Summer Reading Report: Top of the List

With conflicting priorities, I am woefully behind on my book posts, so without further apologies, excuses, or alibis, I will share some of my most recent favorites--in reverse order as I have read them.

Sometimes I read a book and I want to tell everyone I know to read it; others I know are perfect for some of my reading friends and not for others. I find it hard to put into words why I enjoyed Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness so much, but from the beginning in which the narrator painted the setting, the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, I was captivated. 

Hai, the protagonist of the story, is the son of a Vietnamese single mother, who believes he is in medical school (even though he dropped out of undergrad). He was, instead, in rehab. At the beginning of the story, as he stands on a bridge, ready to jump, he is stopped by Grazina, an elderly Lithuanian suffering from a number of maladies, not the least of which is dementia. She insists he not jump, invites him into her home, and changes the trajectory of his life.

One review referred to the book as the story of "chosen family," and indeed, he find just such connections at a local restaurant that holds itself in higher esteem that it deserves. Hai's co-workers are characters without sliding into caricatures. Vuong's insight into these humans he created moved me. The story was, in turns, heartbreaking and uplifting. His relationship with Grazina, who provides him a place to live in exchange for his help, is both humorous and poignant. When flashbacks send her back to her girlhood, escaping from enemy soldiers, rather than trying to convince her she is mistaken, he takes on the persona of Sgt. Pepper (the name of his restaurant's local rival pizza joint) navigating her through the landscapes of her imagination. 

He also shows empathy for his cousin Sony, who works at the Homemarket restaurant where he finds employment. Sony, who exists somewhere on the autism spectrum, lives in a group home because his mother is in jail with a bail they can't scrape together. Vuong surrounds Hai with flawed and broken people who forge a bond to replace missing familial relationships. The author develops the disparate characters gradually, so that even those most prone to stereotyping come to life. "Heartwarming" is an adjective that is too often a code word for "sappy" or "overly sentimental." This story, with its quirky cast and the author's masterful command of language, literally warmed my heart.

Another recent favorite is Virginia Evans' The Correspondent, an epistolary novel. The letters are exchanged between protagonist Sybil Van Antwerp, a woman in her 70s who has carried on correspondence with friends, family, and even strangers for her whole life. Through the letters Sybil writes and those she receives in response, Evans weaves the story of a life.

Sybil is alone, divorced from the father of her children after the loss of a young son and now estranged or at least distanced from her two remaining children. Whether she is writing to her best friend (and sister-in-law) or the customer service agent she encounters at a company based on Ancestry.com, she asks. "What are you reading?" 

She exchanges letters with authors Ann Patchett (yes, she uses the correct address for Parnassus Books), Joan Didion, and Larry McMurtry. She wages a campaign with a newly appointed university department chair to allow her to audit course, and she exchanges communications with her elderly neighbor and with a Texan gentleman eager to court her. Through the letters, readers learn of her role as assistant to a prominent judge, her family trauma, and her failing eyesight. Sybil Van Antwerp models how to live and to age with grace, forgiveness, and --yes, with love.

Wally Lamb took a long hiatus between books--almost ten years. Honestly, at times I found reading The River Is Waiting painful. Lamb certainly doesn't handle his characters with kid gloves. He lets them walk right into the most unimaginable circumstances. Corby Ledbetter, his protagonist, ends up in prison as the result of a tragic accident that took the life of one of his twins. 

The majority of the narrative takes place behind bars. I was not surprised to learn that Lamb had spent time teaching in a prison. The dynamics between prisoners and the staff are fraught with trauma and with connections. When he has the opportunity to showcase his artistic ability, he not only draws approval but resentment. He is a witness to and victim of unspeakable violence and injustice, but must work within the system. 

At times, I wondered if I could keep reading, but I could not stop. Lamb is a master at storytelling. He builds characters and develops plots that keep readers engaged but guessing. Lamb offers no neatly tied resolutions, but he makes readers believe the story he spins.

Amid all the nonfiction, I found myself captivated by Barbara Demick's Daughters of the Bamboo Grove. The author takes a microscopic look at a rural Chinese family at odds with the one-child laws. When one daughter is taken by the Family Planning Commission, the parents have no idea where she was taken or what recourse they have. Demick alternates between a close examination of this one family's story and a wide-angle view of some of the deception that abounds and the impact of well-meaning adoptive parents. The author's research spans many years, and she finally brings together the birth family and the daughter who remained in China with her twin sister and the American family who raised her.

Demick handles the story fairly and truthfully. She models integrity as she interacts with the two daughters and the families who raised them, opening the door to a future relationship. 

This post is a drop in the bucket of my recent reading, but it's a start. Stay tuned for more.

Summer Reading Report: Top of the List

It Happened on a Train: Summer Reading

Summer, for me, is a marathon reading experience. I maintain a list of books I want to read next, but the list grows and changes. I certainly don't go in any kind of order. In fact, sometimes a book presents itself out of the blue. 

This summer, I saved the "Summer Reading Bucket List" from the Next York Times Book Review earlier this month. Rather than helping me choose books, I use it to mark those I've read that fit the criteria. As a result, though, the selections vary widely. Nevertheless, I am always amused to see the threads that tie my reading together.

Most recently, I read Emma Donoghue's novel The Paris Express, a departure from other books by her I've read--particularly Room, which haunts me still, and Frog Music. This novel follows an ensemble cast of characters heading on a train toward Paris. There is an American artist, a young woman studying medicine, a woman who goes into labor, a young boy traveling alone, employees of the railroad, and a young woman who plans to celebrate her twenty-first birthday by blowing up the train, particularly when she is assured there will be three members of Parliament aboard before they read their destination. 

I'm reminded of Ann Patchett's suggestions that all of her books follow the formula of Canterbury Tales: Take people from different walks of life, put them together, and see what happens.  Based on an actual train disaster in 1895, the author explores the political climate in France as well as some of the fears tied to time and speed. 

The next book I picked up, eager to read it as soon as it was available, was Fredrik Backman's latest book My Friends. (So I get to check off "Read a book in translation.) If both these novels were made into movies, the same actress might be cast in both. In Backman's book, Louisa has just fled her group home on the day before her eighteenth birthday, still grieving the loss of her only friend there. 

She slips into an art exhibit to see a painting that has fascinated her most of her life, since she first saw it reproduced on a postcard she carries with her. Suspected of planning to deface the painting, she escapes into an alley, where she encounters what at first appears to be a homeless vagrant. He is The Artist (as he is called for most of the book). Near death, he commissions Ted, one of his childhood friends to take his life savings to buy back the painting. Then he tells him to give it to Louisa. 

The gift is too much for her. Though Ted is least equipped to deal with the socially awkward teenager, the two end up riding together on a train toward the seaside town and the pier depicted in the painting. They carry the painting and The Artist's ashes, and the back story unfolds. Louisa has to remind Ted that while the story is an old one for him, it is happening in the moment for her.

Anyone familiar with Backman knows that while his stories vary, his skill at developing quirky, engaging characters is a constant. He explores similar themes: the power of love and friendship, friends that are family, with some of the most lovable curmudgeons. Even the minor characters, both the heroes and the villains, come to life.

Maybe what I need is a long, slow train trip with a big bag of books.

It Happened on a Train: Summer Reading

Radio Silence Doesn't Mean I'm Not Reading

What probably should be my retirement years haven't turned out to be just that. After one semester off about ten years ago, I've been back as an adjunct ever since. Teaching has never gotten in the way of reading, but combined with other ventures, I've neglected to report on my reading. 

This summer (academic summer, that is; I know real summer doesn't start until June), my reading list covers has run the gamut. I read three pop rom coms in a row. Go figure. I started with The Wedding People by Alison Espach because it was getting a lot of press. It was clever, and the idea of an adjunct ditching her classes and heading off to a tropical vacation--even if it is with suicidal intents--drew me in. Living in Nashville, the bachelorette capital of the US, I also enjoyed some of the humor from an outsider's perspective. 

I also read Rufi Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles, and I didn't find a personal way in. I did finish reading, which I don't always do these days. Then a friend I trust recommended Colton Gentry's Third Act by Jeff Zentner, the story of a B-tier country artist who gets cancelled for an alcohol-fueled rant about gun control, after losing a close friend at a concert shooting. Of the three, this would be the best for a book club because (a. there is SO much food talk, since he ends up looking the restaurant business. If your book club is like mine, a food link makes for a fun evening; and (b. there were some really clever lines--the ones that make me stop and open my notes app.

I also read Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel The Plot, and I will seek out the sequel, aptly entitled The Sequel. For anyone who's read Yellowface, this plot might ring a bit familiar. 

I've read two Liz Moore novels recently. I started with God of the Woods, which has been fun to pass along, followed by The Unseen World, which would make a good companion reading with Richard Power's Playground. While I was "in the woods," I read Heartwood by Amity Gaige, another newer release, set in the northern segment of the Appalachian Trail, when a forty-something woman goes missing. The multiple perspectives are well-done, but making it less a whodunnit than a how's it gonna turn out. Warning to Southern purists: If you listen to the audiobook, the narrator (mis)pronounces Appalachian as Appalaychian instead of Appalatchian. 

Those titles are just a few from my recent reading list, but what brought me back here, wanting to share was a book someone--and I can't remember who--recommended on Facebook: How Donating a Kidney Fixed My Jumpsuit by Jim Sollisch. 

Not infrequently, I am stopping mid-book to tell other reading friends, "You've got to read this one." This is one of those books, but it also makes me want to get out my notebook or open a new document on my laptop and start writing my stories. Sollisch is in the advertising business but has written and published short essays, particularly in newspapers, for several years. Most of these are under three pages. He manages to tell his story, reminding readers just how universal some of those stories really are. It's a book that makes me want to read out loud. I already see so many ways I want to incorporate this book into my freshman composition course when fall semester rolls around. 

Which do I love more--a book that makes me want to read, one that makes me want to write, or one that opens up great book conversations? Maybe all three.

Radio Silence Doesn't Mean I'm Not Reading

Prequels: The Ultimate Spoiler Alert

 

Narratives told out of chronological order are nothing new. After all, Sophocles wrote Antigone about twelve years before Oedipus Rex. C.S. Lewis' Narnia series was likewise written out of chronological order. So when I learned that David Wroblewski had written Familiaris, a prequel to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, one of my all-time favorite novels, I couldn't wait to read it, but I was concerned about knowing too much.

Familiaris is the story of Edgar's grandparents John and Mary Sawtelle, the original breeders of what become known as Sawtelle dogs. Like the earlier novel, this one is not only lengthy, but grand in scope. While the first novel was a modern retelling of Hamlet, this one does not seem to have such a direct literary origin. 

Wroblewski has assembled a big cast of characters--two childhood friends of John, who come with them to the farm they purchase after becomes across it while waiting on his car too cool off. Their quirks are endearing and surprising. Frank, who lost a leg and arm in the war, is justifiably curmudgeonly. The large and taciturn Elbow discovers his own talent with woodworking, but his charm is his shifting personas--the Man Who Agrees with Everything, the Man Who Questions Everything, and so on.

Throughout the narrative, the author weaves in subplots, the earliest, the man who first tamed wolves; the most significant to the plot, Walter Payne, and Ida, the newborn he discovers in a raging wildfire and takes to raise. The supernatural element of her strange gifts are a small but curious part of the plot.

I knew to anticipate the birth of John and Mary's sons, Gar and Claude, since they are major characters in Edgar's story. Wroblewski's characterization of Claude, in particular, allowed me to be cautiously sympathetic with the boy, despite knowing the role he plays in the future.

Familiaris, above all, is a beautiful love story--John and Mary, naturally, but also their love for the dogs they raise, extending long after sending them to new homes, and from beginning to end, the love under the surface of John, Elbow, and Frank. Wroblewski varies his narrative style from time to time, sometimes almost mythical, sometimes epistolary, but he beautifully captures human nature, particularly the pain of loss.

I suspect I'm going to be re-reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, if only to visit the dog Almondine one more time.

Prequels: The Ultimate Spoiler Alert

The 2024 Book Report: My Year of Reading

I plan to follow up with notes on some of my favorite reads this year, here is the list of books I read this year. A few I have to Google to remember their content; others will not leave me. As I read other people's list of favorite books--as well as the New York Times list of the best books of the century so far, my list of what to read next gets longer. Here are the 80 I read and remembered to record:

Books I Read in 2024

Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford

Lee Smith, Silver Alert

Julie Whelan, Thank You for Listening

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults

Fred Chappell, I Am One of You Forever

Daniel Mason, North Woods

Kari Gunter-Seymour, Dirt Songs

William Kent Kruger, The River We Remember

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

Margo Jodyne Dills, The Nail Set

James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes

Chris Bachelder & Jennifer Hebel, Dayswork

Gary Goldman, What I Meant to Say Was

Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

Luis Alberto Urrea, The Hummingbird’s Daughter

Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

Mark Zwenitzer & Charles Hirschberg, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?

Carla Jean Whitley, Muscle Shoals Sound Studios

Percival Everett, James

Angeline Boulley, A Firekeeper’s Daughter

Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl

David Grann, The Wager

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

James Goodhand, Day Tripper

Erica Bauermeister, No Two Persons

Ben Groner, Dust Storms May Exist

David Platt, Something Needs to Change

Lucinda Williams, Don’t’ Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You

Amor Towles, Table for Two

Marianne Worthington, Girl Singer

Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse

Julia Alvarez, The Cemetery of Untold Stories

Colm Toibin, Long Island

John Cowan, Hold to a Dream

Tommy Orange, Wandering Star

Monica Wood, How to Read a Book

Gillian McAllister, Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Luis Albert Urrea, Goodnight Irene

Anita Prose, The Mystery Guest

Sian Hughes, Pearl

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

Amanda Skenandore, The Life of Mirielke West

Sean Dieterich, Kinfolk

Emilie Hart, Weyward

Barbara Martin Stephens, The People and the Music

Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here

Michelle Horton, Dear Sister

Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois

Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre

Elizabeth Berg, We All Are Welcome Here

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Goo Omens

David Barry, Big Trouble

Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Christina Dodd, Daughter of Fair Verona

Scott Owens, Augury of Birds

Adrian Rice, The Chances of Harm

Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

--. Show. Your Work.

Paulette Giles, Chenneville

Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

Ryan McGee, Welcome to the Circus of Baseball

Brian Fairchild, Willie, Waylon, and the Boys

Tyler Mahan Coe, Cocaine and Rhinestones

Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf

Emily Critchley, One Puzzling Afternoon

Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Chris Whitaker, All of the Colors of the Dark

Todd Snider, I Never Met a Story I Didn’t Like

 Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

Liz Moore, God of the Woods

Leah Weiss, If the Creek Don’t Rise

Ruth Thompson, Journey Bread

KB Ballentine, All the Way Through

John Thomas York, The Charge,

Claire Keegan, Foster

Desmond Tutu and Ngho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving

Thomas Fuller, The Boys of Riverside

Jonathan Haidt, Anxious Generation

Elizabeth Keating, The Essential Questions

 

 

The 2024 Book Report: My Year of Reading