reid

By: Taylor Jenkins

Review:

When I started googling why I haven't heard of these band members, this band, that's when I realized that I wasn't reading nonfiction. I was reading a novel, and the whole thing is made up. I spend 10 minutes questioning myself, why doesn't apple music or Spotify has it. If these people were so large, so well described, so recorded, then why couldn't I find them? The reasons were visible, the writing, the speeches, the dialogue, the emotion, the audiobook, were real. They existed in a part of my head. They orated like it was a spectacular set of interviews, from the author to them. And, the author wrote their stories.

The author wrote each and every interview as, as a documentary that was supposed to teach the aura of the 1970s. They took us out of time and lived it through their eyes, every little cup of vodka being drunk, every shard of glasses being broken, every heart being broken, and sown. They're real, they felt authentic. We knew what was going to happen, the burnout, the death, the puking, the heartbreaks.

We all knew. And there are so many themes being taught, especially gender and sexuality. Especially feminism. Especially the addictions.

Especially them all, with many parts from the book are lessons from the ages of rock and roll.

Stats:

• Reading Time: 12/12/19 - 12/13

• Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notes:

• December 13, 2019 –
  90.0% "“I decided I don’t need perfect love and I don’t need a perfect husband and I don’t need perfect kids and a perfect life and all that. I want mine. I want my love, my husband, my kids, my life.
  “I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect. But things don’t have to be perfect to be strong”"
  

• December 13, 2019 –
  84.0% "D:When T died, that was it. I’d decided there was no sense in getting sober. I rationalized it. You know, If the universe wanted me to get clean, it wouldn’t have killed Teddy. You can justify anything. If you’re narcissistic enough to believe that the universe conspires for and against you—which we all are, deep down—then you can convince yourself you’re getting signs about anything and everything."
  

• December 13, 2019 –
  79.0% "And when you rediscover your sanity, it’s only a matter of time before you start to get an inkling of why you wanted to escape it in the first place.”"
  December 13, 2019 –
  79.0% "“It’s funny. At first, I think you start getting high to dull your emotions, to escape from them. But after a while you realize that the drugs are what are making your life untenable, they are actually what are heightening every emotion you have. It’s making your heartbreak harder, your good times higher. So coming down really does start to feel like rediscovering sanity."
  

• December 13, 2019 –
  72.0% "“Karen and Graham must be sleeping together. And I say to them, I said, “Are you two an item?” And Graham says yes and Karen says no.
  G: I didn’t understand. I just didn’t understand Karen.
  K: Graham and I could never last, it was never…I just needed it to exist in a vacuum, where real life didn’t matter, where the future didn’t matter, where all that mattered was, you know, how we felt that day.”"
  December 13, 2019 –
  51.0% "“BILLY: I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay because when I looked at Daisy, wet and bleeding and out of it and half-near falling down, I did not think, Thank God I stopped using.
  I thought, She knows how to have fun.”"
  December 12, 2019 –
  50.0%
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  36.0% "“BILLY: When she took her key out of her pocket, she also took out a bag of coke. She was going into her room, and she was gonna, at the very least, have a bump. I…I didn’t want to be around it.
  I couldn’t go into that room.
  DAISY: I had thought for a moment that he and I could be friends, that Billy could see me as an equal. Instead, I was a woman he shouldn’t be alone with.”"
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  23.0% "“Teddy said, “How do you feel?”
  And I told him I felt like I’d made something that wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned, but it was maybe good in its own right. I said it felt like me but it didn’t feel like me and I had no idea whether it was brilliant or awful or somewhere in between. And Teddy laughed and said I sounded like an artist. I liked that.”"
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  22.0% "Teddy said, “Daisy, someone who insists on the perfect conditions to make art isn’t an artist. They’re an asshole.”
  I shut the door in his face.
  And sometime later that day, I opened up my songbook and I started reading. I hated to admit it but I could see what he was saying. I had good lines but I didn’t have anything polished from beginning to end."
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  22.0% "It didn’t seem right to me that his weakest self got to decide how my life was going to turn out, what my family was going to look like.
  I got to decide that. And what I wanted was a life—a family, a beautiful marriage, a home—with him. With the man I knew he truly was. And I was going to get it, hell or high water."
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  22.0% "“ I went to rehab so I don’t have to meet my own new daughter.”"
  

• December 12, 2019 –
  5.0% "The audiobook is really fun! Each section is read by a different orator!"

Metzl - Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland.

Author: Jonathon Metzl.

Review:

An overview and introduction into the major causes of politically induced death, of whites are cleared stated in this book. It talks about the outcome of whites in the rural Midwest after the Trump administration. Through the 3 major causes of death for rural white Americans are 1. Gun induced suicide, 2. Lack of hospital due to reduced ACA and 3rd. The reduction in education spending. All of those major scenarios have an epidemiological approach and conclusion of their research, introduction into the history of racism in that field, soulful interviews with communities that have gone through it, and with disclaimers of why a certain research approach was picked.

I’m really happy with this book’s introduction to the politics of guns, and is a great place to jump off into the world of gun related death statistics. Heavily reliable for the understandings of rural white Americans who’s lives, some racist, of why they do the actions they do. The conclusion of this book is thus: dying of whiteness.”

Reading Stats:

• 12/31/19 - 1/1/20

• Reading Level: Sophomore Level College

• Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notes

• The “Dickies” legislation that was passed in 1996 prohibits any NIH or public funding on any research that could be used to study gun violence or any research that has to do with gun prevention. The legislation has been renewed every year since then.

• Due to the lack of funding in gun prevention research, there is thus a lack of public information on guns! So one of the best place for gun information is from death! Since the “causes of death” section of death certificate includes guns. :D

• Fascinating research on suicidality methods! Thinking is the best prevention for suicide, thinking requires more time to concentrate the death. Thus pills have a 3 percent chance of death, even though it’s the highest weapon of suicide where as guns have 85 percent due to lack of time to think. To think then kill rather than eat, think, then die.

• How many people just wanted to make a statement, to the end that turned themselves into a number wasting away.

• Americans held 4.4 percent of the world population but owns about 43 percent of the world supply of privately own guns. Like whaaaa?? Also there’s 200 million guns in the United States, wtf.

• The gun acts as a form of totem for whites, it symbolizes: masculinity, freedom, and patriarchy. But for the non whites it’s like giving the tools of oppression to the oppressor (the whites).

• Gun Background Check law( PTP) In Missouri when the ptp law was rejected, there was an increase of 16 percent in gun suicides, where as the enforcement of sub laws in Connecticut has reduced gun suicide by 13 percent. Other variables has been included for control sample.

• White men in Missouri is 7x times more likely to kill them selves with a handgun than it is to protect themselves when armed. Bruh

• Cost! Healthcare. The ACA saved money and allowed people to live longer!