I am too young (and was for too long too disconnected from politics) to know much about Jimmy Carter except for a vague understanding of the common wisdom that he had been a poor president and of the progressive reclaiming of him in recent years. I’ve had my eye on this biography for a while: I nearly bought it at full price from my local bookstore, but when a used copy was on sale at the library for $3, I knew I couldn’t pass it up.

It’s really hard to know how to rate this book! It is meandering to the point of tangential—Graeber confesses that it evolved out of an essay that didn’t stop growing, and I wonder if it would have been better if forced to be more concise. It also has some of the same issues that I saw in The Dawn of Everything (indeed, this could have been a section of that book), in that it’s working with data and history that are impossible to nail down for sure.

After leaving our local indie bookstore, I realized how appropriate it was to spend some money there the same day the FTC goes after Amazon.

Someone let us go to our local indie bookstore the week that kiddo is recovering from a rough semi-allergic reaction, so now she has a bunch of new stuff to read, and we have a lot more loyalty points.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy church, but what really fed my soul today was a family trip to some beloved indie bookstores. And some listening to a radio adaptation of Les Misérables. And, okay, yes, the smores cookies and cream ice cream I snitched from spouse’s cone.

Look, this is the kind of book that I bought knowing already that I’d agree with its thesis, so maybe you shouldn’t read my review of it. Nonetheless, I think Caine does an excellent job of bringing together many of the arguments against Amazon. This company is bad news, and while it’s hard to escape it entirely, I think the world would be a better place if more of us did less to support it.

Kiddo starts at a new school on Wednesday, and I’ve been putting off signing the Acceptable Use Policy and Chromebook Policy because I want to read them carefully. I don’t know how much I can do about anything that I’m really concerned with, but I’m a tech researcher when I’m not being kiddo’s dad, so I feel an obligation to be informed and raise a fuss when something is fussworthy.

I have long supported Joseph-Beth, but this is giving me ideas for other bookstores to try!

Happy to say that my local indie bookstore does not have this problem.

It is a coincidence that I’m visiting my local independent bookstore the same day Bezos went to space, but it’s a happy one.

Won a $25 gift card to local indy bookstore from local library. Went to bookstore and wound up spending an ADDITIONAL $50, so it looks like everybody won this round.