I’ve been reading two books simultaneously and finished both this weekend, so I’m just going to write about them one at a time.

First, I read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (636 pages). It was very good! I’ve read two other books by Chabon and this was probs my favorite one of them all. There’s this kind of extensive WW2 battle part that I wasn’t quite as enthralling as the rest of the book, but I really loved the friendship between Sammy and Joe. I also thought the parts where Sammy figured out he was gay and had a boyfriend were super cute, even though it was sad when he broke up with his adorable actor boyfriend to pretend to be straight for awhile. Also, my Mom’s been bugging me to get more in touch with my Jewish heritage, so this book was good for that haha.
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The other book I read was Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn (320 pages). I bought this book after seeing Kristoff speak at a local university and reading his articles in the NYT. I finally got around to reading it and it has kind of altered my outlook on life! Whenever I talk about feminism, I find myself talking about a lot of first-world problems that, while totally valid, don’t even skim the surface of problems that women face on a worldwide scale. I’m staring college next year and I’m actually thinking about heading in the direction of working for a nonprofit that helps women once I graduate. There were all of these amazing/inspring stories of women in Africa building women’s health hospitals and girls overcoming years of sexual abuse in brothels. Also, did you know that, in the last 50 years, more girls have been killed because of their gender worldwide than the number of men killed in 20th century wars?! Basically, I kind of want to change the world now.

@internrachel and @julia1