2021 Midlife Crisis Bingo

Hello, old bloggy friends! It’s been a while since I’ve written here, and I’m still working out what I’m going to do with this blog going forward. But speaking of old, I had a milestone birthday last year that didn’t get the attention it deserved because of the pandemic. I’m moving the birthday celebration to a later date, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t incorporate this Big Moment into my 2021 reading goals. I hope you’ll join me.

 

So, ta-da! I’ve created a Midlife Crisis Bingo game! If you’re not in midlife, or if you’re not experiencing a crisis, that’s OK. You can play anyway. To you, this will just be Bingo. Regular, age-doesn’t-matter, life-is-normal Bingo. I’m only a little bit jealous of you, but I will tuck that in. The whole point is to read together and talk about books together. I’ll update along the way with what books I’m using to complete the squares, and I’d love for you to do that, too. And if you complete your whole Bingo card, let me know, and I’ll enter you into a drawing to WIN a FREE BOOK at the end of the year. Reading buddies, good times, free books – what could be better? (OK, I acknowledge that there are lots of things that would be better – worry-free travel for one. Faith in our political leadership would be another. An end to the plague would also be nice. But all I can give you is Bingo. Sorry.)

 

The rules:

 

1)    Read books, following the topics however you interpret them. You can print out the card here.

2)    Share what you’re reading periodically if you want – I’ll have blog posts where you can talk about your reading life in the comments, or you can share your experiences on the Leaning Stack of Books Facebook page.

3)    Once you’ve completed a row, let us all know. We will clap for you!

4)    At the end of the year, if you’ve filled your whole square, you can enter a drawing to get a free book delivered to your home. It will be a good book.

5)    There are no more rules.

 

Here are the topics on the card:

 

Spring Chicken:

 

Kids these days are fresh and creative, and they help you solve your problems connecting to the internet. The world is in good hands. Read a book by an author younger than you are. (For many of us, this should be an easy task!)

 

Out of Time:

 

It seems like just yesterday that you were a teenager waiting impatiently for the thrill of adulthood. Now the sink is backed up, there’s a stack of bills to pay, and the child you’ve been nurturing all these years with your love and energy just called you “Karen” when you asked him to put his dirty socks in the hamper.

 

Today is kind of a bummer. Take this opportunity to read something about a time long ago. Or read about the future. Or both.

 

Group Dynamics:

 

You never get the front seat. There are so many secrets. Why didn’t she/he/they love you the way you deserve to be loved? You can’t stand to be apart, and you can’t stand to be together. Read a book about group life that makes you feel less alone, or one that reminds you about why you actually enjoy quarantine.

 

Buckle Up:

 

Sometimes the way forward involves crossing difficult terrain. Read a book that challenges you, or makes you look something difficult in the eye, or asks you to do hard work.

 

Impulse Buy:

 

Grab that book that you bought and then just left on your nightstand to gather dust. Make it one that has been on the stack for a long time, like a monument to your bad decisions.

 

Most Comfortable Sweatpants:

 

Sometimes you know what’s right for you. You have a great lane, and you should stay there. Read a book that is exactly the kind of book you love.

 

Might Sting a Little:

 

You carry your pain like a boulder in your backpack, wield it like a weapon, hide with it, nurture it, sleep with it, obsess over it, swallow it. Read a book about the human body and its capacity for hurt and healing, or a book about sticks and stones that broke some bones, or one about words that hurt. Or maybe read a book about a cure for what ails us. We sure need it!

 

Vintage:

 

Who’s calling you old? You are just getting started, baby. Take a moment to notice that having a midlife crisis is actually the luxury of a person with many years ahead! To put your age in perspective, read a book that was published before you were born.

 

The Great Escape:

 

So far, the new year feels like the last one. Time to read a book that is a great escape, or is about a great escape, or meaningfully interrogates the possibility of escape.

 

Long Trip:

 

Are we there yet? Come on, you are old enough to know that life is not all about the destination. Read a book that takes you on a ride or one that feels like a journey.

 

Made It Big:

 

Find a book that won a prize. Imagine that you actually wrote something that was recognized in that way, and feel the jealousy slide down your back like sweat in an awkward moment. But come on, now. You have done many wonderful things. Plus, you might win Midlife Crisis Bingo!

 

Hero and Sidekick:

 

Getting older makes you think about whether you’ve been the star of your own show. It might be time to become the hero, to put on your Big Girl Cape and make things happen. On the other hand, sidekicks are often played by character actors who have long and meaningful careers without needing to resort to cheek implants or drug addictions to get by. Maybe there’s value in a life in the shadows, where you have space away from the public gaze. Find a book about heroes, or about the person behind the scenes that makes everything work, or a book about a dynamic duo.

 

Free to Be You and Me:

 

For this square, read whatever you want. No one can tell you what to do. But wait…Is there really such a thing as a “free square?” Does freedom really exist? Who has it and why? How has the idea evolved? Will you lose it? Will you keep others from having it?

 

Life Unlike Your Own:

 

You have been staring at your own walls for the better part of the past year. Now is the time to look at someone else’s walls or walk in their shoes or wrestle their demons or eat the French fries off their plate.

 

Hot Topic:

 

You are not too old to put on your fancy pants and join the club. Everybody’s talking about it. Read the book, and find out what the fuss is all about.

 

Old Love:

 

Oh man, you know you can’t go back. Or can you?

 

Always Meant To:

 

Find a book you always meant to read or read again. The book is a reminder that you don’t follow through. So follow through! No more woulda, coulda, shoulda for this reader.

 

Delicious:

 

Put some flavor back in your life. You are still so mad that you couldn’t go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate your milestone birthday, and you’ve had the same takeout Thai food every week since March. You’ve eaten your way through the apocalypse food stash you built as the pandemic hit (Pringles!), and now everything is so boring. Make life taste better. Read that delicious thing.

 

I Wonder:

 

Have you wanted to be a better voter or sound worldly at cocktail parties or impress your friends or win at Trivial Pursuit or learn something about that topic whose class you stupidly slept through in college? Read a book that helps you be the smart guy in the room.

 

Get a Clue:

 

It’s time to figure this sh*t out before it’s too late. Read a book where you solve the problem, put the pieces together, or discover how one thing leads to another.

 

Out of Your Zone:

 

Read a book that makes you feel off-balance. It might turn out like that time that you did a high-ropes course in the 1990s, only to find out as you were dangling from a tree that you don’t like ropes or heights. But it also could change your life. Either way, you get a Bingo square before you return to bingeing Netflix. Win!

 

Side Splitter:

 

2020 was no joke. It’s time for some funny business! What kind of book makes you snort? Go find that. Or read a book about someone who had the last laugh.

 

Animal Magnetism:

 

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: you’re not getting any younger. You may try to weasel out of acknowledging your true age, but you know the cat is out of the bag. It’s probably time to get control of those vices before things completely go to the dogs. But hold your horses! Don’t despair! You don’t have to give up your rock n’ roll lifestyle cold turkey. Just slow down a bit.

 

Read a book about creatures great or small, real or imagined, or maybe about the wild animal in you. Get to it, crazy beast!

 

Outside:

 

You know that the nature will make you feel better, except you have a Zoom meeting at 9, 11, and 3. Let this book take you to a stunning place – feel it on your skin or between your toes. Or maybe the book will remind you that your couch is a lovely place to be after all.

 

Truth Be Told:

 

Does anyone tell the truth anymore? Can you believe what you read? This era has tested our ability to trust. Find a book where someone tells their truth, or find a book about lies, or one about secrets – or maybe a book that shows the value in multiple perspectives. And now that you’re getting older, what’s your truth? Could you ever share it? Would you?

 

 

Happy New Year, everyone! I look forward to spending this next one with you. Ready, set, GO!

 

 

 

Winter Nonfiction Roundup

I had a request from a reader for an update. I had planned to do a monthly update this year, but here it is March. March! How did that happen? I was sidetracked by the plague in January and by the snow in February and by our family’s first college touring trip (which of course is an existential journey for me, because how did I become the middle-aged woman with the questions about financial aid on those tours instead of the cool, twenty year old with all the dreams and the bright future? Also, my babies are going to leave home, and there aren’t enough potato chips in the world to fill that upcoming hole in my heart).

But I digress. While I haven’t been writing (except for updating on Goodreads, and you can follow me there if you want. My Goodreads feed updates on the sidebar of the blog), I have been reading a fair amount. Since the new year began, I’ve read five nonfiction books, so here’s my early spring nonfiction update. I will do a fiction update next.

My favorite piece of nonfiction so far this year has been Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. Priestdaddy is a memoir by an adult daughter who moves home to live with her right wing, domineering Catholic priest father (yes, there’s a story there) and vaguely batty mother.  I don’t usually love memoirs by young people, because “back when I was a kid” should not be ten minutes ago. But this was an exception to that rule. I loved it!  It is at once a book about living with and in a complicated family ecosystem and living with and in Catholic culture (or probably any community culture). The author has a lot to say about being complicit – when you speak up and when you don’t, when you’re honest and when you’re not, and when you continue to affiliate and when you break away. Also, it was often laugh-out-loud funny.

I also read two books about food culture. I checked out both of these books for my son, who is writing a big paper about food culture for school. I go a little bonkers with my library card, as evidenced by my enormous late fines. My kids roll their eyes at how many piles of books I check out “for them.” I leave the books in tantalizing piles around the house, growing irritated as those piles go untouched. This time, my own hunger drove me to read Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley. Now that I think of it, Relish is another memoir, this time a graphic memoir of the author’s life growing up the daughter of a chef. I also read Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine by Edward Lee. This book is part travelogue, part culinary lesson, and part meditation on what it means to be an American.

Speaking of travelogues, I also read Our Towns: a 100,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart of America by James M. Fallows and Deborah Fallows. The authors do a version of William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways trip, but this time in a single engine plane. They set out to evaluate the thesis that everything in America is terrible these days by travelling to small cities and towns that have reinvented themselves. They talk to civic leaders, local business people, and regular residents about the processes of change. And SPOILER: they find that there’s a lot of vibrant, engaged stuff happening, often across political, ethnic, and economic divisions. I liked this book, and it felt good to be hopeful. But I also wondered if a different set of questions would have led to a more complicated narrative in some of the places that the authors visited.

Finally, I read White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America by Margaret A. Hagerman. Though it reads a bit more like a dissertation than other books I usually review, it is a compelling conversation-starter about how communities talk about race. The author follows 36 white kids in a midwestern metropolitan setting, hanging out with them in their homes, going with them to their extracurricular activities, and interviewing them and their parents. Hagerman points out the ways they talk indirectly about race as they perpetuate segregation (e.g. saying “diversity” when they mean Black) and how they negotiate the school system to their own advantage. If you want to look the idea of “social justice” in the eyes, this book might get you there.

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Coming up next on my spring nonfiction list is The Library Book by Susan Orlean and An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz.

How about you? What nonfiction have you been reading? Any recommendations?

New Year, Old Books

It is the real first day of my new year. By that I mean that school starts again for the kids, and it’s no longer OK to spend the entire day on the couch watching the piles of holiday debris grow and tilt on every surface. Of course, like every day in my life, the world has thrown a wrench into my well laid plans to Get My Sh*t Together (2019 resolution, already withering on the vine). One kid woke up with a fever, and our next door neighbors have decided that this is the day to clean out their vents. A big truck pulled up in their driveway, which is mere feet from the side of our house, and the suction process has commenced its ear shattering song. As I write this, it is 7:30 a.m., and I am already reneging on many of the commitments I made to myself (Hello, Internet and your many seductions).

But this is a book blog, not a whine blog (or a wine blog…if I started one, could I sip while I type?). I have decided, as part of the project to eliminate some of my many piles, to make 2019 The Year of the Backlist. And with that decision, I have chosen for the second time to join Roof Beam Reader in the TBR Challenge.

Here’s the premise: I pick 12 books (and two alternates) that were published before 2018 and that are languishing on my shelves (or leaning in a random stack in the closet, or gathering dust on my nightstand). I vow to read twelve of them over the course of the year, thereby reducing the clutter of things undone. This project is good for me because I have two reading habits that conflict: 1)I love to buy books; and 2) I check out hundreds of books from the library. The library books tend to win my attention because of those pesky due dates and even peskier fines. And what happens is the growth of the aforementioned piles and the general hauntings of unread pages.

I have to admit that I tried this challenge four (!) years ago and failed. Or, I suppose, I could reframe the experience and say that I was able to read five books from my incredible leaning stack, leaving just nine to clatter around my house. I am putting a few of those original TBR copies back on this list this year.

I have attempted to make a list that incorporates all the of things I like to include in my reading life – authors from different backgrounds, a mix of genres and topics, and a healthy assortment of challenging and “easy” reads.

It’s time to get started! Here’s the list:

1)    The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison: I got to page 111 of this book of essays before getting distracted. I was loving it and always said I’d need to go back to the beginning and try again. The first one describes the author’s experience being a medical actor, a practice patient for medical students developing their empathy skills. The receipt I was using as a bookmark says that I bought it new at Powells Bookstore in Portland, OR in May, 2017.

2)    Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I have always wanted to read this book, and yet I always pass it over for other things. I know that several of you have read this and loved it. I admit to shying away from it because both the terrorist and the opera elements of the description been off-putting. It was on my 2015 TBR list, and I’ve had it on my shelf for at least a decade. I fear that I borrowed it from someone and never returned it. Sorry.

3)    Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I love this author, and I enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and Dear Ijawele,or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (here is my blog post). One of my kids read this novel for school, and this is his copy. I don’t know where it came from, but it includes a 2016 receipt from The Cheesecake Factory (Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch). Was he reading it while eating?

 

4)    Arcadia by Lauren Groff (alternate): I like Lauren Groff (though here's my conflicted review of Fates and Furies), but I’m not really interested in communes, which is the setting for this novel. I remember hesitating when I bought it at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas in 2016. You know how it is when you really want a new book, but nothing really calls out to you? It was one of those days.  I’d rather read Florida by this author – that one is also on my nightstand – but it was published in 2018 and doesn’t qualify for the challenge.

 

5)    The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin: This one came highly recommended from a friend, and it’s by a Pacific Northwest author. From the price tag, it looks like I bought it used at Powells Bookstore in 2016. Historical fiction is not my go-to genre, which is probably why it has sat unread for so long.

 

6)    The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma: I bought this one new at Bookends and Beginnings in Evanston, IL in 2016, after it was highly promoted on the Book Riot Podcast. And then the New York Times called the author, “the heir to Chinua Achebe.” Nonetheless, the violence promised by the description has put me off. I am hopeful to get over my hesitance and try it.

 

7)    Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: This is another one that friends have recommended, and I really enjoyed the author’s Sourdough last year. I bought this copy used at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA. I don’t usually gravitate to fantasy-ish books, but I hope to be charmed. A magic bookstore? OK, I’ll bite.

8)    Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok: I bought this Advanced Reader copy at the Friends of Seattle Public Library book sale for fifty cents more than five years ago. I know you're not supposed to buy unpublished copies, so my apologies to the literary world. I’m a sucker for an immigration story, so I’m not sure why this one has languished on the shelves for so long.

 

9)    Commonwealth by Ann Patchett: Another Patchett! I started this one in 2016 just as we were starting our house remodel. I read 75 pages and set it aside. I seem to remember that this was the time when I went four months without reading, because I was too overwhelmed by picking out paint colors and hinges and baseboard styles.  I got this copy for Christmas, and Santa found me a British paperback edition before the American version came out.

 

10) The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell (alternate): I also got this one for Christmas in 2016 and it was set aside for the house remodel extravaganza. The description says that the author goes around the world visiting bookstores. What’s not to love about that!? I have this down as an alternate, but now that I’m looking at it, I might read it first.

 

11) H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: I bought this copy from the remainder table at Third Place Books, Ravenna in Seattle. Everyone I know said it was fantastic nonfiction about grief, but I haven’t picked it up because I’ve been worried about ending up miserable. I want to read great things, but I don't want to propel myself into a sobbing heap. What a readerly dilemma!

12) Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides:  I got this one as a gift, and the gifter knows how much I enjoy this author. I looooved Middlesex (and, fun fact: Eugenides went to my high school, albeit several years ahead of me). This is a collection of short stories, and I am notoriously bad at getting through short stories.

 

13) The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: I know that this book the best thing since sliced bread, and I love sliced bread. I promised to read it when I participated in Nonfiction November years ago, and it was also on my previous TBR challenge list. I received this copy in hardcover for Christmas, maybe in 2010.  I don’t know why I am intimidated by this book, but it is time to overcome whatever it is that is in my way.

 

14) We Were Eight Years in Power: A Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates: One of the essays in this collection, Donald Trump is the First White President, knocked me down when I read it in The Atlantic in October, 2017. And I have written before how Between the World and Me changed me forever.  I bought my copy of We Were Eight Years... at Powells when it first came out, and it has been staring at me from my nightstand ever since.

 

My plan is to update you along the way as I successfully navigate my way through this list. I'll be keeping track of my progress on this entry, adding completion dates and links to reviews:

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok -- READ 1/19
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

And if you’re interested in joining me, you can find the “rules” at Roof Beam Reader. Or you can just read your own backlist in your own way, but please let me know how it’s going. I hope you play along!

Onward!

My Year in Reading: 2018

I did not read as much as usual last year. To be honest, I struggled with my phone and all of its lures: your adorable kids on Facebook; dogs in costume on Instagram; the endless rabbit hole of Twitter; and Snapchat? I still don’t understand its appeal, but I am certainly not going to pass up an opportunity to decorate a photo of myself. I find that those things pull me and pull me, and a whole pile of my reading time was lost in those mindless ventures.

The question is, of course, whether I want to continue reading this way, or if I should make myself become more intentional and focused. I have always said that reading should not be a grim task, full of rules and requirements. But the internet is my candy corn, straight sugar to the brain. I always feel gross after I consume it.

This is not to say that I didn't read some fabulous things over the last twelve months. I don’t have an easy-to-rank list of favorite books from 2018, so this will not be a straightforward Top 5. Instead, I will follow the lead of one of my favorite reading rituals (on the internet! Ack!): A Year in Reading from The Millions. In that feature, authors talk about their reading adventures over the course of the year. Many of them bring their most pretentious reader selves to the task, leaving me to wonder, “What did you read in the bathtub? Certainly not the snooty stuff you list here.” But each entry brings the possibility that I will find a new title or author or perspective.

When I look back at my own list, I am most struck by the nonfiction. Educated by Tara Westover was fantastic, in part because of its novel-like accessibility, but also because of the questions it raises about the American mythology around pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps. Westover grew up isolated in a very religious family, enduring restriction and abuse. What made it possible for this kid to transcend her difficult circumstances, finding her way to an intellectual life? Was it something about the kid or the circumstances? Two other books I read also grappled with schooling. The Class: A Life-Changing Teacher, His World-Changing Kids, and the Most Inventive Classroom in America by Heather Won Tesoriero and Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve Ewing ask us to consider how and when and for whom formal education is a pathway to power. Those two books were particularly interesting to read back-to-back, with Ewing’s discussion of structural racism in Chicago suggesting all the unspoken variables that might have led affluent Greenwich High School’s acclaimed science research program to become so special. (In other words, was it just a “life-changing teacher?”) And finally, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond asks us to consider the way that our housing polices might further exploit an existing economic divide. The narrative style of his reporting makes this a particularly compelling read, especially if you are looking for a gut punch. Maybe that should be a new genre category: The Gut Punch.

I did manage to recover from the gut punching with some great comedy this year. The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher was probably the book I enjoyed the most this year. I’m a sucker for academic satire, and this one hit all the right notes for me. I’m not sure if you need to be part of the academic world to enjoy it, but if you are or ever were, this short novel reveals every absurdity. I also loved – and was surprised by – Sourdough by Robin Sloan. I wouldn’t ordinarily gravitate toward a book about magic bread, but this comedy-skewering-foodie-culture/dystopia-in-which-disruptive-technology-runs-amok was a true treat.

And finally, my reading comfort comes from family dramas, and 2018 offered no shortage of those. The most compelling was probably Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue. The novel follows two families on the eve of the 2008 financial collapse. One is an immigrant family awaiting asylum and the other is an affluent family whose husband/father works for Lehman Brothers. The story explores the idea of the “American Dream” and asks whether it’s attainable (and at what cost). A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza also scratched my family drama itch. In some ways it’s a middle class drama about parental expectations. In other ways, it’s a specifically cultural story about being Indian and Muslim in America. And finally, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee came to me as a surprise. I’m not usually attracted to sprawling historical fiction, but this account of a Korean woman in Japan over the course of the twentieth century was unusually captivating. Plus, it pushed me to think about the economic forces and racist systems that impact an individual’s autonomy, both in this historical context and generally.

I’ve already finished my first book of the new year (Our Towns: a 100,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart of America by James Fallows and Deborah Fallows). And I’ve started my second (Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver).  I’d love to hear from you all about what you enjoyed in 2018 and what books you’re looking forward to in 2019. Also, how do you stay off your phone? Can you resist the cute animals in costume?

It's Tuesday at the Leaning Stack of Books!

I’m a day late for my weekly update! So sorry! Can I blame it on the fact that I received another inexplicable recommendation from Goodreads?

Based on my reading preferences??????!

My intent last week was to read one book: News of the World by Paulette Jiles. I did that, and I also got through 2 more: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and Rise Up!: Life and Literacy in an Urban First Grade By Linda Katz.

An American Marriage is, of course, the most recent Oprah book club pick. And I have lots of thoughts – ones that I should turn into a longer post. This book is about a marriage, sure, but the title, “An American Marriage,” is significant. My take is that the novel is as much about what our obligations are to each other as Americans as it is about our obligations to each other are in intimate relationships.

A fun tidbit about Tayari Jones – she once shined her famous writerly gaze on this blog. Here’s a screen shot of our exchange on Twitter after I posted my thoughts about her previous novel, Silver Sparrow.

In the spirit of setting small goals, I will be reading one new one this week: Force of Nature by Jane Harper. I read Dry, the first in Harper’s Aaron Falk series, in January, and I’m excited to return to the Australian setting and the fast paced plotting of these mysteries.

For those of you looking for new things to read, here’s a link to The Millions’ list of new books coming out in March. I just added The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea to my enormous leaning stack.

(It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date)

Staying Upright in a Messed Up World

My ability to get things done is very affected by the news. I recently wrote about how destabilized I was by the 2016 election and its aftermath, and how my reading and writing life suffered because of it. Watching the news these last couple of weeks has also unsettled me. But I’m trying to stay upright. I bought a happy light. I put highlights in my hair. And yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in eons.

While on the treadmill, I listened to Will Schwalbe’s new podcast, “But That’s Another Story,” which features different authors talking about their reading origin stories.  Schwalbe is most famous for his book, The End of Your Life Book Club. The first episode spotlights Min Jin Lee, who wrote Pachinko, a book I received at my book club’s holiday book exchange (and which is perched atop my leaning stack!). And at the outset of the episode, Schwalbe reads the famous James Baldwin quote about empathy:

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

I don’t know why Baldwin's insight struck me so much at that moment (somewhere around mile 2, at the point where I remembered that I hate running on the treadmill). There have been so many times recently when I have wondered if it matters that I read books or talk about them or write about them. And that set of questions very easily shifts into, “Why bother?” Baldwin reminds me that reading is a bridge to greater understanding of the world, an understanding that I so desperately need right now. So you can thank James Baldwin (via Schwalbe via the gym) for my first "It's Monday!" post in over a year.

The good news is that I finished two books last week. First I read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2017. I will write about that book shortly, because I think it's an important one for those of us grappling with questions about why things in the world seem so messed up.  I also read Girl at War, by Sara Nović, which is a fictionalized account of the Balkan Civil War in the 1990s.

This week I am reading News of the World by Paulette Jiles. This book has been recommended to me by so many people, which is weird because I wouldn't pick it up on my own in a million years ("for lovers of Texas historical fiction"). I have checked it out from the library 5 times, and the fifth time is going to be the charm. In addition to all the praise the novel has received, it has the added bonus of being only 200 pages. I’m all about small goals these days. 

Before I leave you, I have a random question. Can anyone explain the logic of Goodreads’ algorithm for picking recommendations? Today I woke up to this:

I can guarantee that I don’t have a single cowboy romance on the list of things I have read – no offense to cowboys, of course. Also, the blurb says, “Luke like his life – and his women – uncomplicated.” Luke would not like me at all.  Goodreads, I’m feeling a little bit misunderstood.

(It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date)