Lost in a Good Book

Family is converging, Smoking Bishop is on the stove, and I’m trying to recover from a head and chest cold that my wife graciously gave me as an early Christmas present. Since that down-time allowed me (finally) to finish a book that I’ve been slogging through for months, I thought I’d look back on my year in reading.

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Non-Fiction

The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

A giant tome of a book with one of those grand-theory-of-everything approaches to our world. Graeber and Wengrow upside-down-ify our old assumptions about the inevitable progression of humankind from hunter-gatherer to farmer to serf to citizen. They show us recent findings in archeology, like Gobekli Tepe, that suggest some kind of city planning or formal group structure for people, thousands of years before we thought anything like that existed, and without any sign of a king or overlord ruling the place. They present evidence that, for a long time and in many places, we were happy to live as nomadic foragers during the warm months, but then came together in centralized living with something like a government for the colder parts of the year. And they suggest that the Spanish encounters and conversations with indigenous Americans, which were documented and published widely in Europe, inspired the political ideas of the Enlightenment.

A Brilliant Life, By Rachelle Unreich. Our fabulous friend, Rachelle, an Australian journalist, sat with her mother in the last years of her life, interviewing her about her experiences in World War II, her survival through the horrors of the Holocaust, and her amazing resilience and determination not to let those events define the rest of her life. Tough, at times, of course—but also inspiring and lovely.

Thinking in Bets, by Annie Duke.

Duke, a professional poker player and the founder of the Alliance for Decision Education, has written several books that apply her unique perspectives and skills to the world the rest of us live in. In this book, she talks about how to assess risk in everyday life.

The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt

Haidt’s most recent book, about smartphone addiction, has churned up a lot of controversy. I haven’t read that one, but I did read this, earlier book, which attempts to put definition and explanation around different worldviews and ways-of-being. He argues that more religious and conservative people work from the same, general set of morals and values as more secular and progressive people, but that they weight and prioritize those values very differently, creating an interesting Venn diagram that has some overlap, but also some start differences.

This is Not My Memoir, by Andre Gregory

This is Andre, of My Dinner with Andre, the theater director and sometime film actor, telling stories of his life—his larger-than-life parents, his refugee childhood, his adventures in theater, and all of the strange and interesting people he’s collected along the way.

Ghosted, by Nancy French

Many people know of David French, the New York Times opinion writer and Republican apostate who, though deeply conservative both religiously and socially, had to be banished from the tribe for speaking the truth about Donald Trump.

His wife, Nancy, went through a similar scourging. Once a sought-after ghost-writer for conservative public figures looking to write memoirs, she was driven out of polite society—partly because of her marriage to David, and partly because of her work as an investigative journalist, uncovering years of sexual abuse and coverup at an Evangelical Christian summer camp.

No longer wanted as a writer of other people’s memoirs, French decided to write one of her own, and it’s an amazing story of grit, resilience, faith, and love. It gave me a glimpse, not only inside one person’s unique life, but also into a world I have had very little access to or or knowledge of. And that’s always a good thing.

Oath and Honor, by Liz Cheney

I was no fan of the Cheney family during and after the Bush administrations. Many of us thought papa Dick Cheney was a war-monger and a war profiteer, and I haven’t changed my opinion of him much since then.

But. There’s no getting around the fact that father and daughter stood firm against Donald Trump when so many in the Republican party folded. And Liz has put her career and reputation on the line, again and again, to do the right thing. So, I thought it would be interesting to read her memoir of this period.

It’s thorough and damning, and it’s not afraid to name names as the story unfolds and Trump’s election denialism turns into something toxic. Mike Johnson, our current Speaker of the House, is all over the story. Those of us who didn’t know who he was until he emerged from the Kevin McCarthy wreckage: he was there, and he was making himself very useful.

Cheney is so plain-spoken and unadorned and…well…Wyoming…that that she can get away with scenes that many readers would howl at in cringy disbelief. As she gets ready to head back to Washington to chair the January 6 committee, her father walks her out to the car, then leans down into the driver’s side window, and says, “Protect the republic, daughter.” To which she answers, “I will, Dad.”

Somehow, I can actually believe them having that exchange, hokey and old-fashioned as it is. And, somehow, that feels like a good thing.

Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, by Jessica Pan

I found Jess Pan on Substack, where she was writing a charming blog about living in Paris and working in a bookstore. That led me to her funny and touching book about the year she spent defiantly saying Yes to everything, to break her out of her introversion and the rut she felt she had been digging for herself.

That’s it for non-fiction. Not a single education or technology book in the batch. How did that happen?

Fiction

When I started putting this list together, I felt sad about how little fiction I had read this year. Only four books? Really? But then I realized that at least two of the four were 1,000+ page beasts, and I didn’t feel so bad.

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver

The one actual, contemporary bestseller that I read this year. I thought it was fantastic—so much so that I decided to read David Copperfield (upon which it is based) immediately after, because I had never read it before. Kingsolver does an amazing job of getting inside the head, and capturing the voice, of a boy and young man raised in Appalachia and dealing with abuse and deprivation of all kinds. Is it bleak? Yeah, it’s a little bleak. Is it unremitting? Yeah, kind of. But the main character’s grit, and humor, and insistence on moving ever forward, hoping for a better life, makes the journey well worth taking.

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

As I said, I had never read this book before. So, reading it after Kingsolver’s modern adaptation obviously colored the experience for me. I saw all the connections, all the references, all the things Kingsolver used, or changed, or discarded entirely.

Even so, it was great to read the original. I really didn’t like or appreciate Dickens in high school, which is the only time I read him (or was forced to read him). But now…it’s a little different. Bleak House was a revelation. And this book, as grim and unremitting as it is, sometimes, is also a whole universe, with laughter and lightness and pretty much everything else life has to offer. As tough a time as young David has, being pushed and prodded from place to place, there are always a few wonderful and warm-hearted characters around, who keep showing up in his life and bringing a little light to things.

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This was recommended to me by my Ed Reform and Ed Tech friend, Thomas Steele-Maley, as we were comparing notes on favorite science fiction novels. I recommended N.K. Jemisen’s “Broken Earth” trilogy to him, which I’m sure he still hasn’t read (what say you, Thomas?). I loved this first novel, but got bogged down in the second of the trilogy. My older son, who loves both science fiction and fantasy, tore through the trilogy and is deeply disappointed with me for abandoning it.

HOWEVER. This first novel is amazing, and I’m very glad I went into it knowing nothing about it. The book narratives enormous leaps through centuries like nothing I can think of, other than A Canticle for Liebowitz. And the author does a great job of capturing the way a sentient, non-human being, living in a body very different from ours, might understand the world and build a society and a technology.

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

This one was recommended by my children. Well…that’s not entirely accurate. It was demanded of me by my children. They started the negotiation at, “you have to read everything Brandon Sanderson has written,” and then retrenched at, “you have to read The Stormlight Archive.” My final bargaining position was, “I’ll read the first book, but that’s it. I can’t spend the rest of my life reading this one guy.” Because…this guy churns out pages, let me tell you. My boys accepted that offer, suspecting that, once I finished, I’d want to keep going. They might not be wrong.

I had a lot of trouble getting hooked. The first few chapters each focus on a different character, and not all during the same time period. I felt bogged down by all the alien words for things and names of people (especially when names were “normal” but with extra letters for the sake of alienness, like, “Szeth”). But that comes with the territory, I know.

It took a long time (it felt like a VERY long time) for a story to start to come together in my mind, with some compelling forward motion. Once it did, it was smooth sailing and quick reading.

Sanderson’s world-building is insanely detailed—not only in the center of the story, but also in lands far distant and times far past. His dialogue is a little flowery and fraught for my tastes, but people who love the fantasy genre don’t seem to care much about that. And the themes of the story are absolutely grounded, and real, and important.

So…yeah…maybe I’ll read the second one. Just the second one, though. I swear. And not right away.

Because…

Ongoing

Ulysses, by James Joyce

I read this in college, in a seminar led by Joyce’s most well-known biographer, Richard Ellmann. That was a great experience. But it was a long time ago. I always thought it might be nice to re-read the book as an adult, and try to just…enjoy it, without analyzing every word or referring to the secret codex to unlock meaning from every reference.

My wife bought me a beautiful, hardcover version in Ireland and hefted it all the way home for me. I’ve made some progress, but it’s the kind of thing I like dipping into for a little bit, now and then, rather than reading straight through. So…it’s going to take a while.

What I Didn’t Quite Get Around To

And here’s what’s been sitting on my Kindle, waiting for attention, while I’ve been trying to finish the Sanderson novel:

Polestan, by Neal Stephenson

The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny

The War of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf

Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm

Life in Code, by Ellen Ullman

How We Learn, Stanislaus Dehaene (aha! There’s the education book I was missing)

On to 2025!

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