My Year of Books, part 2, THE LISTS!

Turns out that you can "like" a book for different reasons - some books on my list were notable for the impact they had on me, even though I wouldn't necessarily call all of these my favorites from the list.

Favorites are still the ones I want to own, have on my shelf and read again someday, or at least think I would read again. There are plenty of books I really enjoyed, had great impact, or just plain enjoyed for the ideas/worlds presented, but I wouldn't want to read again.

None of these lists is more important than the other, in my heart, they are just different.

Here are my lists** ... finally ...

Favorites - as in I would read *again*
Nimona - Noelle Stevenson (keeping it til it's due to listen to AGAIN and AGAIN)
The Rules of Magic -Alice Hoffman
The Cutting Season - Attica Locke (already read it twice)
With the Fire on High - Elizabeth Acevedo
Tattoos on the Heart - Fr. Greg Boyle [to be reread everytime I need inspiration/perspective]
Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson [WOW]
The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo
The Astonishing Color of After - Emily X. R. Pan
The Museum of Extraordinary Things - Alice Hoffman

Most impactful - as in I am glad I read, probably won't read again
The Muralist - B. A. Shapiro
Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
Barking to the Choir - Fr. Greg Boyle
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
The Line Becomes a River - Francisco Cantu
The Lightkeepers - Abby Geni

Glad I tried, I really enjoyed, but not *favorites*
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney
Jojo Moyes - Me Before You (series of three books)
Gennifer Choldenko - Al Capone/Alcatraz (series of four books)
The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak
The Wildlands - Abby Geni
The Beekeepers' Lament - Hannah Nordhaus
The Story Sisters - Alice Hoffman

New to Me Authors - will keep reading everything they write!
Abbi Geni
Attica Locke
Anne Hillerman [I LOVE her take on the Chee/Leaphorn/Manuelito mysteries]
Elizabeth Acevedo
Alice Hoffman (I am working through her list of books, some I love, some I didn't, but she is GREAT!)
Laura Lippman (worked through all the audio available, ready for next book Ms. Lippman!)
Elif Shafak - please more books on audio!

2018 reads I should I have written about
There There - Tommy Orange
Leaving Atlanta - Tayari Jones
An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner
The Untelling - Tayari Jones

In Other Words - Jhumpa Lahiri

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me - Sherman Alexie

The House of Broken Angels - Luis Alberto Urrea

Hunger - Roxane Gay

Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi

**These lists are probably more in timeframe order, going backwards from the most recent I read, not in how much I liked them! :)

Recommendations

I have been thinking about writing a recommendation for a book I just loved ... and now I have another two things to recommend.

It's been a long time since I felt the strength to do a NRU... honestly, I am still not there. But I read this piece and fell in love. *wink*

We all need a little more inspiration to 1) be ourselves and 2) open to possibilities despite setbacks.

***please note it has been so long since I started this post that I honestly cannot remember the other thing besides the book I was going to recommend.***

The book ... a while back, because I have been moving the publish date on this post for MONTHS, I listened to Hunger by Roxane Gay. I have been listening to books more than reading, but I still call it reading. I hope that is okay.

So, Roxane Gay and her memoir Hunger - wow, WOW, I listened to the author read her memoir. I heard the life in the words. It was amazing.

My takeaway was that every WOMAN should listen to this book. Not read. Listen. There are dark spots, a lot of them, that you need to push through to get to the honey. Because it is sweet when you get past the darkness, when you are deep inside the heart of Roxane Gay, it is all sweetness and reality. And those two things do not always go together as perfectly as they did in this book.

You should listen to it.

You will learn to love your body and hear the story it is telling you every day, at least a little bit you will learn this, by listening to this book. You will, at least, learn that loving your body and listening to its stories is life changing.

Or maybe you won't ... as some reviewers have noted, and Gay herself has as well, this is not a book about transformation. It is not a victory lap. It is not this is how you do it.

But, for me, it was a how to and why to love your body, just as it is, and to listen to your body because it is engaging you in the dialogue every day, even when our too busy minds and emotions are yelling loudly over our bodies attempts at conversation.

You should listen to it.

Read/listen to this book, if you are a woman, or a man, or whatever, and you have not yet committed to loving your body and listening to its stories.

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This is not the other thing that I was meaning to recommend when I started this post, but I have come upon this realization in the past two weeks: I am not only more productive when I listen to books while I work, I am more peaceful. My emotions to do not get the better of me when I am listening to a book and someone asks me for the work item I delivered three weeks ago, or tries to dump their work in my lap because I am a good worker, or tries to organize my work life to make their lives easier. I just smile and listen to my book and do my work.

My blood pressure appreciates listening to a good book. Maybe your blood pressure loves listening to a book, too.

Remembering GGM

When I found Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was like inheriting a wise grandfather, randy uncle and beloved teacher.  I dreamt of meeting a real life Melquiades.  I marveled at the drama of the Buendia -- their lives were like those of the families in our stories, but full of magic we never get with soap operas.  I fell in love with a geography I have visited only through his stories.   I felt like I could walk around Macondo without a map ... intimately connected to it and its history.  But it also gave me new eyes for my own hometown. You can love someplace that you have desperately tried to get away from as much as the place where you landed. 

I became more interested in the history of Latin America because of the twists and turns I read in his book.  His novels and stories are full of allusions to Latin American history, politics and intrigue.  But you have to know something about it to get them... so, there I would go, trying to get deeper into the story by understanding the inside jokes.

The stories were magnificent and I loved reading them in the original. [My first read, One Hundred Years of Solitude, I read and reread and reread it.]  Through his books, I learned vocabulary without looking up words in the dictionary.  I learned to appreciate my long, winding sentences as a legacy of the Spanish living somewhere inside my brain since I was an infant.

I had the pleasure of reading far and wide in his works because I was teaching them in AP Spanish Literature as a novice teacher. I wanted to know all of the works inside and out so that I could help my students.  I studied literature more intensely those first few years of teaching than I ever did as a Romance Languages and Literature major.  I mean, of course, I had read what I was assigned to read, but now I needed to KNOW the readings.  I am sure I enjoyed the readings more... mostly because it was challenging stuff for my students. Really, only a few of them had the skills to actually get through a story.  When they came back to me frustrated, I would say, "Oh, if you didn't like this story it must be because you missed the secret sex." The joy of teaching high schoolers -- some would go back in search of the secret sex.  I can only hope that in the search some of them also found they loved GGM, too.

My favorite short story is El ahorcado mas hermoso del mundo.  Cien anos de soledad will always be my favorite of his novels.  You might see my admiration for GGM's work is firmly in the magical.

I picture GGM's heaven as a brothel in the daytime -- surrounded by beautiful women and recounting stories that always leaving them wanting more.

Thank you, don Gabriel, your magical places were always a refuge for me.  May you rest in peace, your mind free again to wander in the realms of magic, reality and wonder. 

Books I Read This Summer

Murder Your Darlings -- J. J. Murphy
Ugh... I didn't really like this one, but my mother "chose" it from the stack I gave her to choose from -- and then when we got one day into the trip she told me she didn't like it.  So, I gave her the one I had brought for me (see below - Tell Me Something True).

Stabat Mater --Tiziano Scarpa
I wanted a book in Italian preferably about Venice (that's where I bought this one) -- the lovely blue eyes that sold me this book thought it would be perfect for me.  It was odd -- but interesting.  The entire book is really a monologue in the guise of letters to a mother this young woman has never known.  While the "action" takes place in Venice, there are very few times when it is noticeable since she rarely leaves the convent walls.  I don't know now how much I enjoyed the book or just that I was excited to still be able to read Italian well enough to get what was happening.

Tell Me Something True -- Leila Cobo
Someone gave me this book after she read it for a book club.  It sat on my shelf for a while, I might not have chosen it.  But, it turned out to be engaging and not your typical story.  My mom liked it because it was melodramatic at times and centered around romance.  I read it on the plane home ... that might have been a mistake.  It would be better as a beach read.  That is as much as I can say without spoiling it.  I did leave this one at a friends house.

Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead -- Sara Gran
I searched high and low in the THREE neighborhoods I visited in NY city on the day before I left and could find NO bookstore.  This is a significantly bad side effect of the online bookstore mania.  I needed a book and the only place that I could buy a book was Walgreens (I won't even tell you how bad the selection was) or the airport ... so, I waited for the airport hoping their selection would be a tiny bit better.  This was one of the "sales people choose" books ...it was not the worst book, but not the best book either. It got better -- but I was concerned that I found so many typos.  Who edits books these days??

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- Stieg Larsson
I finally got around to reading this ... it was a long slog, but I had a lot of time. I spent most of my time comparing it to the movie. I am still not sure what the hype is about it ... it is much less mystery than it is political commentary.  For a while, that commentary is somewhat interesting.  Did not knock it out of the ballpark for me.

Emma -- Jane Austen
I was staying with a friend for a few weeks -- while I was reading the book above -- when I needed another book to read, I grabbed a cute little edition of this that she had.  We had been watching Austen and Austen-like (read Downton Abbey) movies and series, so I decided I should finally just read one.  I really never had read an Austen all the way through. There were some descriptions I had to skim through... I am still not sure where I stand on these.  I guess I could never be an Austen scholar.

Into the Beautiful North -- Luis Alberto Urrea
I started reading this book a while ago -- I only allowed myself a chapter at a time while I was studying.  But, I decided to finish it when I got back to town this summer.  I love Urrea, so I was already enjoying this.  This is the lightest piece of his that I have ever read, but there were still edges that hurt -- like the pain of the main character traveling through the racism of our country.  However, it rang true and was beautifully described.  I am hoping and waiting for a sequel to this one.  You should read it.