Books of 2022: History and Memoir

This year, I forgot how many good things I'd read until I looked back on my list.  I set no records for volume but thoroughly enjoyed several books.

Best of the Year: History

Shadow Divers; The True Adventure of Two Americans who Risked Everything to Solve one of the Last Mysteries of WW II, Robert Kurson, 2004

My colleague John Beck lent me this book.  He and his sons share an interest in World War II.  When he first shared it with me, I wrestled with a little resentment: You don't get to put a book on my already-too-long to-read list!  I'm not a WW II nut!  It took very little time once I'd started reading it to understand why someone would evangelize for this gripping tale.  Kurson (with whom I was unfamiliar) draws the reader into this history extremely effectively.  A group of experienced shipwreck divers pursue a tip that there seems to be something in the water 60 miles off New Jersey in the early 1990s.  They discover something from World War II (no spoilers; it's in the subtitle).  Shadow Divers tells the story of their dives, their research, their rabbit trails and red herrings, and the risk that is an inextricable part of diving shipwrecks. The pages fly by.  I read the final 60 pages in essentially one sitting.  The story rewards immersion.  Not that it makes me want to do the literally death-defying things that these guys did in their efforts to solve this mystery.  Although I have experienced being gripped by some passion or interest, I can't imaging going to the depths that these guys did.

Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Morgan, 2002

This book parked under my nightstand for a long time after being - I believe - a Christmas present from my father.  I read it as part of my resolution to read all of the books in that under-nightstand stack before bringing new books into the house.  At that, it was in the second half of that stack, and I wasn't totally psyched to start it.  But I was wrong.  Morgan writes a brisk life of a man who left lots of writing behind that captures his extraordinary intellect and public service.   It's hard to imagine America coming to be without Franklin deploying his intelligence in the colonies, in England, and in France, where he secured funding for the emerging country between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  A polymath, Franklin is known for his contributions to the science around electricity, but he had his hand in other things, too, like advances in ship technology, and charting the gulf stream.  He lived in a tension between science and public affairs.  We can't know what he might have done had he dedicated himself to science, but we can be grateful that he didn't.  Between personally moving between different groups of people in Europe and in the New World and writing his own essays and printing those of others (his main trade was as a Philadelphia printer), Franklin continually did the intellectual and influence work that the emerging country needed. He believed that all governments succeed based on the will of the people to be governed and their satisfaction with the performance of that government.  This amounted to a newfangled idea against the monarchic background of colonial times.  Poor Paige heard a lot of Franklin fun facts while I raced through this book.

Live from New York; the Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as told by its Stars, Writers, and Guests, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, 2014

This is one of maybe two books that have been on my to-read list when I found them in a Little, Free Library.  That's an amazing feeling when it happens.  This is a long (almost 750-page) oral history of SNL by everyone from 1975 to 2014.  The authors got access to everyone - happy and unhappy cast members, one-time and perennial guest hosts, writers, NBC execs.  It's a fascinating walk through an institution that has evolved continually even as the public and critics have rhythmically pronounced it dead every few years.  Everyone falls in love with the generation of the show that's there when they're in high school/college.  YouTube now means no one has to be in or stay up late on Saturday night to see the show.  The insane production schedule is pretty well known, but it's still revelatory to read about it from several different personal angles.  Miller and Shales organize the book in long chapters about each roughly five-year generation of the show.  It's interesting to read about the high times and the low times, the large casts, and the small.  I took several months reading this huge volume amidst other books.  Glad I found it and read it.

Best of the Year: Memoir

Punch Me Up to the Gods, Brian Broome, 2021

Never has a memoir made me want to hug its author more.  More precisely, the child Brian Broome, black, poor, gay, and abused growing up in an Ohio Rust Belt town.  Also, though, young adult drug addict Brian Broome, looking for love in my Rust Belt town, which he now calls home.  Broome writes those two stories moving toward each other in time - actually, he plays with time cleverly, bouncing back and forth between the distant past and the near present.  Rejected by each of his parents in their own way and by that special small-minded nastiness of smaller towns in the 1980s and 1990s, he somehow survived all that hurt him and all that he tried to numb the hurt.  If there's a part of the narrative missing in all of those time leaps, it is the turning point, the redemption story, the finding of the rarely-straight and smooth road of recovery.  Broome writes evocatively - sometimes so painfully evocatively - about discovering his thoroughly-rejected identity.  The book engenders compassion for those suffering the loneliness of otherness even in a kinder, gentler today.

The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2008

Having read other Coates essays and books and seen him give a lecture, I was excited to find a memoir that I didn't really know about in a Little, Free Library on a neighborhood walk.  The Beautiful Struggle is a frank telling of Coates's childhood, including his awkwardness, impulsiveness, and the nurturing (if not perfect) household and community in which he grew up.  West Baltimore can be a tough place.  Coates tells a nuanced story of his complicated family - his father had - at press time - seven children by four mothers.  He was present in Coates's life - maybe more present than young Ta-Nehisi might have wished.  His father's principles and beliefs in the strengths of their African heritage after unhappy generations in America both provided his (not-always-profitable) living in the form of a tiny heritage "press" (often no more than saddle-stapling printouts in the basement and dictated how the family spent time.  Young Ta-Nehisi oscillated between buying into it all and chafing at the sway his father's ideas held sway over him and the family.  The book is full of honest stories about young Ta-Nehisi screwing up and throwing away good opportunities.  This almost always provides a moment for adults who see his potential to give him another chance.  His peers don't always offer the same forbearance for his faux pas.  Reading this book essentially right after Brian Broome's Punch Me Up to the Gods, it's clear that as wild as things occasionally were for the Coates family, there was a safety net of parental intellect and ambition for their kids that generally launched them to the hoped-for mileposts.

Bad Books of 2022

Other year-end lists celebrate the sublime, and I will get there, too.  Just not today.  Today, I start my 2022 reading recap as I always do: by sparing other readers the books that I wish I'd been spared myself.  Life's too short.

Worst of the Year: Fiction

in which, I note as I write this, I take issue more with editors than with authors while griping about books I got for free due to the kindness of strangers (what a peach!)

Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby, 2021

Having enjoyed and been intrigued by S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland, I put the follow-up book on my to-read list.  Imagine my delight when I saw a copy in a neighborhood Little, Free Library.  Sitting down to write this review of that follow-up book, I had a whole theory that Razorblade Tears's flaws could be explained by a rush to publication following the acclaim of Cosby's debut in Blacktop Wasteland.  Then, I discovered that Blacktop Wasteland followed his actual debut, My Darkest Prayer, by a year.  Who knew?  My theory may still hold because Blacktop Wasteland got much more critical love, winning the LA Times Book Prize and being lauded by the NY Times and NPR.  In reading Razorblade Tears, I discovered that the Book of the Month Club still exists - the cover bears multiple marks for the distinction of being the Club's selection for July 2021.

It seems rushed to production because it's poorly edited, falls into weak patterns, and has at least one automotive plot hole.  Or is that plot hole a red herring?  In the "thriller" genre, does one ever really know?  So yeah, typos don't quite abound, but there are enough of them to elicit a reader's exasperated "sheesh."  Beyond that, though, editorial laziness appears in the form of a clumsy phrase repeated verbatim in two different places in the book.  Also, characters whose bodies get absolutely messed up in Cosby's signature over-the-top violence just keep going as if nothing has happened like superheroes.  Also, no one they encounter comments on the blood and bruises that must be covering them.  Also, things happen in time and space that don't quite seem possible.  Too much happening in too short a time.  A grand estate being described as a half-acre lot (so, a tiny grand estate?).  A small business owner neglecting his business for what seems like weeks on end.  And that's after his faithful and capable assistant decides not to return to work after experiencing over-the-top violence in the workplace.  Poor execution throughout, which is a shame.  You don't need to know about the dumb plot because you shouldn't read this, but it's two homophobic dads who investigate the murders of their married gay sons because no one else is doing anything about it.  I was so happy to finish this book and move on to something else.

If the River was Whiskey, TC Boyle, 1989

So many times walking past a Little, Free Library, I see nothing I would want to read.  Every so often, though, I see a book by an author I at least know.  So it was with this paperback TC Boyle story collection.  Having enjoyed his novels and having had my trust with the short story collection genre rebuilt by some recent successes, I grabbed it not without some trepidation.  Short stories have eaten away at my trust by relying too heavily on magic for plot.  The thrill of the close observation of characters figuring their way out of challenging situations gives way to disappointment when the path into our out of the challenge is paved with magic.  It's lazy writing.  Like a foster kid who finds himself in a good placement after several bad ones, I told myself a few stories into this tome that it wasn't so bad in the world of Boyle's stories.  His writing is crisp, and he captures the human condition well.  The plots were varied and - having been written not later than 1989 - had all of the advantages of a time before cell phones - smart ones in particular.  Since I remember 1989 well, it feels strange to say these stories transported me to a different time, but I must.  Boyle brings us the Ayatollah's PR man, people dating as safe sex emerges as a necessity, and a low-end performance artist who becomes a sensation.  Around the halfway point of the collection (almost to a page), however, I began to detect an editorial strategy of putting the stories roughly in order of craziness.  By the end, there was magic, but more than that, there were characters so awful or stupid as to be really hard to read.  The fun drains out of the enterprise at that point for me.  The title story is last, and it's definitely among the best.  A devastating and finely observed few days in the life of a family with troubles.  Not happy, but if the whole book had been like that - eschewing shortcuts - I would have enjoyed it much more.

Worst of the Year: Non-Fiction

Comedy, Henri Bergson and George Meredith, 1877, 1900, 1956

Keegan Michael Key referenced this book on Mike Birbiglia's podcast.  Although our library system lists a copy, it turned out to be missing from the shelf when I looked for it.  I found a paperback copy online though an independent bookseller.  This is a strange little book.  The volume I got collects Henri Bergson's long essay "Laughter" from 1900 with George Meredith's shorter 1877 "An Essay on Comedy."  Professor and non-fiction writer Wylie Sypher edited the collection, published by Johns Hopkins in 1956, and supplies an introduction and an appendix.  Having read the introduction and slogged through the Meredith, I found the Bergson more accessible than either.  But then I noticed that Cypher's appendix runs another 65 pages.  My force of will and obstinacy could only get me to the end of the "Laughter" essay.  This is basically late-19th-century philosophy on comedy.  And you know who has two thumbs and never reads philosophy?  This guy.  Ninety percent of both Meredith's and Bergson's references are to Moliere.  As it happens, I have had some exposure to Moliere, including as a high school theater parent.  My skim level of knowledge was not enough to make philosophizing about what is funny - or rather, what was funny in the 1870s-1890s - interesting.  Bergson wrote his essay from 1884-1900.  For posterity, the main theses here are: something's funny when it's repeated, or repeated and morphed, or when people act in an automatic way beyond their power.  Something has to be human to be funny.  Animals are only funny to the extent that they remind us about how humans behave.

Self-Compassion; Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, Kristin Neff, 2011

This book lingered on my list for quite a while after I heard about it from Caroline Ealy, the 20-something cohost of the podcast Good Christian Fun.  When I finally started reading it, I doubted the wisdom of taking book recommendations from 20-something podcast hosts.  Neff's concepts don't strike the more wizened, hard-bitten middle-aged man who's been to some therapy and read much better self-help books as very profound.  Neff has created the academic research area of self-compassion, which she describes as having three parts: self-kindness, recognizing our common humanity, and mindfulness.  Because of the attention that self esteem gets, Neff has to continually contrast her self-compassion concept with that.  This is not about telling oneself how great one is.  It's about acknowledging what is, good or bad.  In particular, it's about dismissing the critical voice that inhabits a lot of our heads, or rather telling it "this is a moment of suffering; I'm suffering right now, and I'm going to be compassionate to myself for that suffering."  I persisted in reading the book despite not loving it in hopes that Neff's dopey-sounding message of being kind to myself would break through my defenses.  It kinda did.  This is the most self-helpy book I've read in a long time, complete with exercises in the middle of the chapters (which I didn't do).  In shorter sections revealing her own personal life and experiences, Neff does some of her best work.  Particularly at the end of the book, the concepts come together in her personal and family story in a way that does reach the profound.  This book may be the thing that certain readers need to really break through troublesome patterns in their lives.  Others may come at it like I did, more skeptically and reluctantly.  There's good stuff here for all even if the experience of reading it doesn't light up all of the revelation and insight sensors Neff might think it will.

Update: 2022 Pirates Win Predictions

 Every few years, someone in our family predicts the number of Pirates wins exactly.  It's super scientific and impressive - basically a 538 Obama election level accomplishment.  When I say "someone" in our family does this, it's only one person: Paige in 2012 and 2022

Predicting the exact outcome may be even more impressive considering this team that set a record for number of different players used in a season.  A young, unpredictable team in flux offered its share of both embarrassing lows, sublime highs, and teases of what will hopefully manifest as better days to come.

Reading Resolution Completed

Back in March, in this space, I wrote an accountability post about my resolution to read down the stack of books under my nightstand before bringing any more books into the house.  Today, I can happily report that the stack is gone.

As always, I read a mixed bag of good and bad books, quit one and would recommend several.

The Teammates; A Portrait of a Friendship, David Halberstam, 2003

On paper, a baseball book - a Red Sox book at that - written by David Halberstam and given to me by my dad should was a good bet.  It was really, really OK; kinda niche.  For Red Sox fans who want to know about the stars of my dad's young fandom - Ted Wiliams, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio, and Bobby Doerr, it could be great.

Comedy, Henri Bergson and George Meredith, 1900

Recommended by, of all geniuses, Keegan Michael Key, this book turned out to be an awful, dry, philosophical slog - about the furthest thing that I can imagine from actual comedy.  Long on Moliêre references; short on laughs.

Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902

I listened to this book on my highly effective sleep-aid podcast, Phoebe Reads a Mystery.  I heard and followed at least 80% of it.  Not my favorite Sherlock Holmes story. 

Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Morgan, 2002

A better gift from my dad.  Having begun this book with low expectations, I found myself drawn in and entertained.  Franklin played a part in so many parts of early American life, it boggles the mind.  Although our country may not exist without his leadership role in public affairs, there's a whole sliding doors version of Franklin in which he devoted more time to science and discovered even more than he did about electricity, ship technology, and understanding the gulf stream.  A surprisingly good founding father biography.

If the River was Whiskey, TC Boyle, 1989

Another Little, Free Library find from an author I've enjoyed before.  This collection of stories - from another time entirely, plotwise - struck me as having an A side and a B side (like an old LP).  I really enjoyed the first several stories, only to be quite disappointed in the second half of the book.

Live from New York; the Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as told by its Stars, Writers, and Guests, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, 2014

I considered it a Little, Free Library miracle when I found a book that had been on my to-read list in one in my neighborhood.  This exhaustive (700-page-plus) history did not disappoint.  It's not hyperbole to call it a masterwork.  Although I certainly would have finished my resolution sooner without such a big book being in the stack, I still call it worth it to read about the show's founding, the many times it's been pronounced "Saturday Night Dead" and the many times it's come back to, um, Live.  At this point, the cyclical nature of cast stars and chemistry has become part of the formula. 

Punch Me Up to the Gods, Brian Broome, 2021

A devastating memoir about growing up Black, gay, and poor in the rust belt.  Broome survived Warren, Ohio and made it to Pittsburgh, a second place he needed to survive.  Reading this difficult but beautifully-told story just made me want to give the author a hug. 

After reading Broome's book, I abandoned Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud, a "memoir of place" about a famous author of good books (like The Shipping News) building a home in a gorgeous spot in Wyoming (or something).  By the time I got to her third review of a contractor at around page 100, I had to tap out.  There was nothing here to care about.

The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2008

A different story of growing up Black, this time in West Baltimore with enlightened parents focused on African heritage.  Coates tells the story of his upbringing, pulling no punches about his own tendency to screw up opportunities.  He acknowledges how lucky he was to be pulled along by parents and other adults who, despite their own imperfections, worked to see him get a chance to succeed.

It's a great feeling to see the floor under my nightstand again.  Now, please pardon me while I hit up the fiction stacks at the library.

2022 Pirates Win Predictions - mid-year check-in

 Baseball season is long.  162 games long.  Having played 81 of those games, the Pirates are 33-48.  Their .407 winning percentage projects them to win 66 games.  That would both improve on last year and give Teddy the title of most accurate Forster predictor.  

This young team has been maybe more exciting than I had hoped and wildly unpredictable.  A nice goal would be for the team to go three weeks without the second baseman pitching the ninth inning.  Too much Diego Castillo and Josh Vanmeter on the mound in blowouts so far.  While a leap to match Charlie's optimism seems highly unlikely, his more pessimistic family members all remain solidly in the running.

2022 Pirates Win Predictions

 Well, this is a shame.  I failed last year to return to the blog to gloat that I had nailed the Pirates win prediction exactly at 61 games.  At least somebody in Pittsburgh won.

 Close readers will know that last year's result continued a pattern where the most pessimistic Forster most often ends up closest to the real Pirates win total.

 This year, the optimism spectrum ranges widely as the Pirates prepare to field a young team with lots of question marks.

 

Monday Chart: Parental Fiscal Motivation

 In case you thought having teenagers with phones is a way to save money:

Tuesday Haiku: A Walking Thought While Passing By

 Or is it a passing thought while walking by?

Why didn't they say

hello? Asked the sad man who

didn't say hello

I Love You No Matter What

 My family makes fun of me for a sentence I've just now started to cultivate saying to my sons: I love you, no matter what.

I probably deserve the ribbing for attempting to adopt a dad tag line well into their teenage years, but it comes form a good place.  They should know that they areunconditionally loved by me and their mom, and this is the simplest, most straightforward way I can think of to express it.

Do our kids know the things we hope they will know if we don't make them explicit?  The rule in marketing is that a consumer has to hear a message seven times before they'll act on it.  As the African or Chinese (depending on your Google result) proverb says "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  The next best time is now."  I've decided not to let my wish that I'd thought to say this to them from when they were tiny enough to accept it more easily stop me from saying it now in the rich complexity of our father/adolescent relationships.

A Reading Resolution

The serious readers that I know contend with a common problem: the stack.

The stack of unread books, typically on or under a nightstand, that represents our best intentions of reading.  Mine has grown during the pandemic for two reasons: First, our library system has allowed renewals up to six months as long as no other patron requests the volume.  On top of that, they are not collecting fines, even for books kept beyond that six-month mark.  Second, pandemmy walks take me past a lot of Little, Free Libraries.  While many of those bear the same promise-fulfillment ratio as a high school dance, I have scored some worthwhile titles here and there.  And here. And there.

Long story, short, I entered 2022 with an untenable stack.  Two stacks, to be precise, for structural integrity reasons.  I honestly don't know if one stack would have fit between the floor and the bottom of my spindly nightstand.

A few weeks into the new year, I resolved to read what was there before bringing any new books into my life, by big library, little library, bookstore, or friend-lend.  It seemed like the right thing to do.  In part, it was a response to a sobering realization late in 2021 about just how little I will be able to read in my remaining lifetime (NBD) relative to the number of books that get published every week, let alone the span of published human history. There are so. Many. Books. Who's to say that the books under my nightstand aren't the best ones to read now?

the stack, partially reduced

Resolutions do often go awry or get forgotten, but here's a happy early status report: the stack is dwindling.  That desire for freedom to hunt up new titles again is motivating me to make more time to read.  As the first quarter of 2022 draws to a close, I have read more books YTD than in any year since 2000, when I started tracking with my current system.  That, of course, puts me on pace to break my annual record.  I'll not jinx that by saying more than that I am on pace.

The books I've finished since my resolution are a mixed bag of genres and came from a variety of recommendations/sources.  Those remaining in the stack bear a certain resemblance, which may become a problem.

Success before problems: what I've been reading to get out from under:

Shadow Divers; The True Adventure of Two Americans who Risked Everything to Solve one of the Last Mysteries of WW II, Robert Kurson, 2004

Highly readable history lent by a coworker.  I was pretty steamed when he gave me this book because it wouldn't help with my bloated to-read list (a whole separate magilla.) Teddy liked this one too before I gave it back.

Self-Compassion; Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, Kristin Neff, 2011

Decent.  I didn't love this as much as did the podcast host who recommended it, but it did allow me to check off a book that had occupied my to-read list for over a year.

Running the Light, Sam Tallent, 2020

Another podcast recommendation, this when the author appeared on Marc Maron's WTF. (Free podcast recs for readers who a) follow links from blog posts and b) will not hate me for adding to their to-listen list). Tallent's tale of his self-published novel during the pandemic when he couldn't book shows pulled at my heartstrings. I ordered a copy as a patron of the arts.  Marc liked the book, and I can see why. It's amazingly good for a self-published novel; especially the first half before the editing declines  A memorable if often difficult read about a road comic in full blown drug and alcohol addiction mostly bashing his way to self destruction amidst fleeting glimmers of hope.

Everything in its Place; First Loves and Last Tales, Oliver Sacks, 2019

Another coworker rec (different coworker - nice to work with smart, interesting people) that I really enjoyed.  Sacks's final essay collection, published posthumously.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie, 1920

Agatha Christie's first novel, consumed via the podcast Phoebe Reads a Mystery, which I say as a high compliment is the thing that helps me fall asleep when nothing else does.  A soothing voice reading at a measured pace a story that's just involving enough to quiet my monkey brain.

Dusk, Night, Dawn; on Recovery and Courage, Anne Lamott, 2021

Randomly picked up at the library (this is how I get myself into this stacktuation) that turned out just as I'd hoped.  Lamott is a prophet endowed with a talent for the right, unexpected turn of phrase.

That's what my momentum looks like.  My barrier is a shrinking stack dominated by memoir and biography.  That's a symptom and a problem all in one.  I'm seriously under-noveled this year and will remain so until I complete my resolution. Apparently, these books have been stack marooned because I have my doubts about them.  These genres are crap shoot categories.  I hope the highs buoy me, and the lows motivate me.  It's my only hope to get to summer novel reading.

What's your reading resolution?

Books of 2021: Fiction

Each year at this time, a good friend (whom I will not out here) and I share our complete reading lists from the year before.  We like and read many kinds of books that overlap and many that don't, which makes the list-sharing exercise fertile and interesting.  She reads a fair amount of romance novels and always notes on the list or in her cover letter (which might be the best part of the exercise, a hand-written letter!) "no judgment!"  

I beg the same of you, dear reader: much of the fiction I read in this escape-worthy year falls into the cop, spy, and noir genres.  To be fair (to me), the cop novels are set in Oxford, England, the spy novels are about MI5 rejects, and the noir is by an emerging author.  Although I will not call them my best of the year, readers who want to escape like I do may be interested in Colin Dexter's "Inspector Morse" novels, Mick Herron's Slough House/slow horses books, and the noir of S.A. Cosby.

The novel typically rules my reading roost, but this year, I have to give my top fiction props to a short story collection.  Among everything I read, no writing was better than Steve Wiegenstein's exquisite gem of a collection.

Best of the Year: Short Stories 

Scattered Lights, Steve Wiegenstein, 2020, PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist 2021

We learned about Steve Wiegenstein's (i before e except after t) collection of short stories,Scattered Lights, when we watched online the ceremony presenting the PEN/Faulkner Award to our neighbor and acquaintance Deesha Philyaw for Secret Lives of Church Ladies.  Each of the finalists read excerpts from their books, and Wiegenstein intrigued me the most among the runners-up.  This slim volume of short stories set in the rural south (Wiegenstein is an Ozarks native) stands up well against The Secret Lives.  It's clear why it would also be a finalist.  With efficient descriptions of characters and setting and plots that marry high stakes with day-to-day action, the stories are highly readable, cinematic, and memorable.  As is my practice with collections of stories and essays, I used Scattered Lights as a palate cleanser between other books, savoring each story on its own.  My only hesitation in recommending this book to others is the obscurity of the little press that put it out.  Fortunately, my neighborhood indie bookstore was able to order it.

Best of the Year: Novel

Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead, 2021

The concept of a Colson Whitehead novel unburdened by his "heavier" themes intrigued me.  Whitehead has written important literary novels with an urgency to show the injustice baked into America.  What might he do with a heist book?  In Harlem Shuffle, we meet Ray Carney, a guy with a foot in the "straight" world and another in the "crooked" world, trying to make a go of it as a Black businessman in 1950/60s Harlem.  As I read this, I thought back to August Wilson's plays, one theme of which is how hard it is to live the American dream as a Black man and how offerings of a crooked path might appeal to a Black man that would seem crazy to someone with different advantages.  Harlem Shuffle is an intricate yarn masterfully set in its period and place.  In an interview I heard before reading the book, Whitehead described walking around present-day Harlem and looking mostly above street level to see the remains of earlier eras.  First floors of commercial or mixed-use buildings get tweaked and updated far more than even the second floor.  Seeing ghost signs on the sides of buildings or in windows above the street provided the author with a sense of what had gone before. On the one hand, Whitehead's vivid descriptions of characters and Harlem made me think this book would be ripe for development as a TV series.  On the other hand, the plot is intricate enough that I wonder if people could follow it.  Particularly in the latter half of the book, the layers of power structures show themselves multiplying the deeper one looks.  A great read; I think I understood the ending.

Runners-up: 

Goodbye, Vitamin, Rachel Khong, 2017

Tomorrow Will Be Better, Betty Smith, 1948

Books of 2021: Best Regular Ol' Non-fiction

In a good year for non-fiction, a few titles to enthusiastically recommend.  One was actually published this year.  The other is from a while back.  That one from a while back gets my if you read nothing else I recommend this year, read this book endorsement.

The Unthinkable; Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why, Amanda Ripley, 2008

If you read nothing else that I recommend this year, read this book.  Paige came across this book, and we started reading it aloud in the car on our long drive to and from the Outer Banks in the summer (our sons are so lucky).  Ripley pulls together an impressive amount of research and stories in a highly readable fashion a la the Heath brothers or Malcolm Gladwell.  She explains the natural human reactions (and some non-human animal responses) to disasters - major threats to survival - natural and otherwise.  Like the stages of grief, there is a predictable set of responses to unexpected circumstances including denial, deliberation, and "gathering."  People in the World Trade Center on September 11 and in 1993 when one of the towers was truck-bombed have shown a surprising fog of denial and a tendency to pick up and pack up things that their brain or gut tells them they need to gather before they get out safely.  Some people deny, deliberate, and gather so long that they don't get out.  The books is scary and bracing and empowering.  I came back from vacation and did something I've never done: walked down the stairs in my office building to make sure I know where the stairs near my office let out and how long it takes (~3 minutes from the tenth floor with no one in front of me.)  Ripley writes clearly and tells her example stories grippingly.  A book everyone should read and that goes down more easily than some "medicine" titles.

Dopamine Nation; Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, Anna Lembke, 2021

My standard joke about Dopamine Nation is that I had to request it at the library and then wait for it to come in, which was a big bummer because I wanted the immediate gratification of reading it.  Dr. Lembke briskly chronicles how a human species that evolved to survive scarcity now faces a possibly-worse threat: abundance.  She uses a pleasure/pain balance as her central metaphor and explores how when pleasure can be accessed super easily at almost all times, those with addictive tendencies tend to pursue pleasure to their ruin.  Whatever the "drug" that people reach for, they follow its empty promise until all good things in their life are stripped away.  Although this is rather familiar terrain by now, Lembke weaves her observations of addiction culture together with stories of her patients and the confession of her own addiction.  Possibly the most unexpected pieces here are that pursuing pain can be a way to restore a see saw that has been imbalanced toward pleasure and the healthy value of prosocial shame.  For the former, intermittent fasting and subjection to cold water (even ice water) are her most potent examples.  Re: the latter, Lembke breaks down shame and guilt and the reinforcing effects of destructive shame - pursue pleasure with abandon, feel shame, pursue pleasure to cover the pain of the shame.  She then offers an alternative with examples from 12-step groups and sports teams about how being honest about failure in a nurturing environment can help people grow, rather than shrivel.  Not quite as amazing as I expected after hearing Lembke interviewed, but a helpful read.

Books of 2021: Best Biography/Memoir

Continuing the week of book reviews, we get to stuff I would actually recommend.

Perhaps I am getting more selective with age.  Perhaps I just had a good year picking books.  Evidence points to the former.  For the last three years, the proportion of books in my highest category (highly recommended) has averaged just over 60%.  For the ten years prior to that, I average 49% at that rating level.

There's so much good non-fiction this year that I have to break it up.  Today, non-fiction starts with a post dedicated to biography and memoir.  The four books here take four different forms: biography, auto-biography, poetry collection, and essentially comic book essay collection.

The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis, 2017

Having read Danny Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarized his decades of work with Amos Twersky, I had no idea that Michael Lewis had written a book about the two men and their work.  I discovered that he had in the most 2020-21 way possible.  On one of countless pandemic neighborhood walks, I spied Lewis's name on the spine of a book in a Little, Free Library.  Being no fool, I snatched it up and kept walking.  My brother-in-law, Graham Hennessey, endorsed the book when I snapped a pic of the cover.  

I read Thinking, Fast and Slow because so many other books and articles I had read recommended it.  Kahneman and Twersky were a most unusual academic pair, a psychologist and an economist respectively, who worked out new scientific approaches to old issues in economics by introducing psychology.  They turned on its head the foundational economic idea that people act in rational ways to increase individual utility.  Although Lewis - in an afterword - praises their academic papers as more open to the general reader than most and asserts that Kahneman tried to make Thinking, Fast and Slow more accessible still, I can testify that it took some determination for this reader to get through that book. Lewis describes how the unlikely pair found each other and their specific method of working: spending hours in a room together talking.  The Undoing Project covers the arc of their friendship, working relationship, findings, and the mostly-positive recognition they received for those findings.  Lewis being Lewis also explains their work more clearly than they did for the general reader.  It was fun to recall or relearn the things Kahneman and Twersky concluded in little Lewis-bomb nuggets.

Beastie Boys Book, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, 2018

Having been 13 years old when Licensed to Ill was released, I always considered myself smack dab in the intended market for the Beastie Boys phenomenon.  My parents didn't try to get me to stop listening to any other music; I marshaled the surprisingly-persuasive argument that the Beastie Boys references they'd learned about from James Dobson were about violence (guns like all rappers rapped about), and not sex.  They allowed me to keep listening.  My knowledge of Beastie Boys as a band and as people waned after their peak, but the minutiae I did encounter always intrigued me - one of them had playwright parents; they were much smarter than "Fight for your Right to Party" would make you think.  The buzz about Beastie Boys Book came from respected quarters.  Adam Yauch died tragically young from a rare form of cancer, and the surviving Beasties wrote this book, honestly as an homage to a guy who sounds incredibly brilliant and unique.  The book, too, is unique: 550 pages with lots of full bleed photos, it's a kind of a mix tape with Mike D and Ad Rock passing the author torch back and forth (and making little notes on each other's essays.)  Notebook pages and other scraps of evidence of their creative process also get reproduced here.  The book is rounded out by essays by people in the Beasties universe in one form or another.  The book is so long, but the writing is totally crisp, and I learned a ton about what only die-hard fans would know about the band and its members as people.  It also made me nostalgic for the grittier New York City that I visited in the '70s-'90s (barely scratching its surface).  It's hard to imagine Beastie Boys springing up without the New York terroir of artistic foment and cross-cultural influences.  The book captures the punk rock ethos that these white hip hop artists never actually shed.

I Was a Bell, Soledad Caballero, 2021

We met our neighbor and frequent CSA-crate-subscription-sharer Soledad Caballero when her husband Richard Heppner and Paige worked together at ReedSmith.  A literature professor at Allegheny College, she also write poetry.  Like, serious poetry.  This debut collection focuses on her family's escape from their native Chile when Pinochet was torturing people and making everything awful.  The poems beautifully and poignantly capture Soledad's uprooted childhood to move to Oklahoma for her father's advanced degree.  The poems illuminate the pain of rupture, the alien experience of immigration to a place so different - the shock of snow emerges as a frequent theme - and the knowledge gathered over a lifetime of the darkness her family escaped.  All of that said, there are moments of sweetness, human kindness, community, and even humor here.  Thoroughly edifying.

I Will Judge You by your Bookshelf, Grant Snider, 2020 

My sister- and brother-in-law, Lauren and Mike Jackson, gave me this book.  It's a comical graphic essay collection on reading and writing by an orthodontist/comic book artist/writer.  Snider groups his observations and assertions into several loose themes that he couches as confessions, including: "I read in social situations" and "I like to sniff old books."  It's a quick read that inspires my own confession: I pad my annual book stats by reading short books in December.  Snider captures the dilemmas that readers and writers face, mostly the finitude of time, and the vagaries of motivation. It made me think about my reading and aspire to do more of it.

Books of 2021: Stay-Aways

The year 2021 opened much the way 2020 closed, with much more time alone in our homes than prior years.  With vaccines on the horizon, the year was poised to turn for the better, and it did.  It just didn't get anywhere near as good as it could have been if a large portion of the population weren't complete idiots.

Anyway, silver lining: I read a lot again, and I read books I really liked.  In fact, I only seriously disliked 2 books out of 25, my smallest ratio since 2010.  Per tradition, I share my recommendations for books to avoid like, well, the plague before I tell you what I loved in various categories.

Worst of the Year: Non-fiction

How to Do Nothing; Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell, 2019

This is the worst book I read this year by a long shot.  It was on my radar when my friend Tom Persinger and I started discussing having a book club (of two).  We went back and forth about titles, and I prevailed in making this our inaugural book to read and discuss, mainly on the strength of the title.  It's a great subtitle with its accompanying subtitle, but the product Odell delivers does not meet expectations.  She is, at least, up front about that.  This is not a "how to" book, but the title was clearly too good to give up.  It's a collection of essays, the first of which shares the book's title and also shared the title of a talk she gave at EYEO, the technology and art conference.  Odell makes digital art.  She actually came up with the title before she wrote the talk, which seems to have been her process with each of the chapters in the book.  The essays read like high-level student papers, stringing mostly-good, long quotes together with her analysis.  Odell likes making bold statements - "the world needs me to do something now more than ever" - without backing them up with a why.  In the case of that particular statement, I posited to Tom that that's the difference between Gen X and Millennials.  We don't think the world needs us or will provide us with anything; they do.  I would like to read a different version of this book in which her editor applied a much heavier hand to the logic and structure of the essays.  In multiple places, one thought gives way to another from paragraph to paragraph, but the link between the two thoughts was not obvious to this reader.  If Odell's book has a theme - and God forbid she form a conclusion (actual quote "It's tempting to conclude this book with a  single recommendation about how to live.  But I refuse to do that."), it is that having been sucked into the attention economy of social media and online advertising, we cannot escape into a void.  We are all connected beings on this planet; escape into community and nature - your "bioregion," a term used heavily in early essays and then abandoned.  Not a bad conclusion.  There were thought-provoking ideas here; her essay on why communes always fail was a revealing - if repetitive - part of her not-thesis thesis.  Barack Obama called this one of his favorite books of 2019.  Perhaps that and the best-seller status it likely caused will get us a second edition.  Maybe it will put the "edit" in edition.

Worst of the Year: Fiction

One of Ours, Willa Cather, 1922, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1923

Although I enjoyed reading One of Ours, I couldn't shake the feeling that I spent the whole book waiting for the story to start.  That's all the more striking considering that the hero spends the first half of the book essentially entirely at home on the farm, and the second half of the book "at war."  Actually, that structure makes One of Ours stand out relative to other war fiction.  When the characters wind up in the theater, we at least know one of their home stories well.  So often, home or the people there are far off and merely glimpsed in letters or a photo carried in a breast pocket.  Cather draws distinct characters and conveys a lot about them with a little bit of action.  So little action.  It's hard to place a novel in its actual milieu reading it nearly 100 years after publication, but I suspect that One of Ours felt ahead of its time.  Some of its personal psychology aspects must have caught the attention of the Pulitzer committee.  It wasn’t a whammy in my project of reading all of the Pulitzer Prize winners, but neither was it a thrill ride.