The BEST BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR – PART II

By Ruth A. Sheets

I love to read as you might know.  I read in a lot of genre because most subjects have at least something to ponder.  This is part II of my list of books I really enjoyed.  I didn’t have a specific set of criteria to follow, but included books I just loved reading.  Here goes!!

1. I Survived Capitalism And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money by Madeline Pendleton (The author had trouble finding a permanent job after college, so eventually started her own company locating, repurposing clothing, and original designs.  Until she took the issue of money seriously, she was barely surviving.  She changed her business model and everyone who worked with her received the same salary and perks.  By last year, all her 8 or so employees had cars that were not breaking down all the time and could buy a home if they chose and the company is still doing well.  Very inspiring and made me wonder why that is not the standard small business model, maybe even large business model.) 

2. Goldenrod, Poems by Maggie Smith (I loved these poems about life, family, nature, and more.  My favorites were “Animals” (response to harms done to immigrants to this country), “In the Grand Scheme of ?Things” (the way things don’t work as we expect when we think we are in control), and “If I Could Set This To Music” (imagining if there were music to recognize the world’s events that could let someone we love hear who we are).  Beautiful and approachable!    

3. Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower (In this first mystery in a series, Emily Dickenson and her “maid” Willa solve a murder at the time of the Underground Railroad and the rise of pre-Civil War tensions.)

4. The Russian Job, The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union From Ruin by Douglas Smith (From 1921-1923, Herbert Hoover and a lot of Americans went to Russia to bring food aid for a starving nation, saving millions of lives.  It is forgotten in Russia and here too.)  

5. How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi, Collected Works of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math for Nerd Night ed. By Chris Balakrishnan & Matt Wasowski (This was a fun collection of interesting quirky stories about the work of people in science etc. for the “Nerd Night” programs around the world.  They included all kinds of topics from human physiology to animal habits, to mortuary science, and other worlds.)

6. Our Hidden Conversations, What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity by Michele Norris (This was a collection of 6-word stories from the Racecard Project.  Thousands of people submitted their “stories” and some commented on them.  These pieces and the author’s commentary were fascinating and everyone should read them.)

7. The Golden Girls, A Cultural History by Bernadette Giacomazzo (“The Golden Girls” was an icon of TV about 4 older women living their lives together and separately, proving over and over how great and resourceful women over 60 are.)  -   

8. White Rural Rage, The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller & Paul Waldman (This is an important book, although disturbing that explains white rural rage, and some of the white rage in general.  Politicians have seen the despair and maintain it to keep the scared, angry people  under their control by making loud promises, then never keeping them because it might make the people content and more self-reliant.  It is criminal and our DOJ should be acting in at least the worst cases, but doesn’t.)

9. A Sin By Any Other Name, A Reckoning with the South’s Past and Future by Robert W. Lee IV, (A descendant of Robert E. Lee tries to deal with the challenges of being white in a racist society.  He is an ordained Methodist minister who has been speaking for a reconciliation which he believes white America must initiate and push for since it is whites who created and continue to create the problems caused by racism.)

10. Planet Palm, How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything and Endangered the World by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman (I knew palm oil was problematic, but didn’t know the treachery, deceit, and virtual enslavement that accompanies its production.  It is now being obtained all over the tropical and semi tropical world from Honduras to Malaysia.)

11. This Promise of Change, One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality by Joann Alice Boyce & Debbie Levy (Joann Allen was one of the teens who integrated the Clinton, TN high School in 1956.  The town was coming to accept their presence in the school until whites from outside the area  stirred up the anger and hatred that made it unsafe for the Black students to be in the school.  Of the 12 who started the year, only 6 finished that year in the school and only 2 graduated from Clinton HS.  The author’s family moved to CA where she graduated from high school and college.  Gr.5-8 and older – everyone should read this one)

12. An Unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin (This was a fascinating book of two people who lived the 1960s:  Dick Goodwin, speech-writer for JFK and LBJ and campaign worker for Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy and Doris Kearns Goodwin who was a student, then teacher at Harvard as well as a fellow in LBJ’s White House and worked on his biography at his ranch after he left office.  They met and married in the 1970s, raised a family, and continued to work for a better more fair society.)   

13. Girls On The Line by Amie K. Runyan (In this novel, Ruby signs up to serve in Europe as a switchboard operator the last year of WWI.  She was from a Main Line family, engaged to a man who was socially “right” for her.  She finds true love while on duty.)

14. In the Shadow of Liberty, The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States by Ana Raquel Minian (For well over a century people coming to the US have been detained in prisons, jails, and other facilities, treated horribly, and most of the time, released into this country.  The claim is that the bad treatment is a deterrent; it isn’t when conditions in the countries the people left were far worse than those horrific situations immigrants encounter here.  We can and must do better!)   

15. Roll for Initiative by Jaime formato (a new middle schooler loves “Dungeons and Dragons” and accidentally starts a D&D group in her apartment complex’s laundry room with 3 friends.  Through the process, she learns to trust herself and depend on her friends as they come to depend on her.  Gr.4 and up and anyone who likes D&D and other role-playing games)

16. 1177 BC, the Year Civilization Collapsed Revised and Updated by Eric H. Cline (This was a fascinating book about the rise and fall of the civilizations around the Mediterranean from about 1500 to 1200 BCE and the ideas that surround what might have caused their collapse within a short period of time.  All the cultures were thriving and had trade among each other, but it looks like a combination of factors occurring over a short period may have led to the end of the Bronze Age:  severe drought, earthquakes, crop failures, invasions, internal turmoil, and other as yet unknown factors.)

17. Relinquish, the Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson (This book looked at the impact of adoption on the birth mother and the pressures those girls and women have on them to relinquish their child to someone else, often tricked into signing papers that would keep them from contact with their child and the adoptive family.)

18. How To Say Babylon, A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair (The author is a poet who grew up in Jamaica with an extremely strict, often violent father who was Rastafarian.  She faced a lot of prejudice and roadblocks but won scholarships and ultimately came to America to study, teach, and write poetry.)

19. Knife, Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Rushdie was nearly murdered by a religious fanatic at a writers’ conference.  He recounts his thinking and experiences after the crime, his hospital stay and rehab and his learning to live with the physical and emotional changes that resulted.)

20. The Hard Road Out, One Woman’s Escape from North Korea by Jihun Park & Seh-lynn Chai (Jihun Park was a daughter of a party member in Korea.  She had a pretty typical childhood in North Korea until the famine of 1990s broke up her family.  She was sold in China and sent back to Korea.  She escaped again to China and found a man who loved her and helped her get away to the UK.  She went through enormous suffering in the process.

21. The 6, The Untold Story of America’s First Woman Astronauts by Loren Drush (If you like reading history and biography, you’ll like this one.  The lives of the 6 women are described as they fit into the development of NASA and its programs beyond landing a person on the moon.  One of the 6 died in the Challenger in 1986.)

22. Say More, Lessons from Work, The White House, and The World by Jen Psaki (This was one of the best books I’ve read all year.  Psaki talks about how to effectively communicate on a large and small scale while describing her many life decisions, successes and her flubs.  High School and older readers)

23. The Edge of Anarchy, The Railroad Barrens, The gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America by Jack Kelly (I only knew in general about this uprising in 1894 beginning with the Pullman Company, but this book made me proud of the people who tried to stand up against big business.  They did lose the fight then, but they laid the groundwork for future labor efforts.)

24. The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (Alma, a Jewish refugee from fascist Europe arrives in San Franscisco where she forms strong bonds with the children on her uncle’s estate, forming a love-bond with the gardener’s son and her cousin.  From her old age, the story of their love unfolds.)

25. The Playbook, A Story of Theatre, Democracy, and The Making of a Culture War by James Shapiro (This seemed like just an interesting piece of history, but as I read, I learned a couple of scared white congressmen set us on the road we are now on, attacking Communists and anyone who wanted to include Black Americans, women, and topics  those guys don’t like in the life of the nation.  It follows the Federal Theatre Project, part of the New Deal’s WPA and their production of over 1,000 plays that didn’t match their personal views.  They heard about the plays, didn’t see or read them, but condemned them, leading to the establishment of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) which led to the McCarthy hearings and the nonsense now going on in the Republican-led House.) 

26. Shelterwood, A Novel by Lisa Wingate (Olive narrates a time in 1909 when children escaped into the woods to survive the men holding them to get the oil money their families had made.  In 1990, Val, a park ranger wants to figure out what happened to three children whose remains were found in a cave.  A whole mystery arises that she and the grown children help solve.(

27. They Came for the Schools, one Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity  and the New War for America’s Classrooms by Mike Hixenbaugh (This is a powerful book about how easy it is for right-wing Christian-nationalists to bring in a series of lies about public education  and how they can take over school boards and deny the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homo/transphobia among white students in the districts as they attempt to deny history, even sometimes, the very existence of people other than those who are white and male.)

28. The Deadline, Essays by Jill LePore (This collection covers the author’s career in magazine writing including pop culture, politics, the judiciary, and so much more.  She presents an historical perspective for each topic.  The essays are sorted by general topic.  I enjoyed the political ones most.)

29. The Bodies Keep Coming, Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We heal by Brian H. Williams  (This is a powerful book about what it is like trying to save the lives of the many Black men and others who come into the ER with bullet wounds and other trauma and the toll it takes on the staff, families, and communities.  Dr. Williams is working hard to make changes that will enable more of the victims to live.)

30. Super Foods, Silkworms, and Spandex, Science and Pseudoscience in Everyday Life by Joe Schwarcz (When the book ended, my immediate comment was, “that was fun.”  This book covered a wide range of stories about common items and practices:  a brief history and the science or no science attached to each.)

31. Taming the Street, The Old Guard, The New Deal, and FDR’s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism by Diana B. Henriques (This was a fascinating book about the preliminary actions that led to The Great Depression and the various things FDR did to change Wall Street to keep such an event from happening in the future.  Unfortunately, there were many forces that got in the way.  It was great to read an economics history book by a woman.)   

32. Exotic Tales, A Veterinarian’s Journey by Steven B. Metz DVM (This was a collection of stories of a vet’s adventures with humans and animals, pets and wildlife.  This is a fun book if you love animals, have pets, or both, or if you just like a good story.  My favorite was the story of a 5-foot boa hiding in a guitar.)

33. On Call, A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci (This was the story of an incredible life of service including:  school, college, medical school, residency, and choice to go into public service through the National Institutes of health, heading the Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases for decades.  He helped the country deal with HIV.AIDS, Evola, COVID, and so much more.  Well-worth reading this memoir!)

34. Baking Yester Year, The Best Recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s by B. Dylan Hollis (This was a fun romp through the kinds of recipes people liked during most of the 20^th Century.  I ended up selecting 29 recipes I want to copy and try.)

35. Find me the Votes, A Hard-Charging Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal An American Electiion by Michael Isikoff & Daniel Klaidman (These authors present a play by play account of the shenanigans that went on in Georgia after the 2020 electiion.  Fulton Co. Prosecutor Fanny Willis was charged with getting to the bottom of what happened.  The case continues in 2024.)

36. Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, A Novel by  Kirsten Miller (Lula fills her little free library with books she claims shaped her life.  They were all conservative, white books, so a girl in town put banned books inside the covers and hid the other books.  People began to read the banned books and appreciate them as their town began to change for the better. 

37. 100 Places to See After You Die, A Travel Guide to the Afterlife by Ken Jennings (This was a fun romp through various cultures’, religious, authors’, and film and TV artists’ ideas of what the afterlife is like, what one would encounter on arriving there, and some of the characters that inhabit those locations.  Highly recommended) 

38. The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price (I loved this collection of ideas for making life more fun, getting people to enjoy fun activities with us, and keeping track of what is fun for us, or what could be fun.  I also heard her presentation of this material live.)  

39. Keeping the Faith, God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted A Nation by Brenda Wineapple (This was a very interesting book about the Scopes “Monkey trial.”  The author presented the thinking that led to Tennessee making a law forbidding evolution being taught in schools.  John Scopes, a young temp. biology teacher agreed to be the defendant.  The fanaticism of the prosecution was amazing, including the KKK and preachers hanging out while the trial was going on.  The conclusion was already known at the beginning because the judge was also a religious fanatic, although it seems he did a bit of thinking about “free speech” and the 1^st amendment, but not much. 

40. True Gretch, What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, And Everything in Between by Gretchen Whitmer (This was a fun romp through Gov. Whitmer’s life, the interesting people she’s met and the more interesting things she has done.  Everyone should read this one.)

41. Lovely One, A Memoir by Ketanji Brown Jackson (I found this story not only compelling as an American success, but it was fun and interesting to read.  It has a bit of everything one would want in a memoir:  honesty, family, friendships, struggle, determination, a dream, and a seriously strong positive code of ethics/moral compass.)

42. What’s Next, A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald & Mary McCormack (Wow!  I loved this one probably because I loved “The West Wing.”  It was a great show and this book  looks at the various actors and their characters, what they were like on the show and the cast when not on camera.  What an amazing group of people.  I have attended several fund-raisers where they did “table reads” of parts of relevant episodes.  I would do it again in a minute!)

43. The Art of Power, My Story As America’s First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi (I loved this book about some of the activities of Pelosi as Speaker and the background to those actions.  The section on the lead-up to involvement in the Iraq War and January 6^th were particularly important.)

44. Connie, A Memoir by Connie Chung (This pioneering reporter had an amazing career despite the forces that tried to stop or slow her down, men and an occasional woman trying to get where she was.)

 

There are actually about another 10 books I could have included, but I am already stretching what is reasonable for a friend to read.  So, there you have it, my top 84 books out of the 380 I read this year, 44 right here.  Enjoy!  Happy New Year!

LOTS OF REALLY GOOD BOOKS! PART I

The year is coming to a close and I am looking back over the really good books I have read this year and there were a lot of them!  I am a picky but eclectic reader, so I have read a bunch of interesting, well-written, often challenging books.  Here is the first collection of the best.  I hope you choose to check out some of them.

*1. Take My Hand Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Syvil is a nurse at a clinic in Montgomery AL that is found to be ordering Black children and adults to be sterilized without parents or patients understanding what they are signing.  Charges are brought against the clinic that are won by the community, based on a true case in 1973.)

*2. You’re the Only One I’ve Told, The Stories Behind Abortion by  Meera Shah (An abortion physician discusses some patients and others she knows who have had abortions and felt until talking with her, couldn’t tell anyone about it.  The stories were often hard to hear, but were real and powerful examples of the need for us to acknowledge that abortion is necessary and a right and will continue regularly no matter what anti-abortion folks want.)

*3. Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson (The Chief of Staff to Trump’s Chief of Staff had finally had enough and testified before the January 6^th Committee in the House about her experiences on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse and in the White House.  Her whole experience with Mark Meadows and Trump disrupted her life to an extreme extent.)  

*4. The Black Angels, the Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios (This was an interesting book about a subject I knew nothing of before.  The Black nurses came from the South to Statan Island to work at a TB hospital.  The discrimination even in NYC was terrible but the women persevered and did win respect over time.)   

*5. Ghosts of the Orphanage, A Story of Mysterious Deaths, A Conspiracy of Silence, and A Search for Justice by Christine Kenneally (The author uses events at St. Joseph’s Catholic orphanage in Burlington, VT as the example of the kind of violence and abuse perpetrated by the priests, nuns, and lay workers against children at orphanages all over the world between 1935 and the 1970s.  She describes efforts of survivors to find others’ belief in what happened and maybe justice.)

*6. The 9, the True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss (This is the most powerful book I have read so far this year.  Nine women who were in the concentration camp Ravens brook helped keep each other and others in the camp alive.  On their forced march out of the camp, they escaped and went to the front where they were “rescued” by US troops.  The women suffered enormously.)

*7. Why Didn’t We Riot, A Black Man in Trumpland by Issac J. Bailey (This is an astonishing book by a Black journalist who is looking at the underpinnings of Trump’s ascendency to the White House including Black people not speaking up [ because of potentially devastating consequences, the deep DNA of racism within our culture – every white person needs to read this book, Trump supporter or not.)

*8. This is What America Looks Like, My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar (I loved this memoir of her personal force, her optimism, and her hard work that enabled her to accomplish amazing things like learning English so quickly she was a straight A student shortly after she arrived here from Somalia.)

*9. Showdown, Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Will Good (After a rather unruly youth, Marshall discovered the law and pursued it on behalf of Black Americans at the risk of his life.  LBJ nominated him to the Supreme Court because he believed it was essential to have a Black man on the SC.  The transcripts of segments of the hearing are included which shows the depts of racism even among serving representatives.)

*10. Quilt of Souls by Phyllis Biffle Elmore (At age 4, the author went to Alabama to live with her grandmother, a woman who cared for everyone and made quilts of pieces of clothing so people would have with them the stories of their loved ones.)

*11. The Bastard Brigade, The True Story of the Scientists, Renegades, and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean (This was an adventure book with a cast of strange characters chosen for the work because of their peculiar talents.  My favorite was Mo Berg, a baseball catcher, and unlikely hero who happened to speak many languages fluently and learned physics so he could understand what he was looking for on his missions.)

*12. Chita, A Memoir by Chita Rivera (a fun account of her Broadway career and the many musicals she played in.)

*13. Redeeming Justice, From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System by Jarrett Adams (Everyone interested in justice and our screwed-up legal system must read this book about an innocent man charged with rape and sentenced as a 17-year-old to 28 years.  He describes the near total inhumanity of the system that did this to him.  He decided then to become a lawyer which he did.)

*14. The Grandest Stage, A History of the World Series by Tyler Kepner (I loved this look at the many World Series between 1903, the first to 2021. There are the greatest, the worst, the most interesting, etc.  There are people, stats, and just a lot of memories.)

*15. 10 Birds that Changed the World by Stephen Moss (Who would have thought that birds had such a massive impact on human existence over time.  Some of the birds:  ravens – smart, resourceful, all over, bald eagle – a symbol of power as with all eagles, pigeons – messengers who live with and have evolved with humans.)         

*16. Cooperstown Confidential, Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame by Zev Chafets (This was a fun romp through the Hall of Fame, established in 1936 to remember the heroes and sometimes rogues of baseball and there were a lot of both.  The question of doping is presented as just one-way athletes have always tried to improve their abilities.  I have not made a personal judgment on that one yet.)

*17. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, A Family, A Virginia Town, A Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green (PE County in Southern VA decided that instead of integrating as Brown v. Board required, they would close the county’s schools and open a private academy for white children, ignoring the education of Black children, about a third of the county’s population.  The schools were closed 5 years but the academy continued to operate, only integrating in 1986, but not really.  The author learned that her family was involved in establishing and running the academy which she and her siblings attended.)  

*18. Opinions, A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding other People’s Business by Roxane Gay (I loved this collection of essays on a range of topics from movies and TV to political activism to good advice, to gay writes for the NYT and other publications.)

*19. Generations The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents, And What They Mean For America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge (This was a fascinating book about the contributions each generation has made to our culture and what impacts they have and will continue to have on our society.  None should be dismissed as either irrelevant or the most valuable.) 

*20. Matt and Me by Putsata Reang (I loved this memoir of a child who came to America from Cambodia with her parents just at the beginning of the “killing fields.”  She barely survived, but grew into an intelligent caring journalist but against her parents’ culture is gay and married a woman despite her mom’s wishes.)

*21. The Good Virus, The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage by Tom Ireland (This was an amazing book about a special type of virus that attacks bacteria and has been used to treat bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics.  It is good that it is being investigated seriously after the neglect of over a hundred years in the west.)

*22. Deadly Force, A Police Shooting and My Family’s Search for the Truth by Lawrence O’Donnell (This book is the story of a young Black man shot by police in Boston in 1975 and the trial that the O’Donnell family of lawyers prosecuted to try to prove the police guilty.) 

*23. Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free and Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System by Jed S. Rakoff (Wow, this book really delves into the way our system forces accused persons to make plea bargains even when they are innocent.  It looks at how rich persons and corporations are not held accountable because of their wealth and claim of “too big to fail” and are not expected to make changes to prevent what happened.)

*24. Life on Other Planets, A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe by Aomwa Shields (I loved this memoir of a Black girl who wanted to study astronomy and be an astronaut.  She grew up to find a way to combine her love of astronomy and acting to become an effective teacher and speaker as well as a researcher in the field of astrobiology.)

*25. Poorly Understood, What America Gets Wrong About Poverty by Mark Robert Rank Lawrence, M. Eppard, & Heather E. Bullock (This was an amazing book about the myths Americans hold about people in poverty.  The authors give suggestions for changing our thinking about it then making changes in providing resources for people who are poor.  The biggest myth is that it is their fault.)   

*26. American Eclipse, A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World by David Baron (This book described the science and not quite science that led to a variety of Americans including scientists, male and female, heading west to Wyoming to record the July 1878 total eclipse.  Their records were the most detailed to that time.) 

*27. In Defense of Witches by Mona Chollet (Hundreds of years after the witch hunts and murders, people are still fascinated.  Three kinds of women were the ones most often targeted:  independent women, the childless woman, and the older woman.  These were vulnerable women because they were often not under the thumb of males.  They were often objects of pity and horror.  Surprise, surprise, these women in different parts of the world are still harassed and oppressed.  

*28. Nothing But the Truth by Marie Henein (The descendant of Egyptian and Lebanese parents, the author became a defense lawyer in Canada where she fought sexism and to improve the criminal justice system.  She describes the value her family had in shaping her life.)

*29. Blood Money, The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry by Kathleen McLaughlin (I used to regularly give blood and knew some people “sold their blood, but I never thought of the whys of it and that mostly poor Americans donating plasma provides treatments for people all over the world, but the donors are paid poorly considering the prices recipients pay.  The author, one of those plasma recipients investigated the issues involved in the “industry.)

*30. Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (There were murders of so many people and so many in public positions were involved!  The organization that became the FBI came in to help but never really got to the bottom of the horrific crimes.  Osage members were wooed by white men and women and married.  The whites often ended up killing their spouses so they could get the wealth that had come to the Osage in OK due to the oil discovered on their land.  White people were the only ones allowed to administer the money, so killed for it.)

*31. Days of Infamy, How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese-American Internment by Lawrence Goldstone (The author takes the reader through the many events related to laws in America that made it acceptable to discriminate against, even imprison people of Japanese descent.  This included court cases, treaties, and local ordinances.  Every white American needs to read this one.  Gr. High and older)

*32. Soil, The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy (This poet describes the evolution of her garden from when her family moved into their Colorado home through the pandemic.  It was poetry in prose.  She intertwined history, the racist acts in the area and country, denigration of the environment, and other real-life stories with the plants and animals of her garden.) 

*33. The Mad Girls of New York, a Nellie Bligh Novel by Maya Rodale (Nellie goes to New York to be a big city reporter.  Her first story is investigating an insane asylum for women in NYC.  She goes as an inmate to find out about the women imprisoned there because they were inconvenient and the cruelties perpetrated on them by the staff.)

*34. Defiant Dreams, The Journey of An Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education By Sola Mahfouz (Sola was born in 1996 under the Taliban when education was denied to most girls.  She received a bit of education from abusive people then started learning through Khan Academy.  She won scholarships and came to the US for college to study physics.)    

*35. A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly (In this mystery novel, Eleanor worked at a munitions plant near London when she is approached by a British agent who wants her to monitor activities at Whitehall during WWII.  She ends up solving a murder and being hired as an intelligence officer.)

*36. Surely You can’t Be Serious, the True Story of “Airplane” by David Cucker, Jim Abrahams, & Jerry Zucker (The authors had the idea for “Airplane” and with a lot of work and care, it turned out to be one of the funniest movies ever, using serious actors to make the comedy work.)

*37. Of Greed and Glory, In Pursuit of Freedom for All by Deborah G. Plant (The author’s brother is in Angola Prison in Louisiana for a crime he did not commit.  His case caused Plant to wonder about Black Americans and presents the case that slavery never fully ended in America.)

*38. Opposable Thumbs, How Siscal and Ibert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer (Two movie reviewers who started out not liking each other, started working together in 1975 and came to appreciate each other’s review style to make exposing viewers  to movies they should or should not see.) 

*39. A Fever in the Heartland, The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped them by Timothy Egan (D.C. Stevenson blew into Indiana saw the simmering hatreds there, and jumped in to lead the haters into the Klan while he took over police and governments.  He abused women at will, was a drunkard while claiming his holiness.  He raped a woman and caused her to attempt suicide.  Her dictation of what happened to her, given before she died convinced the jury of Stevenson’s guilt.  He never did reform.)

*40. The Irish Boarding House by Sandy Taylor (In this novel, Mary Kate’s grandparents who raised her have died and she is trying to figure out what to do with her life when she learns she has inherited a large sum of money from her mother that she never knew.  She buys a boarding house and rebuilds the cottages where she grew up.  Her boarding house becomes a family place where she shares her love and care for others.  A positive uplifting book!) 

So, check out a few of these and share your thoughts about what you read. 

GRATITUDE IN A TIME OF PAIN AND BETRAYAL

By Ruth A. Sheets

November 24, 2024

Nearly 3 weeks ago, an election was held which will impact our lives for at least the next 4 years and if predictions are accurate, far longer than that.  The American people had a choice that day of voting for Harris who wanted to see more joy in the world; more rights for people, particularly for women over their own bodies; more opportunities for working-class and financially disadvantaged Americans; more opportunities for people living in this country for many years, to become citizens, more work toward stopping global warming; more appreciation of the diversity of this nation in our attempts to make this a “more perfect union, and the other choice, less of all of the above.  The American people, if voting counts are correct, chose the latter and here we are, anticipating what that is going to be like.  I admit I feel betrayed. 

 

So, for the past almost 3 weeks, I have been working to move past the intense grief that my fellow Americans chose hopelessness, pain, anger, fear, distrust, incompetence, and above all, hatred as leadership for our nation. I keep hearing people trying to understand or pontificate over the reasons, but I am not sure there is a reason beyond the often unexamined, unadmitted All-American racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, classism, and more that stalk our nation.  Evidence of this can be seen all over the country, particularly in the “red” states where governors and legislators are competing to see which state can do the most damage to its non-white, non-male, non-rich, non-christian, non-straight citizens.  The strange thing to me is that somehow, the victims just keep re-electing those who do the most harm.

 

Knowing all this and also understanding that I will not give up despite the darkness ahead, I decided I must hold onto the hope, joy, love, and care that Mr. Trump and his gang are trying so hard to destroy as they undermine programs that actually help people who are not rich as they are, and perhaps, our democracy itself. 

 

I have been considering what I am grateful for and I thought it might help me see the beauty in the upcoming holidays and change of season.  So, here goes.  I am grateful that . . .

 

• - I have an amazing family that is nearly as diverse as this nation and its members are talented in so many ways from my youngest grandnephew living just down the road to my older sisters, living too far away, alas;
• - I have music as a centerpiece in my life, a family that had us all singing before we could talk
• - I sing with a musical group that brings pleasure to audiences because the music of early America is fun, sometimes reverent, and helped shape our nation’s founding;
• - I received a guitar for Christmas when I was in high school and although I am not too good at playing it, I still can accompany people to sing a whole lot of really great songs;
• - I have the privilege of continuing to teach as a tutor for kids who have so much potential, but don’t yet believe it, with colleagues who are enormously skilled and caring;
• - I have a great place to live, nearly 29 years, when I never thought I would have something so nice;
• - I can cook and bake muffins my nephew Parker loves, and well, I do too;
• - I love reading and have access to recorded books of all kinds, at least one in 6 that are really good, so in addition, I am grateful for such outstanding writers and poets;
• - yesterday, my brother-in-law was able to fix my computer, phew!;
•  

There is more I am grateful for, bit thinking about just those I have named here has brought me some peace, so I will leave it there for now.  One thing I have learned, though, gratitude can’t be a competition to see whose slices of life gratitude are more valid or significant than someone else’s.  This exercise is just a way of looking to the positive.

 

So, I hope you, too, will find an opportunity to run through the things that make you feel gratitude.  I suspect we all will need those thoughts to help us through the next months and years among people who will come to realize that maybe their choice wasn’t a very good one, and others who are working hard to cause that realization.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!