My Year in Books

 Dear Readers, It's been a stellar year in books for me.  According to my Goodreads site,  I should hit the 50 mark by the end of the week. We are going on a family trip tomorrow and I hope to read two more books by the end of the week. I'm currently reading S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders for the first time ever. My dear friend Evelyn gave me a 50th Anniversary signed copy for Christmas and I'm ashamed I've never read it. My older daughter adores that book and taught it to her eighth graders last year. So I will finish it before 2016 ends. I'm concurrently reading the sixth of the Canadian author Louise Penny's mystery novels featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. These books have been a real delight to me and I have at least six more in the series! They are my late-night-don't-turn-on-the-light reads on my Kindle Paperwhite.

But today I want to share my highest rated books of the year. My five star books this year were: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (my review) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (my review), When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr.  

My four star books included all The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante (my review), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, Miss Jane by Brad Watson, Arcadia by Lauren Groff, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant, Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton, and a few more. 

The longest book I read was A Little Life and the shortest book was Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both were equally rewarding.  Jon Michaud, reviewing A Little Life in the New Yorker, said: "Yanagihara’s novel can also drive you mad, consume you, and take over your life. Like the axiom of equality, 'A Little Life' feels elemental, irreducible—and, dark and disturbing though it is, there is beauty in it." This book draws you into the story of a post graduate friendship between four men in New York City. The story travels forward as the men grow older and one character's past becomes to reveal itself and you are already hooked on the book and can't stop reading even as the story grows dark. Now that I think about this book, I'm not sure why I didn't give it five stars.

A Little Life is an amazing work of fiction. So add that to my five star list! Who knows, I might even have one more before this year ends. 

Still Tired of Waiting

I know I have already written a blog post here with a similar title, but Langston Hughes' words come to mind yet again as I finish reading the slim book, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It feels false to write a review of a book about the black experience when I am clearly not able to understand that world view at all.  I am a privileged white woman living in the urban South. I have no familiarity with the world that Coates describes in this book which is framed as a letter to his teenaged son. But yet, but yet, I urge everyone to read it. Read it more than once.  This book, winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015, parted the veil a bit more for me.

Between the World and Me is not a hopeful book. Coates doesn't say that we can make things better in this racist America - "this terrible and beautiful world." But he examines his journey and the reality of growing up black in America and explains these truths to his son and to his readers. He forces all of us to take a hard and difficult look at the systemic racism of America. Coates says, "I am writing to you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store. And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect." 

Coates tells about growing up where "fear ruled everything around me" on the streets of Baltimore and beginning to "dimly perceive the great barrier between the world and me."  He writes about his college years at the Mecca, Howard University, where he saw the "dark energy of all African peoples" in the Yard and where he began to immerse himself in research and writing about the expanding black power he experienced there. Some of his strongest writing is about his college friend Prince Jones who was killed by a police officer in 2000. Years later he interviews Dr. Mable Jones, his mother, a radiologist who raised her children to have a better life with an excellent private school education and privilege. But the dream didn't hold when her son was killed mistakingly and his murder was not punished. 

Coates tell his son that he doesn't think the hurt that Dr. Jones and the parents of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner experienced will go away. "I do not believe we can stop [the Dreamers], because they must ultimately stop themselves." He writes throughout the book about the Dream and the Dreamers - the "perfect houses with nice lawns…treehouses, Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake."

But Coates, a journalist and correspondent for The Atlantic,  does urge his son to struggle. "Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom…Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers (the white American dream). Hope for them. Pray for them if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversation."  Coates' book is the story of his life and a story of the future for his son and a look at the reality of the black experience in America. Toni Morrison calls it "required reading." I have to agree with her. We must see the world for what it is - a "terrible and beautiful"place.