Reading, nanny fatigue, and is marching something you do by yourself?

I'm finally (and very reluctantly) reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" because it was part of the 3 for 2 sale at Borders. So far, it is about being overly dramatic about dull things. Reading about reading is sort of too many layers of reference, but we'll see.

I was severely disappointed by "The Career Mystique" because it seemed to deal with upper middle class families exclusively. I suppose poor people don't have "careers"--they have "jobs." I'm just so bored by the eternal nanny problems of the upper classes that I'm ready to hurl. (Hint to Salon.com).

I also finished two Sarah Vowell books today. "Assassination Vacation" is pretty brilliant and a lot of fun. One of my favorite things about women authors is that there autobiographical bits usually reflect stuff about other people (in Sarah's case, her sister). Male authors occasionally give you all the uninteresting bits about themselves and NOTHING about their families and friends.

The same trend can be noticed in biographies of men and women. I think biographies of women tend to do more to place the women in context in their social and family circles. Biographies of men--especially the genre I call "great men in funny clothes marching through history"-- tend to emphasize the man as struggling in the world on his own. And just in terms of what makes biographical or autobiographical stuff interesting, it is way more cool to find out about how people affect each other than to make the (usually false) assumption that marching through history is a solo occupation.