Best of 2020

I read a LOT this year--228 books, perhaps the most ever for a year since leaving childhood behind. Getting into audio books has definitely increased my reading, since you can listen while cooking, doing a puzzle, playing a computer game, walking, driving, etc. I've read some very good books this year although I'm not feeling as strongly about the best novels as I did in 2016-2018. But that's not stopping me from making some "best of" picks.

Fiction

Feast Your Eyes, by Myla Goldberg. I will admit I picked this book over my two honorable mentions because it was more original. In fact, it was not like any other novel I have read, in that Goldberg structured it as an exhibit catalog written by the artist/photographer's daughter. It also incorporates excerpts from her mother's journal and interviews with people from her mother's past. The story that unfolds is a complex exploration of a problematic mother-daughter relationship, female friendship, and the life of an artist, both in terms of the economic challenges and the way in which the creative mind works.  I loved Goldberg's first novel, Bee Season, and Feast Your Eyes is similar in its originality, its complexity, its insights into art, and its spot-on portrayal of a young female character, and yet wholly different.

Honorable Mention:  The River, by Peter Heller and The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo. Still feeling unqualified to choose a best sci fi/speculative fiction, I would just say I thoroughly enjoyed The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi; Recursion, by Blake Crouch; and The Dreamers, by Karen Walker Thompson.

Oops--how could I have forgotten Olive, Again, by Elizabeth Strout? Loved it!

Mystery

Odd Child Out, by Gilly Macmillan. Two British teenage boys, best friends, sneak out after dark; one ends up being fished from a canal. The other is in a state of shock, unable (or unwilling) to speak. As the police try to figure out what happened, the reader grapples with issues of adolescent friendship, childhood illness, immigration, and sexual violence.  

Honorable Mention: Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich; Those People, by Louise Candlish; and Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (Ruskovich and Candlish might not consider their books mysteries, but I wish more mysteries resembled them)

Nonfiction

Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes. Hawes documents the horrific 2016 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, and the aftermath for the survivors and families of the victims. The survivors were badly let down by their church and pastors in the aftermath and, while some victims' families were remarkable in their strength, others experienced conflict and estrangement, compounding their losses. The perpetrator's story is equally disturbing, since his radicalization seems to have occurred largely on line. While the book offers moments of uplift, it's mostly terribly sad.

Honorable Mention: Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson; If I Understood You Would I Have This Look on My Face? by Alan Alda; and Everything Happens for a Reason . . . And Other Lies I've Loved, by Kate Bowler, which gets a special award for leading me to the author's wonderful podcast (https://katebowler.com/everything-happens/). 

YA

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo. This may be the best book I read this year--I absolutely loved it. Acevedo, a former middle school English teacher, wrote the book as the poetry  journal of the main character, high school student Xiomara. The writing is exquisite and the character's challenges as a teenager and the child of strict immigrant parents are presented with great empathy. It's a beautiful book. Here's one poetic excerpt (I love the Legos metaphor so much!):

Every time I think about Aman

poems build inside me

like I've been gifted a box of metaphor Legos

that I stack and stack and stack.

Honorable Mention: The Opposite of Always (my granddaughter's favorite), by Justin A. Reynolds, and Words in Deep Blue, by Cath Crowley

Poetry

Monument, by Natasha Trethewey. I read several poetry collections this year (yay me!) but some were a little too obtuse for my taste (shame on me!). Trethewey's poems chronicle the life experiences of life experiences of African Americans, especially African American women, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina. If the book only included the first stunning poem, it would be worthwhile; that poem is about the murder of Trethewey's mother by her stepfather and the things people say to her about this trauma ("Do you think your mother was weak for men?"). As a farm daughter, I loved these lines: 

. . . Lord, bless those hands,

The harvesters. Bless the travelers who gather

Our food and those who grow it, clean it, cook it,

Who bring it to our tables. Bless the laborers

Whose faces we do not see--like the grl

My grandmother was, walking the rails home:

Bless us that we remember. 

"Invocation, 1926"

Honorable Mention:  Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Favorite Passages

I loved so many passages in The Well-Read Black Girl, edited by Gloria Edim, that I'll just refer you to that review for a sampling: https://novelconversations.blogspot.com/2019/05/well-read-black-girl-edited-by-glory.html. 

Perhaps related at some level to those passages is this one:

Sisters, drop

everything. Walk

away from the lake, leaning

on each other's shoulders

when you need

the support. Feel the contractions

of another truth ready

to be born: shame

turned

inside out

is rage. 

Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson

And, although it's hard to say this is a favorite of all favorites, I do appreciate some snark: 

If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told it does, it appears that writing takes some away. 

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend (the narrator's thought when she hears another writer say about her friend, "Now he's officially a dead white male")

Rounding out the Year of Reading

Fairly early in December, LitHub compiles a list of the books that landed on the most "best of" lists (https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2019-list/); I immediately start perusing the list and asking myself, "Why haven't I read that . . . or that . . . or that?" So I start madly trying to get my hands on some of the books I haven't read (this continues through February); some prove to be worth it while others make me scratch my head. December's reading was definitely peppered with items from that list, as well as other random choices. Here are the more interesting titles from December.

Note: I read two books of poetry this month--The Tradition, by Jericho Brown and Hybrida, by Tina Chang. Both have some beautiful language and imagery but I find I have nothing intelligent to say about them, so . . .

Fiction

My Sister the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Korede is a well-respected nurse in a hospital in Nigeria. Her more beautiful and Instagram-obsessed sister Ayoola is a bit of a challenge, calling her from time to time to help clean up the mess that results when she kills her latest boyfriend. Then Ayoola starts dating a doctor from Korede's hospital, the doctor Korede just happens to have been in love with for ages. What is Korede going to do? The book is a satirical look at sibling relationships and social media--a quick look at reader reviews on Amazon shows that many people love this book. I enjoyed some of the humor but wasn't entirely won over by the absurdity of the situation.

Akin, by Emma Donoghue. An elderly man who is about to make a pilgrimage to his hometown in Europe learns that he is the sole relative available to provide temporary care to his 12-year-old great nephew. The boy's mother is in jail, his father and his paternal grandparents are dead, and the maternal grandmother with whom he has been living has just died. A social worker agrees to let the boy travel to Europe with the great uncle, and the book is he story of their "adventures." In some ways the book is endearing, as the simultaneous experience of investigating his mother's history and learning to cope with the young boy opens the old man's mind and heart. However, the situation is so ridiculously unfeasible (what social worker would go for this plan?) and the two characters make so many bad decisions (that's my kind way of saying they are obnoxious) that I became weary of the book about half way through.

Normal People, by Sally Rooney. Very near the top of the LitHub list (and a favorite of President Obama's for 2019) but not universally loved on GoodReads, Normal People is the story of a relationship between two bright teenagers,  the wealthy loner Marianne and Connell, a member of the "in crowd" at school whose mother works for Marianne's family. The two start a secret sexual relationship that waxes and wanes as they go off to college and enter early adulthood. Although they are drawn to each other, they can't seem to establish a healthy relationship as they struggle with self-esteem issues and the need to please/impress their friend groups. This will probably seem weird, but the relationship reminded me of Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. In the end, the author leaves the future of the relationship to our imaginations.

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson. Also high on the LitHub list, Red at the Bone examines the effects of a teen pregnancy on two African American families, one successful, the other struggling. The book is told nonlinearly from the perspectives of the child Melody, her parents Aubrey and Iris, and her grandparents. Woodson goes back into the grandparents' memories of violent racist attacks on their family and the struggle to overcome, relates Aubrey and Iris's teen marriage and the sadness that persists as a result of Iris's rejection of both her daughter and her husband, and explores Melody's dating and friendships. While there is great sadness and pain, there is also uplift in the way in which Aubrey essentially became the child of Iris's parents and the love with which Melody was surrounded. And, of course, there is Woodson's exquisite prose, crafted to express five distinct voices. Definitely recommended.

Rules for Visiting, by Jessica Frances Kane. I really enjoyed this light book featuring May, a gardener at a college. When she gets an extra month of vacation from her job, she decides to use it visiting four old friends that she hasn't seen for years. Feeling herself not well-versed in friendship, she studies up on how visitors should behave. The resulting visits are awkward, funny, and sometimes touching. And there's a lot of information about plants. If it sounds silly, it is a bit--but it's a good silly.

Supper Club, by Lara Williams. This one was lower on the LitHub list, but I can't imagine how it got onto even four "best of 2019" lists. Maybe it's a millennial thing. The protagonist Roberta and friend Stevie, stuck in unrewarding jobs straight out of college, start a supper club for women in which they make elaborate dishes from foods they have obtained through dumpster diving. They eat until they feel sick, hoping to be able to take up more space in the male-dominated world in which they live (The Guardian described the supper club as a female version of Fight Club). This is an interesting, if somewhat nauseating, idea, but the supper club is only a piece of the story, which also deals with Roberta's dysfunctional childhood, rape, self-harm, and painful/bad relationships. Maybe this could all add up to something insightful, but for me, it does not. 

The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami.  At the heart of this novel, also lower down on the LitHub list, is the hit-and-run killing of Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant who owns a small restaurant in a small California desert town. His daughter Nora, a composer (not a career her parents would have chosen for her) believes the accident might have been a hate crime, and the investigation into this possibility provides a through thread for the novel. At the same time, through multiple narrators, Lalami explores the conflict between self-interest and doing the right thing, the longing for home, the particular stresses in immigrant families, the effects of violence/PTSD, and more. While some of the content and themes may seem to be particular to the immigrant experience, I found the author's insights equally applicable to all people. The author's skill in weaving together different perspectives and themes while keeping the narrative of the accident moving forward was impressive. Recommended.

Mystery

The Nanny, by Gilly Macmillan. Macmillan has written some very good mysteries. The Nanny is so-so. I found it predictable and also winced at the "bad mother" theme that seems to be common in recent mysteries.

How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid. Years ago, I read a lot of Val McDermid. Then I decided she was getting too dark for me, so I stopped until about five years ago, when I started reading her newer series. I enjoyed several of them quite a bit. Sadly, I found How the Dead Speak, which is number 11 in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, somewhat dull, though you'd think dozens of children's bodies found in the yard of an orphanage would make for an interesting read. Perhaps it's because Tony and Carol aren't actually the main characters in the book. Perhaps it's because Tony is in prison, trying to use his psychological skills to help other inmates while avoiding getting beaten. Perhaps it's because there's a major coincidence that ties two cases together in an unbelievable way. This one just didn't do it for me. 

Sci-Fi/Speculative Fiction

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. My friend Suzy, who is a big reader of sci-fi, recommended this book. Its structure is interesting, in that the bulk of the book is devoted to seven travellers telling their stories a la The Canterbury Tales. Because I am very bad at getting the gestalt of fictional worlds, here is a slightly edited version of Wikipedia's overview of the context:  In the 29th century, the Hegemony of Man comprises thousands of planets connected by farcaser portals. The Hegemony maintains an uneasy alliance with the TecnoCore, a civilisation of AIs. Modified humans known as Ousters live in space stations and are in conflict with the Hegemony. Hyperion is a planet with no farcasters that is difficult to access without significant time dilation. It is home to structures known as the time Tombs, which are moving backward in time and guarded by a creature known as the Shrike. On the eve of an Ouster invasion of Hyperion, a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs has been organized. I found several of the pilgrims' tales to be very interesting; however, I was put off by not having a better understanding of the point of their pilgrimage and by the ending, which was an obvious indicator that there would be a sequel (which there was).

The Dreamers, by Karen Thompson Walker. In a small college town in California, people suddenly fall into a deep sleep. Some die, others just keep sleeping. In the fear engendered by the sleeping illness, people and institutions take drastic actions to try to prevent its spread and the reader experiences those actions through the eyes of various townspeople.Eventually, for no apparent reason, some people start to wake up, bringing with them memories of dreams they believe predict the future--and some seem to. Yet others of the dreams, while still perceived as images of the future, are actually forgotten events of the past. The book leaves us with many more questions than answers. My description does not do the book justice--it's highly entertaining and also thought-provoking.

Nonfiction

Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon. Kiese Laymon is an accomplished writer and educator. Reading his memoir about growing up in Mississippi and the long-term effects of abuse of varied types, pervasive violence, and racism makes one wonder how he has managed to achieve so much. Clearly, his success has not been easily won, as he has struggled with addictive behavior (exercise, eating, gambling), psychological issues, and persistent racism. He addresses the memoir to his mother, which is an act of courage, given that she was at the heart of many of the troubling aspects of his childhood (and she is still alive). Heavy is a courageous, troubling, and intense book that can be uncomfortable reading--but will worth the discomfort.

What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, edited by Michelle Filgate. I found it somewhat ironic to be reading this book in the last week of the year in which my mother died.  There were certainly plenty of topics we did not talk about but reading the 15 essays in this collection made me feel like the pain and anger under those silences are fairly low key in comparison to what others have experienced. The parental failures to accept their children, to address their traumas, to be there recounted in some of the essays are heartrending, and one can understand how estrangement between parent and child happens. Other essays deal with silences that seem less significant to me; an NPR reviewer classified these as wanting to know "what to know what their moms were like before they were moms." Trying to unravel the mysteries of our parents' youth is certainly interesting but it's a silence of a different nature (believe me, as I am currently transcribing my grandmother's diaries, I have some questions about the family narrative, but I am not obsessed with finding answers). I don't think I had any major insights into my relationship with my mother (or my children) as a result of reading this book, but I did find it interesting.

YA

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, by Hank Green. Hank Green, brother of mega-popular YA author John Green, has created a fast-paced tale about graphic designer April May, who comes across a giant Transformer-like statue on a Manhattan street. She calls her videographer friend and they post a video about the statue on YouTube; when it turns out that these statues have appeared simultaneously in cities across the world, the video goes viral and April becomes a media star. The book deals with serious themes--fame/celebrity and their effect on people, how social media is changing culture, fear of the unknown and how it can be exploited, and more. The book is entertaining but the ending is clearly a set-up for a sequel (to be published in 2020), which is something I'm not fond of. Interestingly, my granddaughter couldn't get into the book while it's her best friend's all-time favorite.

Favorite Passages

His girl will love and be loved. She will suffer, and she will cause suffering. She will be known and unknown. She will be content and discontented. She will sometimes be lonely and sometimes less so. She will dream and be dreamed of. She will grieve and be grieved for. She will struggle and triumph and fail. There will be days of spectacular beauty, sublime and unearned. There will be moments of rapture. She will sometimes feel afraid. The sun will warm her face. The earth will ground her body. And her heart--now thrumming strong and steady, against her father's chest, as he rocks her to sleep on a porch swing one evening in early summer, at the very start of a life--that heart: it will beat, and it will someday cease to beat. And so much of this life will remain always beyond her understanding, as obscure as the landscapes of someone else's dreams."

Karen Thompson Walker, The Dreamers


For too long we said nothing. There was something moving through me like a razor in my chest--I didn't know then if it was rage or sadness or fear. Maybe Iris felt it too because she moved closer to me, rested her hand on the back of my neck, and pressed her lips into my hair. I wanted more, though--a hug, a kindness whispered into my ear. I wanted her to tell me I was beautiful, that she didn't care what music played, that she loved me. I wanted her to laugh with me about the ridiculousness of garters and stockings. 

Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone (and very relevant to What My Mother and I Don't Talk About)


Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.

Laila Lalami, The Other Americans

Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson

I have long admired Bryan Stevenson's work as the founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative and marveled at his fierce yet gentle demeanor. But I had never read his book until now--and it confirms that he is a true American hero. The book details his work on behalf of those treated unfairly in the criminal justice system, often because of racial discrimination, but also because they lacked the resources needed to receive a fair trial because they were poor, young, or disabled. The story of Walter McMillian, who was wrongly convicted of a murder (literally everyone involved with the investigation and prosecution lied) and sentenced to death, provides a through line for the book. Eventually, Stevenson was able to win McMillian's freedom, and he continued to assist McMillian after his release (as he and EJI have done for many).

Alternating with chapters about McMillian are chapters that delve into some of the issues with which Stevenson and the EJI have worked--sentencing and treatment of the mentally disabled or mentally ill, trying juveniles as adults and rendering death penalty or life without parole penalties in those cases, women who had stillbirths and were subsequently charged with murder, and more. Near the end of the book, he describes the decision to become in education programs to help people understand racial discrimination in the larger context of the African American experience in the United States with slavery, post-Reconstruction terrorism, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration being four phases of that experience. That work has resulted in the construction of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice; you can learn more about these educational projects at https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/.

The book can be difficult reading--I was crying on an airplane as I read earlier today--but it should be read by everyone, particularly those who think that our justice system operates well. Highly recommended.

Favorite passages:

The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of hope makes one strong.

I guess I'd always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we're shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.     

Thankful for Good November Reading

I read a lot in November—partly because I have had a cold that won’t quit and have been reading while lying around—and enjoyed a surprising number of the books read. I still read some titles I ended up sneering at, but in the spirit of the holidays, I've decided not to deal with them here.

Fiction

Lake Success, by Gary Shteyngart. Hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen, plagued by an SEC investigation and unable to cope with his three-year-old's autism diagnosis, takes off on a Greyhound bus in search of his college girlfriend, leaving his much younger wife Seema to cope with their son, her immigrant parents, and the SEC. Barry's experiences as he lurches across he country might teach a better man something important about himself or humanity, but Barry is not the reflective type. Seema, on the other hand, grows in her Barry-free time, finding ways to encourage their son to become a functioning human being. This book was my first by Shteyngart, but it won't be my last.

Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok. Sylvie Lee is the older daughter of Chinese immigrants to the United States who spent the first 9 years of her life living in the Netherlands with her grandmother and an aunt. After travelling back to the Netherlands to be with her dying grandmother, she disappears, and her younger (and much less accomplished) sister Amy travels to Europe to try to find her. As Amy searches for her sister, she uncovers family history that has been held secret for decades. The story is told asynchronously from the viewpoints of Sylvie, Amy, and their mother; as the climax approaches, we begin to sense what may have happened, but there is still a bit of a twist at the end. An engrossing family drama.

Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue. Cameroonian immigrant Jende thinks he has landed his dream job driving for Lehman Brothers executive Clark. Jende's wife Neni and their son have joined him in the United States, and she is going to school and expecting their second child. Despite the challenges of being an immigrant in the United States, they believe they are on their way. Then the great recession hits, and Jende loses his job and his somewhat trumped-up asylum request. As his family struggles, so does Clark's family, as dreams at many levels (people might have to start flying coach!) are crushed. What makes this book different from so many other immigrant stories (SPOILER) is that Jende, over Neni's objections, decides the family should return to Cameroon.

The Confession Club, by Elizabeth Berg. This is Berg's third feel-good book set in Mason, Missouri. The center of this story is a group of women who meet regularly to eat and confess to each other their misdeeds and regrets. Several characters from the previous two books reappear with new problems to solve, but all ends happily. It's corny but charming.

Nonfiction

Erosion: Essays of Undoing, by Terry Tempest Williams. Williams is brilliant, a marvelous writer, and an environmental advocate. While reading Erosion, I occasionally felt I had read the same environmental arguments in her book about the national parks, but her writing about the reduction of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments reminded me of the destructiveness of the Trump Administration (so much keeps happening that you forget the outrages of first two years) and the utter lack of understanding of the indigenous people's histories. Her essay on her brother's suicide is terribly raw and moving, beautiful in its grief. The book is not uniformly great, but there's enough that is to make it worthwhile.

Eat Joy: Stories and Comfort Food, edited by Natalie Eve Garrett. This collection brings together writings (and recipes) from a variety of well-known authors, who describe a moment in their lives when food was important. The title is somewhat misleading, as many of the stories have more to do with sadness than joy--dead fathers abound (Edwidge Danticat's essay about sharing rice with her dying father is perhaps my favorite)--but the pieces are nonetheless rewarding. And it's somewhat shocking what horrible food some authors lived on (General Tso's tofu, anyone?).

To Obama, with Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope, by Jeanne Marie Laskas. Every day of his presidency, Barack Obama read 10 letters from constituents, sometimes replying with handwritten notes, other times leaving directions for staff to investigate and respond. Selecting these letters was only a small part of the work of the Office of Presidential Correspondence, and Laskas gives us insight into what that work involved, its rewards and its challenges (the office received a lot of what were termed Red Dot letters, those that suggested an emergency in progress, whether self-harm or violence against others, and under protocol had to be responded to with assistance within 24 hours). Laskas talked to a number of people whose letters made it into 10LAD, examining how writing the letter and getting a response affected them. She also talked to President Obama about how the letters affected him. He told her, "If we duplicate enough of those moments, enough of those interactions, enough of those shared stories, over time we get better at this thing called democracy. And that is something that all of us have the capacity to do. That's not the job of the president. That's not the job of a bunch of professional policy makers. It's the job of citizens." Of course, the letters and the President's responses are the soul of the book--it's good to be reminded how angry people were in 2008 (and interesting to see that Obama often argued with accusations made against him). To Obama may not be the deepest book written about his historic administration, but it's an enjoyable one.

Mysteries

Those People by Louise Candlish. Candlish's work reminds me of the novels of Liane Moriarty--both skewer the smug self-satisfaction of the upper middle class and do it in a way that is both creepy and humorous. The fact that Those People includes police interviews with people in the neighborhood where the book is set makes this title even more reminiscent of Moriarty's Big Little Lies. In Those People, a lovely suburban neighborhood near London is disrupted when a lower class gent inherits a house on the block. He and his female partner immediately offend by playing heavy metal at deafness-causing levels, parking a variety of junky vehicles on the street and in their yard, and starting construction projects that promise to be protracted. Then the scaffolding required for one of the projects collapses, killing someone. Was it an accident, negligence, sabotage? Relationships break down as the police investigate. It's entertaining and somewhat mysterious.


Favorite Passages:

Whatever I know as a woman about spirituality, I have learned from my body encountering Earth. Soul and soil are not separate. Neither is wind and spirit, nor water and tears. We are eroding and evolving at once, like the red rock landscape before me. Our grief is our love. Our love will be our undoing as we quietly disengage from the collective madness of the patriarchal mind that says aggression is the way forward.

Erosion, by Terry Tempest Williams

Election Results
An Abecedarian

A shuffle of slippers awakes me. I arise from my
bed. Mom looks at me through tearstained cheeks. "Honey, she lost. 
Clinton lost." I squeeze my eyes shut. I can't even pretend to suppress the
dry sob that 
echoes in my throat. Someone
fear-driven will be the head of this
glorious nation, my
home country. How could we have done this?
I convince myself to get up. The days are now numbered until
January 20th, that dreaded day when our true leader is 
kicked out, no
longer in the position to
make our country the place we
need it to be. Right now,
only Obama can make me feel better, so I
press the Home button on my iPad to watch his speeches.
Quiet tears leak down my face, a whispered
reminder: my Mexican, Asian, and Muslim friends may
soon be leaving me, all because of 
Trump, who can't even begin to 
understand the rest of the world's point of 
view. I thought I
would be angry. Instead, I'm sad that he's brainwashed America with his
xenophobia-ridden lies. I turn back to Obama,
yearning for everything and nothing at the same time. I tell myself.
"Zoe. We can get through this."

Zoe Ruff, age 13, in a letter to President Obama

Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics, by Susan Herbst

It’s embarrassing to look in your stack of unread books and find a book you borrowed from a friend years ago and still haven’t read. So with apologies to my friend Nisan, I have finally read Rude Democracy. One of the things that was immediately interesting was that the book was written in 2009-10, in the wake of the 2008 election and the health care debates—a time when we thought incivility was high but did not realize the escalation that would occur in the Trump era. It would definitely be interesting to see what the author has to say about the current situation. (Early on in the book she says “My belief is that truly interesting and important cases of intentional public lying are somewhat rare,” a statement I think might require some revision.)

Herbst suggests there are three basic definitions of civility—one equates civility with virtue, one with good manners, and the third, the definition Herbst favors is that civility and incivility are strategic tools. One can certainly see this in the 2008 election, which Herbst looks at (with particular emphasis on Sarah Palin) and the 2016 election, which of course she was unable to consider. She is hesitant to say that the level of incivility is worse than it has previously been, arguing instead that modern communications put incivility in our faces in a way that would not have been possible in previous centuries. She also makes a strong argument that civility is not only about how we talk but about how we listen.

The book is organized into three major sections; the first looks at Sarah Palin’s use of civility and incivility in the 2008 campaign; the second examines President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame in 2009, in which he discussed the need for civility, as well as how subsequent events related to the health care debate tested Obama’s thinking about civility; the third presents results surveys of Georgia college students regarding freedom of speech and civility on campus. I did not find any of these analyses particularly helpful. In the section on Palin’s use of civility and incivility, which she praises as skillful, she spends more time critiquing the way media covered Palin and Obama rallies than actually dissecting how Palin used civility/incivility as strategic tools and why her use was effective.

I did find interesting the fact that American Presidents rarely have talked about civility. A search of the American Presidency Project’s archive of 86,000 documents revealed only 129 mentions of civility, only one before 1961. She does look at strategies Obama used in his speech, but I am not sure they are strategies of civility but rather strategies used in discussing civility. The strategies—linking terms by forcing associations among them, breaking a concept into parts to identify one’s proposal with the most favored part, creating a symbol that condenses an issue, and frame shifting—are interesting but I’m not sure what I learn about civility through learning about these strategies for controlling the discussion of an issue.  

The major idea I took from the chapter on the survey of college students is that, while students have very strong feelings about political discussion, they have very few skills for engaging in such discussion. As an educator who has spent years teaching teachers how to develop discussion skills in their students, this came as disheartening confirmation of the concerns most of us have about the civic preparation of young people.

Overall, I was disappointed by Rude Democracy.  While Herbst presents some interesting ideas, her analysis could have been more pointed.

Favorite Passages:

“Again, Eulau gets to the bottom of it, proposing that civility is about emotional maturity: “We have achieved the politics of civility when we are capable of asking not only ‘What is in it for me?”’ but also ‘What can I do for you’ It is out of these two simple questions that the maturity of civility is born.”

Just as incivility is a strategic asset, a real skill when practiced well, listening and dealing with incivility can also be both skill and asset. Neither ignoring nor capitulating in the face of incivility will move a conversation.

Bad Weather, Good Reading

October in Colorado is ending on a particularly cold and snowy note, but it is also ending with a couple of really good books (The Grammarians and Olive, Again), so the month redeemed itself!

Fiction

For a writer/editor who as a child thought that being a twin with a secret language would be unbelievably cool, picking up Cathleen Schine's The Grammarians was a no-brainer. After all, it's about identical twins Laurel and Daphne (oh, did I mention my name is Laurel) who are obsessed with language. Their closeness and idiosyncrasies set them somewhat apart from their families and prevent them from forming other close friendships. Yet, after attending college together and sharing an apartment in New York, they both marry, have a daughter, and eventually carve out language-based careers. Daphne becomes an editor and columnist who writes snarky pieces about writers whose language is insufficiently precise while Laurel is a teacher who writes poems and short stories based on the language of historic letters to the Department of War whose English does not live up to the standards of the pedantic Daphne.  Other than the sisters, the characters are not particularly well developed and there were some inconsistencies in the narration that bothered even me (this is the kind of thing my son the literary scholar usually has to point out to me). But I enjoyed the sisterly relationship, the word play, and the philosophical discussions of language and its uses enough to let me ignore any problems I saw. And, by the way, I no longer think being a twin would be that great.

I pick up every Elizabeth Strout book as soon as I can, so I certainly wasn't going to miss the new sequel to Olive Kittredge, titled Olive, Again. Like its predecessor, Olive, Again is a a collection of linked short stories. In some, the irascible Olive Kittredge, a retired math teacher who was widowed near the end of the previous book, is the central character; others feature her neighbors in Crosby, Maine, with Olive making a cameo appearance. Together, the stories in this collection add up to something not quite a novel but equally rewarding--an exploration of "coming into age," of loneliness, of friendship. Olive as a character continues to fascinate--she seems here to be gaining some degree of self-reflection, yet she continues to offend with her abruptness and condescension; perhaps that is why she feels so authentic. My favorite story is "The Poet," in which Olive sees a former student sitting in a coffee shop and joins her for breakfast; the student happens to be a former poet laureate but Olive is perplexed by her ratty sweater, bad teeth, and apparent sadness. When the woman later writes a poem that eviscerates Olive, the pain comes not only from the poem but from the fact that someone left the poetry magazine at her door, knowing how it would affect her. While there is much that is sad in Olive, Again, it is balanced with humor and the humanity Strout gives her characters. 

I thought I had already posted about Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys, but either the post was imaginary or it has disappeared, so . . . The Nickel Boys is based on facts about a horrific school for boys in Florida, The Dozier School, renamed the Nickel School for this novel. The main character, Elwood Curtis, is a good student who is looking forward to better things in the future when he accepts a ride from a man who happens to be driving a stolen car; though an innocent passenger, Elwood is sent to the Nickel School, where he and other African American boys are hideously abused, sometimes killed. Although there is a novel-ish twist near the end, when we are learning about Elwood's post-Nickel School life, most of the time I felt like I was reading a nonfiction account, which was somewhat disappointing given the creativity of Whitehead's earlier works (particularly The Underground Railroad). Nonetheless, I am glad I read the book.

If you are a beer aficionado or are just looking for a "feel good" novel, you might enjoy The Lager Queen of Minnesota, by J. Ryan Stradal. I don't like beer and I thought the story was quite unbelievable, so didn't really care for it but can see that some people would feel differently.

I listened to Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein because the editors on the podcast Audicted recommended it. It's the story of two friends, Julie and Maddie, who are involved in war work; they are assigned to a secret mission behind enemy lines in France. Julie is captured and the first part of the book is structured as her confessions; the second part is a more straightforward narrative from Maddie's perspective. It's an intense story that not only educates about the work women did during World War II but also explores loyalty, friendship, and courage. Although I am somewhat tired of World War II stories, I nonetheless enjoyed Code Name Verity.

My friend Colleen recommended Problems with People, a collection of stories about the difficulty of connection.  While I admire author David Guterson's writing style, the stories mostly left me feeling dissatisfied.

Some reviews I'd read of Katherine Center's Things You Save in a Fire had led me to believe it was a more serious book than I found it to be. Essentially, it's a romance with some serious social issues--sexual assault, misogyny in certain professions--thrown in to give it some depth.

Classic

I have struggled with Margaret Atwood in the past (I think Alias Grace is the only of her books I have made it through), but all the attention to The Handmaid's Tale convinced me that I should read it, and I'm glad I did. The dystopian tale of women's subjugation is a terrifying look at what could happen in a religiously-oriented state run by people who hate women (does this now seem more possible than it did a few years ago?). The epilogue, which purports to be the minutes of a presentation at a historical association meeting, is both encouraging (Gilead no longer exists) and very funny, perhaps especially if you're an academic or even a semi-academic (as I might call myself). I am now looking forward to reading The Testaments and might even try some other Atwood.

The Ongoing Binge

In case you think I might have abandoned mysteries, such is not the case. Here are this month's time-stealers:

• The Liar's Girl, by Catherine Ryan Howard. This book about a young woman who returns to Ireland when the police ask her to talk with her former boyfriend, a convicted serial killer, has been nominated for some big prizes in the genre and I thought it was okay but not great. 
• All The Wrong Places, by Joy Fielding. At the end of this book, I felt the author was asking us to be happy about the protagonist's nasty cousin being the victim of a serial killer--don't think I'll read any more of Fielding's work.
• Here to Stay, by Mark Edwards. In-laws from hell come to stay with young married couple and bad stuff happens. Ugh.
• Leave No Trace, by Mindy Mejia. A counselor at a psychiatric facility becomes involved with a patient's efforts to escape and help his father in ways that strain credulity. Totally unbelievable.
• Bloody Genius, by John Sandford. I liked this latest title in the Virgil Flowers series better than its recent predecessors, perhaps because there was less womanizing (after all, Virgil's girlfriend is pregnant with twins). 
• 17th Suspect, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. What you'd expect from this series. 
• Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke. I like that Locke brings issues of race into the mystery genre, but this particular book had a kitchen-sink feeling to it--Locke threw in so many plot elements (a cover-up of a previous crime, problems in the marriage, exploitation of Native Americans, protection of squatters who have set up on property owned by African Americans) that I wished for a bit more simplicity. Still, I will continue to follow her work. 
• Still Midnight, by Denise Mina. This is book 1 in Mina's Alex Morrow series; I'm not sure I'll try another. 

Will I staunch the mystery binge in November? Stay tuned. 

Favorite Passages

There were no words for what she felt, the depth of the emptiness, the breadth of the emptiness, the emptiness of the emptiness. Words could only cloak what she felt. Words were supposed to illuminate and clarify.Words were meant to communicate information and feelings from one person to another. But today words stood numb and in the way. We are alone, Daphne thought, words can't change that.

--Cathleen Schine, The Grammarians (these were Daphne's thoughts following her father's funeral)

"When you get old," Olive told Andrea after the girl had walked away, "you become invisible. It's just the truth. And yet it's freeing in a way."

--Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again

Make a career of humanity. Make it a central part of your life.

--Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

Talking to Strangers, The Dutch House, and Feelings of Inadequacy

This week I definitely felt my inadequacy as a reader. First, the finalists for the National Book Award came out--and I haven't read any of them, in any of the categories! And I read a lot!

Then I read a couple of very good books that I struggled with for various reasons.

Talking to Strangers

Malcolm Gladwell has such a genius for synthesizing cases and research that I always feel somewhat dense when I read his work. His new book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, started with concern about the Sandra Bland case. In case you don't remember, Bland was the African American woman who was stopped for a minor traffic offense, was arrested after her interaction with an overzealous police officer escalated, and committed suicide in her jail cell a few days later. Something I had not known about her was that she had a history of depression and had recently suffered a grievous loss.

Gladwell's interest in the case led him to ask: Why do we so often go wrong in our interactions with people we don't know? This is not the question I would have asked if I were looking into the case--mine would have been more focused on how we can improve policing. But it's an interesting question, and Gladwell brings a large variety of cases to bear on the question, from a Cuban spy who goes undetected in the Defense Intelligence Agency for years, to Bernie Madoff, Friends, Amanda Knox, the creators of "enhanced interrogation" techniques, Sylvia Plath, judges who grant bail, convicted sex abusers Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nasser, stop and frisk (or pretextual police stops), and more. From his examination of these cases and related research, he teases out three explanations for why we are so bad at understanding strangers:

--In general, we default to truth--that is, we tend to believe people are telling the truth.
--People are not transparent--their exterior does not always match their thoughts. Even so-called experts in reading facial expressions are often wrong. This problem can be exacerbated by cultural differences.
--People's actions are often closely coupled with place/context (e.g., suicides in Britain went way down when the way in which gas was delivered to homes changed, indicating that people's suicidality was tied to the availability of a particular method).

His analysis clearly indicates that people continue to cling to their misconceptions even in the face of evidence (this is in line with brain/learning research that we have known about in education for some time). He also points out that much of police training is based on misconceptions.

It's when Gladwell brings everything together to apply it to the Sandra Bland case that I don't follow, as it seems in this case many of the above general rules don't really have a lot of explanatory power. And he doesn't deal at all with the question that plagues society with respect to the many tragic police-citizen interactions in the past few years: racism. In the end, he sums up the police officer's mistake in dealing with Ms. Bland as "blaming the other person." Sorry, that seems to me to abandon all that has come before--but I respect Gladwell enough to wonder if I've somehow missed the point.

The Dutch House

I like Ann Patchett's work, and I particularly appreciated her prior novel Commonwealth, which was an autobiographical work based on Patchett's own complicated family. The Dutch House continues some of the themes from that work--children abandoned by their mothers, the cobbling together of family, memory and how it shapes people. The Dutch House is less complicated, however--two children are at the core: Danny, the narrator, and his older sister/surrogate mother Maeve. The title refers to the huge house that their father Cyril, a real estate developer and landlord, bought for their mother, a woman who was planning to be a nun before she met and married Cyril. Unsurprisingly, she hates the house and eventually abandons it and her family to serve the poor in India.

The children (3 and 10 at the time) are devastated, particularly Maeve, who has no one to be a substitute mother. She longs for her mother while Danny, over the years, becomes increasingly angry at her abandonment. When their father marries a younger woman with two daughters, the ultimate result is the children's banishment from the house, which haunts them as they become adults. Over the years, they spend a lot of their time together parked in a car outside the house reminiscing.  In the end, redemption, forgiveness, and (so the ending is not entirely happy and fluffy) grief.

The characters in this book are not as deeply drawn as in some other Patchett works and I think that relates to my feelings of inadequacy. I heard Patchett being interviewed on NPR (can't remember who was interviewing her), and she said The Dutch House was Maeve's story as told by Danny. But as a reader, I didn't see that at all--to me, it was Danny's story, often Danny's story of being manipulated by Maeve. Now I know this doesn't really matter, especially in reader response theory, but when you hear the author say the book is one thing and you can't figure out what she was thinking, you don't feel really insightful.

I liked The Dutch House, even though I don't think it was Maeve's story, but I have liked other Patchett works more.

Favorite passage:

But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House 

Reading around the Edges of a Mystery Binge

I've been on a bit of a mystery binge (a sadly disappointing mystery binge), but have read a few other books worth  mentioning in September (and how can it be nearly October already?). After drafting this post, I realized that my reading in the latter half of September was pretty depressing!

Nonfiction

My book club started up again for the fall, and Educated by Tara Westover was our first book for the year. I thought I was the only person left in the Western United States who hadn't read this memoir of a young woman's upbringing in an "off-the-grid" (but not really family) in Idaho, but it turns out that wasn't true. The story is amazing, in that Ms. Westover managed to get away from her crazy family and gain an education, including a Ph.D. from Cambridge. However, it's also infuriating in that the Westover children were horribly mistreated by their father (Tara was also mentally and physically abused by one of her brothers), not defended by their mother or anyone in the community, and  completely uneducated (the parents claimed to be home-schooling them but in truth they were unschooled). There is much that a person who grew up in a "normal" situation simply cannot comprehend, but when I finished the book I wasn't sure that Tara herself has even now completely processed her experience, but maybe that's not possible either. The book did cause me to consider the line between mental illness and evil and to what extent someone's mental illness should excuse their abusive behavior; that question remains unresolved but I appreciate being prompted to think about it.

Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes, was another thought-provoking read that leaves one with more questions than answers. Hawes documents the horrific 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, SC, and the aftermath for the survivors and the families of the victims. It was upsetting to learn that the survivors were badly let down by the church and their pastors in the aftermath--very little spiritual assistance was provided and funds sent to the church but intended for the survivors and victims' families were taken by the church. The depth of the indifference shown these good people is literally shocking. Many of the survivors and members of victims' families were admirable in the strength and forgiveness they showed following the tragedy; as one might expect, other families experienced conflict and ultimately estrangement, compounding their losses. The story of the perpetrator is difficult to take in. Though his childhood and young adulthood seem to have been rather chaotic, he was not explicitly raised to be a racist; his radicalization seems to have occurred largely online, which is a frightening reinforcement of other stories we've all read. And, while some progress in race relations in Charleston are documented, much remains to be accomplished there and elsewhere. The book offers moments of uplift, but it's mostly terribly sad.

Fiction

Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich, might almost fit into my mystery binge, but the author definitely had more complex motivations than simply to entertain. The book has multiple narrators and jumps back and forth in time. In the present, Ann and Wade are married, and Wade is suffering from early onset dementia. One of Wade's daughters, May, is dead, and his first wife Jenny was convicted of killing her; his other daughter, June, disappeared on the day May died. Without being able to discuss the events with Wade, Ann tries to find her way to the truth of what happened and why it happened. Meanwhile, Jenny is in prison, where she has one friend, a woman who killed two people but is eager to learn.  The book is beautifully written and the characters come alive in Ruskovich's prose. I definitely recommend it--but only if you don't need everything neatly wrapped up.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin, got a lot of positive reviews and landed on a several "Best of" lists, but I actively hated the story of four siblings who at very tender ages go to see a psychic who tells them when they will die. This, not surprisingly, screws them up rather thoroughly. Who would predict children's deaths? How did no responsible adult in their life never find out and help them deal with the predictions? I found the entire scenario so disgusting I could not enjoy any of the deep points other reviewers thought Benjamin was making. Not recommended.

Classic

Unlike House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome is not set among the upper class denizens of New York. Rather, Edith Wharton sets this "tale" (as she called it) in rural Massachusetts among struggling farmers, of which the title character is one. Ethan had gone off to college but been forced to return home to care for his ailing mother; he was so grateful to his lively cousin Zenobia for helping in his mother's illness that he married her. Shortly thereafter, Zeena transformed into a dour invalid. Then her cousin Mattie came to stay with them, and the situation between Ethan and the two women became complicated and ultimately sad (I won't say more to avoid ruining the twist at the end of the book). Wharton frames Ethan's story as being told by a visitor to the area 20 years after the end of the story took place; I didn't find this framing added anything (but in general I dislike such frames), but I found the tale interesting. Of course, Wharton's prose is admirable.

The Binge

• Blood Oath, by Linda Fairstein -- possibly her last book, since she has lost her publisher due to her role in the Central Park Five case (as portrayed in Ava Duvernay's Netflix series). Surprisingly, I thought this book was better than a lot of the previous Alex Cooper series.
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny -- Inspector Gamache, Jean-Guy, Three Pines, blah, blah, blah.
• In Her Bones, by Kate Moretti -- Daughter of a female serial killer becomes obsessed with survivors of her mother's crimes and then is suspected of killing one. Interesting premise, not that great in execution. 
• Whistle in the Dark, by Emma Healey -- What do you do when your daughter returns from four days being missing and won't tell what happened to her? Again, better premise than book. 
• The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen -- A controlling husband and the women who fall for him and then must escape -- ugh. 
• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda -- rich friend, poor friend, mysterious death -- again ugh.
• Sins of the Fathers, by J.A. Jance -- I have always liked Jance's character J.P. Beaumont, but this isn't really much of a mystery. More of a dip into Beau's drunken past -- definitely not the strongest entry in the series.

Favorite Passages:

Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness.

     Tara Westover, Educated

How quickly someone else's life can enter through the cracks we don't know are there until this foreign thing is inside of us. We are more porous than we know.

Theirs is a devotion that is possible only because of their equal disappointments in each other and the knowledge they share that at one time, to the one who mattered, they were each separately enough. 

     Emily Ruskovich, Idaho

Reading OBOB Authors: Recursion and The River

One Book One Broomfield has introduced me to some authors I might never have encountered otherwise; two of these are Blake Crouch and Peter Heller, both of whom have new books out. The two books are both engaging, although in totally different ways.

Recursion 

Crouch's Recursion is a time travel tale but different than other such books I have read (and I have to admit, I haven't read that many) because people in this story travel only backward, have different lives when they travel, and, at some point in the future, can remember all of the lives. Aside from those who have created the time travel apparatus, people do not understand what has happened to create the conflicting memories--indeed, they think they have something called False Memory Syndrome (FMS)--and a suicide epidemic results.

The narrative is told from the viewpoints of two characters. New York police officer Barry Sutton  starts investigating FMS when he fails to prevent the suicide of a woman who is tormented by her memories of another life. Barry has also experienced tragedy--his teenage daughter was killed in a car accident and his marriage subsequently fell apart--and is open to return to the day of her death to prevent the accident. When he is afforded that opportunity, he enjoys his altered life until the day his wife and daughter remember the other life. At that point, his thinking about time travel changes.

The second protagonist is scientist Dr. Helena Smith, who is working on a device that will help people with Alzheimer's (including her mother) recover some of their memories. When a wealthy investor offers to underwrite her work, she is delighted until . . . no spoilers here.

Recursion bears some similarities to our 2017 OBOB selection by Crouch, Dark Matter. People have alternative lives--clearly a fascination for Crouch--but the focus is somewhat different, in that Recursion explores the functions of memory while Dark Matter looked at how the smallest decisions can change a person's life. Each book contains a device whose function is somewhat magical to this reader and which some more scientifically picky readers will likely find infeasible. And each book contains some violent scenes that I could have done without; I can't help wondering if Crouch was thinking about the TV/movie adaptation when he wrote those scenes.

In the midst of Recursion, I sometimes struggled to figure out what life someone was in (and why) but then remembered what my friend Suzy advised me when I was reading The Time-Traveler's Wife:  "Don't worry about the details; just let it flow." Hardline sci-fi people might have difficulty with that approach, but it allowed me to enjoy this book.

The River

Peter Heller wrote two books between our OBOB selection The Dog Stars and his latest release The River.  I was not overly fond of either The Painter or Celine, but The River lives up to that earlier work. Although The River is not set in a post-apocalyptic world as The Dog Stars was, it features men surviving in the outdoors as they battle nature and their fellow humans--and Heller writes about these themes exceedingly well.

Dartmouth roommates Jack and Wynn decide to take a canoe trip on the Maskwa River in northern Canada before they return to school in the fall. The two young men are different--tough guy Jack grew up on a ranch near Granby, Colorado, where his  mother was killed in a fall when he was a boy; Vermonter Wynn, while bigger, is more tender, perhaps because he grew up in an intact family that included a sister with cerebral palsy--but they share a love for the outdoors, fishing, and literature. The trip starts out as the idyllic trip they had imagined, but then it goes all Deliverance on them (that book/film is referenced more than once) as they encounter wildfire, a pair of drunk Texans, and a badly injured woman.

I can't say much more without veering into spoiler territory, so let me conclude by saying that The River is riveting.

Favorite Passages

Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human--the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

Blake Crouch, Recursion


He heard a loon call, piercing and forlorn, and it poured into his spirit like cool water. It was a sad cry and he realized as he listened how barren the river had felt in the days without it. Why was a wail that
seemed so lost and lonely so . . . what? Essential and lovely.

There's always relief in committing to a decision, even when there's no choice.

The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. I twas like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

Peter Heller, The River

One Book One Broomfield 2019: Beautiful Boy

This year's One Book One Broomfield pick is Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff. The memoir of the author's journey through his son Nic's meth addiction has a new Afterword added in 2018, ten years after the book was initially published. His descriptions of the pain Nic's addiction--and his behavior while using--caused are raw and heart-rending: the worry about the child; the feelings of guilt and powerlessness; the difficulty of figuring out what, if anything, can be done to help the child, particularly given the varying advice given by different professionals, not to mention friends, family, and others with addiction experience; the sometimes delusional hope; the concern about how the addiction is affecting younger siblings and the parents' marriage. It's overwhelming--especially (for me at least) when I think about Sheff's wife (Nic's stepmom) and two younger children, whose pain and steadfastness bring tears to my eyes as I write this.

Sheff, who is journalist, also did voluminous research on addiction, particularly meth addiction, and shares that information in an understandable form. This information is one reason that the book feels like more than a memoir to me. The other is Sheff's obvious intent to help others by telling his family's story. I don't always perceive that same intent when I read other memoirs.

It is interesting that the meth epidemic has faded from the public consciousness as concern about the opioid epidemic has grown. But meth is still a problem, and a quick Google search reveals that it is growing. If you're interested, here's an informative piece from Kaiser Health News, written in May of this year: https://khn.org/news/meth-vs-opioids-america-has-two-drug-epidemics-but-focuses-on-one/.

Back to Beautiful Boy, note that the film of the same title is based not only on this book but also on Nic's book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.  I'm thinking I should read this book too before the author's appearance in Broomfield on November 8.

Favorite passages:

When we talk, in fact, I realize that Nic has discovered the bitterest irony of early sobriety. Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs.

. . .  in mortal combat with addiction, a parent wishes for a catastrophe to befall his son. I wish for a catastrophe, but one that is contained. It must be harsh enough to bring him to his knees, to humble him, but mild enough so that he can, with heroic effort and the good that I know is inside him, recover, because anything short of that will not be enough for him to save himself.

How innocent we are of our mistakes and how responsible we are for them.

Reading Prize Winners: The Known World and Independence Day

I didn't have much paying work this month (the bane and blessing of being a freelancer), so I read a lot . . . 20 books (plus various magazines, short pieces from Audible, etc.). I actually made some progress on my very long-term project of trying to read all the Pulitzer and National Book Award fiction winners.

BTW, if you love audiobooks or, alternatively, think listening to books is somehow cheating, you might find this small study interesting. It suggests that our brains react the same way to both forms of text:  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/08/22/reading-listening-activate-same-brain-regions/

Prize Winners

When I began this project back in 2015, I chose these two prizes because, I guess, they were so well-established. I had not been enamored with most of the Booker Prize winners I had read, so I steered away from that one, and none of the others I knew about had as much history. My goal was basically to push myself to read things I wouldn't pick up on my own--and, while I had read many of the books when I started, I have definitely read some things I would not have otherwise chosen.

The project has led me to some books that I really admired (e.g., The Sympathizer, The Road) and some I thought were total dogs (e.g., A Confederacy of Dunces, Tree of Smoke). And, of course, confirmed my good taste when I found that books I already loved were winners or became winners (e.g., Empire Falls, March, Underground Railroad, The Overstory). To date, Lonesome Dove is the only one that has completely defeated me, but I will return to it some day...when I'm out of books and bored.

So this month, I read two Pulitzer winners, The Known World by Edward P. Jones and Independence Day by Richard Ford (plus The Sportswriter, which introduced the protagonist of Ford's "quartet" about Frank Bascombe).  The setting of The Known World is a Virginia farm owned by an African American slaveholder, William Townsend. When he dies, things on the farm begin to fall apart, and we see the effects on the enslaved people; on whites in the community, including his mentor, a white man from whom William's father bought their family's freedom; and on the Townsend family. Aside from learning that there were black slaveholders, I didn't find the book cast much light on slavery or race relations in the time period. I feel guilty about it, but I was occasionally bored as I listened. Perhaps it is a symptom of white privilege to be bored by a book about slavery -- or perhaps the book is overrated.  (The experience wasn't enhanced by the fact that I could frequently hear the narrator swallowing.)

Ford's books focus on a middle-aged man trying to make sense of his life. Although he has changed careers, from sportswriter to real estate agent, and a number of years have passed between the events covered in the two books, Bascombe is struggling with similar issues in both--his relationship with his ex-wife and his two children (both relationships are shadowed by the death of his oldest child); his attempts to relate to other people, whether his current girlfriend, a disabled sports hero he interviews as a sportswriter, a member of his divorced men's group who is struggling with his sexuality, real estate clients, or the tenants in two rental properties he owns; and how he should try (if at all) to shape his future. Each novel takes place over a short period of time (Easter week or the Fourth of July weekend); my favorite section of the two books is the trip Frank takes with his son to the basketball and baseball halls of fame in Independence Day. His son has gotten into some trouble and the short trip is supposed to be a time for father and son to bond, perhaps as a first step in the son's eventually coming to live with Frank. Their attempts to make contact with each other are painful and the result is not good.  Much of our time as readers is spent in Frank's head, a place I eventually became rather tired of.  The books remind me of John Updike's Rabbit Run (I haven't yet read the others in the series) although Rabbit is younger than Frank and, while Ford is a good writer, Updike is a master. I'm glad I read The Sportswriter and Independence Day but probably not glad enough to pick up the other two books in the quartet (The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You).

Other Fiction

The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo. The Most Fun We Ever Had is the phrase an exhausted Marilyn Sorensen says in answer to a question along the lines of "How is it having two babies in diapers?" asked by an academic at a faculty party. Marilyn is a college drop-out whose husband David is in medical school, and her life at the time is challenging. But the phrase becomes a catch phrase for the couple who love each other through raising four daughters and a variety of real-life challenges. The most interesting thing about this book is that the Sorensens are good parents who love each other, yet their four daughters are pretty impressively screwed up--definitely not the usual fictional "bad parents/screwed-up kids" scenario. Lombardo weaves stories from the family's earlier years--presented in chronological order, working up to the present--with stories of what is happening in the present. Because the author gives every character their own sections, she sometimes leaves us wanting to know more about particular family members. Nonetheless, the book is a rewarding read.

Chances Are, by Richard Russo. Three college friends in their 60s, having created very different lives for themselves, reunite at the site of the last college weekend they spent together, the same weekend when the only female member of their foursome, with whom they were all somewhat in love, disappeared. For the first half or two-thirds of the book, I thought Russo was taking this tired trope and making it work (much like Philip Roth did for the class reunion trope in American Pastoral); but then he gives it up and has one of the characters explain everything to the other two--and somehow they are all more or less redeemed. Disappointing--but still worth reading.

Ask Again, Yes, by Mary Beth Keane. As she handed me this book, my friend Lynn said, "I really didn't like this." Not a great thought to start reading with, but I pretty much agreed with her. Ask Again, Yes, is about trauma and friendship that occurs between neighboring families; both families are Irish and the fathers in both families are police officers. Ultimately, the story is about redemption and rising above, but it feels like we've read it before.

I'm Fine and Neither Are You, by Camille Pagan. I did not care for this story of a married couple trying to revitalize their marriage after the wife's best friend dies of an opiod overdose (yes, the author is working in current issues--how admirable). It's gotten a lot of positive reviews on Amazon so maybe it's an age thing (i.e., I'm too old for this book).

The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald. The Bookshop is a very sad little book about a middle-aged woman who tries to start a bookshop in a small English town. The year is 1959 and the town is full of close-minded people and those who don't want their self-perceived cultural superiority challenged. I don't have much more to say about it but I do recommend it.

Fleishman Is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.  I found this book to be quite strange. It appears to be the story of Toby Fleishman, a short 41-year-old doctor who spends a lot of time on dating apps and porn sites. Then his soon-to-be-ex-wife fails to pick up their children at the appointed time, throwing his life into chaos. The book is narrated by his college friend, Libby, although this was not at first clear to me because some sections of the book are in third person (Libby telling Toby's story) and others in first person (Libby telling her own story). As the book progresses, Brodesser-Akner shifts the emphasis from mostly third person to mostly first person, eventually taking a "meta" turn that I won't go into because it might ruin the book for those who want to read it. I didn't hate the book, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune, by Roselle Lim. I had high hopes for this book about an aspiring chef who inherits her grandmother's restaurant, but the magical realism (her cooking cures her neighbors and restores their street in Chinatown to prosperity) and the simplistic romance just didn't work for me.

Mysteries

The Cold Dish, Craig Johnson. This is the first Longmire novel and, after having read a few of the later books, seen the TV series, and heard Johnson speak (hilarious--highly recommend you go listen to him if you have the chance), it was interesting to see how he introduced the characters in the series.

The Couple Next Door, by Shari La Pena. A couple leaves their child unattended while they have dinner next door and the child disappears. Subsequent events reveal every character to be unlikable or worse, and La Pena's wooden writing does not save the book.

Shell Game, by Sara Paretsky. I couldn't finish Sara Paretsky's last V.I. Warshawsky book, Fallout, because I thought her depiction of Lawrence, KS, was so off base and dated I just couldn't deal. In Shell Game, she sticks with V.I.'s home turf--Chicago--and it's a better read. The case with which V.I. is involved is complicated, involving stolen antiquities, the Russian mob, U.S. immigration policy, and her ex-husband. Although the book was okay, V.I. and her friends are becoming old-hat.

Behind Her Eyes, by Sarah Pinborough. Single mother Louise starts an affair with her boss David while simultaneously embarking on a secret friendship with his wife Adele. Both appear to the reader to be using her, and Louise (who seems to be something of an idiot) cannot figure out what to make of their marriage from the information they give her. I found the book interesting until the author introduced a supernatural element (not sure that's the right word), which rendered it totally ridiculous.

Paradise Valley, by C.J. Box. I gave up on C.J. Box's Joe Pickett series because it had become too dark and too violent. However, Paradise Valley is part of a different series featuring Cassie Dewell, and I enjoyed it--although it's also quite dark. Cassie is trying to trap a serial killer who is known to be a long-haul trucker (evidently introduced in an earlier book, but reading that book is not necessary to understanding this one); the trap goes badly, ending with several police officers dead, including Cassie's fiance. Fired from her job, she continues the search for the so-called "Lizard King," whom she believes has kidnapped her son's friend Kyle. The Lizard King is a an appropriately horrible villain, and Cassie and Kyle relatable heroes.

YA 

The Opposite of Always, by Justin A. Reynolds.  My 12-year-old granddaughter absolutely loved this book, which has a "Groundhog Day" structure. High school senior Jack and college freshman Kate meet at a party and bond immediately. But Kate is deathly sick, and Jack determines to save her, as he repeats the few months between the party and her final illness over and over, affecting his other relationships and his and his friends' futures with the decisions he makes. Very engaging, funny, and touching.

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined, by Danielle Younge-Ullman. When Ingrid's opera-singer mother loses her voice, their lives change drastically, in ways that challenge both mother and daughter. The narrative weaves together stories from their lives post-fame and from Ingrid's experience on a very challenging "Outward Bound" type camp, which her mother has told her she must complete in order to head off to a special school for the musically talented. Both stories are engaging and the book ends with a twist. I really enjoyed the book and want to recommend it to my granddaughter, but it might be a little too mature--maybe in ninth grade.

Nonfiction

50 Things That Are Not My Fault, by Cathy Guisewite.  This collection of essays is what you'd expect from the creator of the cartoon "Cathy." The best selections are about her parents and daughter. Pleasant but not eye-opening.

A World Without "Whom," by Emmy J. Favilla. It took me two years to finish this book because, while I agree with many of the author's points about the evolution of language, her snarky self-satisfied tone made it hard to read more than a few pages at a time. And some of her claims just seem ridiculous: for example, she describes emojis as "the most evolved form of punctuation we have at our disposal"--while simultaneously endorsing the use of no punctuation as an effective way to convey excitement. Sorry, not using punctuation conveys an inability to communicate!  I am sure Favilla, the chief copy editor at BuzzFeed, would dismiss me as an old, hidebound traditionalist because I don't agree with all of her points, but I can live with that. Interesting but also annoying.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays, by Samantha Irby.  I guess I'm too old to enjoy Irby's essays about her dating/sex life, but I found essays on other topics both funny and informative. My favorite was written as a job application, detailing her experiences working the front desk at a veterinary practice. It was laugh-out-loud funny and gave me an appreciation for the complexity of jobs that often seem basic when you're on the other side of the desk. It ought to be a slap in the face to idiot pet owners and people rude to workers who are only trying to help them (not that they would recognize themselves). Pick and choose among the essays and you'll likely find something to amuse.

Favorite Passages

She ought to go down to the beach. It was Thursday, early closing, and it seemed ungrateful to live so close to the sea and never look at it for weeks on end.  [how I feel about ignoring the mountains]

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

The distance grew between us, thickening like an all-day fog, until we were both so well versed in our new roles as people who didn't matter to each other that it was impossible to break through.

Danielle Younge-Ullman, Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

And he realized, then, how silly it seemed that you could ever know another person--really know her--and how silly it was to think that he had any idea what it was like to be her, day after day.

Claire Lombardo, The Most Fun We Ever Had

Dog Days Diversions and A Few More Serious Works

It may not quite be the dog days of summer yet, but lately it has felt like it--and I amused myself with the alliteration. After all the nonfiction I was reading earlier this summer, I decided to go for some fluff--mostly but not entirely mysteries (the mysteries ran to the very dark with a strong dysfunctional marriage theme, so not as fluffy as I might have hoped). And I read a few nonfiction books, too (what is happening to me?).

Fluff

Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman. This Lippman stand-alone is the story of two Baltimore women in the 1960s. Madeline Schwartz is white, wealthy (until she leaves her husband), and trying to find herself by becoming a newspaper reporter. Cleo Sherwood is black, scraping by, and trying to find a man who can fulfill her. Along with these differences, Madeline is alive, and Cleo announces her own death early in the book. We get to know both Maddie and Cleo well, but we also hear from numerous other characters whose lives intersect with Maddie's as she tries to establish herself and determine who is responsible for Cleo's death--a story that is of little interest to the editors at her paper. The racism and sexism of the time are clear in the challenges that Maddie deals with and Cleo had to face in her brief life. There's one spot near the end that I thought was a weak way to do some explicating, but otherwise I really enjoyed this book.

The Chain, by Adrian McKinty. This book, which has gotten a lot of positive ink, has a very disturbing premise: A child is kidnapped. The parents are told that to get their child back, they must pay a ransom and kidnap another child, who they hold until the parents of that child pay a ransom and kidnap another child, and on and on. They do get their children back, but sometimes they may be required to do additional "jobs" for the operators of The Chain and risk their families being annihilated if they refuse or tell anyone. While reading the book, one cannot help asking oneself: What would you do to get your child back? The answer for the protagonist, a recently divorced woman just out of treatment for cancer, is completely transform herself into a ruthless person. I can't say I exactly enjoyed the book, but it held my interest.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, by Sonali Dev. This is not a mystery, but it is rather delightful fluff. It's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in an Indian-American community in Northern California with the gender roles reversed--the female protagonist is a neuro-surgeon from a wealthy, well-educated family, whose oldest child is running for governor, while the male character is a chef with a desperately ill artist-sister who paints vaginas. It's utterly predictable but still fun--and perhaps the only book I've read in which eating is depicted as an orgasmic experience.

Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson. Atkinson is a serious writer, but her Jackson Brodie mystery series, of which this title is a part, is up and down. Big Sky was more down than up--there are a lot of characters (not unusual for an Atkinson book), many of whom are unlikable and seem to have little to do with each other. Most of them come together at the end as Jackson solves years-old and current child trafficking cases. Unfortunately, by then I didn't much care--but Atkinson is always merits a few sentences. Maybe Jackson should retire and the writer should focus on her more serious writing, which has produced some exemplary work.

Not worth a complete sentence:

The Tale Teller, by Anne Hillerman -- A decent entry in Hillerman's continuation of her father's series.
The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harriss -- Shame on Kate Atkinson for giving this a glowing blurb.
Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane -- Shares with The Silent Wife a really dysfunctional marriage.
Blood Orange, by Harriet Tyce -- See comment on Since We Fell.
Watch Me Disappear, by Janelle Brown -- Ditto.
My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing -- Is a lovely couple who kidnaps and kills women together by definition dysfunctional? Hmmm. (Sorry that was a complete sentence.)
The Sleeping Beauty Killer, by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke -- Dumb and predictable.
The King Tides, by James Swain -- Nonsensical.
Crosstalk, by Connie Willis -- Indefensibly long (and so silly).

Non-Fluff

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? by Alan Alda. Alda, a truly remarkable human being, discusses the need for better communication in general and in science and medicine particularly. He also shares  research on communication and looks at how acting exercises (particularly improv) can be useful in developing communication skills. He also describes the work he and others have done at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. It's fascinating and well-communicated--and the audio version is read by Alda, who charms as he communicates.

Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Shout is a memoir that examines the traumas of Anderson's youth--she was raped at 13 and lived in a home with alcoholic parents (her father also had PTSD). A year in Denmark as an exchange student may well have saved Anderson's life. She built a family and a successful writing career. Because her best-selling YA novel Speak dealt with teen rape, she is a frequent speaker at schools. Shout recounts one experience when a school principal pulled the fire alarm to prevent her from speaking to a second group of students after he heard her first presentation--denial that allows rape culture to continue is alive and well! Some of the short poems that comprise the book are moving, some less so--but the book is well worth reading. 

Working, by Robert Caro. Caro's career has been dedicated to documenting the lives of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson (he is still working on the fifth volume on Johnson). This book allows him to insert himself into that work, something he normally tries not to do. He does this by documenting how he conducted the research on the biographies and how he responded to what he learned. One of the most compelling stories he tells is about an interview with Lady Bird Johnson in which he asked her about a woman named Alice Glass, who was not only LBJ's lover but had enormous influence on the man; Caro recounts being unable to look at Lady Bird as he asked questions and she responded. What he makes clear about Johnson is what a complex and flawed man he was--he stole at least one election, manipulated people cruelly, exacerbated the mess in Vietnam, and yet his accomplishments domestically were unparalleled. Caro, like me, finds Johnson's civil rights speech one of the greatest presidential speeches ever--it's tragic that the "better angels" of his nature could not prevail over his other side.

Favorite Passages

untreated pain
is a cancer of the soul
that can kill you

Sisters, drop
everything. Walk
away from the lake, leaning
on each other's shoulders
when you need
the support. Feel the contractions
of another truth ready
to be born: shame
turned
inside out
is rage.

Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson

What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

Lyndon B. Johnson, quoted by Robert Caro in Working

"Creative" Plot Devices: What Makes Them Work or Not?

Two books that I just finished have set me to thinking about "creative" plot devices and why some work and others don't (though they seem like good ideas).

Given the current popularity of podcasts, it's not surprising that they are showing up as plot devices in novels. I had read at least two other novels that used fictional podcasts as a source of text for a novel before reading Conviction, by Denise Mina. In the latest title from mystery-writer Mina, on the morning that Anna McDonald learns her partner is leaving her for her best friend, she has just started listening to a true-crime podcast (she's an aficionado). To her surprise, the podcast is about the death of someone she knew a decade ago, a man named Leon Parker. She decides the conclusion reached in the podcast can't be right and sets off on a madcap road trip with her former best friend's husband Fin (an anorexic over-the-hill rock star). As they investigate Leon's case, they are also pursued by hit men from Anna's past, who believed her to be dead but are alerted they were wrong about that by a picture posted on social media. Fin decides they should start their own podcast about the case, which only leads to more trouble.

Conviction has gotten some very positive reviews, but I found it to strain credulity. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems unlikely someone who has been trying to stay anonymous for a decade would, on the day her partner left her, set out on a crazy investigative road trip (with someone she barely knows) that is bound to stir the beehive. And the links between Leon's case and the trouble in Anna's past are also rather difficult to swallow. In this case, the podcast just seems like a way to get out a lot of information about the case--and it's not particularly effective. I didn't hate Conviction, but I don't think the rave reviews were justified. 

Lorna Landvik, in Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes), uses an analog device that might seem dated in today's digital news environment. but I found it much more effective. Haze Evans has written a newspaper column for 50 years. When she suffers a stroke and lapses into a coma, the newspaper's editor Susan decides to republish selected columns and reader responses from Haze's long career. She enlists her teenage son Sam to assist with the job, and the process turns out to be transformative for Sam--and for others in the community. It's a little bit corny but also funny and moving. The newspaper columns are an effective device because they create a distinct voice that makes a nice counterpoint to Susan and Sam's perspectives. And they offer Landvik the opportunity to comment on virtually anything that has happened in the past 50 years that she wants to opine about.

So what's my conclusion about why some "creative" plot devices work and some don't? I guess the main (and perhaps obvious) reason is that if a book has other flaws that cause you to discount it, a clever device is not likely to redeem it. In addition, if the device doesn't serve a particular purpose for which it is uniquely well-suited, then it's not really functional and not likely to be engaging. But I could be wrong!