Quote of the Day -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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According to Wikipedia, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803– 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and his ideology was disseminated through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Quote of the Day -- Doris Lessing

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

-- Doris Lessing

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According to Wikipedia, Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

Book Review: Leaving Everything Most Loved

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear is my 10th Maisie Dobbs novel. I'm most definitely a fan. Each novel features an intriguing, knotty mystery with most of the violence happening either before the story begins or outside our view. My kind of mystery... spare me the gory details. Maisie Dobbs is both cerebral and psychological in her approach to solving a case, and she is always haunted by her own demons while she  pursues justice for others.

Leaving Everything provides Winspear's typical satisfying story, combining a social problem (in this case the treatment of Indians in London) with the killer's very personal motives. But reading it, I experienced a stronger than usual sense of melancholy and dread about Maisie's future and the future of her friends and colleagues. I felt like I was supposed to be on Maisie's side and share her desire for adventure and self-discovery, but I kept thinking "Poor James!"

[Spoiler alert coming up for Elizabeth George readers] Midway through her wonderful series of mysteries, Elizabeth George chose to kill off her detective's beloved and pregnant wife, Lady Helen. Readers were livid. George spent time explaining herself on social media and even wrote another entire book about it (What Came Before He Shot Her). In the end, I think most readers forgave her. As George explained, it was something she had to do for her series to continue. Writing her detective as a happily married man with a baby simply didn't work. It lacked the level of angst and drama that she needed. 

And my point in recounting George's journey is because I think that Winspear has arrived at the same juncture. (Meaning she arrived there in 2013, when this book was published. And if you've read all her novels and know the answer, don't tell me!) I don't think she can see her way forward if Maisie becomes happily married to James, plus she needs to change up the cast of characters, replacing Billy and Sandra with new people. She's not exactly bored and out of new ideas, but she's definitely looking for a major change of scenery. When I read the next novel, I'll report back. I remain a serious Maisie Dobbs fan and don't expect to be disappointed with her next adventure.

Book Review: Wish You Were Here

People who write book reviews are careful about spoilers -- either avoiding them or warning about them beforehand. In the case of Jodi Picoult's Wish You Were Here, everyone who writes about it is very careful not to spoil it for other readers because the unexpected turn it takes is such an important part of the experience. So I won't spoil it, other than to say that the turn was huge and made all the difference for me.

In Wish You Were Here, Picoult provides a nuanced exploration of the personal impact of COVID-19 from several points of view. Although this book feels very different from most of her other work, that nuanced exploration is very much Picoult at her best. She looks at survivor guilt experienced by those who are largely untouched (like me) side-by-side with the daily trauma felt by health-care workers. She spends more time than usual, for her, in examining romantic relationships. At times, this book began to feel like a romance novel and I almost put it down. 

Parent-child relationships are central to the story. As she peels back the onion of the fraught relationship that Diana, the protagonist, has with her mother, Picoult takes her on a twisted, often painful journey of self-discovery. Forgiveness and redemption ultimately enable Diana to find her way in the world, but I confess to finding the outcome equal parts sad and uplifting. 

This isn't Picoult's best work but even her "above average" is definitely worth reading.  

Book Review: We Are Not Like Them

Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, a Black woman and a white woman, long-time friends and colleagues, write a book about a Black woman and a white woman who are best friends faced with incredible challenges to their relationship. It has the potential to be trite or overwrought, but it's neither of those things. It's thought-provoking, gut-wrenching, insightful. The prose is straight-forward, not overly flowery or emotional, but laced with wonderful well-turned phrases and astute observations. As I started reading, I was almost immediately sorry I was reading a library copy because I wanted to underline and comment. Instead, my book is filled with little post-it tabs I'll need to remove before I return it to the library.

When Pride and Piazza talk about their book, they quip "Come for the friendship, stay for the social justice." They explore the challenges of any close friendship (honesty, different life experiences, diverging achievements). And then they add an incendiary social justice issue to the mix. Riley is Black and a rising media figure in Philadelphia. Jen is white and married to a cop who kills an unarmed Black teenager. As a journalist, Riley takes the lead in covering the story. (No spoilers here. This is on the book flap and in the first few chapters of the book.) Through alternating first person narratives, Pride and Piazza explore the many cracks this exposes in Riley and Jen's relationship with nuance and compassion. 

We Are Not Like Them probes difficult subjects, often painfully, but it does so against the backdrop of a deep lasting friendship. As Riley says to herself, "Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person. It's like finding your favorite sweatshirt in the back of the closet, the one you forgot why you stopped wearing and once you find it again you sleep in it every night." Awkwardly constructed but heartfelt. And I'm sure these two experienced writers and editors thought long and hard about each turn of phrase. 

As Jen struggles to cope with the fallout from her husband's horrific mistake, she pleads with Riley, "I just need you to be on my side." Riley, the more introspective of the two, and the authors along with her, understand that's it's not that simple. The situation has multiple sides, and there is no right side. And therein lies the strength of this book. There is no easy answer. There is no escaping the impact of race, so Jen and Riley (and the readers) might as well face it and deal with it. Here's Riley again: "I've been consumed these last few months (or a lifetime, really) with all the ways race oozes its sticky tentacles into every relationship, every interact, every intention... There are no easy choices, no safe choices, you can't plan your way to happiness."

We Are Not Like Them is a terrific, timely, important book.

Book Review: State of Terror

Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton -- what a powerhouse duo!  (Much better than James Patterson and Bill Clinton, IMHO.) They perfectly blend their different expertise and experiences with their obvious mutual respect and deep friendship to deliver a truly compelling story. A new administration is in the early stages of recovering from a disastrous 4 years with an incompetent and egotistical President who is never named but doesn't need to be.  For nefarious political reasons, the new President Doug Williams appoints Ellen Adams as his Secretary of State. Together, they confront a horrific terrorist plot that spans the globe and reaches into the depths of inner Washington.

Clinton brings to the table an enormous breadth of knowledge of world leaders, non-state actors, and Washington machinations. As Ellen Adams, she confronts some of her biggest nightmares and also gets to indulge her fondest desire to slap down a few political adversaries.

Penny contributes her masterful ability to construct an intricate plot, dropping just enough hints and red herrings along the way to keep the reader thoroughly engaged. She even includes a few nods to her loyal readers with a tiny bit of action in Three Pines and a cameo appearance by Armand Gamache. 

The thrilling, heart-stopping, page-turning plot would have made an excellent book. Combining that with the depth of female friendships, the fraught family relationships, and the nuanced portrayal of both the good guys and the bad guys bring this book to the next level. And the wonderful literary references, including the code between Ellen and Betsy, are icing on the cake. The subjunctive would have walked into a bar... had it only known. 

Needless to say, I really loved this book!

My Reading Life -- 2021

When I look back on my reading life in 2021, it feels like an embarrassment of riches. I read 113 books in a variety of genres. I got caught up on the backlist of some favorite authors like William Kent Krueger, Jacqueline Winspear, and Louise Penny. I branched out, reading more non-fiction, science fiction, and "social justice" fiction. Most of my selections rated a 4 or 5 on Goodreads. My reading was more selective, intentional, and well-curated than in past years. Despite the challenges of COVID, I'm not generally stressed or overloaded.  I'm retired, after all... So I have no need to use reading as a safety valve. I want my reading to challenge me, inform me, and make me wiser. I definitely cleared that bar in 2021.

Choosing 10 favorites was very difficult because it was such a good year. This list, in order by author not ranking, represents some of the best as well as the breadth of my year in books.

I attribute much of my reading success in 2021 to my decision to seek out book recommendations from a few trusted sources. Two of them, Anne Bogel and Gretchen Rubin, both sang the praises of Octavia Butler as one of their favorite authors. The book I chose to start with, Kindred, checked important boxes for me -- a writer of color whose corner of science fiction I like to think of as cultural anthropology combined with time travel. Wow! Kindred explored the horrors of slavery in a truly unique way. It's an important, eye-opening, moving book.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich was my last book of 2021 and one of my very favorites. It tells the story of an incredibly challenging year in my home city from the perspective of a native American employee in a locally owned bookstore. Erdrich skillfully addresses racial justice issues around both the murder of George Floyd and the native American community. The book is filled with pain but also with so much humor.  Who knew Louise Erdrich could be so funny? It is both heart-breaking and heart-warming. And as a wonderful bonus, it is filled with book recommendations. My TBR positively exploded!

I heard Lisa Genova speak on a (virtual) book tour for her new book Remember: The Science of Memory and The Art of Forgetting.  She was funny and engaging while delivering important information succinctly. Loss of brain function as I age is probably my biggest fear, stemming from watching my father and other relatives struggle. I'm terrified that my mind will die while my body lives on. I read Genova's non-fiction book Remember (excellent) and then decided to read Still Alice, which has been sitting on my stack for several years. I found it wonderful and haunting. One of the final scenes, when Alice can't remember long enough to follow through on her earlier self's recommended course of action will be seared in my memory forever (or for as long as my memory functions. Still Alice is a book that has really stayed with me.

A Bay Area friend with somewhat quirky but discerning taste in books recommended Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's an unusual coming-of-age story told from the perspective of an AI robotic companion to a young woman with fragile health. Ishiguro proves himself the master of first-person narrative. We enter the "mind" of the AI as it learns about the world and tries to apply key principles of its programming to complex situations and perplexing human emotions. Klara and the Sun artfully explores the ethics of AI as well as genetic and societal engineering. I was so impressed that I read Remains of the Day, another masterpiece of first-person narrative. I'm ashamed to admit I didn't read it sooner. There's more Ishiguro on my horizon.

My book club read The 100-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and found it delightful. It's very reminiscent of Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. It features wry, almost slap-stick Scandinavian humor coupled with the knowledge that we lose much as a society if we ignore the unique wisdom of the young and the old. The value of injecting humor when exploring challenging topics seems to be an important theme in many of my favorite books this year.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride is such a funny book. I really appreciate authors like McBride who have the skill to explore challenging subjects with humor that doesn't diminish the importance of the issues. Deacon King Kong is a wild ride through Brooklyn in the 1960's, illuminating the culture of the black community and the attitudes that surround it. And it's so funny! My enjoyment motivated me to read The Good Lord Bird about James Brown -- equally funny and illuminating.

My daughter's book club (a very intellectual, highly educated group of young professionals) read The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. I've found that I can't go wrong piggybacking on their picks. We have a growing lexicon of excellent books that help us understand the history and impact of racism in our country and how me might constructively move forward. McGhee's book is an important entry on that list, shedding light on the historic and current economic impacts of our decision first to enslave and then to segregate and discriminate. Perhaps if we can accept that racism hurts all of us in our pocketbooks, we can begin to eliminate it.

I was a bit hesitant to read All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny because it was set in Paris, not in quaint, beloved Three Pines. I love Paris, of course, but I wasn't sure I could love a Louise Penny book that didn't feature the normal quirky cast of characters. But love it I did. One of the things I most admire about Louise Penny is her dedication to her craft. She never rests on her laurels, as some other famous authors do. The plot of each book is skillfully designed, and she continues to plumb the depths of her characters. All the Devils provides insights into Gamache's youth and the dynamics of his family today.  Penny, as usual, balances a page-turning story with keen psychological insight.  An engaging, thought-provoking read. 

Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner is a very personal selection for this list.  It has been life-changing for me in my journey to becoming a competent, well-controlled diabetic. My doctor has told me repeatedly that some people have an easy journey where oral meds and a few life-style changes do the trick. My journey is much more challenging, and it's not my fault. But whatever the fault, I was very baffled and frustrated until I discovered Scheiner's book. He helped me understand so much about how my pancreas works (or often doesn't work). And he gave me the tools to be more in control and competent. Life-changing.

Bryan Stevenson is an incredibly talented writer and an even more impressive human being. Just Mercy was "featured" at Starbucks quite a few years ago. I picked it up in Seattle when we were babysitting our granddaughter (so that makes it 6 years ago), and it sat on my shelf until this year. I heard Stevenson speak and immediately sought out the book and devoured it. He lays out a compelling case for the tremendous damage we have done with our mass incarceration policy and provides constructive suggestions for how we can begin to undo the damage. This is another key book in the lexicon of racial justice books that everyone should read.

 

Quote of the Day -- Chris Cleave

This was how a kind heart broke, after all: inward, making no shrapnel.

-- Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

Quote of the Day -- Sandra Cisneros

True reading comes from pleasure, not obligation. When obliged to read something that doesn't speak to you, you'll ultimately forget it.

-- Sandra Cisneros

Quote of the Day -- Barbara Tuchman

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

-- Barbara Tuchman

Quote of the Day -- Rudine Sims Bishop

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.

-- Rudine Sims Bishop

Quote of the Day - William Wordsworth

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, 
Are a substantial world, both pure and good: 
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

-- William Wordsworth

Quote of the Day -- Helen Oyeyemi

You know that book; you forget the title after you’ve returned it and over the years you try to look it up a few times, but you never find it again.

-- Helen Oyeyemi

Quote of the Day -- Allen Eskens

...sometimes when you look down at the surface of a pond, all you can see is your reflection, not the depth of what's on the other side.  

-- Allen Eskens, Nothing More Dangerous

Quote of the Day -- Carl Sagan

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. 

-- Carl Sagan

Quote of the Day -- Desiderius Erasmus

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. 

-- Desiderius Erasmus

Reading Randomly

Over two millennia ago, Julius Caesar wisely said "A room without books is like a body without a soul." We don't have books in every single room in our house, but almost. Which I guess means that our house definitely has soul. 

I've often sheepishly said that I'm incapable of leaving a bookstore empty-handed.  So our house has a "real library," crammed with books that we've read and can't bear to part with. And then I have my "aspirational" library, scattered around the house, populated with books that I haven't yet read. Seeing them often fills me with a combination of guilt and embarrassment. But now I've discovered that my affliction is common around the world and has a wonderful Japanese name: Tsundoku.

One of my COVID-19 projects has been to tame my Tsundoku. I've collected unread books from around our house, alphabetized the fiction by author, and loosely categorized the non-fiction by topic. They are now neatly arranged on a bookshelf in my office, beckoning me to read them. They feel delightfully aspirational, and because the library is closed, they aren't competing for attention with my equally aspirational library reserve list.

Next problem. What to read first? Alphabetical order makes me cringe -- too pedestrian. Closing my eyes and pointing feels too childish for my aspirational library.  No eenie meenie or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey for my Tsundoku. Then the geek in me had an aha moment. Random number generator. And Mr. Google quickly delivered just what I needed. With a click of my mouse, I spun the metaphorical dial and now find myself reading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCord.

As a final note, many of the entries in my Tsundoku are a mystery to me, meaning I have no memory of when I bought them or who recommended them. But so far, I'm glad that Angela's Ashes ended up on my shelf.

Book Review -- Edward Tulane

When Ann Patchett recommends a book, I listen...

That night I read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and, well, it changed my life. I couldn’t remember when I had read such a perfect novel. I didn’t care what age it was written for. The book defied categorization. I felt as if I had just stepped through a magic portal, and all I had to do to pass through was believe that I wasn’t too big to fit. This beautiful world had been available to me all along but I had never bothered to pick up the keys to the kingdom.

"Kid lit" isn't exactly my go-to genre when selecting what to read next, but Kate DiCamillo is wonderful. I enjoyed Because of Winn Dixie just as much as I enjoyed Edward Tulane. The writing is both lyrical and stripped to its essence. The messages are both obvious and profound... and appropriate for children of all ages. 

I'll keep reading Ann Patchett's recommendations. Her taste is impeccable.

Book Review -- Why We're Polarized

Ezra Klein is flat out brilliant. He has his own great ideas, but his magical power is synthesis. For his book Why We're Polarized, he read volumes and volumes of material and interviewed countless experts. And then he analyzed, synthesized, and organized all of that information into a coherent story. And he made it easy to read -- digestible -- without sacrificing reference to the underlying research and analysis that supports his work. 

I've read many of the books and articles that he references. Most of the concepts he highlights are familiar to me. The new ground he paves is in the logically constructed big picture where all the pieces fit together and make sense -- even if the big picture isn't particularly attractive.

He starts with historical context and how the supposed "golden age" (when both parties were on average more moderate and willing to compromise) was the result of a devil's bargain with southern racists. When that bargain fell apart after the passage of civil rights laws in the 1960's, we began to sort ourselves into liberals and conservatives aligned by party.

Klein's pillar premise is that we are living in Identity politics with a capital "I." Most of our identities are stacked and aligned with our political party so that our party affiliation becomes a mega-identity. And the other party becomes Other with a capital "O." Our party's success and the other party's failure become equally important (which is how our hard-coded group think works). 

He spends a lot of time exploring how Trump won the nomination and ultimately concludes that in some ways, it didn't matter. Many Republican party leaders were terrified that Trump would win the nomination but helpless to prevent it. And in the end, their hatred of Hilary and everything she stands for trumped their disdain for Trump. That's fundamentally important to understanding our polarization -- being against is just as important, if not more so, as being for.

Klein examines the media's role in fostering the polarization and ultimately enabling Trump. And he highlights stark differences in how Democrats and Republicans consume media. An important part of the Democrat's identity is embracing diversity -- width rather than depth. Republicans are precisely the opposite. Depth explains Fox News. Breadth explains a Democrat's willingness to read much more broadly (but not Fox News).

Klein also talks about how the idea of balance written into our Constitution was built around the idea that the individual states would have competing interests. They would have to compromise to achieve results that a majority of states could accept. Seeking compromise among many states is far different from trying to seek compromise between two nearly equal, diametrically opposed political parties. Nor did the Founding Fathers conceive of a time when population would be spread so unequally among the states. Their notion of balancing geography and the competing interest of the various states has, in our time, lead to gross inequity in representation.

I've only scratched the surface of Klein's analysis. His book is eye-opening and sobering. Although he has suggestions that might soften the hard edges of partisanship or blunt its effects, basically it is hard to see an optimistic way forward.

Mrs Palfry at the Claremont

Author Elizabeth Taylor is a new discovery for me. I receive book recommendations from a variety of sources... friends, newsletters, Goodreads. I add many to my "to read" list in Goodreads, which has ballooned ridiculously to over 900. And I add some of them to my reserve list at the library. I don't know when or why I added Mrs. Palfry at the Claremont, but it arrived just before the library closed for the COVID-19 lockdown. And, serendipitously, it arrived in the same batch with Susan Moon's this is getting old. (Or perhaps I read a newsletter about aging and that's why they both ended up on my reserve list?) But I digress...

Susan Moon's collection of essays addresses the challenges of aging with wry good humor. I saw myself in many of her vignettes, and they made me nod and smile. I found Taylor's fictional treatment of aging far more difficult to read. Her characters are a group of eccentric, lonely old people, living in reduced circumstances in a hotel in central London. Their lives are very "small" with minimal interaction beyond their little circle. 

Mrs. Palfry, the central character, is recently widowed and profoundly lonely. She has a strained relationship with her distant daughter and grandson. She doesn't feel any real connection to her fellow inhabitants at the hotel. But she does establish a relationship, of sorts, to a young man she meets while on a walk.

Some of the reviews talk about humor. And, apparently, there was a movie a few years ago. The book jacket that features a scene from the movie shows Mrs. Palfry looking well-groomed and not all that old and feeble. She smiles while her young friend laughs. I find this image almost offensive because it so completely contradicts my impressions of the book. For me, the few moments of laughter in the book bordered on pathetic. The overall impressions that stay with me are shabbiness, loneliness, and pain (both physical and emotional). This is simply not a happy book.


That being said, I do recommend it. Taylor writes masterfully, capturing the eccentricities of the Claremont inhabitants with spare but elegant prose. Following in the tradition of Jane Austen, Taylor gives us a story in which very little happens but we gain powerful insights into the indignities of aging and of human nature in general. What the heck. I guess I will add another Taylor book or two to my "to read" list.