January 2022 Reads

Rang in the New Year over a gourmet German feast cooked by one of my best friends while flipping between a progressively terrible line-up of New Year’s Eve specials on TV. Classes started back up on January 10. All of my classes are online, which I am grateful for as the number of students testing positive for CoVID-19 in my classes just keeps trending up, up, up! While I think students, especially undergraduates, learn better in class, no one really learns well when they are acutely sick. That said, I have complicated feelings about the start of the semester and knowing so many of my colleagues and students are risking their health for their education. With the weather frigidly cold (and CoVID surging in West Virginia), I have spent most of my time at home. I think the cats are getting tired of me.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou lived an incredible life and this serves as an account of the first 17 years. It reads like fiction but is really an emotional tome of acceptance. Angelou very directly addresses the triumphs and tragedies of her young life and in the process explains how children comprehend tragedies like death and sexual assault. Her account of her junior high school graduation and the feeling that the school district dismissed the potential success of the students from the segregated school for African American students could spark rage in just about anyone. At best, she described, they could hope to be athletes. I dearly hope some of the leadership from the school district in Arkansas lived long enough to realize their mistake. Closing in on the end of her adolescence, it was breathtaking to discover that Angelou was the first woman of color to operate the San Francisco Cable Cars. An engaging and inspiring memoir that has very appropriately taken its place among the classics.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Aiming to bring complex and sophisticated scientific concepts to a general audience is a tall order, one that most scientists and researchers fail to do (we love our complex jargon!). Upon starting, I feared this might take the form of a rambling tome akin to everything Simon Winchester has written. However, Bryson, generally, does a very good job of explaining concepts like the Big Bang, geology, and all kinds of biology. I think his approach of explaining the science alongside the history makes for an entertaining read. If nothing else, I appreciated how he humanized the scientists responsible for so much of the knowledge we have about, well, everything. My only frustration is that virtually everyone involved is a white guy. That is not Bryson’s fault, and at several points he indicates some frustration with that, too. Though despite covering billions and billions of years of history, he makes some references that do kind of date the book to the early 2000s. Anyone outside of the science community who feels science is not for them might really appreciate and benefit from this book!

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

There are so many missed opportunities in this novel. It reads easily, but feels almost unbearably trite. The character development is weak and formulaic. There are so many leaps of faith as the story is told that it feels inauthentic. I also find the title frustrating because he never said anything, spoiler alert, he left a two-word note before vanishing. I am not sure if the author feels uncomfortable around technology or technical terms, but I found the circumstances surrounding the him in the title to be under-described. Though I did really like what Dave did with time and how there are interludes that describe the relationship between him and the protagonist. This would make for a decent read on a plane or a Sunday afternoon if you want to kind of check out for a few hours, but do not get your hopes up too high.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

I am a huge fan of one of Whitehead’s other novels, the Underground Railroad, so I was really excited to read the Nickel Boys and it did not disappoint! Through the Nickel Boys the reader get a glimpse of growing up black as the end of segregation neared and folks seemed on-edge about the changes confronting a nation. The tug-of-war between how it’s been versus how it’s going to be was rarely directly addressed, but it felt like a pulse beating away under the skin throughout. The twist near the end of the novel came as a huge surprise because it really was not necessary. The novel would have been great without the twist, but Whitehead never seems to settle for the status quo. Rather than good, Whitehead always manages to be great.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

I learned a lot more about Martin Luther King, Jr. growing up than I did about Malcolm X. After reading his autobiography, it makes sense. Born Malcolm Little, he grew up all over the place before his family settled in Michigan. In Michigan, his father was savagely murdered and his mother slowly lost her mind in the aftermath. As soon as he could, Malcolm left Michigan for Boston and then Harlem leading a life that would have been a bit difficult to explain to grade school children: petty crime, womanizing, drinking and doing drugs, etc. However, firmly in my 30s, I can handle the truth! The transformation of Malcolm Little the small-time crook to Malcolm X the leader of a culture movement is engaging. In prison he discovered the Nation of Islam and devoted himself to Islam for the rest of his life, first to Elijah Muhammed and his Nation of Islam and then to the broader, global Islamic community. Malcolm X never stood still and was in continuous transformation until the moment of his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom. Every stubborn person should read this autobiography for lessons on continuous growth and improvement.

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

I’ve never really been into comics or graphic novels. I rarely read them and the reason for it has as much to do with laziness (graphic novels don’t render well on my Kindle, so then I have to use the more cumbersome iPad) than it does with struggling to follow the story between the different frames, I never seem to read in the right place. Yang’s love-letter to his former employer and the Bishop O’Dowd basketball team is well received. It took a while to get into the story, but as the story built momentum and I got used to the presentation of the story, it was impossible not to get caught up in the story. By the end of the book, I had to consciously keep myself from yelling out as the story reached its climax. If you’re on the fence about sports (which I kind of am), this graphic novel tells the reader everything they need to know about how sports, in this case basketball, have the power to be transformative forces in the lives of people young and old.

Pick of the Month: January 2022

Books read this month really the gambit from trashy chick lit to a moving real-life story of the power of sports to elevate people to autobiographies of two people who failed to accept the status quo and dedicated their lives to change, despite the deck being stacked against them. All of these are wonderful books. However, the Nickel Boys takes the cake. Last year a wave of mass burial sites at Indian Residential School sites were discovered across Canada (and if they searched at the U.S. residential schools, they would probably make the same discoveries—and this is work that needs to be done). This discovery shook Canadians and accelerated the dialogue about how, as a society, Canada needs to work harder on truth and reconciliation. Anyhow, the reform school in the Nickel Boys is based on an actual reform school that came to Whitehead’s attention after unmarked graves were discovered and it became clear that many students at the school that “ran away” never left the campus. Racism and white supremacy has hurt a lot of people in both Canada and the United States. The Nickel Boys is one way to confront and humanize these tragedies.