Literature

I didn't mean to buy it. In fact, I passed it twice before caving in to its glossy cover and celebrity author. In the end, I just couldn't resist it, the candy hearts on the cover calling to me like demons from Hollywood's underbelly of gossip rags and Kitson boutiques, beckoning to me like I was still the tortured 13 year old of its target demographic. I felt guilty as the clerk swiped my credit card, but there was no turning back - it was done. I was the owner of LA Candy, Lauren Conrad's venture into my literary world.

We're in deep shit. There is no doubt about it. The national unemployment rate is crawling up to 10%, and in many areas it has surpassed that figure. Minorities and men are among the hardest hit, and in a country with pervasive job and wage discrimination, 2% of the employable workforce incarcerated, and divorce rates that hover around 50%, families are feeling the sprain -excuse me, strain.

Why do we read and re-read books? Why do certain bestsellers seem to age well like fine wines, while others are just assembly-line cheap thrills that entertain and fail to satisfy … la fast food? I am always appreciative when I pick up a book that I turned up my nose at a few years ago, only to discover that it is funny, witty, sad, beautiful, and everything I wanted in a paperback. The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank is one such book.

Zadie Smith does characters. Her three novels -White Teeth, The Autograph Man, and On Beauty- are dedicated to the lives of her protagonists, who usually happen to be also the antagonists. The obvious conclusion I always draw from her work is that I am my own worst enemy. Or, to be objective, one is one's own worst enemy. Either way you slice or dice it, the books are almost Flannery O'Connoresque in their common theme, a search for Redemption and Grace and overcoming the Self.

"A nation's laws reflect a nation's values," Sharon Hays announces in caps lock in the opening salvos of her 2003 book, Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform, This thesis becomes the central theme of her study of two welfare offices in different regions of the United States, which details the consequences and implications of welfare reform. The Personal Responsibility Act, passed in 1996 during the height of the Clinton administration, resulted in sweeping changes in the welfare system and a reduction of over fifty percent of welfare enrollment rates.