Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2010) by Tony Judt

 Audiobook Review

Postwar (2010)

by Tony Judt

  Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 was itself published in 2010, which puts it on the edge of being out-of-date, but I couldn't turn down the opportunity to listen to the 40 hours plus Audiobook.  It took me months, because like many titles in the LA public library system, they have one or two permanent copies of many titles, and you have to wait months between check-outs.  I'm not complaining about it, just saying it happens with longer books.  At one point I had thought that the book blog aspect of this endeavor would be focused on history, not fiction/literature, but there is a real lack of content, as the kids would say.  Cutting edge history is the domain of for-pay journals or graduate student work that isn't published.  Popular history in the United States basically means books about "the wars" (Revolutionary, Civil, World I, World War II, Vietnam) or "the presidents."   Leading writers of popular history in the US would have to include Bill O'Reilly, again, not complaining, just describing the market for history books in this country.

   Subjects that fall outside those two categories are few and far between.  I use the Bancroft Prize, which focuses on the Americas, and the Pulitzer for proxies on history books that are making the scene, but for subjects outside the US, it is even worse, in terms of supply.  Thus, Postwar, despite or perhaps because of its length, is a rare treat, a contemporary work of popular history about a subject that isn't America based (although the US does pop up relentlessly in the context of the subject), writing about areas (Central, Eastern, Southern Europe) that I don't here much about on a day-to-day basis.   In print, Postwar is 960 pages long, and I feel like that wouldn't include an index let alone footnotes.  Maybe an Index.   Judt starts at the end of World War II and methodically works his way forward, area by area, using contemporary, specialist sources to write a book for generalists (although, 960 pages calls that term into question). 

  Were it not for the Audiobook, I'm quite sure I would have never read  Postwar in print, if only because, closing in on turning 50, I believe that physically reading a book over 500 pages, in paperback or hardback, is a real ordeal.

    Trying to say anything about Postwar is tough because the subject is so large- like reading a book called History and then being asked to describe it.   The major trend is the rise and fall of Communism, though Judt's major contribution to this subject matter is combining that more familiar story with the first chapter of the European Union story.    The cut-off point in time leaves the reader wondering whether the accession of Eastern and Central European states will prove a success, and with the Ukranian conflict not even on the horizon. 

   I guess, the parts I found most relevant to the present situation were the chapters about the rise of post-communist populist/nationalist movements in central, southern and eastern Europe.  Postwar cuts off too soon to cover Brexit, and Le Pen makes a brief, late appearance, but the stuff about the split between the Czechs and the Slovaks, the situation in Hungary- where Victor Orban appears as a rabble-rouser, not yet in power and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia all gave me pause.   Another theme, or rather, absence of a theme, is any premonition that Ukraine and Russia would begin a now decade long war over...?.?>? only four years after the publication date.

  With the benefit of reading Postwar I would now argue that the war was precipitated by the eastern reach of the E.U., and Russia's feelings about that vis a vis Ukraine, which for many is considered a part of Russia and whose independence movement is fraught with Nazi's, Neo-Nazi's and the far right.  I could go on. 

Native Nation (2024) by Kathleen DuVal

 Audiobook Review

Native Nation (2024)

by Kathleen DuVal

  I like my history books like I like my coffee... magisterial.  Native Nations won a Pulitzer Prize last year, which is why I looked up the Audiobook on the library app and checked it out.  The Audiobook version clocks in at over 20 hours, and it look me a couple of check-outs and months of waiting in between to finish up, but it really is a great gloss on the history of the Native People in North America.  DuVal's major scholarly achievement is blending part of the argument made David Graeber in The Dawn of Everything, where Graeber, drawing on other scholars, argued for the historical choices made by allegedly non historical peoples (pre contact Native Americans) and essentially postulated that the "contemporary" Native American political scene when the Europeans showed up was the result of a centuries old rebellion against the Cahokia regime in the area of modern day St. Louis, and a similar rebellion in a similar time frame against a different group.   The idea is that the Native American who made contact with Europeans were not ignorant savages, but a collection of peoples who had rejected the kind of hierarchy and consolidation that won the day in the "old world" lands of Europe and Asia. 

    Graeber offers this analysis mostly as a theory, but DuVal fills in that gap with actual chapters from actual Native American history- she goes all over the map, with particular highlights coming from the Southeast and Southwest.   If you read Graeber, and are looking to follow up his Native American supported arguments, this Pulitzer Prize winning history book is worth reading.

Vanishing World (2025) by Sayaka Murata

 Audiobook Review

Vanishing World (2025)

by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Sayaka Murata

  I'm not an anime watching fetishist, but it is hard to deny the emergence of East Asia on the global cultural stage since World War II.  Compare the popularity of cultural products emerging out of markets like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to places like France and Germany.  When was the last time a German act played Coachella?   Generally speaking, if the New York Times does a full length or capsule length review of a work of fiction translated from Japanese, Korean or Chinese, I'm going to take a look and if I see anything like "speculative fiction" or the like I'm going to check out the Audiobook and maybe even read an E-copy on my Kindle.   It's one of the most interesting areas in global fiction- East Asia and South Asia I'd say, but South Asia gets a boost because of the large number of English language speakers. 

   Vanishing World has it all: It's a work of disturbing speculative fiction, and it takes place in an alternate present where Japan turned to IVF after World War II, and where traditional sex between a married couple has become akin to incest.   It is a fascinating world, drawn out with the kind of wavy realism that I associate with Japanese literature read in translation.  Getting the Audiobook was a real stroke of luck. I spend so much time waiting for Audiobooks in the library queue. 

  But this was one of my top books of the year for sure. 

The Power Broker (1974) by Robert A. Caro

 Audiobook Review

The Power Broker (1974)

by Robert A. Caro

   Clocking in at over 60 hours, the three volume Audiobook edition of Robert A. Caro's seminal masterpiece, The Power Broker, a comprehensive biography of New York park-and-freeway man Robert Moses, is certainly one of the most epic Audiobooks I've ever heard.   The Audiobook is broken into three volumes; each volume is a little over 20 hours long.   I wrote a review for the first volume back in September of last year.  Volume two didn't get the break-out treatment because, like many Volume 2's in a three-volume set, it didn't seem like it warranted a stand-alone post.   Roughly speaking, volume 1 is his rise, volume 2 is his hey-day and volume 3 is his decline and fall.  Reader, what does it tell you that I couldn't wait for the fall, and the last ten hours of the third volume was my favorite piece of the entire endeavor. 

  I was reflecting on The Power Broker, and Caro's achievement, during a recent trip to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin Texas (thanks Dad!) Caro has famously been trying to finish the fifth volume of his LBJ biography for years- the last update was in 2023 after his longtime publisher Robert Gottlieb died.   Both Moses and LBJ symbolize a very specific type of 20th century man, the non-ideological Government guy who saw the rise of big government as an opportunity to obtain the specific type of success both craved.   One of the ironies that plays out again and again over the cours of all three volumes of The Power Broker is that Moses, the ultimate public servant, held the actual voting public in the kind of contempt one associates with modern day plutocrats like Peter Thiel.    He did not brook criticism or compromise, which is astonishing for a man who spent his professional career rooting up large parts of New York City, displacing thousands, and rebuilding it in his image (parks and freeways to get to those parks). 

  His path to power was unique to the rise of big government in the 20th century, he was able to master the internal bureaucracy of New York state and city- serving as the head of the Tri Borough Bridge Commission in addition to a dozen over entities in his prime AND he served as the link between New York and Federal freeway fund.  If he was outmaneuvered at the state level, he could shut off the funding at the federal level, and his opponents knew it.

  Ultimately, he was only bested by two men, one he survived and the other who ended him.  The first was Franklin Roosevelt, who first encountered Robert Moses when he was the Governor of New York and Moses was in his early, progressive phase associated with his parks era.  Roosevelt owed nothing of his rise to Moses, and was secure enough in his power not to be cowed by the others backroom machinations.  A final showdown wasn't required because Roosevelt went to Washington DC, and spending on public works became a preferred path out of the recession, and Moses was a position to spend more of that money than anyone else in the country, so they needed each other and that was enugh.

   The other, Nelson Rockefeller, spelled the end for Moses, who was in his late 70's and early 80's when Rockefeller appeared on the scene.  As spelled out by Caro, the enduring key to Moses' unassailability within the New York state and city bureaucracy was as the counterparty for all the bond that the state had issued via his various positions.  Basically, you couldn't do anything to Moses because the bond holders viewed it as tampering with their bonds.  Fortunately, the largest holder of those bonds was the brother of Nelson Rockefeller, so he could do whatever he wanted to Moses and the bondholders wouldn't do shit to stop him.

Published 9/11/24

Audiobook Review

The Power Broker: Volume 1 (1974)

Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

by Robert Caro

Read by Robertson Dean

(2011)

   Lists like the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die commonly keep fiction and non-fiction books separate.  For example, in the two lists I just cited, there are zero works of non fiction.  At least with the 1,001 Novels project the bias is in the title, but the 1,001 Books list has no excuse.   One recent list to buck this separation is the recently published New York Times Top Books of the 21st Century, which combines fiction and non-fiction.   Such an approach might have benefited the 1,001 Novels project.   You can see why if you listen to the Audiobook of The Power Broker: Volume 1, which is just about as New York a book as one could possibly imagine.  Indeed, there is an argument that its inclusion is required if a reader wants to really know New York, city and state.  No single person has had a greater impact on how the entire state LOOKS than Moses.   

  Volume 1, which lasts 22 hours in Audiobook format, handles his rise, and takes us to the cusp of his monumental bridge, tunnel and freeway building projects that remade Manhattan in his image.  We learn that Moses came from a patrician upbringing- a key element of his success is that he never needed to make money from his work and that his vision was inspired by the idea of a non-partial bureaucratic technocrat, who overcame all obstacles to benefit "the people."  Caro presents it as an idea he came up with while he was doing post-graduate studies in Oxford University, and his school-child dreams of a core of highly disciplined, uncorruptible state employees was about as far from the facts on the ground in New York City as could be possible.

   After some early career missteps, he was rescued from obscurity by a friendship with Belle Moskowitz, a reformer and early supporter of future Governor of New York Al Smith.  Moskowitz recommended Robert Moses to Smith as a man who could get things done, as someone who could help Smith implement the progressive ideas he wanted to advance to distance himself from the Tammany Hall political machine from which he sprang and get him in the running for a run at President.  Smith and Moses were an odd couple to be sure, and the depiction of their friendship is the unquestionable highlight of the book.   

   In Volume 1, most of the action is stage setting, as Moses begins to develop his vision of parks and freeways to drive to those parks.  Most of the action takes place on the tip of Long Island, where Moses spent the 20's and 30's in endless litigation with the land barons who owned all the property out there.  Parks were really popular with the general public and the press, particularly when those standing in the way are wealthy captain of industry.  It's clear both from the action of the book and Caro's relentless foreshadowing that the combination of power and lack of public accountability would turn Moses into a monster, but by the end of Volume 1 that moment is still on the far-ish horizon.

Perspective (2025) by Laurent Binet

 Book Review

Perspective (2025)

by Laurent Binet

   This is pretty clearly a Laurent Binet riff on Umberto Eco or, more recently, Alvaro Enrique- i.e. a medieval who-dun-it with real life characters.  The plot involves a risque portrait of a duchess (or somebody like that) and the efforts her scheming father will go through to retrieve the portrait and her honor.   I was disappointed and barely paid attention, a sad miss for Binet, from my perspective, or at least not the kind of inventiveness I'd expected from his other books. 

Brother Brontë (2025) by Fernando Flores

 Audiobook Review

Brother Brontë (2025) 

by Fernando Flores

 I checked out the Audiobook of Brother Brontë from the library based on the capsule review in the New York Times book review promising Latin American themed/dystopian/literary fiction, and it was that, though perhaps it suffers from the narrow viewpoint common to many protagonists in post-apocalyptic fiction.  If you don't know anything different, what is there even to say about the situation.  Here, Flores hedges his bets by making one of the young-ish characters a "last bookworm" sort of heroine.   Various elements flash into view and then disappear, rendering the proceedings closer to literary fiction, but less exciting than genre.  Only the setting, which I imagined to be something like Brownsville, on the Mexican/Texas border, really stirred by imagination.    My issue with Brother Brontë is similar to my issue with the YA and child narrators from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list:  They don't go anywhere, they don't do anything, and they aren't particularly interesting people, being under 13 and poorly educated.   The sameness of the inner experience of the lower echelons of the socio-economic ladder across genre and geography is something that is never commented upon by literary critics, but I think it is worth noting. 

Random Family (2003) by Adrian LeBlanc

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

Random Family (2003)

by Adrian LeBlanc

#25

       This might be THE most representative book from the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list, a 432 page in depth exploration of the life and times of a loosely related group of New Yorkers who are knee deep in the crack epidemic.  You've got Coco Rodriguez, the main character, a woman who manages to have four children by three different men in between the ages of 17 and 24.  You've got Jessica Martinez, the consort of a notorious crack kingpin who is sentenced to life in Federal Prison during the book, and who herself serves a ten year federal prison sentence over the course of Random Family.  You've got Coco and Jessica's respective families, who are equally filled with child sexual abuse, drug usage, child neglect and early/frequent exposure to domestic violence.

   As someone who deals with individuals who are enmeshed with the Federal Criminal Justice system because of their participation in drug trafficking, I am well familiar with the social milieus that produce the characters in this book, and everything that they say or do was familiar to me- listening to the Audiobook of Random Family was like listening to a 20 hour federal probation report, where probation officers try to get to the heart of the same questions that LeBlanc frames in 15 pages instead of 400.

   A common theme, both in Random Family and my own professional experience, is disordered living.  A one parent household headed by Mom, or a serial household with Mom and a succession of partner's, is common.  It's been my own observation, borne out at length in Random Family, is that people who get into organized criminal activity do it because a) they never think it will end up with them serving decade long prison sentences b) they literally do not have a single other idea about what do besides crime. The men in this book, most of whom spend the entirety of the book in Federal or State Prison make these decisions when they are very young and even as they spend their ten, twenty year or life in prison sentences, the level of self-reflection is minimal because there were never any other choices to be made.

  The women on the other hand, again, based both on the experiences depicted in Random Family and my own professional experiences, is that women often believe that the only thing they have to offer is their body and that a child is their best chance of forging a lasting relationship with a providing male. When this inevitably fails to happen, the man disappears, and the woman is left with the child.  Coco, at the center of this book, is incapable of making a reasoned decision or really even looking after her own interesting, rather she is buffeted by the day-to-day chaos of the consequences of her decision to have four children with three different men.

  Coco is, in a sense, amazing in that she manages to keep her tattered family together through the entire book.  Jessica, on the other hand, manages to get impregnated by a guard while in prison and foists the children off on her long-suffering mother, also caring for some of her other children which she left behind to serve her decade long prison sentence.   The men are equally despicable and pathetic, the tattered flotsam of late-stage capitalism, going nowhere and doing nothing.  What, one wonders, is the end game for anyone in Random Family, except as a burden to the state and incubator of intergenerational trauma.   Those looking for answers will find none here and the author doesn't bother to try- it's not that type of book.

  

     

Gold Diggers (2020) by Sanjena Sathian

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Gold Diggers (2020)
by Sanjena Sathian

1400 Dunwoody Village Pkwy SUITE #1406

 Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia 11/26

    You'd think there would be more novels written by the sons and daughters of the Indian diaspora in America but one gets the sense that writing fiction is secondary to becoming a doctor, scientist or venture capitalist. The post World War II South Asian immigrants to the United States mostly arrived as graduate students in hard-science/technical subjects- they had top degrees from elite Indian universities.  There's a much smaller subset of small-business owning immigrants who were fleeing turmoil- your NYC cabbies and gas station owners, but mostly the South Asian experience in the US has been small families: Dad, Mom and one or two kids.  Dad works as a scientist or doctor or in computers, Mom stays at home or has some kind of home business.  Kids are under intense pressure to do well.  

   In that regard, what must be mildly embarrassing for Sathian's own parents (she went to Yale for undergraduate and then went to, sigh, the Iowa Writer's Workshop), is great for readers.  Sathian's magical realist/coming of age drama is a rare depiction of the inner lives of two families of reasonably well off Indian American immigrants living in suburban Atlanta.  Sathian's protagonist is feckless male high school student who moons over his more successful neighbor-girl, also Indian American.  One night he stumbles over her neighbor's secret:  Her mom is creating a drink out of stolen gold as a way to harness the ambitions of others.   Sathian goes light on the lore- I sense the hand of the market at work, but that doesn't detract from a lively tale. 

  I could actually identify somewhat with these characters- some of the action takes place in the Bay Area and some of Sathian's high school portraits reminds me of Indian American girls who went to my own, highly selective high school in Oakland.   I was glad to get this window into a world that had always seemed opaque to me as a high school/college/law school student.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025) by Stephen Graham Jones

 Audiobook Review

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025)

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Stephen Graham Jones is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet nation in Montana.  He is also a prolific author of genre fiction, with a bibliography that dates back to 2000, and usually with one publication a year, or two publications in one year and none in the next.  I'd never heard of him until he published The Only Good Indians, which was picked up by Simon & Schuster and represented a step up in authorial profile and out of the limitations of genre fiction (his previous publisher was Tor- a science fiction/fantasy/horror genre specialist.)

  I actually didn't like The Only Good Indian and didn't finish the Audiobook I checked out from the library, but that could have had something to do with the pandemic era publication date.  I also didn't know about the author's tribal affiliation, which makes a big difference in distinguishing genre horror from speculative but literary fiction.  The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, to me, is like, a riff on Interview with a Vampire but with the intent to actually say something about its historical era, instead of using the historical elements as scenery for the soap-opera plot.  It is also very much a horror novel with a very...um. visceral and uniquely Mountain West take on the familiar tropes of vampire lit.

  The format. a mysterious, black-clad Native American with an acute sensitivity to sunlight shows up one day in a late 19th century Montana frontier church whose minister has his own connections to the events that have touched the life of the stranger.  He insists on unburdening himself to the preacher over a series of evenings, and then the preacher recounts the events to his journal.

  Jones uses a somewhat awkward but historically accurate/appropriate framing device for this sort of 19th century yard, a present-day graduate student in western history who is the last descendant of the frontier preacher and who comes into possession of his narrative.  Considering his lengthy publication history, it's hard not to suspect that Jones is writing with editorial guidance about maximizing the potential for what I would imagine would be an FX miniseries adaptation.   More power to him- I think it would be a great tv show/movie, but you'd have to get the violence right, which would be tough. 

  The Audiobook is also good for this book because you get the Native American narrator voice, which I wouldn't have wanted to do in my head, reading a paper/e copy at home.

The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukehjee

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

The Emperor of Maladies (2010)

by Siddhartha Mukehjee

#84

   I'm wrapping up the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times) list.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do the fiction portion, since most of the books I haven't read from that part of the list are books I already know about and don't want to read.   I'm busy enough with my day job these days that I don't feel compelled to read as much during my leisure time.  I listened to the Audiobook version over a period of months.  It's a 22 hour listen, and frankly, 22 hours of listening to the history of the treatment of cancer proved to be a bit of a slog. 

   The take-away is that curing cancer is incredibly complicated because cancer itself is incredibly complicated.  Really, the history of cancer is the history of medicine itself.  No disease has attracted more attention from scientists seeking a cure, and The Emperor of Maladies was written at the cusp of the modern period, where a decline in the cost of genetic sequencing of individuals has made "curing cancer" a realistic prospect for a small but growing cohort of sufferers.   The major issue, as it turns out, is that each cancer is genetically different, and a cure requires sequencing the genetics of the cancer cells for a particular person.  

   Mukehjee does have lots to say about the causes of cancer, which can either be incredibly reassuring or the equivalent of a death sentence with no execution date.  Genetics plays a huge role in who does or doesn't get cancer, as do environmental factors and personal choices, but it really isn't only one thing or the other.  One fact I did take away is that family history is super important- if cancer runs in your family you are susceptible to it no matter how hard you try to stay away from risk factors, conversely, if no one in your immediate family has had cancer, you are more likely to get away with risky personal choices and environmental exposure. 

The Love Songs of WEB Dubois (2021) by Honore Jeffers

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Love Songs of WEB Dubois (2021) 

by Honore Jeffers 

Eatonton, Georgia

Georgia 10/26

  I love a writer with some ambition, even if I don't love the book.  That's the case here with The Love Songs of WEB Dubois, a debut novel with some gusto written by author/professor Honore Jeffers.  It would be fair to call this book "over-stuffed" in that it covers multiple generations (and multiple characters within each generation) of a mixed-race but basically African-American family that has done well in 19th and 20th century Georgia without getting into any trouble.   The main protagonist is Ailey Pearl Garfield, one of three sisters and the daughter of a medical doctor and his wife.   She is pretty clearly a stand-in for the author herself, as her experiences and physical description mirror that of the author. 

 

  At 816 pages, the plot resembles something like a 19th century Russian novel written by Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy but the subject matter is distinctly modern, with a strong current of child-sexual abuse and its consequences running through the family from start to finish.  I thought The Love Songs of WEB Dubois wasn't perfect, but it was interesting, and it will certainly be a top 5 book from Georgia and top 10 for the Chapter (Georgia/Florida/Louisiana/Alabama/Mississippi). 

Kira-Kira (2004) by Cynthia Kadohata

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Kira-Kira (2004)

by Cynthia Kadohata

Chesterfield, Georgia

Georgia: 9/26

   Kira-Kira is a YA book about the experiences of a Japanese-immigrant family living and working in rural Georgia.  In some ways Kira-Kira is different than the vast amount of immigrant struggle narratives in the 1,001 Books project, in that the family here works hard and doesn't spend the entire book complaining about how hard it is to be an immigrant in America, which, if you take the books in this project as the sample-set, constitutes about 90% of the immigrant experience.   It is similar in that, like other books told from the perspective of a young child, the protagonist doesn't go anywhere or do anything for the most part, just sits around and thinks about her family circumstances.    The benefit of that approach in the context of this particular project is that the narrator in these situations has plenty of time to slowly meander through whatever American setting is involved.  Here, it's rural Georgia, which is on no one's list of top places to visit.   At least the racism and discrimination experienced by this Japanese immigrant family is leavened by their unfamiliarity to locals.  

The Director (2025) by Daniel Kehlmann

 Audiobook Review

The Director (2025)

by Daniel Kehlmann

  I think Daniel Kehlmann is my favorite German-language author.  I enjoyed both Measuring the World- which is a 1001 Books to Read Before You Die pick, and Tyll, his medieval jester novel.  I like his take on historical fiction, dark, but also funny.  The problem with historical fiction is that it typically treats the past like we view the present i.e. a perfectible world with characters who possess a positive attitude about the capabilities of humanity to solve its own problems.  Of course, no one thought like this until well into the mid/late 20th century, and yet in work after work of historical fiction the protagonists evince an eagerness to investigate and solve problems that, IMO simply didn't exist in the past.  People just accepted shit, back in the day.

  The Director is about German auteur G.W. Pabst who inauspiciously left Hollywood right before the beginning of World War II to return to the embrace of the Reich, which chose to overlook his past indiscretions (he was own as "Red Pabst" because of his Communist sympathies) and co-opt his talents. After a slow start, The Director really picks up in the second act, when Pabst begins working for the regime.  After that point, it's a wild ride.

Eviction (2016) by Matthew Desmond

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

Eviction (2016)

by Matthew Desmond

#16

  The overriding theme of the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21s Century by the New York Times is "getting to know the underclass."  It is poverty, more than race or gender, which interests the voters for this project.  Like Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Eisenreich,  Eviction is a laser-focused sociology-inspired work of reportage from the front lines of the housing crisis as represented by Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Desmond moved into a particular trailer-park for some of his time researching this book, and the trailer park really takes center stage.

  My abiding conclusion after listening to Eviction is the same thing James Baldwin said, "Poverty is expensive."  In other words, if you can't exist on a day-to-day basis you end up paying MORE for things like food and shelter.  The best example from these pages is the practice of landlords having tenants' possessions removed to a storage unit facility, where they are then charged for keeping their possessions even after they are rendered homeless.  

Purple Cane Road (2000) by James Lee Burke

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Purple Cane Road (2000)

by James Lee Burke

New Iberia Parish, Louisiana

Louisiana: 3/28

    Purple Cane Road is one of 24 volumes in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series- about a Louisiana sheriff's deputy who isn't afraid to use investigatory techniques that should probably get him fired.  This being Louisiana, he does, not, apparently get fired in this or any other book.  He is also obsessed with the solving the mystery of who murdered his Mom (aren't we all?)  This book weaves what can only be described as a familiar mix of police procedural and criminal deviousness, with a well-mannered hit man and a loose-cannon sidekick filling in the cast.  I listened to the Audiobook- which- like some other parts of the country, I like because the narrators do accents that I could not do in my head.

Orleans (2013) by Sherri L. Smith

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Orleans (2013)

by Sherri L. Smith

New Orleans, Louisiana 

Louisiana: 2/28

   This is a YA post-apocalyptic title, set in a New Orleans which has been disenfranchised from the rest of the country after a series of horrific hurricanes and the consequent emergence of a fever which infected all the remaining residents.  I could not believe that this book- which is almost entirely about tribes divided by blood types and the raids that go back and forth as people try to steal blood from one another.  The narration is split between a local teen and an outsider, Daniel a scientist with the military who is researching a cure for the fever.

   Again, I was startled that a book marketed to teens would contain so many scenes of cringe-inducing blood theft and minors being raped as a matter of course, but what do I know.

The Long-Legged Fly(1992) by James Sallis

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Long-Legged Fly (1992)

by James Sallis

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana 1/28

   I have adjusted my approach to completing the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America to reflect the fact that I am now driving less than I have been over the past decade.  I have less time to listen to Audiobooks in the car, and that makes me more selective about the titles I choose.  No more YA fiction or struggle narratives in Audiobook format, it's quicker and easier to just glide through the print copy since that category of book rarely takes more than an hour to read, but multiple hours to listen.  SO, while I read at one end of this chapter, Georgia, I'm listening at the other end: Louisiana.  And by Louisiana I'm mostly talking about New Orleans, which boasts 13 of the 28 titles in this subchapter.  Also I'd be willing to wager that many of the other Louisiana books set somewhere else on the map have significant action inside New Orleans.

   New Orleans is not a first-tier American literary city but it is certainly in the group after the first tier- I'd put in the same group as Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.  It's an interesting place, and it has historically drawn writing talent attracted to the anarchy of New Orleans.  The Long-Legged Fly, by underrated author James Sallis, is a great way to kick off the festivities.  Sallis is best known today as the author of Drive-which was made into the Ryan Gosling movie.  The Long-Legged Fly was his first novel, about African-American detective Lew Griffin.  Fly is anything but a conventional detective novel, taking place across the decades to give a fuller portrait of the detective.  This is a great example of how good the 1,001 Novels project can get- because I'd never heard of Sallis before reading this book, and now I think I'll go on and check out his other books. 

The Cherokee Rose (2015) by Tiya Miles

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts(2015)

by Tiya Miles

Diamon Hill, Georgia

Georgia: 8/26

  The subtitle, A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, made it hard to take The Cherokee Rose seriously, and there is no mistake that is a work of fiction written by a historian, but I can see why editor Susan Straight would pick it because it talks about a little mentioned group: people with mixed African American and Native American lineage.  As recounted by this book (and something I knew independently before reading this book, but presumably something the "average" reader would be learning for the first time by reading this book), the Cherokee tribe had gone a long way to assimilation before they were forced off their developed lands in the southeast and forced west at gun point.

  The conventional whoa-is-me narrative surrounding the trail of tears does a particular disservice to the Cherokee nation by focusing on the least fortunate among them.  Wealthy landowners, often of mixed Cherokee/white heritage (but identifying as Cherokee) were able to relocate with their possessions, including slaves, intact.    After the removal, some African American slaves with mixed parentage were left behind for various reasons, and then the convention became to identify as wholly African American.  Finally, in the 20th century, there was a double reckoning, first among the remaining Cherokee people in Oklahoma, who had taken affirmative steps to disenfranchise those of mixed African America/Cherokee blood AND by African Americans in the Southeast who "rediscovered" their native roots in the 20th and 21st century.

  Miles awkwardly accommodates all these experiences in the context of a novel about a wealthy but frivilous African American woman from Atlanta with "mixed roots" who buys the plantation of a famous Cherokee landowner who left as part of the removal process.  There, she reconnects with a childhood friend with her own racial identity issues and a Cherokee journalist who mixed racial identity.  There is also, yes, a ghost, and an appropriately menacing white local.  Besides the very real and interesting historical perspectives, The Cherokee Rose is basically an LGBT friendly Hallmark movie plot.

Hunchback (2025) by Saou Ichikawa

 Audiobook Review

Hunchback (2025)

by Saou Ichikawa

Translation by Polly Barton

  It's been a slow year for literary fiction- compared to last year- by this point in 2024 I'd read 14 books published in the current year.  This year the comparable number of books is four, and none of them were particularly memorable.  Thus, Hunchback arrived as a minor revelation, a book which boldly does what fiction ought to do- generate empathy and understanding for a point of view which has been previously neglected or ignored.  Ichikawa, who suffers from congenital myopathy, has written a book which redefine the way most readers think about the severely disabled.  It's not a rah-rah look at me I'm amazing situation, nor is it inordinately bleak.  Ichikawa's protagonist and narrator is wry, self-aware and very horny- a situation which is exacerbated by her side hustle of writing porn for the internet. 

  The plot is slight, as one would imagine in a book written from the POV of a person who is basically stuck in her room all day. Basically, the narrator wants to have sex and then there are consequences. I think it's likely to be a memorable read for most readers.  The Audiobook was great.

Bull Mountain (2015) by Brian Panowich

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bull Mountain (2015)

by Brian Panowich

Dahlonega, Georgia

Georgia: 7/26

   Brian Panowich had the audacity to open his debut novel- a genre thriller/noir, with a quote from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  I think I actually gasped when I heard it on the very decent Audiobook.  Of course, no serious author influenced by Cormac McCarthy would open their book with a quote from a Cormac McCarthy novel- it's ridiculous.  For a genre writer to do it, on the other hand, certainly telegraphs a literary level of ambition.  I'm not a huge detective fiction/regional noir guy outside of the Coen Brothers, but in the context of the 1,001 Novels project I love the detective fiction/noir titles and seek them out in Audiobook form.  

   To the author's credit there are some genuinely shocking passages that do, indeed, evoke some of Cormac McCarthy's roughest moments.  There's also some troubling content that seems positively retro by the "trigger warning" standards of contemporary authorial license to depict trauma in the context of genre fiction.  I can't really get into it without spoiling the major plot reveal, which is the only twist on a conventional shoot em up double cross type scenario involving a rural crime family which dominates the titular Bull Mountain, where they have evolved from moonshine to weed to meth over the course of three generations.  Along the way they have made common cause with a Jacksonville motorcycle gang with a sideline on what we would today call "ghost guns."  Enter a mysterious DEA agent with a dark secret, and you've got a book that won the International Thrillers Award for best debut.

  

Crossing Ebenezer Creek (2017) by Tanya Bolden

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Crossing Ebenezer Creek (2017)

by Tanya Bolden

Ebenezer Creek, Georgia

Georgia: 6/26

  Crossing Ebenezer Creek is a YA novel based on a horrific real-life event during Sherman's March to Georgia during the Civil War.  Basically, a corps commander under General Sherman, ironically named Jefferson C. Davis, destroyed a pontoon bridge that was crossing Ebenezer Creek in Georgia, allegedly because he was concerned about Confederate soldiers.  The destruction of the bridge stranded hundreds of freed slaves who were following the Union army on the wrong side of the river, and many (tens? hundreds?) drowned, those who remained on the far bank when the Confederates arrived were either killed or re-enslaved. 

   Pretty heavy subject for a YA novel, amiright?  But basically, the horror only happens at the end, and the rest of it is just a YA book written from the perspective of a freed slave following Sherman's army to Atlanta, so it gives a good sense of that experience, and it was interesting to learn about this little known historical atrocity in Civil War era Georgia- perpetrated by the Good Guys, no less!

The Darkest Child (2005) by Delores Phillips

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Darkest Child (2005)

by Delores Phillips

Cassville, Georgia

Georgia 5/26

   The Darkest Child is a real cabinet of horrors, about a light-skinned African American prostitute and her brood of 10 children, written from the perspective of one of the daughters.  It is a one-off by an author who never wrote another novel, I'm assuming based on that fact, that this was a thinly veiled work of auto-fiction.  If it wasn't, it is an incredibly fucked up work of imagination, if only because large portions of the plot revolve around the Mom forcing her various, very underage daughters, including the narrator, into acts of prostitution with men from the town.  Mom is, as one would expect, both mentally ill and a substance abuser- she is frequently depicted clawing invisible bugs from her face in times of distress.

   Anyway. I thought The Darkest Child was dark, indeed.

The Atlas of Reds and Blues (2019) by Devi S. Laskar

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Atlas of Reds and Blues (2019)

by Devi S. Laskar

Roswell Road and Johnson Ferry Road, Marietta, Georgia

Georgia: 4/26

   The Atlas of Reds and Blues is yet another novel on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America that is focused on the police shooting an innocent person for little or no reason.  I think I might be up to a half-dozen books with some variant of this plot out of the 200 novels I've read from this list.  So we are talking about 3 or 4 percent of this Library of America centering around police shootings of innocent citizens.  Here, the victim is the narrator, a Bengali-American woman living in suburban Georgia.  She is a Mom of three, she holds down a part-time "Mommy track" job at her local newspaper and her husband is away on business almost always.  The story is told in flashback perspective, which made it refreshing in a literary merit kind of way. 

  Unfortunately, her experience doesn't add much to the tapestry of American Lit this project represents.   This narrator is America, through and through, other than her complaining about the way she is treated by white people in suburban Georgia, you wouldn't even know she was Bengali-American.  The open, thoughtless racism she recounts had be checking the publication date to make sure I was reading something contemporary and not from the 1970's (though some of the racism was from the girlhood of this narrator.)

   And not specific to this book but to all of the narratives that involve people being shot by the cops.  Look, I've worked in criminal justice for my entire career. I am nothing is not empathetic to innocent victims of police brutality but what consistently amazes me about these narrative, fictional and real life, is that the victims never seem to understand what the Cops are thinking about before they shoot.   Like, don't you know it's a bad idea to make sudden movements and/or generally disregard what Cops are asking you to do, especially when they raise their voices?  People should have some awareness of how law enforcement reacts in stressful environments and try not to do those things.

Say Nothing(2018) by Patrick Radden Keefe

 The Top 100 Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

Say Nothing: 

A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018)

by Patrick Radden Keefe

#19

   I visited Belfast over the Christmas/New Years Holiday period last year.  While I was there, I took a "black cab" tour where a local takes you on a tour of both sides of Belfast- Catholic and Protestant.   You see plenty of murals, and it's clear that conflict by proxy continues- the Catholic side is filled with Palestinian flags and the Protestant side with Israeli flags.  Keefe's account of the "troubles" which is a period in Northern Ireland history that generally corresponds to the time between the 1960's and the dawn of the Good Friday agreement signed in 1998,  has been hailed as a classic, and its inclusion on the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century- I think as the only non-American history book on the list... and the recent Hulu television version.

   I listened to the Audio book, and it works well in that format, since much of the writing seems to come from transcribed interviews.  The major narrative thrust beyond documenting the historical facts involved (from the perspective of the Catholic side) involves the fate of a handful of "disappeared" including a single mother of seven children- Keefe's desire to "solve" these disappearances is the tension-inducing narrative device that elevates Say Nothing above an ambitious oral history.

Sounder (1969) by William H. Armstrong

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Sounder (1969)

by William H. Armstrong

Bartow County, Georgia

Georgia: 3/26

  I guess it isn't so hard to imagine at time when a book that uses the "n" word like a comma could not only be a children's book but also a prize winning children's book, is as the case with Sounder, about the son of share-cropper who is hauled off to a Georgia prison after he is accused of stealing a ham to feed his impoverished family.  Sounder is just a slip of a book, 116 pages, so it had that going for it, and also the fact that it wasn't a YA issue based novel published in the last decade, which are truly the most insufferable titles in the 1,001 Novels list. 

Dear Martin (2017) by Nic Stone

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dear Martin (2017)

by Nic Stone

Westbrook Academy, 

401 Lewis Braselton Road, Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia: 2/26

   Dear Martin is another YA title, by far my least favorite category in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.   This book is a good example of what I find so unlikeable about the whole category:  It's a book about a African-American high school student who is on scholarship at a prestigious Atlanta-area boarding school.   He has to deal with normal prep school kid stuff, then about 100 pages in, his best friend gets shot by an off-duty cop at a traffic intersection.  Then, of course, you get another hundred pages of him dealing with his emotions about the shooting.

 Despite this extremely adult subject, the rest of the book is written like the author is trying to PROTECT her audience from every other adult subject.  I.E.: Not one curse word, not one act of adult sexuality beyond holding hands and light kissing and no violence.  If you are going to write a novel about a teen being murdered in cold blood by an off-duty cop, doesn't the audience deserve the rest of adulthood?  According to the conventions of YA fiction, they do not.  Thus, it is a universe of books about rape without any sex, about murder without any violence and about complex emotions without complex characters.

Far From the Tree (2012) by Andrew Solomon

 New York Times 

100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Far From the Tree (2012)

by Andrew Solomon

#67

  This is a 41 hour Audiobook.  I have been trying to get through it since November 20th of last year.  I finally finished a couple days.  Four separate check-outs.  Truly a beast of an Audiobook and depressing as hell, but I totally get while it was included.  Solomon, known for his journalism and his memoir about depression tackles this project charting societal attitudes towards "children who are different than their parents" with characteristic ambition.  Each chapter was an average of eight hours.  He covers deafness, dwarfs. down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, rape, criminals and transgenders with book-ending chapters about his own experience growing up gay and later experience as a gay dad of a very modern family.

  As Solomon repeatedly acknowledges, his sample is limited by parents of these different sorts of children and the children themselves who want to sit down to extensive interviews with a nosy journalist asking all sorts of extremely private questions.  Solomon is right on top of his major theme: Which is that even allowing for the need of humans to find meaning in cruel fate, parents of these children are by in large grateful for their experience.   One group that was noticeably, noticeably absent from every single chapter of this book was any input from the "normal" siblings of the subjects of this book.  As one of those siblings, and a reader of this book, I was astonished how every chapter featured the parents DESCRIBING how the normal siblings felt or what they thought they felt, but that almost none of them actually were asked anything.

   One of the justifications, traditionally, for warehousing children in these various categories was that it would have a negative impact on the "normal" siblings, which means that in each chapter that viewpoint is explicitly ruled out and ignored.  In some chapters it makes sense- I would hope and expect the hearing and normal sized siblings of the deaf and dwarves would be able to make a go of it.  The next four chapters: down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and disability- which means basically vegetables, could have used some perspectives from the children in these families who have to watch their parent's lives irrevocably altered and generally ruined.  Of course, the parents can and do need to come to terms with it, but I would have liked to hear how out that ceaseless attention impacted the later lives of the siblings.

   The chapter on Prodigies is a clear outlier in that Prodigies carries a positive connotation, but paradoxically this is the one chapter where the parents often come off as manipulative and selfish. The last three chapters- rape, criminals and transgender were almost impossibly cruel in their details.  I think actually the transgender chapter was the hardest of all- hearing from parents who'd had their whole world destroyed because they lived in a small town and had a child who decided He wanted to be a She at a young age.  Published in 2012, I was still frequently shocked by the treatment experienced by the transgender families with young kids.  I certainly won't forget Far From the Tree.

Evensong (1999) by Gail Godwin

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Evensong (1999) 

by Gail Godwin

High Balsam, North Carolina

North Carolina: 18/20

  Another book about Church people in the mountains of Western North Carolina, only this time it's the classy sort.  Evensong is a good example of what you might call domestic/low stakes fiction with just enough professional engagement (the narrator is a female pastor of an Episcopalian congregation in the North Carolina mountains) to make it interesting.  I was never really worried about anything going on in this book, but every twenty pages or so the narrator/protagonist would make some kind of wry observations about the vagaries of married/professional life that I would chuckle.  Her Wikipedia says she has three National Book Award finalist nominations (1975, 1980 and 1983) but never got a win.  Seems about right?  Church people are boring people, by in large, that is something I've learned from books in the 1,001 Novels: A Libary of America.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) by Alice Walker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)

by Alice Walker

Eaton, Georgia

Georgia: 1/26

   I started the next two chapters of 1,001 Novels: A Library of America at once.  Chapter 4 is Mountain Home & Hollows, Smokies & Ozarks and it contains Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.   The Third Life of Grange Copeland is the first book from Chapter 5: Blues & Bayous, Deltas & Coasts and it contains books from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.   My sense is that Pennsylvania would have been a better fit in either the chapter with New York/New Jersey or the last chapter next to Viriginia, Maryland and DC but I haven't found a single interesting book yet in the Pennsylvania chapter and it is really slowing me down.

   Chapter 5, on the other hand, seems very promising, and more geographically aligned with the original sweep down the Atlantic coast that the first three Chapters seemed to promise.  I think I'll abandon Chapter 4 and do Chapter 5 first, then come back to 4.  

  Anyway, The Third Life of Grange Copeland was great- very dark but really good, and the first novel by Pultizer Prize winner Alice Walker.  The writing in Grange still seems fresh today- maybe more so today than it was back then.   Alice Walker is no stranger to the pages of this blog.  I read The Temple of My Familiar (1989) back in June of 2017- a book that was in and then out of the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list.   Of course, The Color Purple is a drop-dead banger- also read that back in 2017 as part of the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die list.   I guess maybe Walker isn't considered to be as sophisticated as Toni Morrison, or maybe she is just a victim of The Color Purple's cultural success.  

 Unlike The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar is a historical novel served straight up with little deviation from a consistent timeline and narrative perspective.  What's amazing about Grange Copeland is that it almost seems like they are living in the 19th century all the way up until voting rights activists make an appearance.  Grange Copeland was also another example of Walker's theme of a deep and absolute hatred between black and white people, which I've noticed in her other books. 

Horse People (2013)by Cary Holladay

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Horse People (2013)

by Cary Holladay 

Rapidan, Virginia

Virginia: 17/17

y

   Finally closing out the Virginia sub-chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project with Horse People, the impressively obscure novel-in-the-form-of-a-short-story-collection that I had to buy off Amazon because the Los Angeles Public Library system does not own a copy, and there is no Ebook, and there is no Audiobook.   Despite the title, the book isn't about "Horse People" in the sense that I understand that term which is "rich people who don't have to work and spend all their time and energy riding horses and talking about them."  Rather, the central figures seem to be a succession of what you might call the Viriginia version of poor white people, followed over generations, with the addition of a wealthier white woman who is more in line with what I expected from the use of that term. 

  I'd never heard of the author before- she's published nine books, all but one on a small or university press (this book was published by the University of Louisiana press, and her most lasting relationship is with the University of Ohio press) but it looks like she mostly works in the area of short stories. I didn't love the Viriginia chapter- Virginia didn't have the Kook factor of North Carolina and South Carolina, and I didn't relate to the locations like I did in Washington DC and Maryland.  Bye Virginia- doubt I will be back!

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Waubgeshig Rice

 Audiobook Review

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)

by Waubeshig Rice

  I think I discovered this book via the "recommended" tab in the Libby library app- which is pretty good if you are reading books in translation or literary fiction.  Moon of the Crusted Snow is a typical end of the world type book with the exception of the perspective, which is that of a Anishinabbe community living in northern Canada (not far northern Canada, just regular.) The protagonist is Evan Whitesky, a regular joe type who lives and works in his native village, a place relatively recently connected to the modern world via the wonders of the internet and power from a nearby hydroelectric project.  Evan and his tribe/band first know something is wrong when the cable goes out, then the power.  Winter is setting in, and deliveries from the outside world have ceased, when confirmation finally arrives from two residents attending college in the nearest patch of so-called "Civilization."

  Of all the many works of post-apocalyptic fiction I've read, I would be hard pressed to name another volume that is so low-stakes.  One of the funniest moments in the entire book comes when one of the village elders asks Whitesky to explain this term "apocalypse" means that the young people are bandying about, and when he defines it, she laughs and says that her people/his people have been through at least two others, the first when they were moved north, the second when the Canadians took their children away to Indian schools.  

  Danger arrives in the form of a white survivalist/homesteader type who follows the tracks of the returning college students, and the drama is in the form of the dwindling food reserves the tribe has socked away for just such an occasion.  

Nickel and Dimed (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

Nickel and Dimed (2001)

by Barbara Ehrenreich

#57

   I actually remember the release of this book- I was surprised to find out it happened in the 21st century.  For me, one of the consequences of the rise of Trump has been a corresponding decline in the empathy in the real people depicted by Ehrenreich in this book: white, minimum-wage, poorly educated, with a myriad of health and housing issues.  These are, of course, Trump voters and it's hard for me to muster any kind of enthusiasm for their plight.   Ehrenreich spends each chapter in a different chapter: She starts in Florida, working in a restaurant and briefly, in a motel.  Then she moves to Maine- where she cleans houses in and around Portland.  She ends up in Minneapolis working in Walmart where she reveals that it was essentially impossible for her to get by on a minimum wage salary.

  In 2025, it is hard to imagine that anyone would feel bad for these future Trump supporters.  Ehrenreich is careful to keep her depictions positive- you don't hear any racist slurs or witness any of the kind of disgusting (spitting in customers food) type behavior that makes me reluctant to even eat at many sit down chain restaurants. 

  It's also worth noting that 25 years on and after eight years of Obama and four of Biden, no one has done anything to help these folks except by raising the minimum wage. It occurs to me that the best solution might be to hand the kitchen work and house cleaning over to robots and pay folks who can't hack it some kind of minimum amount of money to provide for food and housing.  The cost of shitty housing is one facet of Ehrenreich's poor people cos-play that stood out to me- because 25 years later it is still true.  Poor people often end up spending as much as a mortgage payment to stay by the day and week at SRO type motels and other temporary living arrangements which become permanent. 

  Surely, the need to provide more affordable housing options (or workforce housing, as they call it in some parts of the country) is a solution that all can agree upon.

Oromay (1983) by Baalu Girma

 Book Review

Oromay (1983)

by Baalu Girma

   Oromay is an Amharic language novel written by a member of the Ethiopian Communist elite circa 1980.  It proved, let us say, controversial in his native Ethiopia, where the Communist Derg were not known for their sense of humor, and where Girma was allegedly murdered by said Communist government of which he was a member.  Easy come, easy go! Oromay is about the lengthy, unsuccessful and ultimately pointless war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Historically, Eritrea was a province of the Ethiopian empire, and independence was tied to the Italian colonization of the area (the title of the novel is an Ethiopianisation of an Italian expression), but it was basically a decades long civil war that Ethiopia eventually lost.

   In this particular book, Girma covers one unsuccessful campaign among what had to be dozens, and adds an interesting entry to the shelf of books set in 20th century Communist dictatorships.  Honestly, the Ethiopian Communists don't sound half bad, so far as books like this one go. 

The Argonauts (2015) by Maggie Nelson

100 Best Books of the 21st Century- New York Times

The Argonauts (2015)

by Maggie Nelson

#45

  The Non-fiction portion of the New York Times 1001 Best Books of the 21st Century list should be subtitled, "How the Left Lost the Culture War," because all of these titles celebrate and draw attention to diversity, and different types of diversity, and it is exactly what the right is targeting when the eliminate "DEI" initiatives.   I've written on this blog about the importance I place on diversity and different viewpoints, and while I personally adhere to that view, it's also hard not to see things from the other side, particularly since the other side is in power and is doing whatever they want in that department.

   And of course, Maggie Nelson, is no doubt appalled beyond belief by Trump and Trumpism, although there are elements of her reference points which might suggest a post-modern-like joy at the bare face of evil power as it relates to issues like transgenderism and queerness generally.  At the same time, Nelson: a queer, sex positive lesbian in a relationship with a f2m/genderfluid artist (Harry Dodge), writing a book about motherhood and sexuality, is like, exhibit "A" in what the right has SUCCESFULLY critiqued about the left. 

  I imagine a member of the MAGA movement would read three pages of The Argonauts and as dismiss it as deviant trash, and it is the book that the New York Times represents as the 45th best book of this century.  Good for Nelson, Good for the Times, bad for the left and bad for the electoral potential of the Democrats in the middle of the 21st century.

Victorian Psycho (2025) by Virginia Feito

 Book Review

Victorian Psycho (2025)

by Virginia Feito

  I swear the E-book edition I checked out from the library managed to inform me that this book was already set to become "a major motion picture featuring Margaret Qualley" which seems almost impossible considering it just got released in the UK and hasn't yet been published over here, but such is the way of publishing rights- they can be sold before the book is even written- a la the Godfather by Mario Puzo which was under contract for a movie before Puzo ever set pen to paper.  Victorian Psycho is pretty much what the title promises, a Victorian-era riff on American Psycho with the nepo baby Investment Banker replaced by a Victorian governess.  What Victorian Psycho sadly lacks is any sort of narrative ambition, we learn, yes, that the Governess has had a difficult upbringing (who didn't, back then?)  The violent bits aren't particularly memorable.   The supporting cast, aka the wealthy family who hires this lady to work with them, are little more than collections of narrative conventions about the Victorians. In short, I was underwhelmed.  I will be interested to see the film.

The Unworthy(2025) by Agustina Bazterrica

 Book Review

The Unworthy (2025)

by Agustina Bazterrica

    I was excited for his novel by Bazterrica, author of the excellent Tender is the Flesh and a slightly less excellent but still very good collection of short stories.  The description had me drooling- promising a tale that combined dystopic lit and religious obsession.  To be fair, Bazterrica does indeed deliver on the promise, but in extremely minimal fashion, at 192 pages The Unworthy is in line with other recent works of literary fiction- short is in, unless it's an extremely long book, but I really wanted more.  The whole deal here is that this one of those books where the protagonist is keeping a journal a la Anne Frank- which, honestly, came to mind more than once while I was reading The Unworthy,  it's a technique that goes hand-in-hand with the development of the novel as an art form- Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, one of the first novels was an epistolary novel.  In that sense, it works that this book is so short, it's hard to imagine this protagonist getting deep into details when she is writing with ink she makes out of mashed up bugs.  Mashed up bugs, in fact, feature prominently, with the girls in the novel subsisting largely on a diet of crickets.  Not ground up cricket protein powder but actual crickets.   Ultimately, I thought The Unworthy was good but it didn't live up to my perhaps unrealistic expectations. 

The Watermark (2025) by Sam Mills

 Book Review

The Watermark (2025)

by Sam Mills

    I read about this book in the Guardian and it looked interesting so I checked out the E-edition from the library.  Sad to find out at the end that the print version has a "graphic novel" section that is simply translated into prose in the E-book.   Ultimately though I found the mechanics of the plot more interesting than the book itself, about two modern-day star-crossed lovers (a low achieving, well educated hipster and his morose artist girlfriend/soulmate) who are entrapped by a writer of literary fiction by use of a tea to become characters in his, and others, books.   While I won't be thinking about the characters or what happened in the book, the idea of these people being trapped as characters in a series of different novels, written by different authors, was really interesting and I can't remember reading anything along these lines that took it through so many levels- for a literary Inception type impact on the reader.   I wish the characters themselves were more interesting but five stars for the idea.

The Lost Steps (1953) by Alejo Carpentier

 Audiobook Review

The Lost Steps (1953)

by Alejo Carpentier

   I read about The Lost Steps in Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank- a book about the life of the 20th century novel.  The Lost Steps struck me as interesting- a pre/proto-magical realism work of Latin American fiction, about a guy living in an American city (New York?) who is dispatched by a museum to the wilds of Brazil to locate the "oldest instruments" in the western hemisphere.  Fortunately, Penguin just published a new translation (2023) done by Adrian Nathan West, who also translated the excellent book by Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World.  AND Penguin also did an Audiobook version, which is what I checked out from the library.

   I thought there were many memorable passages in The Lost Steps, and I enjoyed this book start to finish.  The protagonist is a frustrated composer working in advertising and he has a very existentialist vibe.  His adventures in Brazil are fun and the author and the protagonist stay away from racist proclamations about the indigenous Brazilians they encounter, which is welcome for a book from 1953.  Particularly memorable were his rhapsodic, Proustian passages about his relationship with music- again, unusual for fiction published in the early 1950's.  The Lost Steps maintained a modern feeling from start to finish and fans of Latin American lit from the first Golden Age should give this book a chance.

Plum Bun (1925) by Jesi Redmon Fauset

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Plum Bun: A Novel Without A Moral (1925)

by Jesi Redmon Fauset

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: 6/27

   I've dramatically slowed down on the pace of 1,001 Novels: A Library of American because of less job-related driving (Audiobooks) and more job-related work (reading and writing and generally running around more).   Still, I was excited to listen to Plum Bun: A Novel Without A Moral which is a forgotten classic from a key (but largely forgotten) member of the Harlem Renaissance, Jesi Redmon Fauset.  Plum Bun is a novel about the experience of "passing" where (in this context) an African-American, usually a woman, abandons her racial identity in favor of living among white people.   It's a phenomenon that is best demonstrated in Nella Larsen's 1929 novel, Passing and the introduction makes a point of asking why the canon only includes one such tale.  From my perspective, it's understandable.  Larsen's book is centered around a woman who marries a white man who believes her to be white, and the resulting action is memorable and tragic.  

  In Plum Bun, on the on the hand, protagonist Angela Murray carefully avoids such a situation and generally speaking lives more like an existentialist hero- avoiding close attachments while yearning for them at the same time- than a heroine in a novel published in the 1920's in the US.  Plum Bun is also a book that seems somewhat randomly assigned to Philadelphia because Angela Murray grew up there.  Almost the entire book is set in New York City, and New York City is really the only place that the Author puts across to the reader- I didn't get much of a sense of Philadelphia at all beyond her childhood memories of "passing" with her mother, who was also light-skinned. 

Out in the Open (2017) by Jesus Carrasco

 Book Review

Out in the Open (2017)

by Jesus Carrasco

Translated by Margaret Jill Costa

   I found this book via the Libby library app via the "other books like this one" feature, which is especially useful if you are reading a type of book and want to read other books like it but don't know much about that area.  Here, I was reading another book translated from Spanish and Out in the Open popped up.  The story is about a child fleeing an abusive situation in an isolated environment. I had in mind the desert southwest or northern Mexico, though there are no place names or even personal names to help pin down the location or specific environment.  It's bleak, to be sure, but to call it "dystopian" as does the libby editorial copy seems a bit much.  Not every child wandering around in a featureless desert is living in a dystopia. 

The Ways of Wolf(2017) by James Carlos Blake

 Audiobook Review

The Ways of the Wolf (2017)

by James Carlos Blake

   The New York Times obituary for noir/crime writer James Carlos Blake caught by attention by not only comparing him to Cormac McCarthy but also by using this sub-header: "His savage fiction, set in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, demonstrated his belief that “violence is the most elemental truth of life."   The fact that I'd never heard of him despite being a huge fan or McCarthy and decently well-versed in the world of crime fiction through friends & acquaintances is yet another example of how useful the New York Times obituary section can be for picking up new books to read.   Since he was a genre writer I thought I'd look for an Audiobook  but the only library available audiobook was the fifth volume in his Wolf family saga, about an Anglo-Texas cross-border family immersed in "the shade trade"- mostly selling guns to cartels as far as I can tell.

    Anyway, since I heard about Blake from a New York Times obituary, I'm not going to act like I'm on to anything here. I'm surprised there aren't Audiobooks available for all his titles.  I'm def going to look for his actual books when I am bookstores going forward.

Season of the Swamp (2024) by Yuri Herrera

 Book Review

Season of the Swamp (2024)

by Yuri Herrera

Translated by Lisa Dillman

    I checked out the e-book edition of Season of the Swamp by Mexican author Yuri Herrera based on the New York Times description- not necessarily the review, which was mixed, but the description, which promised a book about Mexican nationalist leader Benito Juarez and his time in exile in New Orleans- of all places- a time about which he spoke little and truly is one of those historical episodes which provides a nucleus for a potentially great work of fiction.  I read it a while back but wasn't compared to write this post until I saw this book was named as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize "best fiction" category, alongside James by Percival Everett, All Fours by Miranda July, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle and Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet. 

     As it turns out, Juarez doesn't get up to much in New Orleans, which is why the LA Times nomination surprised me, surely "something happens" is a prerequisite for a best-book of the year award.  Here, little happens except Juarez experiencing various aspects of life in New Orleans with his buddies.   The character of Juarez is of course sensitive to the vagaries of race in ante-bellum New Orleans.  He was the first indigenous President of a North American country and at several points he or a companion is forced to explain to an on-looker that Juarez is not "just" an Indian (in the parlance of the times).   Despite being set in the mid 19th century, Juarez has all the characteristics of a modernist artist-in-exile character and if you had told me Season of the Swamp had been set in the early 20th century I might not have been able to tell the difference. 

    

  

Gliff (2025) by Ali Smith

 Book Review

Gliff (2025)

by Ali Smith

   I try to keep up with Scottish author Ali Smith.  She is both highly regarded in the literary world, with a slew of Booker shortlisting's (2001, 2005, 2014 and 2016) and shelf full with minor literary awards.  Smith is prolific for a writer of literary fiction, averaging a new book every couple of years.  I skipped her four volume cycle about the seasons- my least favorite literary motif, it slightly clips "the difficulties of young motherhood" in that department.  I did, however, pick-up Gliff, her latest, since it promised a post-apocalyptic milieu (yay!) seen through the eyes of a child (sigh).   The 1,001 Novels: A Library of America has pumped so full of YA lit and adult books written from the perspective of a child that I've developed a cogent body of criticisms regarding these books and their motifs. 

   Specifically, these books (YA books and those adult books written from the perspective of children) feature narrators and protagonists who can't go anywhere and can't do anything, and most every book that fits this description involves a child or "young adult" who is stuck somewhere and can't do anything about it but wants to "get out." The book is then about whether they escape their sad surroundings or fail to do so and why.  

   Gliff fits this description- the characters are a pair of siblings, the protagonist is the elder sibling, a boy, who have been rendered "unverifiable"- the dystopian/novel equivalent of being an illegal alien in this future.. England? Scotland?  Unverifiability has nothing to do with race or immigration status, but seems to have been applied to everyone who broadly disagrees with the current government.  Unlike most YA titles, the language in Gliff is interesting- I found myself looking up words and phrases online, trying to make sense of what Smith was talking about.  At least, in this way, Smith has created a work far different than the usual simple-minded YA dystopian tropes.  However, in another, more important (for this reader anyway) Smith has done nothing unusual in her plotting, which made me wonder whether she is trying for some kind of commercial success with Gliff- a book for the punters, in her mind, perhaps.  

    Having read the book, I don't know. 

Between the World and Me (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates

 Audiobook Review

Between the World and Me (2015)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times): #36

  My tour through the non-fiction picks on the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times continues with #36, Between the World and Me by journalist/author Ta-Nehisi Coates.  It reminded me very much of another book on this list, Citizen by Claudia Rankine (#34).  Both books are first-person works of non-fiction about the experience of being an "African-American body" and the daily threats that such a person faces.  I found value in both books, even though my career as a criminal defense attorney has afforded me many moments of contemplation over the impact of the criminal justice system on the bodies of its subjects.  At the same time, I feel like the adulation of books like this one as well as Citizen have something to do with the fact that Donald Trump won a second term as President.

  If you assume that the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century represents, broadly, the Democratic perspective on the world, you might also look for ideas as to where they/we went wrong in convincing normal Americans to support "the good guys."   My thought, after reading both Between the World  and Citizen, is that Democrats/the left, spends their time lambasting the grievance/identity based politics of the right, while at the same time elevating voices from the left with the exact same perspective.  What are books like Between the World and Me and Citizen if they are not both based on grievances (justified, sure) and identity. 

  At the same time, personally, outside of the context of national politics, the African American non-fiction section of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list has really given me thought about how hostile an environment the day-to-day experience of living in this country is for any human being with black skin.

Cold Crematorium (2023) by József Debreczeni

 Audiobook Review

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz (2023)

by József Debreczeni

   This Holocaust memoir written by a Hungarian-Jewish author about his time in Auschwitz wasn't translated into English until 2023.  Since then it's garnered interest and acclaim, and when I heard about it late last year I immediately put the Audiobook onto my Libby Audiobook Library App.  The Hungarian Jews were one of the last groups from Central Europe to be deported en masse to the Nazi death camps courtesy of their recalicitant pro-Nazi government.  By the time the deportations got going, it was close to the end of the war which meant a couple things.  First, Hungarian Jews stood a better chance of surviving their ordeal because it started it much later than it did for German or Polish Jews.  Second, the later the war progressed, the more important it became for the Germans to extract free labor from the camp inmates, which led to a rough set of checks and balances and impetus other than wholesale extermination.  

  One fact that emerges time and time again from Holocaust lit is the dynamic where a trainload of folks shows up at a concentration camp and there is an immediate cull, some are sent directly to the gas chambers and others are sent to the work camps.  This is, for example, what happened to Sophie in the book Sophie's Choice: she is allowed to keep one of her two children during the initial cull.   Thus, the amount of gassing is directly related to the frequent arrival of new trainloads of undesirables.   In the absence of new arrivals the concentration camp experience was closer to your garden-variety 20th century totalitarian work camp: terrible conditions but also a desire at some level for the inmates to work productively at something. 

   This then, is a book about working at a concentration camp, and it is memorable because Debreczeni has a background in journalism and an eye for detail.  I'll never think about underwear the same ever again.

Heathen Valley (1962) by Romulus Linney

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Heathen Valley (1962)

by Romulus Linney

Valle Crucis, North Carolina

North Carolina: 17/20

    Heathen Valley is a strange (certainly by the standards of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America) pick, a novel based on a true story about the Protestant mission in the North Carolina Appalachians,  founded by an Episcopalian bishop who went on to be the highest ranked protestant to convert to Roman Catholicism.  Heathen Valley is based on a true story.  The Bishop in question is Levi Silliman Ives.  Literary fiction about religion is so rare that the novelty value is often enough to keep me interested, such was the case here, as the eponymous Heathen Valley itself, which is presented as a part of America without organized religion of any kind.  So much of the United States was founded directly by religious participants that an America without religion almost seems impossible.  

  However, as Heathen Valley depicts, parts of the Appalachians were founded without sanction from secular or religious authorities, leaving its residents without an organized religious presence.