October 3, 2019: Recent Reads: Heaven, My Home

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]

I’ve written a great deal in this space about the wonderful Attica Locke, one of my favorite mystery and thriller writers and a voice that thoroughly transcends any stereotypical limitations to those genres. Any new book from Locke is likely to find its way into a series like this, but even with those high expectations I was blown away by her newest, Heaven, My Home (2019). A sequel to 2017’s Bluebird, Bluebird and another chapter in the saga of Texas Ranger Darren Matthews but, as usual with Locke, also so much more than those details would indicate, Heaven is one of those rare novels that both keeps you reading with its plot and characters yet demands that you re-read for its layer themes and histories. When you add in Locke’s work on the TV shows Empire (which she also co-created) and When They See Us (for which she wrote one of the four episodes), I don’t think there’s a more interesting and influential artist working in 2019 America. But don’t take my word for it—read this book, and all of Locke’s if you haven’t already!

Last recent read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 2, 2019: Recent Reads: There There

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]

I’m a critical optimist, and my list of favorite books tends to reflect that perspective—indeed, many of my favorite American novels found their way into my fourth book, with its focus on “hard-won hope” as a model for critical patriotism. But no preference and no perspective should go unexamined or unchallenged, and so I also enjoy the occasional opportunity to read a book that is decidedly and consistently pessimistic. Well, “enjoy” probably isn’t the right word there—but I greatly value such texts and perspectives, even (perhaps especially) in an era where it’s all too easy to give in to despair. Tommy Orange’s There There (2018) is one of the best such pessimistic books I’ve read in a long while, a bracing depiction of contemporary Native American identities and communities that (without spoiling anything) does not offer any easy answers, or indeed any answers at all, for the problems and challenges facing them. I’m tempted to say that writing such a book is itself an optimistic gesture, and thus that reading it can be as well—but I’m not sure that would be in the spirit of Orange’s book, so much as my own perspective. So I’ll just say that I’m very glad I read this book, and everyone should do so.

Next recent read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 1, 2019: Recent Reads: The Nickel Boys

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]

Colson Whitehead has long been a favorite contemporary author of mine, and his The Underground Railroad remains one of the best and most unique historical novels I’ve ever read (and it taught very well too). To a degree his follow-up, The Nickel Boys (2019), is a more conventional novel than Underground, perhaps because the constantly genre-shifting Whitehead has settled this time on a more traditional genre (a bildungsroman, set at a boarding school no less). But conventional doesn’t necessarily mean less compelling (indeed, conventions endure in part because they continue to compel us), and Nickel is one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in years. So much so, in fact, that in many cases I had to stop between chapters, so potently were Whitehead’s words and images, characters and settings, events and reflections affecting me. This isn’t a book I’d feature on my annual Beach Reads list—but it’s also not a book any American can afford to miss.

Next recent read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?