The Leavers, Lisa Ko

 

The Leavers by Lisa Ko was a finalist for the National Book Award and that is where I saw it.

Started: 12/27/2020
Completed: 12/31/2020
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: National Book Award

Review:

The story, largely, of a boy with synesthesia who is abandoned by his birth-mother.  His subsequent adoption was unsettling and his eventual search for his birth-mother dominates most of the book.  His unsettled nature mimics his birth-mother's unsettled nature.  The book does change perspective to that of his birth-mother at times and provides insight into her experiences.

I feel like I have now heard of the sense of deportation/immigration from every angle despite this being a clear novel with no effort to necessarily reflect the truth, but with a clear effort to embody the process of deportation.  In that sense it was a hard read, but I have to say that the great similes and metaphors (I especially liked the sense of security being retracted like the cord into a vacuum cleaner) made the book enjoyable without regard for content.  I think this kind of thing is what elevates a good book into a finalist for the National Book Award.

The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama

 

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on reclaiming the American dream by Barack Obama is a book I have had sitting around for a bit and it just seemed like the right time to pick it up with the election in the offing.

Started: 10/20/2020
Completed: 12/30/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Lots of people

Review:

It was good to hear Obama talking about the future he had yet to forge.  While I didn't agree with everything he said, it was nice to hear a calm, reasoned approach to governing.

A Peculiar Indifference, Elliott Currie

 

A Peculiar Indifference: The neglected toll of violence on black America by Elliott Currie is another book about the black experience I was inspired to read by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Started: 12/25/2020
Completed: 12/27/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The collection of statistics brought forward in this book makes it simply inconceivable that black America in particular and poverty stricken areas in general are suffering violence impacts that are inconceivable to the vast majority of white America.  The racial/ethnic disparities are nauseating.

The general approach of a guaranteed job makes a lot of sense to me and is consistent with the Green New Deal.  We shall see.

The Moon and the Other, John Kessel

 

The Moon and the Other by John Kessel is a book that I read about in the Washington Post.

Started: 12/21/2020

Completed: 12/25/2020

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By: The Washington Post

Review:

This book is an interesting look at how things might be different if society is structured differently.  It also is a bit of a character study so the individuals develop interestingly.  It is a brief study of growth as not that much time elapses, but using flash backs and memories, the author is able to show the changes in how the characters addressed similar situations.

Some of the plot twists are clearly manipulated.  The artificial hand stands out as a shockingly direct manipulation which could surely have been addressed in other ways.  Uplifted creatures get a casual explanation.  The lack of control exerted by Earth on the Moon seems odd.

I really like the way that all manner of drugs are administered via tea at the discretion and direction of the consumer and mixed by a barista of sorts.  That part was really clever and very Persian.

Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

 

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is a book from an author who piqued my interest.

Started: 12/16/2020
Completed: 12/21/2020
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: An Obama list of books

Words for which I sought help:

cicatrix -- a scar left by the formation of new connective tissue over a healing sore or wound

Review:

This book was well written and the author had some excellent turns of phrase, "The kitchen was a nauseating never-cleaned sty that smelled like a mental illness."  Despite that, I found the subject matter ugly.  Who is cheating on whom with whom and wreaking havoc on one another's mental state is not something that I find interesting.  If this is intended as a cautionary tale, I already have that caution.  If this is not, then it feels more like a Peeping Tom kind of novel.  It largely made me uncomfortable for the privacy of fictional characters.

The rant on the Republican party was prescient.  It was reflective of Bush, but it was also projective of Trump.  I try hard to pay attention, but Franzen was completely on it.

Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a book that I am pretty sure I saw in a list of books written by native Americans.

Started: 12/13/2020
Completed: 12/16/2020
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Cannot remember

Review:

This book was very well written and the turns of phrase were sometimes wonderful.  I think that the story itself was new and interesting even if the basis was ancient.  The names were difficult and the distinction between the two gods who were brothers was difficult for me to hear--I could hear the difference, but I could not keep them straight.  I did enjoy how the female protagonist was a hero and brave in ways a traditional male hero is not.  It isn't just a traditional story with a female lead, it was truly a female story.

One Life, Megan Rapinoe

 

One Life by Megan Rapinoe is the autobiography of a bad ass soccer player.

Started: 12/11/2020
Completed: 12/13/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I knew that Rapinoe was gay well before I started this book.  I knew that she was controversial.  I knew that she was a wonderful player.  I have learned a lot from this book about her youth in a large family.  The support that her parents provided for Megan and her twin sister travelling the country to participant in competitive soccer games.

It was interesting to hear her talk about her brother, Brian, and his criminal behavior while also listening to The Thunderhead where an entire section of society is given the space to be criminal in a manner which does not hurt others.  It addresses the black/white differences between those on your side and those who you are against and gives form to the sense that Megan has of how the criminal is innately "evil" and the people outside of prison are primarily "good."  Megan is wide-eyed about the problems with the criminal justice system in part because she experienced part of it directly. 

The heart of this book is a call to action--LFG (Let's Fucking Go).  It is a call to halt oppression against minorities.  It is a call framed within the actions Rapinoe has taken within her own life, but it is a much broader call to action then it is an autobiography.

Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

 

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid was listed as one of the 10 best books of 2017 by the New York Times and that drew me to it.

Started: 12/11/2020
Completed: 12/11/2020
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: New York Times

Review:

This book is simply well written.  The turns of phrase merge cleanly with decent insights into people:

"[P]ersonalities are not a single immutable color...but rather illuminated screens and the shades we reflect depends much on what is around us."

In some ways, this is my favorite form of science fiction--what happens if a single scientific dream was realized?  It is interesting to consider this kind of thing.  This book is a good journey, but it is not a smooth journey (as one might expect).  It is a romance that stutters into a relationship and becomes a friendship of sorts.  It also speaks to the nature of both coming together and stepping apart.  In many ways it is a sad book, but it is also an interesting book.

A Promised Land, Barak Obama

 

A Promised Land by Barack Obama is the most recent book by Obama and deeply needed during Trump's reign.  This is the first volume of a planned two volume presidential memoir.

Started: 11/28/2020
Completed: 12/10/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody...saw it, requested it from the library.  Of course, everyone knows about it.

Words for which I sought help:

abnegation -- the act of renouncing or rejecting something

manichean -- an adherent of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark, matter being regarded as dark and evil.

Review:

This is a long book.  It is also a lot of material.  This is the first book by Obama that looks back instead of looking forward.  It was a little odd to hear him read it--that created an odd sort of intimacy as he talked about his own life.  One of the things that he mentioned was that he "lost" his first name when he became president.  Most people addressed him as "Mr. President" or "sir."  As a result, while I listened to this book, I thought of him as Barack and would say to my wife that I was listening to Barack.  So, in my own way and surely inappropriately, I tried to give him his first name back.

It was interesting to hear him describe how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came to be (I have always seen it as a compromise bill that could not illicit the compromise it sought, so we ended up with a compromise bill when it would have been just as easy to pass a single payer plan).  The actual reasons for the compromises I saw were more complex then simply trying to get a few Republican votes and it was good to hear more about the details and reasoning behind some of the compromises.  I honestly had forgotten the many steps he had to take to shore up the economy in his first year in office and how doing so had taken up most of his time.

I was aware that the job of president was all-consuming and this is a small part of why I had not been interested in pursing it despite my mother's insistence that I would.  To hear the mechanics of how being president was so exhausting for Obama helped explain the gray hair that every president sports at the end of his first term (even Trump's wig got gray).

Obama's range of knowledge is amazing and his depth of understanding is truly impressive.  It feels like there is no topic where he would not be able to engage.  While there are several areas where I feel he did not really do what he campaigned on doing (he felt like a conservative in many ways to me while in office, not a progressive) he does a decent job of explaining some of the trade-offs he faced in his first term.  

This book ended with the killing of Osama Bin Laden which I felt was a high point when it happened.  Obama's solemn description of the process he went through (I've read of the details of the raid elsewhere), his anxiety for the men he put in harm's way, and what appears to be the relief (not joy or any thread of happiness) that he experienced when the job was done is palpable.

I respect Obama and his leadership.  I did not agree with him on everything, but I felt comfortable with the idea that he was likely taking into consideration things which I couldn't possibly know about and it was good to hear him describing just that.  

I also liked hearing more about his stand on principle with regard to Libya.  The manner in which Gaddafi died was so horrifying to me that it overshadowed the terror Gaddafi instilled in his lifetime until I read about Obama's steps to turn back his army at Benghazi.  I knew, in concept the terrible things Gaddafi had done, but I actually saw him being killed, so his death was more graphic and immediate to me then the many, many people he had killed.  Hearing about Obama's actions reminded me of the much broader picture then the few minutes that ended Gaddafi's life and reminded me of just how awful he was.  I had a similar, though shorter lived, experience with Saddam Hussein after seeing a video of his death.