Life Off Headset

I actually got quite a lot of reading done in July. I had books that I was really excited to read with some really powerful, forward moving narratives.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – 6h 24m. Novel about light skinned black twins, one of whom leaves their small Louisiana town and passes for white, and the other who returns home with a dark skinned daughter. It’s an intergenerational story. There is so much to unpack in this book about how our past is part of us, even when we re-invent ourselves. Particularly heavy is the idea of what burdens can you escape, and which ones you carry with you always especially when you are black. I also found the relationships between the characters so fascinating, and how the most “successful” couples were the ones that couldn’t get married.

Lady Be Good by Meridith Duran – 5h 32m. So one of my not so guilty pleasures is reading romance novels, mostly historical romances. I like the escapism of knowing there is a going to be happily ever after at the end, and the big emotions, that seem out of date to write about these days. I do tend to be pretty picky about which romance novels I read, though. The writing has to be smart, but not too anachronistic, and the plots not too ridiculous. The women have to be able to save themselves and the heroes can be a little tortured, but not so much that they are unkind or cliched. I had actually read this book before, but I didn’t remember that until about a third of the way through the book. But it still holds up. It’s about Lilah who works at an auction house, and Viscount Palmer, who strikes a deal with her to help him catch a crazy stalker. The plot is just minimal enough of a framework for some really great characters.

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman – audio book read by Michael Sheen. The is the second book in the Book of Dust Trilogy. Like all second books in a trilogy, it is a little unsatisfying in that you still don’t know where the story is going. But it was a good adventure and some really beautiful musings about growing up and growing apart from those you love.

Quozl by Alan Dean Foster – Hard copy, so no reading stats. Over ten years ago, my husband and I did a book swap of our favorite books as teenagers. I had him read Jane Eyre; he handed me this book. I finally got around to reading this dog-eared copy. Well, mostly. The first chapter is missing half its pages. (But then I asked myself – are the first fifteen pages of a book really that important?). Anyway it’s a story of a group of aliens that come to America and secretly settle in Idaho. It was slow to start (which I guess explains why it took me ten years to read it), but the story ended up being quite far reaching. It’s a little unsubtle in it’s criticism of human foibles, but was entertaining nonethe less. I realize that one thing I like about hard copies of books is being able to physically hold my progress in my hands.

Last Boat out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese who Fled Mao’s Revolution by Helen Zia – 11h 37m. I picked up this book because I wanted to read a book about some part of Asian history. This non fiction book tells the story of four people who grow up as Shanghai falls to the Communists, and about each of their survival paths. I am embarrassed to say that even though my parents are from Taiwan, I know very little about the history of how Chiang Kai Shek came to bring his soldiers there and terrorized the people of the island. That is actually a very small part of the book, but I found it fascinating. I was struck by how all these events are not so far removed from us today. I mean the events in the book took place around the time my mother was born. Also – funny is that despite the different paths the people in the book took to survival, they all somehow ended up in the United States eventually. I’ve long been fascinated with stories of immigration and the things that lead people to uproot their lives and start somewhere new.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood – 6h 58m. Sequel to the Handmaid’s Tale. This was definitely less cerebral than the Handmaid’s Tale, much more plot driven. I could definitely tell that it was written, as Atwood says, as a response to people wondering what happens at the end of Handmaid’s Tale. But I feel like that question mark at the end of the first book was what made it so successfully unsettling.

All Our Wrongs Today by Elan Mastai – Audio book read by author. An average (or really slightly less than average) son of a brilliant scientist living in a slick Utopian version of the present uses his father’s time machine to travel back in time and ends up changing the course of things to our very pedestrian present. It was trippy and a little mind bending with the concepts of time travel and changing futures, but it had a lot of humour, heart and beautiful things in it, about realizing how the things that are important should be important no matter what world we live in. It was a fun listen, and the end really choked me up.

I didn’t get as much reading done in June as I had hoped. I think I need to be better at using reading to fill time rather than scrolling the internet. But still, some good reads. I spent much of my June reading life thinking about the advantages that I have and how hard it must be to navigate in a world in which you don’t fit into the dominant image of what a successful person looks like.

White Fragility by Robin D’Angelo – (6h 22m). I had placed this book on my holds list months ago, and ironically it came off my holds list the day George Floyd was killed. I have mixed feelings about this book in that I feel like the people who are likely to read it, probably are those who are already open to its ideas, and thus least likely to need to read it. The concept of the book feels a little like “preaching to the choir.” Also, D’Angelo defines “racism” and “white supremacy” in a way that neutralizes them, I think in an attempt to make them inclusive terms rather than divisive terms. I’m not sure that rhetoric works, though.

Reading this book is likely to be a very personal experience, and I don’t know that it’s a book one should recommend that others read- you kind of have to come to it yourself. I’m not white, but a lot of what D’Angelo writes about does hit home for me both as a POC and as a “model minority”. What I found compelling is how she asks us to recognize white as a race, recognize the implications of there being a dominant culture in this country, and recognize that those in the minority cannot enact change without the help of those in power. I wanted the book to be more useful than it was, though, I guess that actionable items was not the point of the book. It is meant to be a starting point. There was a great reading/ resource list at the back of the book, however.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin – (time – didn’t track). I remember my brother reading this book when we were little and he raved about it. It was a smart, fun read. More timely than I would have expected.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson – (3h 31 mins). This time/narrative bending book about three black families in Brooklyn was another hold that came through at a opportune point. Interestingly my friend was talking to me about the Tulsa race riots the day before I started reading this, and the Tulsa race riots played a formative part of the life of one family in this book. Indeed, I think a lot of this book is about how our past influences and informs our present, no matter how much we think we can strike out on our own and leave our family behind. At the same time, it is difficult to overcome generations of systemic racism and challenges without other people having faith in you. As always, when I read books, the way parenthood plays out in them resonate with me the most. I loved this quote, the father’s thoughts at a coming of age ceremony, and the encapsulation of the passage of time and stages:

“But what is the father of the child supposed to do with his hands? His big open hands. Where were they supposed to go when all they wanted was to reach out for his child, hug her, hide her from the world? These hands that learned at seventeen how to snatch smelly diapers away from her tiny body, rub A&D ointment over her rashed behind, hold her util the stinging stopped, until the crying stopped. Hold her- over his shoulder with his massive hand behind her fragile head, then on his chest, in his lap, in his arms, on his back, on his shoulders, his hand on her shoulder as she scooted too fast away from him….”

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal, narrated by Meera Sayal – Audiobook. Fun listen, though probably a little more racy than I expected, given that I listen to audiobooks a lot around my children. But the plot, involving a woman who gets a job teaching English at her local Sikh community center, alternates heavy and light, ultimately leaning towards heavy. I liked the characters and how the book addresses the invisibility and frustration of older women.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West – (4h, 39m). Funny, but also sad and infuriating. West’s writing – about being fat, about feminism, about how dehumanizing society can be to people who don’t fit a certain mold, namely white and ideally male – is raw, powerful, dramatic, visceral. It was interesting to read Lindy Wests’s book in the current racially charged climate. Much like how racism is rooted in systematic oppression by a dominant culture, there are really strong societal prejudices against people who are overweight that put them at an incredible disadvantage. From concrete things like how things are not built to accommodate large people, and indeed there is no incentive for companies to change that, to the more subtle messaging about how overweight people are undesirable. She also writes some really powerful stuff about the white male culture of comedy and the misogyny it perpetuates. She writes for a more inclusive world, for freedom of choice, for society choosing to be better. It’s a really good book.

“The only answer is decide we’re worth helping.”