J.D. Vance – Cannonball Read 17

A foreigner, but not from another country.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

February 6, 2020 by kniki 2 Comments

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is the story of J.D. Vance’s mixed upbringing and shows how your family and culture can ‘stick’ to you even when you successfully graduate from a prestigious university education and start a successful career. Early on in the book, Vance explains how his family came to live in Ohio: ‘To my grandparents, the goal was to get out of Kentucky and give their kids a head start. The kids, in turn, were expected to […]

TLDR: I enjoyed it, but it convinced me of nothing.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

January 31, 2019 by Moonlight Reader 2 Comments

I’ve been meaning to read Hillbilly Elegy for a while, but I didn’t want to spend the $11.99 that they were charging on amazon. If I had caught it on sale for $1.99 or so, I probably would’ve bought it, but that never happened. It bubbled back to the top of my consciousness after reading that Ron Howard had bought the rights to create a Netflix series based on the memoir, and then yesterday when I was in the library, they had two copies on […]

Hillbilly Elegy – an arresting title and an arresting story

April 19, 2018 by cheerbrarian Leave a Comment

J.D. Vance is an ivy-league educated lawyer. He has all the trappings of the heralded American dream – rewarded for hard work and diligence, he has a good job, a loving wife, and a nice home. But to get there, he had to first rise above (and in many instances, simply survive) the poverty of his surroundings in Kentucky and his “crazy hillbilly” family. Vance paints a clear portrait of Appalachia that is dire and often hopeless. As a person having a graduate degree that […]

Less than what it seems

December 15, 2017 by Sophia Leave a Comment

Hillbilly Elegy (2016) by J.D. Vance has over 10,000 reviews and four and a half stars on Amazon. It’s on NPR’s Best Books of 2016 list, and was also a book we read in book club. The Economist said “You will not read a more important book this year,” and the New York Times called it “essential reading.” I may be in the minority with this opinion, but I didn’t love it. Although parts of Vance’s life were certainly interesting, it wasn’t what I expected and I found some […]

I’m not joining the fan club

September 7, 2017 by ElCicco 7 Comments

This book has gotten a load of press, particularly since the Trump election. Reviewers and pundits see it as an explanation of the Trump phenomenon — who voted for that rat bastard and why? The disaffected and neglected white working class, that’s who! Of course, it is a mistake to think that it is just the white working class who bear responsibility for Trump. As Ta Nehisi Coates and others have pointed out, Trump’s support is all about being white, with class having little to […]

Hillbillies Among Us

August 29, 2017 by Rachie3879 Leave a Comment

Every year my book club members submit 2-3 suggestions for us to tackle for the upcoming year; we all vote and then the top choices make the cut. I remember seeing J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis described as something we should read to understand how Trump was elected. I was still raw and reeling from the election so I voted against this book. I was sick to death of trying to empathize with people who voted […]

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