End of Year: Ten Best Reads of 2019
Dec. 23rd, 2019 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
delphiI'm hoping next year to rec more books as I read them, but for now I'm playing catch-up. Below the cut (in order of reading, not preference) are the ten books I most enjoyed reading in 2019, a full half of which are memoirs, it turns out. Apparently it was that kind of year.
Educated by Tara Westover
A fascinating memoir about education, culture, and family dysfunction by a woman whose first experience with formal education was going to university after a childhood spent largely off the grid in rural Idaho. While the premise alone could have made for an interesting read, Westover's academic work in historiography puts her own story and storytelling under a thought-provoking lens. I listened to this one as an audiobook and found the reading by Julia Whelan very good.
My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture by Guy Branum
I went into this book mostly knowing Branum as the funny, empathetic and fiercely intelligent host of the pop culture podcast Pop Rocket, and I wasn't disappointed. My Life as a Goddess combines insightful essays about pop culture with Branum's personal stories about growing up smart, fat and gay in a small town and his journey through first law school and then the L.A. entertainment scene.
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston and Cudjo Lewis
This book, published in 2018, was begun in 1927 as Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last living survivor of the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade. The story of its writing and the controversies that led to the long delay in publication is a second narrative that is given admirable attention in the supplementary materials that precede and follow Cudjo Lewis's remarkable accounts of his life and the crimes visited upon him.
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung was born in the U.S. to parents of Korean origin and adopted soon after her birth by white parents. This memoir not only covers Chung's experiences growing up in a predominantly white community as a transracial adoptee and the complicated experience of reuniting with members of her birth family while starting a family of her own, but also speaks thoughtfully to the broader concepts of race and identity in the U.S. and the idea of self-narration. This was a particularly timely read for me, and I've found myself revisiting some of its ideas lately. I listened to this one as an audiobook and found the reading by Janet Song very good.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
This is the 33rd Discworld book and first in the Moist von Lipwig sub-series, and this was at least the fourth time I read it. This has long been in my top Discworld books, but this year I particularly needed something about the public good and hard-won redemption (and something that sinks some satirical teeth into libertarian business practices and telecomm monopolies).
Foe by Iain Reid
The author has called this book a philosophical suspense story, and that's the most apt description I can think of. A man tells the story of the night a corporate representative comes to the house he shares with his wife and tells him he's been selected to go live on a space station. Then things get weird. There were some speedbumps early on that made me wonder about Reid's technical skill, but without spoiling things, I'll just say that a lot of thought obviously went into every writing decision.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
I'm still not sure what I think of this book, but here's the thing: I'm still thinking about it all these months later. A woman who's thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend nonetheless agrees to have dinner with him and his parents at his childhood home. Then things get weird. Having read a lot of discussion about this book, I'm aware that because of some personal factors, I read it very differently from most people who were talking about it. I'd be hugely interested in hearing from anyone here who's read it, and I definitely recommend giving it a try.
Brother by David Chariandy
This one was a slow starter for me. I was right on the edge of abandoning it when things took a turn and it suddenly clicked for me. I'm glad I stuck it out, because that slow build-up really led to something powerful. The story is about a young man who's grown up in Scarborough (Ontario, Canada), his relationship with his brother and mother, grief, discrimination and community.
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus by Sandi Toksvig
Despite having lived a life fascinating enough to fill five books all on its own, Toksvig's memoir weaves her personal anecdotes about her unconventional childhood, her life in British television/radio/theatre, and her experiences coming out in the '90s around the conceit of taking the Number 12 bus through London - with an accompanying wealth of history lessons attempting to make visible the stories that are lost among the public commemoration of white men's works along that route. I listened to this on as an audiobook and would in fact recommend it over print. Toksvig reads the audiobook herself, and her dry wit is a delight to listen to.
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
This book could have fulfilled at least one slot on my 2020 reading challenge, but I couldn't wait until the new year to read it. I don't regret this choice. There wasn't anything earth-shattering in this collection of essays about current national conversations in the U.S. culture, but West brings a refreshing precision and clarity to difficult topics. Every time I thought one of the essays had wandered down the garden path a little (albeit to just as interesting a section of the garden), I'd turn the page and find that apparent diversion circling unerringly back to the book's thesis. For all the jokes and seemingly self-indulgent quirky details in this collection, there really isn't a word I would have cut.
Educated by Tara Westover
A fascinating memoir about education, culture, and family dysfunction by a woman whose first experience with formal education was going to university after a childhood spent largely off the grid in rural Idaho. While the premise alone could have made for an interesting read, Westover's academic work in historiography puts her own story and storytelling under a thought-provoking lens. I listened to this one as an audiobook and found the reading by Julia Whelan very good.
My strongest memory is not a memory. It's something I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened. The memory was formed when I was five, just before I turned six, from a story my father told in such detail that I and my brothers and sister had each conjured our own cinematic version, with gunfire and shouts. Mine had crickets. That's the sound I hear as my family huddles in the kitchen, lights off, hiding from the Feds who've surrounded the house. A woman reaches for a glass of water and her silhouette is lighted by the moon. A shot echoes like the lash of a whip and she falls. In my memory it's always Mother who falls, and she has a baby in her arms. The baby doesn't make sense--I'm the youngest of my mother's seven children--but like I said, none of this happened.
My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture by Guy Branum
I went into this book mostly knowing Branum as the funny, empathetic and fiercely intelligent host of the pop culture podcast Pop Rocket, and I wasn't disappointed. My Life as a Goddess combines insightful essays about pop culture with Branum's personal stories about growing up smart, fat and gay in a small town and his journey through first law school and then the L.A. entertainment scene.
As an intelligent, right-thinking adult, I know I should not admit [...] to finding any part of Mrs. Robinson’s psychological manipulation of a barely adult Benjamin erotically appealing. In the movie, it is permissible because it was 1967 and because Mrs. Robinson is a woman. She can’t be a real sexual threat. I am a gay man, thus a presumed manipulator, predator, and pedophile to many. My inclinations are also not ameliorated by the fact that, when I watched the film, I was five years younger than Ben is in the movie. I’m still a gay man, and admitting that power-based (age-based?) psychological coercion in sex interested me will make me suspect to you. I know these things as an intelligent, right-thinking adult.
But one of the key problems with our modern, liberal construction of homosexuality is that it conceives of homosexual men only as being intelligent, right-thinking adults. "Two consenting adults" are the words on which the gay rights movement was built. Gay adolescents, meanwhile, we ask not to exist. Gay children must wait. They must watch their classmates' adventures, and they have to watch movies about young, imperfect heterosexual love and dance to songs about it. And then they have to wait to get in to a good liberal arts college and become a consenting adult.
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston and Cudjo Lewis
This book, published in 2018, was begun in 1927 as Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last living survivor of the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade. The story of its writing and the controversies that led to the long delay in publication is a second narrative that is given admirable attention in the supplementary materials that precede and follow Cudjo Lewis's remarkable accounts of his life and the crimes visited upon him.
"I want to know who you are and how you came to be a slave; and to what part of Africa do you belong, and how you fared as a slave, and how you have managed as a free man?"
His head was bowed for a time. Then he lifted his wet face: "Thankee Jesus! Somebody come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee somebody who I is, so maybe dey go in de Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody dere say, 'Yeah, I know Kossula.'"
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung was born in the U.S. to parents of Korean origin and adopted soon after her birth by white parents. This memoir not only covers Chung's experiences growing up in a predominantly white community as a transracial adoptee and the complicated experience of reuniting with members of her birth family while starting a family of her own, but also speaks thoughtfully to the broader concepts of race and identity in the U.S. and the idea of self-narration. This was a particularly timely read for me, and I've found myself revisiting some of its ideas lately. I listened to this one as an audiobook and found the reading by Janet Song very good.
All members of a family have their own ways of defining the others. All parents have ways of saying things about their children as if they are indisputable facts, even when the children don't believe them to be true at all. It's why so many of us sometimes feel alone or unseen, despite the real love we have for our families and they for us. In childhood, I was uncertain who I was supposed to be, even as I resisted some of my adoptive relatives' interpretations — both you're our Asian Princess! and of course we don’t think of you as Asian. I believe my adoptive family, for the most part, wanted to ignore the fact that I was the product of people from the other side of the world, unknown foreigners turned Americans. To them, I was not the daughter of these immigrants at all: By adopting me, my parents had made me one of them.
And perhaps I never would have felt differently — perhaps I, too, would have thought of myself as almost white — but for all the people who never indulged this fantasy beyond my home, my family, the reach of my parents' eyes. Caught between my family's "colorblind" ideal and the obvious notice of others, perhaps it isn't surprising which made me feel safer — which I preferred, and tried to adopt as my own.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
This is the 33rd Discworld book and first in the Moist von Lipwig sub-series, and this was at least the fourth time I read it. This has long been in my top Discworld books, but this year I particularly needed something about the public good and hard-won redemption (and something that sinks some satirical teeth into libertarian business practices and telecomm monopolies).
"There is always a choice."
"You mean I could choose certain death?"
"A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."
Foe by Iain Reid
The author has called this book a philosophical suspense story, and that's the most apt description I can think of. A man tells the story of the night a corporate representative comes to the house he shares with his wife and tells him he's been selected to go live on a space station. Then things get weird. There were some speedbumps early on that made me wonder about Reid's technical skill, but without spoiling things, I'll just say that a lot of thought obviously went into every writing decision.
You expecting anyone? I yell to Hen.
"No," she calls down from upstairs.
Of course she’s not. I don't know why I asked. We've never had anyone show up at this time of night. Not ever. I take a swig of beer. It’s warm. I watch as the car drives all the way up to the house and pulls in beside my truck.
Well, you better come down here, I call again. Someone's here.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
I'm still not sure what I think of this book, but here's the thing: I'm still thinking about it all these months later. A woman who's thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend nonetheless agrees to have dinner with him and his parents at his childhood home. Then things get weird. Having read a lot of discussion about this book, I'm aware that because of some personal factors, I read it very differently from most people who were talking about it. I'd be hugely interested in hearing from anyone here who's read it, and I definitely recommend giving it a try.
Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”
You can’t fake a thought. And this is what I’m thinking.
It worries me. It really does. Maybe I should have known how it was going to end for us. Maybe the end was written right from the beginning.
Brother by David Chariandy
This one was a slow starter for me. I was right on the edge of abandoning it when things took a turn and it suddenly clicked for me. I'm glad I stuck it out, because that slow build-up really led to something powerful. The story is about a young man who's grown up in Scarborough (Ontario, Canada), his relationship with his brother and mother, grief, discrimination and community.
The Park is all of this surrounding us. This cluster of low-rises and townhomes and leaning concrete apartment towers set tonight against a sky dull purple with the wasted light of a city. We are approaching the western edge of the Lawrence Avenue bridge, a monster of reinforced concrete over two hundred yards in length. Hundreds of feet beneath it runs the Rouge Valley, cutting its own way through the suburb, heedless of manmade grids. But the Rouge is invisible to us tonight, and we have just arrived at the Waldorf, a townhouse complex at the edge of the bridge and made of crumbling salmon brick, flapping blue tarps draped eternally over its northeast corner. The unit where Aisha lived ten years ago with her father is on the prized south of the building, away from traffic. But the side where I have remained all my life is at the busy edge of the avenue, exposed to the constant hiss of tires on asphalt. I warn Aisha about the loose concrete on the doorsteps and suffer a sudden bout of clumsiness working the brass key into the lock. I push open the door to show a living room lit blue with the shifting light of a television, its volume turned off. There is a couch with its back towards us, and on it there is a woman with greying hair who does not turn.
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus by Sandi Toksvig
Despite having lived a life fascinating enough to fill five books all on its own, Toksvig's memoir weaves her personal anecdotes about her unconventional childhood, her life in British television/radio/theatre, and her experiences coming out in the '90s around the conceit of taking the Number 12 bus through London - with an accompanying wealth of history lessons attempting to make visible the stories that are lost among the public commemoration of white men's works along that route. I listened to this on as an audiobook and would in fact recommend it over print. Toksvig reads the audiobook herself, and her dry wit is a delight to listen to.
I don't remember why I had to leave the second school. The third was because I had failed to follow the fundamental school rule that you ought to turn up every day. The truth is I found it boring and I don't do well with that. I have learned to deal with hurt, embarrassment, pain of many sorts, but boredom in this world seems unforgivable. I was thirteen and at the beginning of my freshman year at Mamaroneck High School. The town name is an old Algonquin word meaning 'where the fresh water meets the salt'. My father taught me that. The school taught me nothing.
I was given a copy of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye to read. It's not a vast volume so I went home and read it, arriving the next day fully prepared to discuss my thoughts. It was as the class commenced that I realised that no one else had read it. In fact, the plan was for us to read the book out loud all year in a rote of disinterested monotones, our fingers tracing one word at a time as we spoke. I abandoned the class. I don't know what I was thinking — perhaps that I would come back when everyone else had read the book.
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
This book could have fulfilled at least one slot on my 2020 reading challenge, but I couldn't wait until the new year to read it. I don't regret this choice. There wasn't anything earth-shattering in this collection of essays about current national conversations in the U.S. culture, but West brings a refreshing precision and clarity to difficult topics. Every time I thought one of the essays had wandered down the garden path a little (albeit to just as interesting a section of the garden), I'd turn the page and find that apparent diversion circling unerringly back to the book's thesis. For all the jokes and seemingly self-indulgent quirky details in this collection, there really isn't a word I would have cut.
Imagine, if you will, a fine woodcut print of a colonial witch burning. A town square, a black sky, perhaps a fat bristly pig. A massive bonfire crackles hungrily, and at its heart, three screaming women are bound to a post, burning to death in agony. Nearby, a group of angry men in pantaloons and buckled hats stoke the flames with long poles. A bat-winged demon harries the dying women from above, while all around the townspeople froth at the mouth and howl in a frenzy of bloodlust. Here and there, corpses litter the ground, but the townspeople seem not to notice or care. Some fricking knave beheads the pig with a sword.
Now, in case you’re not familiar with classic seventeenth-century iconography, I, an art historian*, have compiled a handy reference guide to what each of these elements represents:
* Honorary degree, Trump University.
Women burning to death = Men who did nothing wrong
Men stoking the fire = Feminists (third-wave, booooooooo!)
Demon = How Sharon's butt looked in those pants
The fire = Call-out culture
Townspeople = The court of public opinion
The pig = Due process
The knave = Salma Hayek
Corpses = Free speech, comedy, human reproduction, the legacy of Matt Lauer
I think we can all agree that this fully checks out and that, indeed, it is men who are the true victims of witch hunts. Which they invented. To kill women.
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Date: 2019-12-25 08:16 am (UTC)My To Read list is as long as my To Watch list and it seems I never get around to either. Maybe I'll make another New Year's resolution and see if that helps.
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