End of the 2019 Reading

I never finished summarizing my fall reading and since I want to get to my spring reading, I had better get it done!

Somehow, I always end up with some heavy stuff to read at the end.  It could have been Much Worse, of course.  I made it through A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-2929 by Behnaz A. Mirzai.  It was not exactly a page-turner, but I learned a lot.  What I learned was that while there was a history and tradition of slavery in Iran, it was not based on or justified by racism and it was not necessarily a barrier to social mobility.  Which is to say that slavery, while always repugnant, existed in a much different cultural context than the Atlantic slave trade that is more familiar to American history.  Further, the trade in humans was something exploited by various European powers to advance colonial/imperialist aims and to secure access to resources.  Not fun to read, but useful.

T.R. loaned me Fictions of Feminist Ethnography by Kamala Visweswaran.  He hated it.  I didn’t.  Admittedly, I did not have to read it for school, I did not have to summarize the thinking involved, and did not have to write about it, so I had much less attachment to lucid organizational structure.  What I liked about it was that it, like Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (which I got from T. also and read in 2018), explored the space between the personal and the historical and anthropological.  We are past the point where we can, with a straight face, insist that we are strict impersonal observers.  Examining what the observer brings to the processes of ethnography, history, anthropology, and other disciplines helps keep us honest and transparent about what is going on.

I was late to the Brené Brown party.  But I really liked The Gifts of Imperfection.  It is countercultural in the best ways, helping bring focus to being real and connected and human in a world that would prefer us to stay on the surface pretending we’re always Instagram-ready.

I also got to have fun.  Philip Pullman’s graphic novel The Adventures of John Blake:  Mystery of the Ghost Ship was excellent fun and dove into the kind of intersecting world stories he excels at in a new way.

Both Emily Jenkins’s book Brave Red Smart Frog and T. Kingfisher’s book Bryony and Roses worked with the fairy tale world I so much enjoy in interesting ways.  I love to see what other people do with archetypes to make them work for our time.

The next book I want to talk about is Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi, but I have to take a small digression first.  Some people do a good job of using whatever platform they acquire to advocate for less heard voices and social justice and some don’t.  Rick Riordan is doing it right.  Aru Shah is from a series “Rick Riordan Presents.”  Riordan is adding his name to get exposure for authors from other cultures to present the kind of reimagining of their myths and stories in the same vein as his explorations of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse myths, recognizing that creating a platform for those voices to be heard is the best way to enrich us all without doing the kind of cultural colonization and appropriation that can easily happen.  I loved Aru Shah.  It was fun and funny and compelling.

I rounded out my kid reading with Michael Basman’s Chess for Kids.  I want to learn to do more than shove pieces randomly around the board, losing spectacularly.  I figure starting with what third graders can learn is about right for me.  I learned a lot and now need to practice.

Georgette Heyer’s No Wind of Blame was a reasonably satisfactory mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie.  I would say that the clockwork overwhelmed the novel, but it was a good diversion and I would read more.

Finally, I got to read two more Terry Pratchetts, Wyrd Sisters and Guards! Guards!.  Pratchett makes me laugh and think.  He tells the kinds of stories that feed me.  I love him.

Fall total was 23 books; 2019 total was 62.  Not bad.