It’s been a while, hasn’t it? A looooong while. I could say I’ve been busy on spring break (traveling abroad, browsing cookbooks, knitting, reading tons, etc.), and you could believe me if you so choose. You don’t have to, though. I read enough in the meantime that I have a lot to write about.
Well, for those who may not understand the title (AKA most of the world), I just finished Atul Gawande’s book Better. And if I wasn’t already considering medicine as a possible profession, here he goes, both oddly convincing me and pushing me away from it simultaneously. Somehow. That’s just what happens with this book. Really great book in general. But I can’t tell if I’m encouraged or discouraged by it.
(Yes, I was reading this sitting on my bed. And yes, I was too lazy to get up to get my camera and photograph someplace else. That’s this afternoon, in a nutshell.)
I try to read a variety of kinds of books, though I am not always successful. I read fiction, and I’m just getting into really good fiction, considering most of what I come across is pretty fluffy. I read nonfiction, some “straight-up” and some creative nonfiction. I read autobiographies and memoirs, like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or Mindy Kaling’s or Gail Simmons’ or any number of other books by people I admire and adore.
I had fallen in love with Angela’s Ashes when I read it last January for the first time. It both enticed me and repulsed me, which is completely possible in a book, no doubt. This January I reread it for what seemed like the first time in ages. My goal had been to read ‘Tis and take it off my “To Read” shelf, but in order to do so, rereading the first book was key. I was surprised by my quite neutral reaction to the first book and emotional reaction to the second, given that I had loved the first one so much before. Such is the genius of Frank McCourt.
If Mindy Kaling ran the world, then…
In the seventh grade, my friends Div and Louise wanted to run the world. They said I could be their royal advisor. That is probably as close as I have come to world royalty. Yet why am I thinking of this? Particularly of Mindy Kaling running the world? Oh yeah, I just reread her autobiography Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).
So I was flipping through my WordPress Reader in a homework break, and I came across this wonderful thing:
And it instantly took me back to several things; namely, why I read. I had managed to sum it up into one sentence several weeks ago, or rather, how I view reading. Here it goes:
Books do not give knowledge but instead increased complexity in the way I view the world.
I can put it in a lot more words than that too. Here goes some more letters, consonants, vowels, on the subject:
I read because it’s one of the first things I took on as something I really loved, and it stuck. I loved it then, and I love it now.
I read because it makes me feel connected to other people out there; the writers, other readers, distant past forms of myself.
I read because it’s a form of creating myself (another story– finding myself in my marginalia).
And then, for whatever (seemingly odd, crazy, irrational) reason, I write about it.
I write because there seems to be some solidarity about it.
I write because it feels concrete, even when it’s totally not.
I write because I’m an egocentric, anthropocentric human being who feels that their every thought has to be addressed and recorded for posterity (I apologize for the blunt negativity of this one).
Together, reading and writing form a large part of who I define myself to be, and what I do both in and out of school (which does define me, in a sense).
If you’re a reader, a writer, a dreamer, why do you do what you do?
Nicole
I’m not an animal person. At all. I suppose I could give most of the credit to my dad for this one, as he passed that gene on to me for sure. My friends all go, “What?! How can you not like animals?!” Then I just say, “I don’t. I’m not an animal person.”
Therefore, Cathy Woodman’s book titled City Girl, Country Vet was probably not the best book for me to buy. Yet guess what? I did it anyways. It was sitting on my shelf at home of “Books to Read” for a very long time, and then when I was home over break a couple weeks ago, I picked it up and it was over within two days.
So. Sandra Cisneros. She’s awesome. Yeah. And that title about tropical fruit agriculture in the American middle west? That’s just because I read The House on Mango Street (set in Chicago) and fell desperately in love with the writing of Sandra Cisneros.
A quick look into my book-reading brain. Well, reading in general. I read other stuff too.
Flannery O’Connor has taken over my literary standards of what makes short fiction amazing. I love her. So much. Only two stories into Everything That Rises Must Converge and I cannot possibly stop now.
Sandra Cisneros. On a quest to find more of her stuff to read. The House on Mango Street kept me spellbound and she might beat out Frank McCourt in talking about childhood poverty, which is a feat.
I was in this place on Sunday where I had three books started (or maybe four, considering I’d slowly been rereading The Catcher in the Rye…) and really really wanted to finish them. So this one came first on my list of books to finish. Originally started for class. Will have to go back and annotate more, both in quantity and in depth, later, but glad to know what happens at this point.
Stephen is a young man from Hong Kong who is attending university in Canton, China, when he falls ill with tuberculosis. Sent home and quarantined, he feels shut away from his best friend, King, not to mention his family, especially his younger sister Penelope/Pie. He finally convinces his father to let him take the journey to the family’s home in Tarumi, Japan, sooner than his father would have taken him and by himself.
In Tarumi, Stephen befriends Matsu, the solid, quiet gardener; Sachi, a friend of Matsu’s who also knows how it feels to be isolated; and Keiko, a pretty girl in town. As Stephen starts to embark on his own adventures in Tarumi and Yamaguchi, a small village in the mountains outside, he realizes just how intertwined the past is with the present, especially with Matsu, Sachi, Matsu’s sister Tomoko, and a mutual friend Kenzo. Seeing very much a bubble world, Stephen realizes some of the harshness of life that he hadn’t been exposed to before, and is sad to leave when the time comes.
This book was required for class, which meant that I didn’t pick to read it for me. That was okay; it just meant that my obligation to finish it was greater. (Could you even imagine me using SparkNotes? So impossible it’s laughable.) That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy bits of it, because I did, it just was not the most enjoyable imaginable.
Tsukiyama goes into complex detail about certain things, typically in clusters. The beginning, for example, had a lot of detail about everything. It got a bit tedious at parts for me because, while that’s all nice and good and can be done really well, it slowed the plot down quite a bit. Sure, it was meant to mirror how static Steven’s life was, how little was happening so he noticed the details, etc. It just didn’t work for me because I’m going, “If you’re so bored, why don’t you consider doing something then?”
Unlike a lot of other books I read, I didn’t have a favorite character, or a favorite part, really. That’s pretty unlike me to say that, especially given my human bias to favor one thing over another and then magnify both my like and dislike to the extremes. I didn’t have a favorite character, a favorite section, or a favorite topic that the book brought up- leprosy, suicide, illness and isolation from society, love, relationship histories. If anything, illness and isolation from society was the best-portrayed central theme (take into account when I write this that I really want to read Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed right now too). But Tsukiyama doesn’t really provide hard facts on when historical events occurred, or what was happening during the period, or the types of illnesses and why they’re spread, or the reasons, from the character’s perspectives, for societal seclusion of the sick, or…. you get the idea.
The Samurai’s Garden is a three-star book. The plot deals as much with backstory as it does with what’s happening when the book is actually taking place, which is nice given that so many books choose one or the other, which sets Tsukiyama’s novel apart. Characters, including the narrator (who I found a bit self-congratulatory at parts), were not particularly unique from characters you see elsewhere, especially given the stereotypes that Tsukiyama chooses to have them defy. Set in a period ravaged with deep conflict, but with little involvement in it. It was okay, and just okay.
I have at least two more reviews coming, and should go read more Flannery O’Connor (I’m hooked from “Everything That Rises Must Converge”) and wean myself off “Emily Owens, M.D.” on Netflix before I have to go back to school on Monday.
Have fun reading!
Nicole
2013 was a big year- academically, in regard to development of thinking (especially over the past few months), and, of course, reading-wise. I did not nearly read enough this year (again, over the past few months), but I have read some really fantastic things this year. And so comes the end-of-year highlights.
Pete Wells reviews Guy Fieri’s Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square. By far the best restaurant review ever. Period. Also one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and while this came out last November (picture me laughing and looking insane on the school bus), I have shared it with a countless number of people this year. I believe it is fantastic. My family also has a thing against Guy Fieri, which is mostly with my dad, which makes it that much more hilarious. Enjoy.
LeBron James Is a Sack of Melons. I don’t do sports. I mean, I played volleyball for a couple years and took on soccer this fall, but I definitely am not a “sports person” and I am assuredly not a, let’s say, proficient viewer of professional sports. Uh, no. I have minimal knowledge of football, and the smallest inkling of basketball (primarily from my first grade days when I was playing with all boys– sound familiar to any fields of study I happen to love now?). Yet this article made me laugh. A lot. It too came out last year, but I’ve read and reread it countless times, heightened by the fact that it’s one of my dad’s favorite articles. If you’ve ever heard of LeBron James (who goes by the nickname LeBon (like a bon bon) from my sister in our house), read this. Please.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. I was looking through my notes from last school year to make sure that I technically read this book this year. It’s true. I did read it this year. It was in January, which seems both ages ago and no time at all. Frank McCourt writes more poignantly about childhood, poverty, innocence and loss of innocence than any other writer I’ve ever encountered. This is my go-to book whenever any of those things come up in discussion, and, as I tend to say, “it’s my go-to book for slum life.” As crude as it sounds, it’s true. And the whole book is true too, given that it’s a memoir. I said ages ago that I’d read ‘Tis (the sequel) and I haven’t yet, but will definitely get around to it soon.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I don’t know how I managed to put several other things before this, as it is the best book I’ve ever read and I read it this past summer. Incredible. Just incredible. You have to read it if you haven’t. There’s no way to describe it that does it justice. Just amazing.
These articles (1, 2) on reading. My reading has developed in such a different way in the past couple of months; annotating has approached new standards and levels, which I hope to keep improving. Both of these articles were eye-opening in terms of approaching things in a new manner. More to come on how I read later.
Explaining Twerking to Your Parents. For all teenagers out there. All of them. All teenagers who have to deal with our potentially decaying (though quite up to debate, I admit) pop culture. Inexplicably fantastic.
War and Baked Beans. My dad sent me this article one afternoon. Food for thought, definitely, with no pun intended. Which brings me to…
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Wow. This is one of those books you read in just a couple hours and then need a week to think about. Intense, certainly, but poetic, as a teacher and I agreed on. For sure on my reread list.
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. I wrote about it here right after I first read it, but I gifted my sister a copy and found myself, as I was attempting to wrap it, halfway through rereading it. Similar to The Things They Carried in terms of the way in which you need to read it- three hours or less, and then nothing else for a week. Don’t do what I did and read The Lost Symbol right afterwards. Let’s just say it doesn’t work well that way.
Give and Take by Adam Grant. Sociology, which has been a fairly new topic to me this year, is brought into a totally new light in this book. After reading about him in this NY Times Magazine article a long time ago, I waited to buy the book because it was a hardcover I could only find on Amazon. With a gift card one day, I splurged on it, and never looked back. My copy is currently lent out, but you will want one for yourself. It’s going to change the way I approach everything (and has already) moving forwards.
Both of these articles on running (1, 2). I ran track this spring again, the 400 and 800 meters. But I just love running. I’ve never been “good” at running long-distance, but I am vowing to run more for me next year. Both of these were great to read as general ideas/opinions/advice, not just on running.
Philosophical thoughts here. I know the people who run this blog, and this is a favorite sample of their writing. Reminds me a bit of several quotes from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed that we read in class (which is yet another book on my reading list). Philosophical questions are coming up in my annotations more, so I need to explore more writing and apply ideas across things.
Lastly, if that wasn’t enough reading material, this made me laugh back in June or July. Especially relevant given that this is an end-of-year list. You can be one of those people and comment on this post if you’d like, but no guarantees I won’t do the same on yours.
Happy reading! What’s the best you’ve read this year?
-Nicole
A Book and A Button 