The Once and Future King - T.H. White: I wanted to read this after reading H is for Hawk, because so much of that book is about the life and falconer-ing of White. I expected to know it was objectively very good without really loving the experience of reading it, if that makes sense, because I just didn’t think it was my thing. A pox on having a thing. This book is INCREDIBLE. Funny and tragic and just achingly beautiful, and wise! Oh man, I think I could start reading it again right now and I never feel that way after reading anything, especially not something so dang long. If you haven’t read it, please read it, and know that I am jealous of your getting to discover it for the first time. ALL THE STARS.
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi: This book is the true story of Kalanithi as he grows up marinated in literature, turns to medicine to experience real life so he can attempt to find meaning in it, and then is diagnosed with lung cancer and (spoiler) dies. It is beautiful and (clearly) heartbreaking, and it’s a quick and easy read, if “easy” can be used to describe the reading experience of something so sad. I really liked what he wrote about meaning-making, and even more than that I liked his straightforward view of struggle—in short, that struggle, sickness, calamity are all ways to further our experience, to understand life a little better. Really good stuff.
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe: Another book that attempted to broaden my understanding of space past the idea (unfounded, I’ve found) that boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider and girls go to Mars to get more candy bars. This book is fantastic, a real-life thriller. The writing is wonderfully over-the-top; it is a very fun read. And I learned stuff about space and astronauts and machismo and history and I loved it all.
Styled - Emily Henderson: We moved to a new apartment last November and it’s the first place we’ve owned and planned to stay in more or less permanently. I am lucky in that David and my tastes align really well, but our ways of developing those tastes in our house are different; mainly I want it all to be done right now and I keep thinking if we could just really be dedicated one Saturday, we could get it all done. David is better at contentment. Anyway, we’ve both spent a lot of time in the last year or so thinking about house stuff and how we want to decorate and I’ve looked at a lot of books in that category and this is by far the best one I’ve read. Maybe just because I really like Henderson’s style. But I think the advice is also really solid. I know our house will never look exactly the way I want it to, but I’m excited to try out the ideas in this book. Probably won’t be able to do them all in one Saturday, but I will try.
Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine: Lyrically gorgeous prose poems that cut to the heart of the black American experience. This book is haunting and crucial and the writing is so richly rhythmic. Much of the book concerns itself with ordinary day-to-day encounters that reveal a pervasive racism that’s easy to overlook when you aren’t its victim. I’m really interested in what race means in 21-century America, and particularly what the black experience is like, but I feel some conflict in writing or talking about it, since anything I read about it will fall far short of actually experiencing it, and since even my reading is colored by my own tremendously privileged experience; basically, I don’t want to seem like I’m engaging in readerly Rachel Dolezal-ing. But I do want to understand, and I do want to be aware, and I thought this book was tremendous. Please read it.
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown: I saw this book in the space gift shop at the Natural History Museum and knew I needed to read it because I had no idea why Pluto got kicked out of the planet lineup and Graham kept asking me (I knew enough to tell him it had be reclassified as a dwarf planet and a few weeks later, while we were looking at an old illustration of the solar system in a Magic School Bus book, he said to me, “But Pluto’s just a dorf planet, right Mama?” and I decided he is a genius child.) Anyway, this book was really fun and surprisingly readable and I learned a ton and laughed some, too. So that’s a win.
M Train - Patti Smith: Ugh, Patti Smith’s life. She just pads around her apartment feeding her cats and donning her watch cap so she can go sit at a cafe and think about things until someone asks her to give a speech at an exotic location, and she goes and she takes Polaroids and drinks more coffee and comes home and feeds the cats and goes to the cafe and gets invited to speak at another exotic location, and that is the whole thing, and I really loved it, but man. That really is the whole thing. I need to read “Just Kids.”
Wonder - R.J. Palacio: Really good YA fiction, with sort of a “Fault in Our Stars” crossed with “Stargirl” vibe. If you liked those books, I think you’ll really like this one.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua: Dang, this book is fascinating. It’s worth a read to understand the context of the “tiger mom” social shorthand; Chua’s writing is funny, honest, and brutally self-aware. I am intimidated as heck to be raising kids in this kind of society, because while I do agree with many tiger mom premises—that most things aren’t fun until you’re at least a little good at them and getting to that point can be kind of painful; that parents need to arm their kids with skills; that the ultimate goal of parenthood is not to protect children’s egos; that kids can and should be challenged; and that expecting a lot of kids is good for them—I can’t get down with the idea that self-esteem should be based on accomplishment. Maybe the problem is the idea of self-esteem generally; I think “worth” is a better term and “self-validation” is a smarter concept. And while entitlement concerns me a great deal, when it comes to feeling one’s own worth, I think the entitlement paradigm is the wrong lens to be looking through. Tying worth to competitive accomplishment seems to guarantee that shame will be in play somewhere along the line, and if there’s one thing I'd like to avoid as a mother, it’s teaching my kids shame. I don’t know what all this means for getting my kids to practice the piano, which I’d like them to do someday, but anyway, I’m going to be thinking about this book for a long time.
Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy - Dinty W. Moore: A delightful collection of short, funny pieces by the Everyone’s Favorite Uncle of essay writing. Every time I’ve talked to Dinty (a small handful of times, I’m not that cool), he has seemed super serious and I somehow didn’t know before that he is hilarious.
The 4-Hour Body - Timothy Ferriss: A fat tome of body hacks; if you like Ferriss’ human guinea pig style, then . . . you’ve probably already read this. I’m sure the diet stuff works, but I was a lot more intrigued by the sections on exercise. Ferriss is a devotee of the Pareto principle, wherein 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort, so he focuses on maximizing gains with minimal effort, which I think is awesome. There’s also a good section on sleep and some skill-acquisition business. It’s huge, so it’s a good candidate for selective reading, an approach Ferriss himself advocates in the introduction.
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque: I mean, the last thing this book needs is a recommendation from me, but it’s got it. This is a really extraordinary book about war, appropriately horrific and wonderfully written.
Bluets - Maggie Nelson: Nelson’s writing is just ridiculously gorgeous and insightful. This book is about the color blue, and takes off from there to discuss love and loss, perspective and longing. I really want to get my hands on all of Nelson’s books.
The History of Rock n Roll in Ten Songs - Greil Marcus: This took me a little while to get into, but when I got into it, I REALLY loved it. Marcus’ writing weaves together cultural, historical, personal, and, of course, musical aspects of a bunch of songs that builds into a fascinating history of rock, which is sort of a history of 20th century Western culture as a whole. It took me a while to read because I had to stop every few paragraphs to look up and listen to various songs, which made it all the more fun. Two thumbs up.
No comments:
Post a Comment