My strategy for getting through
this year’s reading is to front-load as many of the big, thick nonfiction books
I can. Worst case, if I decide to run
away, the heaviest ones will already be finished.
I did take a break from
the nonfiction to read Mary Mapes Dodge’s book Hans Brinker. I wrote before
about the collection of children’s classics my grandmother gave me. This was one and I didn’t remember it very
well. On rereading, it turns out that it
is a reasonably good story interrupted by a bunch of educational historical
moralizing. I decided that I needed a
photo of the book and the words my grandma wrote inside, but that I didn’t need
to keep the book.
I always enjoy Anne
Lamott. Almost Everything is a pleasant addition to my shelf. I feel like I have read enough of her work
that she doesn’t surprise me as often anymore with her insight, but it is
always nice to hang out with a wise human.
Keeper.
In that way things have
of adding up to something unexpected, three very divergent sorts of books came
together for me. I began reading The Mexico Reader edited by Gilbert M.
Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson in little chunks over meals. It is a compendium of articles, stories, and
poetry covering Mexican history, politics, and culture. I read about Pancho Villa, lucha libre, Aztec
ritual, El Barzón, and a whole bunch more things over the more than 700
pages. It was mostly fascinating.
The part about Aztec
culture and the way that warriors lived, capturing other warriors for sacrifice
up until the point when they themselves were captured and sacrificed felt
incredibly alien up until I also started reading Top Gun by Dan Pedersen about the founding of the combat
school. More young men training to
sacrifice or be sacrificed, but in a context that was more familiar. This was not the only interesting part of the
book. It is full of good stories and
Pedersen has an engaging way of telling them.
It was just the part that stuck with me.
I’m in a place, personally, where I feel like we need a cultural shift
away from violence, meaning no disrespect to those who have felt that violence
was the only way to defend home.
The practice of violence
was a huge theme in Tara Westover’s memoir Educated,
about her journey from a childhood in a conservative Mormon family where she
did not go to school or see doctors to her current life as a history scholar
with a doctorate from Cambridge. The men
in her family controlled and abused the women, who either became complicit or
outcast. It was a tough read. The convergence of all three books in their
descriptions from various viewpoints on violence, protection, defense, and
survival provided more material for thought than any of the books alone would
have done. Hooray for fortuitous and omnivorous
reading.
Current year total: 23 books.
