In the past couple weeks, I’ve read two interestingly structured novels about art, friendship, family, memory, and more.
Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg is structured as an exhibit catalog written by the artist/photographer’s daughter Samantha Jane and also incorporating excerpts from her mother’s journal and interviews with people from her mother’s past. Lillian knew as a girl in Cleveland in the 1940s that she would move to New York and be a photographer, despite her parents' wish that she lead a more traditional life. In 1951, after graduating from high school, she takes off to pursue her dream. By 1955, she has had her first show, given birth to her daughter (never telling the father that she was pregnant), and met Ken, with whom she will move to Brooklyn, free for a few years to pursue her photography without the constraints of making a living. But then Lillian becomes pregnant; she wants an abortion but Ken wants the baby, and the rift destroys their already-troubled relationship. Lillian has an abortion and a photograph of Sam and herself that she takes in the aftermath shocks viewers when it appears in an exhibition titled "The Samantha Series"; the ripples from this event permanently alter Sam and Lillian's relationship.
This brief synopsis does not do justice to the complexity of the plot; I have not even mentioned Lillian's two significant friendships, the relationship that develops between Sam and her maternal grandparents, the court case revolving around the Samantha Series, and more. The story of these deeply realized characters--even the minor characters are three-dimensional--is moving. In addition, the descriptions of how Lillian worked and the resulting 100+ images included in a posthumous exhibition gave this non-artist a window into photography and the creative mind.
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. Highly recommended.
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez is presented as a letter from the nameless narrator to her nameless friend, a well-known writer, her former teacher, and a recent suicide. Her friend was a womanizer who seduced and sometimes married his students. His third and final wife convinces the narrator to take in his dog, a Great Dane named Apollo. Since the narrator lives in a New York apartment, a Great Dane presents numerous challenges but also offers solace. Apollo's role in the novel provides the closest thing to a plot that the book has; most of the book is more a reflection on writing, memory, friendship, loss, and grief. I can't say I loved The Friend but it was interesting and thought-provoking, and well worth reading.
Favorite passages:
When we disagreed, Lillian's eyes stayed on my face, as if to remind me that our friendship would always have a place in the world.
Feast Your Eyes
If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told it does, it appears that writing takes some away.
The Friend, when the narrator hears another writer say about her friend, "Now he's officially a dead white male."
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Well-Read Black Girl, edited by Glory Edim
Well-Read Black Girl started as a t-shirt given to Glory Edim by her partner. Then it became an Instragam, an on-line community, a national network of face-to-face book groups, a literary festival, and now this book, subtitled Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves.
As a 68-year-old white woman, I am not exactly the book's target audience, but I totally enjoyed the essays by African American woman writers, reflecting on the books that were significant to them as young people, books in which they first felt represented or seen. The essayists include women working in a variety of genres--novels, memoir, poetry, drama; among them are recognizable names like Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Rebecca Walker, Stephanie Powell Watts, Zinzi Clemmons, Lynn Notage, and Jacquelie Woodson. The works they cite as important to them (although not always in a completely positive way) include some of the works one might expect--Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, the poetry of Lucille Clifton and Nikki Giovanni. But there are also surprises--Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg and Boy, by Roald Dahl to name two. One of the gifts of WRBG is the book list of every work mentioned by the essayists.
Another of its gifts is the inspirational writing about reading and writing. A few examples:
“Jamaica Kincaid taught me that the women I loved might not have been known to many people in the world but they were opera singers. They had beauty in their voices; great dramas were at the cruxes of their lives. And if I could catch their voices—the way they loved, the way they taught, the way they turned their faces away in pain, and how they stood in their own power—then their words on the page might become a song worth singing.”—Veronica Chambers
“Baldwin is a moral philosopher. His work does not merely describe and analyze oppression, but relentlessly asks the reader to examine their individual relationship to evil, to cruelty, bigotry, and white supremacy, and whether they are ready to change.” —Barbara Smith
“At the end of the day, the job of the Black woman writer is the same as the work of the well-read Black girl. We are to be curious and determined, committed to life and all of its many permutations. We are to look to the words of our sisters for knowledge and uplift, camaraderie and support. We are to seek beauty and find ourselves. We are to live and tell the story.”—Rebecca Walker
“So much depends on us remembering our past. We live in a country that likes to forget—likes to forget who was here before us, likes to forget who built the country, likes to forget who this country was stolen from.”—Jacqueline Woodson
I know that’s a lot of quoting, but perhaps one of these brief excerpts will inspire you to pick up this book—it’s well-worth your time. Meanwhile, I can’t help wondering where Glory Edim will take WRBG next.
As a 68-year-old white woman, I am not exactly the book's target audience, but I totally enjoyed the essays by African American woman writers, reflecting on the books that were significant to them as young people, books in which they first felt represented or seen. The essayists include women working in a variety of genres--novels, memoir, poetry, drama; among them are recognizable names like Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Rebecca Walker, Stephanie Powell Watts, Zinzi Clemmons, Lynn Notage, and Jacquelie Woodson. The works they cite as important to them (although not always in a completely positive way) include some of the works one might expect--Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall, the poetry of Lucille Clifton and Nikki Giovanni. But there are also surprises--Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg and Boy, by Roald Dahl to name two. One of the gifts of WRBG is the book list of every work mentioned by the essayists.
Another of its gifts is the inspirational writing about reading and writing. A few examples:
“Jamaica Kincaid taught me that the women I loved might not have been known to many people in the world but they were opera singers. They had beauty in their voices; great dramas were at the cruxes of their lives. And if I could catch their voices—the way they loved, the way they taught, the way they turned their faces away in pain, and how they stood in their own power—then their words on the page might become a song worth singing.”—Veronica Chambers
“Baldwin is a moral philosopher. His work does not merely describe and analyze oppression, but relentlessly asks the reader to examine their individual relationship to evil, to cruelty, bigotry, and white supremacy, and whether they are ready to change.” —Barbara Smith
“At the end of the day, the job of the Black woman writer is the same as the work of the well-read Black girl. We are to be curious and determined, committed to life and all of its many permutations. We are to look to the words of our sisters for knowledge and uplift, camaraderie and support. We are to seek beauty and find ourselves. We are to live and tell the story.”—Rebecca Walker
“So much depends on us remembering our past. We live in a country that likes to forget—likes to forget who was here before us, likes to forget who built the country, likes to forget who this country was stolen from.”—Jacqueline Woodson
I know that’s a lot of quoting, but perhaps one of these brief excerpts will inspire you to pick up this book—it’s well-worth your time. Meanwhile, I can’t help wondering where Glory Edim will take WRBG next.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Great YA Novels, Classics, and Other April Reading
YA Novels
The Poet X, a YA novel written as the title character's poetry journal was a wonderful way to kick off my National Poetry month reading. The Poet X celebrates the power of poetry while grappling with religion, identity, family, sexuality--pretty much all the big issues teens deal with. Author Elizabeth Acevedo is a former middle school English teacher whose use of language is lovely. Here, the protagonist Xiomara writes about her new-found love, Aman:
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.
The author reads another of X's poems here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAKiLr__ppM&fbclid=IwAR0MBrzbABFLAU6KwagBM1HR9l28Ukk8dXOpfGjbI95Yd1cw2AjWEElxa_A
Highly recommended.
I also recommend Words in Deep Blue, by Cath Crowley, a teen love story with a twist--parts of the story are told in notes left in books in the Letter Library, a section of a charming book store owned by Henry Jones's family. Henry's childhood friend Rachel Sweetie is hired to create a catalog of everything written on or left within the books in the Letter Library--this cataloging is occurring because the book store may be sold in the wake of Henry's parents' separation. Rachel and others have secrets that only gradually emerge--while the characters do suffer pain, the ending is life-affirming.
Reading Classics
I read two "classics" this month, neither of which I had read before. I actually liked White Fang, by Jack London, more than I thought I would. It's a vivid portrayal of a wolf's life in the wild and then in domesticity; the reflective reader may be prompted to consider what is lost and what is gained when humans become "tamed." The book begins with the trek of two men across the Yukon, beset by a pack of wolves. After one man is killed and the other survives, the narrative follows the wolf pack. I didn't really think the switch in narration from humans to wolves worked, although I guess it provided a context for the travails of the wolves. Notwithstanding Theodore Roosevelt's having called out London as a "nature faker," the writing is compelling.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, my book group's selection for the month, was another story. Although I really appreciated the analysis that our discussion leader Linda led us through, I really disliked the book. The characters were, in my opinion, entirely despicable, I could not understand Bronte's choice to put two unreliable narrators between the reader and the story, and, in sum, I disliked the book intensely.
Some Sci-Fi
I feel unjustifiably proud of myself when I venture out into some science fiction, and I enjoyed both of the speculative works I tried this month. The Dispatcher is a novella by John Scalzi that was one of Audible's free originals this month. In Scalzi's future Chicago, murdered people suddenly disappear from the scene and reemerge at home, naked and alive. Building on this miraculous development, an entirely new career develops--dispatcher, people who patrol hospitals to dispatch people beyond medical help so they can live. The book's story develops from the free-lance work that dispatchers do so that people can, for example, engage in risky activities and survive. It's both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Here and Now and Then, by Mike Chen, is a time-traveling adventure and, like all time-travel adventures occasionally confused me--but it's entertaining nonetheless. Kin Stewart was a time-traveling agent from the year 2142 who becomes stranded in the 1990s. He decides to build a life there, marrying and fathering a child. After 18 years, rescuers from 2142, where only a few weeks have passed, arrive to rescue him, whether he wants to be rescued or not. Back in 2142, he has a fiance who no longer understands him and the ability (though forbidden) to find out what happened to his wife and daughter after he left--what he learns is not good and he sets out to change his daughter's future. The book is, in essence, a testament to the power of love, and I recommend it.
Rant
I've gone on about this before, but Anna Quindlen's Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting brings an old complaint to the fore: there are a lot of silly books that get published simply because their authors are well-established. At the time she wrote this book, Quindlen had one grandchild who was still a toddler and, honestly, she doesn't have anything of much interest or value to share about grandparenting. Her advice is, at best, common sense that few need to be told--and it comes from her privileged position as a member of a functional family unit with exceptional means. Advice from that perspective does not go down well.
The Poet X, a YA novel written as the title character's poetry journal was a wonderful way to kick off my National Poetry month reading. The Poet X celebrates the power of poetry while grappling with religion, identity, family, sexuality--pretty much all the big issues teens deal with. Author Elizabeth Acevedo is a former middle school English teacher whose use of language is lovely. Here, the protagonist Xiomara writes about her new-found love, Aman:
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.
The author reads another of X's poems here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAKiLr__ppM&fbclid=IwAR0MBrzbABFLAU6KwagBM1HR9l28Ukk8dXOpfGjbI95Yd1cw2AjWEElxa_A
Highly recommended.
I also recommend Words in Deep Blue, by Cath Crowley, a teen love story with a twist--parts of the story are told in notes left in books in the Letter Library, a section of a charming book store owned by Henry Jones's family. Henry's childhood friend Rachel Sweetie is hired to create a catalog of everything written on or left within the books in the Letter Library--this cataloging is occurring because the book store may be sold in the wake of Henry's parents' separation. Rachel and others have secrets that only gradually emerge--while the characters do suffer pain, the ending is life-affirming.
Reading Classics
I read two "classics" this month, neither of which I had read before. I actually liked White Fang, by Jack London, more than I thought I would. It's a vivid portrayal of a wolf's life in the wild and then in domesticity; the reflective reader may be prompted to consider what is lost and what is gained when humans become "tamed." The book begins with the trek of two men across the Yukon, beset by a pack of wolves. After one man is killed and the other survives, the narrative follows the wolf pack. I didn't really think the switch in narration from humans to wolves worked, although I guess it provided a context for the travails of the wolves. Notwithstanding Theodore Roosevelt's having called out London as a "nature faker," the writing is compelling.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, my book group's selection for the month, was another story. Although I really appreciated the analysis that our discussion leader Linda led us through, I really disliked the book. The characters were, in my opinion, entirely despicable, I could not understand Bronte's choice to put two unreliable narrators between the reader and the story, and, in sum, I disliked the book intensely.
Some Sci-Fi
I feel unjustifiably proud of myself when I venture out into some science fiction, and I enjoyed both of the speculative works I tried this month. The Dispatcher is a novella by John Scalzi that was one of Audible's free originals this month. In Scalzi's future Chicago, murdered people suddenly disappear from the scene and reemerge at home, naked and alive. Building on this miraculous development, an entirely new career develops--dispatcher, people who patrol hospitals to dispatch people beyond medical help so they can live. The book's story develops from the free-lance work that dispatchers do so that people can, for example, engage in risky activities and survive. It's both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Here and Now and Then, by Mike Chen, is a time-traveling adventure and, like all time-travel adventures occasionally confused me--but it's entertaining nonetheless. Kin Stewart was a time-traveling agent from the year 2142 who becomes stranded in the 1990s. He decides to build a life there, marrying and fathering a child. After 18 years, rescuers from 2142, where only a few weeks have passed, arrive to rescue him, whether he wants to be rescued or not. Back in 2142, he has a fiance who no longer understands him and the ability (though forbidden) to find out what happened to his wife and daughter after he left--what he learns is not good and he sets out to change his daughter's future. The book is, in essence, a testament to the power of love, and I recommend it.
Rant
I've gone on about this before, but Anna Quindlen's Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting brings an old complaint to the fore: there are a lot of silly books that get published simply because their authors are well-established. At the time she wrote this book, Quindlen had one grandchild who was still a toddler and, honestly, she doesn't have anything of much interest or value to share about grandparenting. Her advice is, at best, common sense that few need to be told--and it comes from her privileged position as a member of a functional family unit with exceptional means. Advice from that perspective does not go down well.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Everything Happens for a Reason . . . and Other Lies I've Loved
I stumbled across the relatively brief book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved and basically checked it out because "everything happens for a reason" is one of my least favorite bromides (right up there with "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"--for a takedown of that one, see Christopher Hitchens' Mortality). The author, Kate Bowler, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer when she was 35, and she writes about that experience, how it affected her in innumerable ways, and how people around her responded (and various other things related to serious illness--but you get the picture).
The book was good, but what I liked even better is her podcast, "Everything Happens," in which she talks with people about what they have learned in the dark times in their lives. Three of the episodes that I found particularly meaningful (and I haven't quite listened to them all yet) featured conversations with Alan Alda, Lucy Kalanithi (widow of Paul, the author of When Breath Becomes Air), and pediatric oncologist Ray Barfield. Great life-affirming wisdom born out of great pain. I REALLY recommend the podcast: https://katebowler.com/everything-happens/.
The book was good, but what I liked even better is her podcast, "Everything Happens," in which she talks with people about what they have learned in the dark times in their lives. Three of the episodes that I found particularly meaningful (and I haven't quite listened to them all yet) featured conversations with Alan Alda, Lucy Kalanithi (widow of Paul, the author of When Breath Becomes Air), and pediatric oncologist Ray Barfield. Great life-affirming wisdom born out of great pain. I REALLY recommend the podcast: https://katebowler.com/everything-happens/.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Questions, Comments, and Rants: February Reading
Questions
I like to keep up with things my granddaughter is reading (my grandson loves mostly weird kid graphic novels, which I find less intriguing). This month I read two YA's--Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (granddaughter is on a major John Green kick). Reading the two in close proximity, I couldn't help noticing that dead parents are a key plot device in both books (the books are about much more but a dead parent is important to each). Then I started thinking about other YA or kids books with dead parents and wondering why. This prompted an interesting dinnertime conversation with the grandkids and their parents, with the kids getting very engaged in shouting out the titles books with dead parents (Harry Potter! Wizard of Oz! Cinderella!); the consensus around the table was that killing off a parent was a quick and easy way to provide a source of drama.
This isn't too far off what I read in an explanation of why Disney movies so often feature characters with dead parents. According to Disney producer Don Hahn, "One reason is practical because the movies are 80 or 90 minutes long, and Disney films re about growing up. They're shorthand. In shorthand, it's much quicker to have characters grow up when you bump off their parents. Bambi's mother gets killed, so he has to grow up. Belle only has a father, but he gets lost, so she has to step into that position. It's a story shorthand." (The other reason Hahn hypothesizes has to do with the death of Walt Disney's mother and isn't broadly relevant.)
Is this an effective device or a lazy shortcut? I tend to vote for the latter.
Comments
In February I read Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of poetry, So Far So Good, finished shortly before her 2018 death. I didn't love the poetry but I was intrigued by the list of financial contributors in the back of the book. It appears that the book was published through a version of crowd-sourcing (perhaps we might call it fan-sourcing). While I love that LeGuin's fans wanted to do this, it's sad that it would be necessary for a work by such an eminent author.
I also read Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann last month. It relates one of the most horrific stories of greed, betrayal, and evil-doing by humans that I have ever read. It's truly unspeakable--and it's only one of many terrible stories in our history. We should all be better educated about how the United States was built.
It's scary how much I forget. I look at the list of books I read this month and have already forgotten what some of them were about (this is especially true of mysteries). However, it was really weird to reread Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton this month and discover that I was remembering a totally different book (one of Nadine Gordimer's, I think). Sometimes I wonder if it is worth reading if I remember so little!
I love cookbooks, but I also like books about food that are contextualized within the author's personal life. Buttermilk Graffiti by Chef Edward Lee was exactly that kind of book, since his goal as he traveled to various locations sampling various ethnic/regional foods and talking with the people who make and eat them, was "trying to find my own America and where I belong in it." I enjoyed the book (except for a misplacing of Des Moines in Illinois) and was stunned by the amount of food Lee apparently ate on these forays around the United States. Just reading about it made me slightly queasy--but his writing also inspired me to think more deeply about my connections to food.
I finally read A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman and I don't quite understand why people like it so much. But I guess different people find their upbeat stories in different places. Some people like Fredrik Backman, some like Fannie Flagg; I like Elinor Lipman (she has a new book out--Good Riddance) and Elizabeth Berg. A chacun son gout.
Rant
Michelle Obama's Becoming was the first book I read this month; I enjoyed it a great deal and respect the former First Lady's candor. My rant focuses not on the book but on a review that I heard, in which the reviewer reported enjoying the parts about Ms. Obama's childhood but finding the parts about her public life disappointing. This immediately reminded me of a situation years ago in which I went off on my boss for saying he enjoyed the parts of the film Malcolm X in which Malcolm was a criminal but found it boring when he became politically engaged. The racism in finding black people as criminals entertaining and as activists boring seemed obvious to me. Perhaps it's more subtle here, but I suspect the reviewer found the story of Ms. Obama's childhood interesting because she doesn't expect African American children to have "typical" two-parent, achievement-oriented, middle-class upbringings--puh-leeze! Meanwhile, the story of a black woman (and her husband) achieving is boring. That, too, is racism.
I like to keep up with things my granddaughter is reading (my grandson loves mostly weird kid graphic novels, which I find less intriguing). This month I read two YA's--Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (granddaughter is on a major John Green kick). Reading the two in close proximity, I couldn't help noticing that dead parents are a key plot device in both books (the books are about much more but a dead parent is important to each). Then I started thinking about other YA or kids books with dead parents and wondering why. This prompted an interesting dinnertime conversation with the grandkids and their parents, with the kids getting very engaged in shouting out the titles books with dead parents (Harry Potter! Wizard of Oz! Cinderella!); the consensus around the table was that killing off a parent was a quick and easy way to provide a source of drama.
This isn't too far off what I read in an explanation of why Disney movies so often feature characters with dead parents. According to Disney producer Don Hahn, "One reason is practical because the movies are 80 or 90 minutes long, and Disney films re about growing up. They're shorthand. In shorthand, it's much quicker to have characters grow up when you bump off their parents. Bambi's mother gets killed, so he has to grow up. Belle only has a father, but he gets lost, so she has to step into that position. It's a story shorthand." (The other reason Hahn hypothesizes has to do with the death of Walt Disney's mother and isn't broadly relevant.)
Is this an effective device or a lazy shortcut? I tend to vote for the latter.
Comments
In February I read Ursula K. LeGuin's collection of poetry, So Far So Good, finished shortly before her 2018 death. I didn't love the poetry but I was intrigued by the list of financial contributors in the back of the book. It appears that the book was published through a version of crowd-sourcing (perhaps we might call it fan-sourcing). While I love that LeGuin's fans wanted to do this, it's sad that it would be necessary for a work by such an eminent author.
I also read Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann last month. It relates one of the most horrific stories of greed, betrayal, and evil-doing by humans that I have ever read. It's truly unspeakable--and it's only one of many terrible stories in our history. We should all be better educated about how the United States was built.
It's scary how much I forget. I look at the list of books I read this month and have already forgotten what some of them were about (this is especially true of mysteries). However, it was really weird to reread Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton this month and discover that I was remembering a totally different book (one of Nadine Gordimer's, I think). Sometimes I wonder if it is worth reading if I remember so little!
I love cookbooks, but I also like books about food that are contextualized within the author's personal life. Buttermilk Graffiti by Chef Edward Lee was exactly that kind of book, since his goal as he traveled to various locations sampling various ethnic/regional foods and talking with the people who make and eat them, was "trying to find my own America and where I belong in it." I enjoyed the book (except for a misplacing of Des Moines in Illinois) and was stunned by the amount of food Lee apparently ate on these forays around the United States. Just reading about it made me slightly queasy--but his writing also inspired me to think more deeply about my connections to food.
I finally read A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman and I don't quite understand why people like it so much. But I guess different people find their upbeat stories in different places. Some people like Fredrik Backman, some like Fannie Flagg; I like Elinor Lipman (she has a new book out--Good Riddance) and Elizabeth Berg. A chacun son gout.
Rant
Michelle Obama's Becoming was the first book I read this month; I enjoyed it a great deal and respect the former First Lady's candor. My rant focuses not on the book but on a review that I heard, in which the reviewer reported enjoying the parts about Ms. Obama's childhood but finding the parts about her public life disappointing. This immediately reminded me of a situation years ago in which I went off on my boss for saying he enjoyed the parts of the film Malcolm X in which Malcolm was a criminal but found it boring when he became politically engaged. The racism in finding black people as criminals entertaining and as activists boring seemed obvious to me. Perhaps it's more subtle here, but I suspect the reviewer found the story of Ms. Obama's childhood interesting because she doesn't expect African American children to have "typical" two-parent, achievement-oriented, middle-class upbringings--puh-leeze! Meanwhile, the story of a black woman (and her husband) achieving is boring. That, too, is racism.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
What Might a Psychiatrist Make of the Books You Read?
Several years ago, I read a novel about a young woman who set herself up as a therapist who based her insights on the songs stuck in her clients' heads. Perhaps the odd-ball approach might work as well as some other therapeutic tools. Maybe a therapist could get all the insight needed into one's issues/problems by looking at the books one reads.
This idea came to me as I perused the list of books I read in January. Despite the fact that I have said repeatedly that I should read fewer mysteries because most of them are pretty bad, this month's list was dominated by mysteries, most of which were pretty bad. What does this say about me? Am I hopelessly optimistic? Trying to make up for the lack of intrigue in my daily life? Lazy? I need a bibliotherapist!
Anyway, I did think one of the mysteries I read this month was quite good--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. It's a mystery, but placed within a realistic context. I recommend it.
I also finished the Frieda Klein series by the husband-wife team that goes by the pen name Nicci French--at least I hope it was the end of the series. Psychotherapist Klein was an interesting character, but the authors dragged out the story line involving a serial killer that everyone but Frieda thought was dead over so many books that I became inappropriately eager for one of them to die (I'm sure a psychiatrist could make something of that).
In the non-mystery category, I enjoyed Night of Miracles, another of Elizabeth Berg's upbeat stories, and the poetry collection Monument, by Natasha Trethewey. The poems in Monument are far from upbeat, chronicling as they do the life experiences of African Americans, especially African American women, throughout history, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina. From the first stunning poem, 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?"), the poet's personal story also weaves its way through the collection.
Some lines I particularly liked:
What is home but a cradle of the past?
from "Prodigal 1"
. . . 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.
from "Invocation, 1926"
The month's biggest disappointment was Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers. I have enjoyed a number of Moriarty's earlier works for their wit and intricate plotting, but this tale of nine people being abused by the eccentric (if not crazy) owner of an expensive spa is just stupid. Not a very literary analysis, but . . .
This idea came to me as I perused the list of books I read in January. Despite the fact that I have said repeatedly that I should read fewer mysteries because most of them are pretty bad, this month's list was dominated by mysteries, most of which were pretty bad. What does this say about me? Am I hopelessly optimistic? Trying to make up for the lack of intrigue in my daily life? Lazy? I need a bibliotherapist!
Anyway, I did think one of the mysteries I read this month was quite good--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. It's a mystery, but placed within a realistic context. I recommend it.
I also finished the Frieda Klein series by the husband-wife team that goes by the pen name Nicci French--at least I hope it was the end of the series. Psychotherapist Klein was an interesting character, but the authors dragged out the story line involving a serial killer that everyone but Frieda thought was dead over so many books that I became inappropriately eager for one of them to die (I'm sure a psychiatrist could make something of that).
In the non-mystery category, I enjoyed Night of Miracles, another of Elizabeth Berg's upbeat stories, and the poetry collection Monument, by Natasha Trethewey. The poems in Monument are far from upbeat, chronicling as they do the life experiences of African Americans, especially African American women, throughout history, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina. From the first stunning poem, 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?"), the poet's personal story also weaves its way through the collection.
Some lines I particularly liked:
What is home but a cradle of the past?
from "Prodigal 1"
. . . 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.
from "Invocation, 1926"
The month's biggest disappointment was Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers. I have enjoyed a number of Moriarty's earlier works for their wit and intricate plotting, but this tale of nine people being abused by the eccentric (if not crazy) owner of an expensive spa is just stupid. Not a very literary analysis, but . . .
Thursday, January 3, 2019
The Best of 2018
2018 started with Conscience of a Conservative, by Jeff Flake, whose ideas about acting based on conscience rather than self-interest or party loyalty I liked; I liked less some of his votes this year (notably voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh) that didn't seem to follow this principle. Starting January with a political book established a theme for the year--a number of other analyses of political actors/issues followed, but none made the "best of" list. The year ended with Magpie Murders, a mystery I had somehow not gotten around to despite it having received a lot of attention when it was published in 2017; as always, I read a number of mysteries during the year, many of them rather bad. I read a little poetry, but not as much as I think I should have and nothing I loved. Short stories were also in short supply in 2018.
Fiction
I couldn't decide on a favorite so I picked two:
Overstory, by Richard Powers. In this book, as in his earlier works, science is key to the narrative, in this case environmental science. The environmentalism may seem heavy-handed to some, but I did not find it so. I loved the weaving together of numerous characters with special relationships to trees (some are odd connections, such as the character who was saved by a tree when he fell out of a helicopter). As we proceed through the layers of the forest/sections of the book, their lives intersect in an effort to save the California redwoods, and we care deeply about the forest and the people.
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. The Great Believers is told in two linked narratives, In the mid-1980s Yale and his friends are dealing with the frightening new epidemic killing gay men and the effect of HIV/AIDS on relationships of all kinds. At the same time, Yale is trying to acquire a collection of artwork from an elderly aunt of his friends Nico and Fiona. In 2015, Fiona is in Europe searching for her estranged daughter Claire; Fiona is staying with a friend from the old days in Chicago, who is mounting a solo exhibition of photos featuring the crowd from the 1980s. Makkai fills the book with wonderful characters and subplots but all the plots cause the reader to think about love, family, relationships, art, and cause-and-effect.
Honorable Mention: The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg, which wasn't the deepest book but left me feeling good about humanity, a somewhat difficult task; The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer, a flawed but enjoyable exploration of feminism, friendship, and mentorship; Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, which so vividly conveyed marriage in the years before WWII in a style that still feels innovative decades after the book was written.
Mystery
No mysteries really wowed me this year, but a few did stand out from the crowd of mediocre titles (I know, I should just get over series mysteries):
Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz. Magpie Murders is a book within a book, with parallel mysteries in both. The narrator in the "real world" is Susan Ryeland, an editor whose most valuable author, Alan Conway, creator of the Atticus Pund detective series, has recently died--it looks like a suicide, but Susan comes to believe Alan was murdered. Her inquiry into his death starts as a search for the last section of his last novel, which was missing when her boss gave her the new manuscript to read; soon, however, she is investigating his death as well as contemplating what happened in the last section of the book. The book is cleverly constructed and features some interesting word play and reflections on the writer's angst.
Honorable Mention: The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn, and Sunburn, by Laura Lippmann, both of which managed to surprise me more than once!
Rereads
I was going to call this section "classics," but I'm not sure the two titles I'm listing really classify. However, I loved each of them in two different phases of life, making them classics for me:
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. First read in my late teens/early twenties, this wonderfully written novel provides a devastating look into how depression colors every aspect of one's life. The fact of Plath's subsequent suicide makes the book all the sadder and more compelling.
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose is also beautifully written. It is a multi-level work, telling the stories of retired and wheelchair-bound historian Lyman Ward and the subjects of the family history he is writing--his grandfather, Oliver Ward, a mining engineer and inventor who was often mistreated and swindled by bosses, and his grandmother, Susan Ward, an Easterner disappointed in love and challenged in her Western life with her rough-around-the-edges husband. As Lyman constructs their story, largely from Susan's letters to her best friend, he reconsiders his own life.
Young Adult/Children's
I feel blessed that my granddaughter loans me books she thinks I should read, but in 2018 I was alarmed that so many of the books featured bullies, mean girls, etc. My favorite from her recommendations was a classic:
Matilda, by Roald Dahl. Matilda is a very funny book about a gifted little girl who wreaks havoc on her horrible parents and the abusive headmistress of her school. Dahl captures the revenge fantasies every child must have felt, while still making Matilda entirely lovable.
I also want to note that the grandkids and I read Lois Lowry's The Giver together and really enjoyed reading and discussing it. We also watched the movie and discussed why the filmmakers would change the story in a variety of ways. A highlight of the year!
Nonfiction
Two books stood out for me this year, both having to do with the challenges of being a young person in our high-tech polarized world:
The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, by Helen Thorpe. Thorpe tells the stories of a classroom of immigrant students at South High School in Denver, most of whom have come to the United States, with or without authorization, to escape terrible circumstances in their home countries. Once they arrive here, the challenges they and their families face--legal, financial, emotional, cultural--are huge, but their perseverance and the work of teachers and others who assist them in their journeys are inspirational. Thorpe's style of journalism, in which she immerses herself in her subjects' lives, is what we learned as "the new journalism" back in journalism school in the early 70s. For this kind of subject, it definitely holds up well even though it is no longer new.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle. The author, a professor at MIT, examines how technology, especially smart phones, affect our creativity and ability to be empathetic, our friendships, family relations, education, work, politics, and how we treat the aging. I found it a fascinating discussion that I continue to think about, particularly as it applies to my work as an educator/curriculum writer, but also implications in daily life.
Performances
My son got me started with audio books a few years ago, and I am listening to them with increasing frequency. You can listen to a book while cooking, cleaning, playing Candy Crush, walking, etc. Normally I don't think too much about the performances (unless the narrator has a particularly irritating voice, some odd verbal tic, or a penchant for mispronouncing words), but two works stood out this year:
Black Man, White House, by D.H. Hughley and Michael Malice, performed by Keith Szarabajka, John Reynolds, Fran Tunno, Cherise Boothe, Dan Woren, P.J. Ochlan, Gregory Itzin, Paula Jai Parker-Martin, Mia Barron, Ron Butler, and James Shippy. Presented as a series of (fake) oral history interviews about the Obama campaign and presidency, Black Man, White House is hilarious--the writing is insightful and funny, but the performances make it laugh-out-loud funny.
Girls & Boys, by Dennis Kelly, performed by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance (she was also in the one-woman play on Broadway and in London) of Kelly's play about a marriage, from the moment the husband and wife meet until the marriage ends, complete with career ups and downs and the births of two children. At another level, the play is also about culture, violence, and men and, as performed by Mulligan, is utterly gripping. I've listened to it twice, and a third listen is not out of the question.
Favorite Passages
Since I didn't post as often in 2018, it's not difficult to go back and peruse my favorite passages ("home" was something of a theme this year), so I think I'll just end with one from a book I just finished last week. It seems particularly relevant as we head into 2019:
Now would be a good time to be careful with the meaning of words.
Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk
Fiction
I couldn't decide on a favorite so I picked two:
Overstory, by Richard Powers. In this book, as in his earlier works, science is key to the narrative, in this case environmental science. The environmentalism may seem heavy-handed to some, but I did not find it so. I loved the weaving together of numerous characters with special relationships to trees (some are odd connections, such as the character who was saved by a tree when he fell out of a helicopter). As we proceed through the layers of the forest/sections of the book, their lives intersect in an effort to save the California redwoods, and we care deeply about the forest and the people.
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. The Great Believers is told in two linked narratives, In the mid-1980s Yale and his friends are dealing with the frightening new epidemic killing gay men and the effect of HIV/AIDS on relationships of all kinds. At the same time, Yale is trying to acquire a collection of artwork from an elderly aunt of his friends Nico and Fiona. In 2015, Fiona is in Europe searching for her estranged daughter Claire; Fiona is staying with a friend from the old days in Chicago, who is mounting a solo exhibition of photos featuring the crowd from the 1980s. Makkai fills the book with wonderful characters and subplots but all the plots cause the reader to think about love, family, relationships, art, and cause-and-effect.
Honorable Mention: The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg, which wasn't the deepest book but left me feeling good about humanity, a somewhat difficult task; The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer, a flawed but enjoyable exploration of feminism, friendship, and mentorship; Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, which so vividly conveyed marriage in the years before WWII in a style that still feels innovative decades after the book was written.
Mystery
No mysteries really wowed me this year, but a few did stand out from the crowd of mediocre titles (I know, I should just get over series mysteries):
Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz. Magpie Murders is a book within a book, with parallel mysteries in both. The narrator in the "real world" is Susan Ryeland, an editor whose most valuable author, Alan Conway, creator of the Atticus Pund detective series, has recently died--it looks like a suicide, but Susan comes to believe Alan was murdered. Her inquiry into his death starts as a search for the last section of his last novel, which was missing when her boss gave her the new manuscript to read; soon, however, she is investigating his death as well as contemplating what happened in the last section of the book. The book is cleverly constructed and features some interesting word play and reflections on the writer's angst.
Honorable Mention: The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn, and Sunburn, by Laura Lippmann, both of which managed to surprise me more than once!
Rereads
I was going to call this section "classics," but I'm not sure the two titles I'm listing really classify. However, I loved each of them in two different phases of life, making them classics for me:
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. First read in my late teens/early twenties, this wonderfully written novel provides a devastating look into how depression colors every aspect of one's life. The fact of Plath's subsequent suicide makes the book all the sadder and more compelling.
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose is also beautifully written. It is a multi-level work, telling the stories of retired and wheelchair-bound historian Lyman Ward and the subjects of the family history he is writing--his grandfather, Oliver Ward, a mining engineer and inventor who was often mistreated and swindled by bosses, and his grandmother, Susan Ward, an Easterner disappointed in love and challenged in her Western life with her rough-around-the-edges husband. As Lyman constructs their story, largely from Susan's letters to her best friend, he reconsiders his own life.
Young Adult/Children's
I feel blessed that my granddaughter loans me books she thinks I should read, but in 2018 I was alarmed that so many of the books featured bullies, mean girls, etc. My favorite from her recommendations was a classic:
Matilda, by Roald Dahl. Matilda is a very funny book about a gifted little girl who wreaks havoc on her horrible parents and the abusive headmistress of her school. Dahl captures the revenge fantasies every child must have felt, while still making Matilda entirely lovable.
I also want to note that the grandkids and I read Lois Lowry's The Giver together and really enjoyed reading and discussing it. We also watched the movie and discussed why the filmmakers would change the story in a variety of ways. A highlight of the year!
Nonfiction
Two books stood out for me this year, both having to do with the challenges of being a young person in our high-tech polarized world:
The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, by Helen Thorpe. Thorpe tells the stories of a classroom of immigrant students at South High School in Denver, most of whom have come to the United States, with or without authorization, to escape terrible circumstances in their home countries. Once they arrive here, the challenges they and their families face--legal, financial, emotional, cultural--are huge, but their perseverance and the work of teachers and others who assist them in their journeys are inspirational. Thorpe's style of journalism, in which she immerses herself in her subjects' lives, is what we learned as "the new journalism" back in journalism school in the early 70s. For this kind of subject, it definitely holds up well even though it is no longer new.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle. The author, a professor at MIT, examines how technology, especially smart phones, affect our creativity and ability to be empathetic, our friendships, family relations, education, work, politics, and how we treat the aging. I found it a fascinating discussion that I continue to think about, particularly as it applies to my work as an educator/curriculum writer, but also implications in daily life.
Performances
My son got me started with audio books a few years ago, and I am listening to them with increasing frequency. You can listen to a book while cooking, cleaning, playing Candy Crush, walking, etc. Normally I don't think too much about the performances (unless the narrator has a particularly irritating voice, some odd verbal tic, or a penchant for mispronouncing words), but two works stood out this year:
Black Man, White House, by D.H. Hughley and Michael Malice, performed by Keith Szarabajka, John Reynolds, Fran Tunno, Cherise Boothe, Dan Woren, P.J. Ochlan, Gregory Itzin, Paula Jai Parker-Martin, Mia Barron, Ron Butler, and James Shippy. Presented as a series of (fake) oral history interviews about the Obama campaign and presidency, Black Man, White House is hilarious--the writing is insightful and funny, but the performances make it laugh-out-loud funny.
Girls & Boys, by Dennis Kelly, performed by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance (she was also in the one-woman play on Broadway and in London) of Kelly's play about a marriage, from the moment the husband and wife meet until the marriage ends, complete with career ups and downs and the births of two children. At another level, the play is also about culture, violence, and men and, as performed by Mulligan, is utterly gripping. I've listened to it twice, and a third listen is not out of the question.
Favorite Passages
Since I didn't post as often in 2018, it's not difficult to go back and peruse my favorite passages ("home" was something of a theme this year), so I think I'll just end with one from a book I just finished last week. It seems particularly relevant as we head into 2019:
Now would be a good time to be careful with the meaning of words.
Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk
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