Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Best Books Read in 2016



Of the 38 books I finished in 2016, below are the top five in four categories, fiction, non-fiction, biography/autobiography and honorable mention.  I would love to know your 2016 favorites, so please leave a comment. 

FICTION






(Click on Read More Below for Non-Fiction, Biography/Autobiography & Honorable Mention)

The Sport of Kings: A Novel by C. E. Morgan



The Sport of Kings is not about horseracing, it is about the gravity of pedigree, told within the context of several generations of Kentucky families (from the 1800’s to present day), and centered on a white landowner family and on the descendants of black slaves.

The book begins with Henry Forge Sr. homeschooling his son Henry Jr. on a mindset and culture that persist in our society like an incurable cancer – what Forge characterized as the importance of proper breeding and the superiority of the white man, as evidenced by his family’s heritage. Reading Henry Forge Sr.’s (Morgan’s) many oratories on these topics was simultaneously nauseating and intriguing.

The young Henry Forge becomes so consumed with the issue of lineage he eventually transitions the family corn farm to a horse farm to pursue an almost Frankensteining dedication to creating the perfect racehorse, and his own perfect human offspring.  He marries/mates a woman from the “right” family, and soon they produce a child, Henrietta. But time proves mom is a little too human, signaling to Henry her genes need to be bred out of their daughter to improve the bloodline. And yes, it is as sick as it sounds. Henrietta becomes the perfect pupil and victim of her father’s dogma and the privilege and entitlement that comes with the Forge brand. Although her mother’s humanity eventually surfaces in Henrietta, consistent with the theme for this book, author Morgan (pictured) doesn’t let any good come of it.  

(Click on Read More Below)

A Love Letter to Texas Women by Sarah Bird



In this pretty little gift book, Bird, in her uniquely charming and entertaining style, pays short but sweet tribute to iconic Texas women so recognizable they don’t even need last names, Lady Bird, Ann, Laura, Molly, Barbara, and to the rest of us Texas gals who are members of the noble club of women with unmatched grit and good hair.

Like many of the fabulous women who prop up the Lone Star, Bird wasn’t born in Texas, but she got here as soon as she could - as if there’s a special magnetic force pulling the best of our gender within the bounds of our huge, crazy, wonderful state of mind.

So here’s your unofficial official yellow rose Ms. Bird. Consider yourself Texas-womanized!

What I'm Reading Now


(All book descriptions are from Goodreads)

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
From a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly 
Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.

I Loved Her in the Movies by Robert Wagner
In a career that has spanned more than sixty years Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and how their specific emotional and dramatic chemistries affected the choices they made as actresses as well as the choices they made as women.

In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images?

Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Leslie Bennetts
Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition and her massive insecurities.


"Finding God at the bottom of all of our barrels" by Judy Knotts




Judy earned her doctorate in Educational Administration at Virginia Tech, studied at the University of Oxford, served as a National Advisory Board Member for Harvard University’s Principals’ Center, co-authored the book, Growing Wisdom, Growing Wonder, pens a religious column for the Austin American-Statesman, and is a cherished friend. The below was reprinted with permission.

This was dropped in my lap as I cruised along in my newly leased upscale, all-powerful, shiny vehicle that knows more than I do. The radio was doing its thing in the background. It was just white noise until these words leaped out at me - “You will find God in the bottom of the barrel.”

Barrel?  What barrel - yesterday’s barrel, today’s barrel?  Whose  barrel?  The bottom of my barrel? As I battle bronchitis for four weeks? As I grieve for my younger brother by five  years who died last month? As I realize that my son is more fragile than I am as a senior citizen. Will I find God here?

The bottom of your barrel? As I hear about a house that has not sold and the family is frantic. As I witness friends dueling with political swords and wounding each other gravely. As I talk to a woman in public housing who juggles bills like a Las Vegas dealer trying to decide who gets attention — the phone company, the utility company, the empty dog dish? Will I find God here?

The bottom of our barrel? As I realize that there is a man without legs who lives under the overpass, alone with his cardboard bed and Bible. As I watch once joyful relationships fade and die. As I try to navigate our new world with a divided nation, violence erupting in cities, and foreign countries fighting over land, religious dominance and economic control. Will I find God  here?

I am a master of out of sight, out of mind. Denial and escape are secret coping mechanisms for me and many of us, I suspect. In an imagined rain barrel full of water, the things that rise to the top grab my attention. These are the buoyant beautiful things that make me smile. So, I buy Christmas presents - toys for my young grandchildren and the new Glimmer Strings LED lights for the rest of the family. I relish Christmas carols and sing along. I bask in the banks of poinsettias and sparkling trees in church surrounding the manger scene. These are the easy things to grab and hold onto from my barrel.

For me, for you, for us, the buoyant beautiful things that float to the top of a rain barrel are much the same - new gadgets, sports, pets, parties, friends and family, entertainment, laughter, home, vehicles, food, celebrations, and the Internet.

Am I messing around with these lovelies floating to the top because I am reluctant to dig deeper to the bottom of the barrel where the force of gravity drags down things with weight? Here debris settles, the muck is thick, and everything is not so lovely. If I am brave enough to dig with bare hands, will I see the ugliness, the pain, the anger, the loneliness of the people unlike me and like me at the bottom? Will I see God as promised on the radio?

I know I avoid peering into the darkness at the bottom of the barrel because it is just too much to bear.  It demands excruciating focus on things I’d rather dismiss as not mine.  Still I hear the man on the radio saying: “You will find God in the bottom of the barrel” so I push myself and wonder:

Why did I walk past the person sleeping on the sidewalk with a bare foot sticking out of a dirty blanket while I hurried past to an upscale restaurant doing nothing, not even covering the foot in the freezing air?

Why did I hunker down at home and fret about my own minor illness, forgetting about those in hospitals, nursing homes and hospice  facilities?

Why did I paper over my personal failings while noticing and criticizing the arrogance and errors of other?

Why did I let impermanent things, the gifts, the lights and the music woo me into mere   amusement?

Still I’m trying. So I dig down almost to the bottom of the barrels - yours, mine, ours - finding rubble, wreckage, agony, despair, sickness, injury, brokenness, filth, lies, selfishness, abandonment and trash.

Now I’m digging deeper where there is guilt, forgiveness and hope. And I’m finding God.



Sunday, December 18, 2016

Cluster Critiques


The Girls: A Novel by Emma Cline

The Girls is not so loosely tied to one of the most shocking crimes of the century, the Manson Family killings, delving in an especially mysterious aspect of the murders – the "family" of girls who acted as though hypnotized by their crazy, charismatic leader, Charles Manson. This book is written quite well in total, and exquisitely in sections, and you enter the story knowing people are going to die, and dying to know why.   

Evie Boyd is 14 in 1967, stuck in the tar pit of pubescence, and desperate for something to take her away from her mother who is untethered by divorce. And then she chances upon a group of young girls flush with careless allure – the fictionalized “Manson girls”. Evie senses the ambiance of tragedy at the hippy ranch where the girls and their charlatan of trust Russell live, but the gravity of idealism won’t let her leave. We’ve all been there haven’t we? Somewhere doing something we know we shouldn’t be doing, and then stayed a little past ugly because we wanted so much to believe it was okay?  

What happens to Evie Boyd? Did she make it out like we? Read The Girls.


Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett’s newest book Commonwealth feels like the domestic, protracted version of two of her other best sellers, Bel Canto and State of Wonder, both of which take place in South America and span short periods of time. It is full of intrigue, great characters, identifiable relationships, and is gorgeously written. But unlike those two quartos, Commonwealth is set in Virginia and stretches out over 50 years.

A couple of couple friends become family, but not in a good way when they cross the line to cheat with each other. Then everything going forward hinges on that one heat of passion decision, and upon another heart wrenching event Patchett cleverly throws into the mix.  Commonwealth is about what happens when families bend but don't’ break – desperately trying to maintain relationships within the context of deceit, resentment, conflicting values and desperation - and therein lies the universal appeal. And although it sometimes feels painfully familiar, we read on because we want to see the characters triumph over the seemingly unstoppable trajectory of their lives.  There are wins and there are losses, and they learn, and they do not learn, and we are satisfied because that is our reality as well. 

I feel for Ms. Patchett, having everything you write compared to the ostensibly unsurpassable Bel Canto. So I won’t even say it.


This Is Your Brain on Parasites by Kathleen McAuliffe

What if I told you that your personality, decisions and emotions may be controlled by the parasites in your body? This Is Your Brain on Parasites, which is about the history and study of parasites, is going to be one of my favorites of 2016 - which probably speaks more to my fascination with medical science than the universal value of this book. 

McAuliffe, a science and health journalist for Atlantic, New York Times, Discover, and Smithsonian, makes it clear in the preface of her book that parasitology is a comparatively young science. But she and recent studies also demonstrate they are in fact much more powerful than we imagine. When you consider malaria alone has killed half the people who ever walked the earth, parasites are a pretty big deal.

McAuliffe goes way out on the scientific limb to entertain us, but then society historically poo-poos new discoveries – and the new science McAuliffe talks primarily about in this book is that which suggest parasites, through the same evolution that taught us to walk upright, has put parasites into the drivers seat of practically everything, including us – basically by sheer numbers but also through some sci-fi-sounding evolution. For example parasites that embed in mice brains to cause them to run in front of cats (and thus get eaten) because the parasites can only procreate in cat's guts. And then there’s the parasite that causes crickets to commit suicide by jumping into water because that parasite must procreate in water. McAuliffe and some highly respected scientist have even made the leap to suggest that parasites may be the cause of some mental illnesses, like autism and schizophrenia.

The next time you’re in a bookstore, just read the book preface. I dare you.


Loner by Teddy Wayne

Teddy Wayne’s vocabulary left me breathless and feeling a little stupid but pleasantly challenged. The dude can spin a phrase and is a pretty good storyteller too, deliciously and effectively making us think we know what is going on when we really don’t.

David Federman is brilliant, but socially uncomfortable - VERY socially uncomfortable, yet desperate to fit in his first year at Harvard. He’s the guy that tries too hard – not quite weird enough to totally write off, but sort of the pitiful, adopted member of his dorm pack, headed by the focus of his interest, beautiful Veronica. Nobody cares what David says or does because he has no status. And although he is willing to suck up and even fake a love relationship in a desperate attempt to fit in and to be closer to Veronica, David’s resentment at being undervalued by what he sees as a culture of spoiled WASP kids is bubbling up to a dangerous level. And then we realize David isn’t the only slightly psychopathic member of the group.

You’ll enjoy this tableau of asininity, just plan on looking up lots of words as Wayne dazzles us with his protracted palaver.


The Risen: A Novel by Ron Rash

This is a really short book about two brothers reflecting on their teenage relationship with and the mysterious disappearance of a girlfriend during the 1969 “summer of free love”.  One brother is driven and ambitious, the other impulsive and gullible – both are dominated by their harsh and dictatorial physician grandfather. One becomes a doctor, one becomes a drunk.  And then 30 years later the girl, Ligeia, comes back – liberated from a hidden grave by a flood, her body washes up on the banks of the river where she and the two brothers once drank, had sex, did drugs and pondered life.   

Author Ron Rash does a good job telling a suspenseful story through the characters, leading us slowly to believe one brother or the other committed the murder, and eventually revealing a surprise ending– all the while showing how one teen summer can shape lives forever. 

The Risen is a worthy read.