February book report

Reading Fiction Really Will Make you Nicer and More Empathetic – a new study that’s great news for book lovers!

It has been increasingly more difficult to choose books for Sweet Girl. More times than ever before, I come home from the library with a stack of books for her and she rejects them all. I can’t seem to figure out what criteria to use! This month, we are reading The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. I found this 4-book series by Googling 10-y-o girl chapter books.

Four kids, each of whom has a unique gift (athleticism, intuition, logic, and a photographic memory) test into a special school and work together to solve mysteries.

The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley

I requested this one accidentally from the library, looking instead to read The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English by Lynne Murphy. Still, I loved Abley’s exploration of how the world’s languages have been transformed and will continue to be as a result of global trade, immigration, and the Internet, as well as how language changes people. Abley covers blogging, novels, dictionary makers, web-speak, and talks about what the future holds for each. My graduate program was in intercultural linguistics and this was right up my alley. Though the book is primarily about English as a shifting and influential global language (and, most interestingly, how it is incorporated into other vocabularies around the world), I learned so many fascinating facts about other languages and how we perceive other cultures as well as what we might expect in the future. Definitely worth a read.

“All sorts of borders are collapsing now: social, economic, artistic, linguistic. They can’t keep up with the speed of our listening, of our speaking, of our singing, of our traveling. Borders could hardly be less relevant on teen-happy websites… Languages are merging.”

“The combined influences of global business, media, politics, Hollywood and the Internet have an awesome linguistic power. They entail instant communication and instant comprehension a requirement that may prove strong enough to pull English back from the brink of schism. The Roman Empire did not have CNN or Microsoft at its disposal. For the moment, a rough balance appears to exist between the forces working to pull English apart and those laboring to keep it united. The language’s long-term future depends on which tendency… proves stronger.”

Eternal Life: A Novel by Dara Horn

A woman saves her child’s life by making a vow to never die. When the story opens, she’s been alive for 2000 years. There are so many reasons to love this book! First, I have liked everything Horn has written. Second, I thought the parenting themes of unconditional love, disappointment, and sacrifice that ran throughout the story must have been true for every generation back to the beginning of time. Also, Horn’s characters are just so real. I would have loved to know more about the many lifetimes this woman has lived. Finally, but definitely not the end of my love list, the way each life intersects with another is captivating. I thoroughly enjoyed the messages the story conveys abut the meaning of life.

“She hesitated. She had never tried to say it before, to give words to the bottomless darkness surrounding her, a shard of a girl caught in the world’s throat. ‘I just can’t bear it anymore,’ she said slowly. ‘Being alive. Losing everything again and again. Every year, every day, I still expect it to get easier. But it doesn’t It never does. Instead it just changes. Constantly changing, constantly in motion. Everyone else thinks they’re moving toward something. But you and I are the only ones who know we’ll never get there, that nothing is ever over. I feel like I’m always falling. I’ve been falling without landing for two thousand years.'”

Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Having read her Life-Changing Magic book a few years ago, and since Kondo is on everyone’s tongue these days, it seemed like a good idea to read through this book too. It is full of reminders and tips about how to sort kitchen tools, cleaning supplies, hobby things, and photos on your computer. Despite some of her odd ideas, I like Kondo and have benefited from her process. See my more extensive review, Kon-Mari-ing my Space.

“Tidying up is far more than deciding what to keep and what to discard. Rather, it’s a priceless opportunity for learning, one that allows you to reassess and fine-tune your relationship with your possessions and to create the lifestyle that brings you the most joy.”

Crazy Rich Asians: A Novel by Kevin Kwan

Out of curiosity, I checked this out at the library and read it in 2 nights. Nick takes Rachel home to Singapore for the summer after dating for 2 years, yet she doesn’t know that he is one of the few ultra rich families whose wealth goes back generations. With that comes certain expectations and ways of behaving, which doesn’t include marrying just anyone. I realize there are not a large collection of countries that encourage marrying for love alone, but still, I expected the racism and stereotypes in the book so that wasn’t interesting, nor surprising. Kwan definitely draws his characters with loads of detail. I don’t particularly care for all the fashion/name dropping, and I didn’t like the footnotes. I’m glad I read it but won’t read the others he’s written. I doubt I’d see the movie.

Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah Lipstadt

There are certain books that one just has to read right away. I put down all my others and read this in two sittings. We have seen a recent normalization of open expressions of hatred and this book is an answer to the uncertainty we all have. Organized as a series of letters, the book dives into current examples of antisemitism and white nationalist violent demonstrations happening in the U.S. and Europe. Lipstadt addresses current incidents and historical events through a series of letters, which I thought made it reader-friendly with short, specific chapters. She also adds her personal viewpoints, which I liked.

Lipstadt dives into Trump, anti-Zionism, social media, Holocaust denial, BDS, racism, separatism, violence, hatred of Muslims, opposition to immigrants, and antisemitism that is fundamental to these movements. normalizing open expressions of hatred, the normalization or mainstreaming of white supremacy and its panoply of attendant prejudices.

Here’s a recent NPR interview in which Lipstadt discusses the resurgence of antisemitism globally, how people can criticize Israeli policies without being antisemitic, and how she maintains a sense of joy studying such darkness.

“It seemed that every day a new development—the murder of a Holocaust survivor in Paris, elections in Hungary in which the winning side relied on overtly antisemitic tropes, a Polish law rewriting the history of the Holocaust, white power demonstrations in the United States, campus anti-Israel campaigns that easily morphed into expressions of antisemitism, Labour Party antisemitism in the United Kingdom, the growing resiliency of white supremacist groups, and so much more—demanded analysis and inclusion in this work.”