No Place Safe, A Family Memoir

Would anyone like to join a book club, starting with this book? I want to talk about it with people so much! I’ve never done a book club, but I will learn quickly and lead it. I am passionate about this book. We can make it an on-line club if interested folks are not in the Richmond, VA area. I think it is a very important book. Click on the No Place Safe tag to find a link to this book, because I keep talking about it!

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Just watched this with Tim.  It was very good.  I enjoyed it so much.  It was about passion, art, Existentialism.  It was a contrast from the book I’m reading, No Place Safe, which I wrote about earlier.  I highly recommend this book for everyone.  I would like to see this book in  middle school curriculums.  It is right on in its portrayal of teen angst, and as a European American, it helped me understand how an African American my age felt as a young teen.   In some ways, the same.  However, in the life of  the adolescent Kim Reid in No Place Safe, passion, art and Existentialism, especially, would be luxuries.  When we are struggling just to be safe we don’t have time to mull over ourselves.   Kierkegaard, the Existentialist philosopher, portrayed Existentialism more in the sense of taking responsibility for our own passion, contentment, giving our own lives meaning.  Responsibility was one of his elements in Existentialist thought, with which I would certainly agree. 

I had forgotten Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a Woody Allen film.  His films have evolved!  I always enjoyed them, but this film had a richness lacking in some of his other films.  Of course the actors were beautiful, ravishing.  It was a lot of fun.   The setting was beautiful.  I want to go to Barcelona!

I’m reading..

No Place Safe by Kim Reid.  Click on her name for a link to her site and information about the book.

 I started it a few nights ago, and I am enjoying it a lot.  Her situation in life placed her in a unique place from which to observe the frightening Atlanta child murders starting in 1979, I think.  I remember how terrifying it was even from little Beaverdam, VA, where I lived with my family at the time.  I can’t imagine the fear she must have felt from her vantage point.  I will find out, though, because she discusses just that in her memoir.

Anyhoo, back to reading.