I love my local library and feel privileged to have such access to books, music, and movies there, but sometimes I have to roll my eyes. The parking lot at this branch is small and one lane, with slant-in slots on one side for the first half and on both sides in the second half. Of course since it’s one lane, there’s just one entrance and one exit at opposite ends similar to a drive-through. As I pulled into the parking lot today I noticed all the first half slots were filled, so I continued on, but then saw a car slowly coming at me the wrong direction. I slowly pulled forward hoping the driver would realize the error as I got closer. Then I realized she was trying to back into a slot. That makes no sense in this lot since that would only cause her to be facing the wrong way when leaving. All the slots are slanted the same way, unlike some lots where they go both directions and the lanes are wide enough for two-way traffic. She’d have to make a sharp 120° left turn to exit the right way, so it’s triple the work parking and again leaving. I watched as she pulled in, which took twice as long as it should, and then passed her to park in one of the last slots. As I got out I realized she had parked so crookedly she’d taken up three slots!

After that great start I went in to get my book, which was on hold. I checked it out, no problem. I’d noticed that my wife also had a book, as I always check for her and vice versa; so I checked hers out with the copy of her card I carry. At the end of the usual process, instead of a message saying the book has been checked out, a big red warning screen popped up saying the item “could not be added to your account” and to see the librarian. So I went to the desk and stood there watching as both librarians ignored me and kept talking to each other about something. Finally one of them came up to the counter and offered to help. I explained what happened and she took my wife’s card and scanned it. She said the problem was that my wife had left her library card in the reader and needed to come to the desk herself to retrieve it. My wife had in fact left her card there accidentally a few days ago, but she had already gone back and retrieved it. This flummoxed the librarian because the computer told her no that hadn’t happened. She almost argued with me but rummaged around in the drawer where the found items are kept and couldn’t find it; so then she decided the computer must be wrong, and proceeded to clear that blockage. She told me it was handled and I could leave. I asked her if the book had completed checkout and she said yes. So I left.

But wait! There’s more. When I walked out, the electronic sensor set off the alarm beep, so I went back in. The librarian was reflummoxed and checked again to see that the book had been checked out okay. Then she realized that it wasn’t my wife’s book that set off the alarm, but mine. She checked that and it showed as checked out to me. She said the machine is supposed clear the electronic thingy in the book when I check it out, but apparently hadn’t, due to the book’s thickness, so she took my book and rubbed it around a few times on her own electronic pad. She handed it back and told me not to worry about it and to just keep on going if it happens again. So I went to leave again, but there was a lady coming in and another going out at the same time. I tailed right behind the lady exiting just as the other lady tried to enter. The alarm bells and beeps went louder and longer this time. The lady I tailed yelped and went back to the librarian thinking she had set it off. I got out of there while the getting was good as the other lady stared at me, no doubt sure I had just stolen a book and was escaping. As I approached my car, I saw that the badly parked car was gone and all three slots were now filled with cars parked correctly. Sigh.

For those of you not following chemical news, there is a company in Garden Grove, California (near Los Angeles) called GKN Aerospace that has a dangerous chemical situation. A huge tank of methyl methacrylate, a “highly volatile” substance used in the production of plastics started overheating and was in danger of exploding. The fire department has been spraying it down. It has now sprung a leak, which is considered a good thing as the pressure has been reduced and the heat is starting to lessen. So of course I felt I had to check this out with my trusty reporter, What3Words.

The tank is nestled against two other tanks. The W3W coordinates for this cluster are:
umbrella.crispy.island
heavy.longer.mushroom
payback.shared.erupted
sulked.reveal.dent

So reading those tea leaves, what we have is a vessel with a dent that when it has erupted will turn the area into a crispy island under a mushroom cloud. How fun.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story is told by two young women, Pamela and Ruth. Pamela is a sorority president in Florida when she witnesses a man enter the sorority house late at night. Shortly thereafter she discovers that several of the women have been attacked and one raped and murdered. Ruth is a young woman in Washington State. It is revealed that Ruth was murdered by the same man who entered the sorority and killed there. The book is a novel with fictional characters, but it models closely on the case of Ted Bundy, the real-life serial killer. I didn’t know that when I started reading and I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had, although the back cover advertises that fact. Though it’s well-written and the author manages to inject some suspense, it is too close to the real mundane world of law enforcement and criminal courts to be exciting. I know that world all too well.

The author also spends too much time depicting all the men as sexist and condescending, including even the judge in the case when the defendant goes to trial. I’m not disputing the accuracy of the depiction, but this is a novel, not a screed, and it needs more plot and less polemics. I listened to the audiobook, which is read by two different women. They both did a good job although one them can’t pronounce erudite or nomenclature.

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London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a true crime story with a twist. It begins by telling us the victim in this, a 19-year-old boy named Zac, was seen on video jumping to his death from a high balcony in the heart of London. The police quickly chalk it up as another teen suicide. But we soon learn there’s a lot more to it than that. He had injuries not consistent with the fall. We learn the apartment he jumped from was that of a known underworld gangster and enforcer named Indian Dave. Then we learn the boy was living a double life, pretending to be the orphaned son of a Russian oligarch. Another dodgy character named Akbar sent Zac to Dave and both appeared to be “mentoring” him. The police do bafflingly little to get to the bottom of this death. Akbar and Dave both lie shamelessly about what happened that night, as proven by records like security videos, text messages, and phone records. Zac’s parents have to hire a private investigator and an attorney to get any answers. In the end I think they got the full story, but nothing is 100% clear in this one. The story unfolds in a surprising and suspenseful way. Each new chapter brings in a new character, a contradictory fact, and so on. It had me on the edge of my seat throughout. It can be a sad and depressing story, but a worthwhile read.

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Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement by Peter S. Canellos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sam Alito is Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Alito. The author does a good job of describing Alito’s family and upbringing is reasonably short, efficient ways without this turning into a real biography. This book focuses heavily on how Alito came to wend his way onto the Supreme Court and how he has chosen to wield his power there to complete the rightward tilt of that body. Alito is no doubt a man of high intellect and steely determination. He was almost a cipher throughout his days as a law student, attorney and Circuit Court judge, although those close to him, or who studied him as The Federalist Society did, knew of his strong conservative views. Now the world knows him as an arch conservative who flips his judicial philosophy repeatedly to favor the Republican party. The quotations from his various judicial opinions bring this out in stark relief.

The title refers mostly to Alito’s time at Princeton for his undergraduate days. I had forgotten about that turbulent time. As I was on the west coast at the hotbed of dissent and anti-war picketing (Berkeley) at that time, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the same thing was happening at Princeton, the Berkeley of the East. Alito was very must offended by the disruption to his academic career the protests caused and the anti-government views of the protesters. He joined ROTC, one of the targets of the protests. According to the book, this whole experience colored his judicial and even life view. He’s punishing everyone now for the effrontery of the demonstrators et al. As an attorney and someone who turned down the Ivy League to stay at Berkeley, I may have a particular interest in this book that others might not share, but I found it very worthwhile.

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The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author read this audiobook herself and did a good job. It recounts her own history being raised by parents in the white evangelical Christian church. Her childhood sounds like an absolute nightmare, one of constant fear: fear of doing something, saying something, looking some way, even thinking about something that somehow will cause her to prevent her from going to heaven, or maybe sending someone else to hell or cause some other form of torment. She later, as an adult, left the evangelical church, hence the title of the book, but the teachings she had have clearly caused her lifelong pain and stress, not to mention loss of normal family relationships. Yet she hasn’t left Christianity. In this respect it resembles another book I read a few years ago: Educated a book written by a woman raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family.

This book, though, is more than that. The author is an NPR reporter and the book is to a large extant an investigative report. She has interviewed many other exvangelicals and religious scholars and reported on their experiences and opinions. The overall message of the book is an important one – that the evangelical doctrine is harmful and now even more dangerous due its linking itself to the far right white nationalist movement, especially to Donald Trump. This message seems to be universal from everyone who left the evangelical movement and from outsiders who have studied it or otherwise experienced it firsthand through family, etc.

While I applaud the the message and the generally excellent writing, I find the style of writing a bit preachy (note of irony there) and a bit too “woke” sounding, which can be offputting. She uses words or terms that one hears all the time on NPR but almost nowhere else and seems unaware that it sounds that way. One such example is saying LGBTQ every single time instead of gay or bi. Five syllables instead of one. It sounds ridiculous when spoken, and (gasp!) she leaves off the +! Heaven forbid (pun intended) that she should leave off some self-identified sexual minority even once. The book also becomes quite repetitive because the stories of her interviewees or sources are so similar. Still, it’s an important book for its content and I found it fascinating while at the same time horrifyingly sad.

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