Over the Labor day weekend I planned to get some reading done. Events intervened and I didn’t read quite as much as I hoped but this week I got through my backlog of magazines and two books: * Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It’s a few years old, now, but, given our political climate, as current as ever. Bravely, and sometimes stupidly, taking the jobs that no one notices she describes the experience of women not getting by on minimum wage. Scary if you’ve been there. More scary if you haven’t. * Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler. Ehrenreich’s forte isn’t lengthy case study and analysis and Shipler fills in the larger picture of men and women succeeding and failing to get by.