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If you only have a minute to find a book recommendation, please go right now to buy this book by Avi Melamed. It is an excellent and fascinating explanation of the power dynamics in the Middle East. I am reading it a second time because it is that good! And my favorite fiction this month was A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe.
I don’t know how to explain the number of books for this month except to say that 1) if you want to ensure that something gets done, ask a busy person and 2) reading is a great distraction from reality. I guess I’m going to meet my goal of 100 books after all!
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain — I finally got to listen to this on audio, read by the author, after being on the library waitlist for over a year. My first thought is that Susan Cain’s voice and personality is nothing like what I imagined it to be (soft-spoken, even possibly a little dull). She is vibrant and full of humor and speaks with a variety of inflections and even sarcasm. This book is amazingly researched, full of interesting anecdotes and Cain’s personal experiences. I published a beautiful quote from the end of the book here.
The How: Notes on the Great Work of Meeting Yourself by Yrsa Daley-Ward — How to take care of yourself in a more loving way: setting intentions, feeling loneliness, learning from your past, etc. I listened to this on audio and I’m glad I did because Daley-Ward’s voice is so understanding and calming.
The Candy House: a novel by Jennifer Egan — I totally read this because of the pretty cover. This may be the strangest book I’ve ever read, in part because I had no idea that it was about a dystopian future. It’s not that far-fetched: people are able to upload (“externalize”) all their memories to the cloud and examine them and anyone can “download” them. Told from multiple points of view over different time periods, this is less a story and more a web of ideas and experiences that fit together. It really brought home for me how far gone we as a society are with our cell phones and inauthentic self-portrayals on social media apps. Theoretically, this technology would solve crimes, help cure dementia, revive defunct languages, find missing people, etc. However, I’m not sure I want to know what everyone really thinks. But this book is about more than this. It’s about loneliness, self-image, the truth of memory, connection vs. individuality, technology, addiction, and so much more.
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business by Roxanne Gay — NYTimes columnist and cultural critic, Gay has published ten years of her best pieces about politics, feminism, civil rights, along with surprisingly human celebrity interviews and her own witty opinions about life. I’m glad to know of her because she echoes my own views about the political and racial climate in America.
Parenting a Teen Girl: A Crash Course on Conflict, Communication and Connection with Your Teenage Daughter by Lucie Hemmen — From the book description: “More than previous generations, today’s teen girls face a daunting range of stressors that put them at risk for a range of serious issues, including self-harming behaviors, substance abuse, eating disorders, anxiety, and depression.” I found it helpful in understanding what might be beneath the eye rolls and lethargy, what to do and say in response, as well as when to begin worrying and when to let it go. The best part were the examples of conversations to have – both what not to say as well as what would work better.
Breaking Through: My Life in Science by Katalin Karikó — Really REALLY good! Karikó just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and a friend recommended her memoir. She tells of her hard life in Hungary and her professional struggles along the way to finally fulfilling one of her dreams of working with mRNA and creating the COVID vaccine. Being a woman working in science is twice the amount of work, and Karikó explains the many slights she experienced. Her personal family stories are enjoyable as well. Here is a great article from Your Local Epidemiologist about her work.
“Something hit me, a feeling and knowing. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say it wasn’t there and then it was. this overwhelming sense of urgency flooding me. ‘I cannot let this happen,’ I thought. ‘I cannot stop working. I cannot settle for less.’ No one, I suddenly understood, was waiting for the work I hadn’t yet done… each of those obstacles would always be more tangible than contributions I hadn’t yet made. Obstacles have shape and structure. You can see them. One’s future impact, by contrast, remains invisible, hypothetical, at least until the future finally arrives. Nobody would ever knock on my door and say ‘Kati, this world needs the research you haven’t done, the discoveries you haven’t yet made.’ My contributions at this point didn’t exist. That’s the thing about potential — it always begins as nothing. And if that empty space was ever to be filled in, if it was ever to become something, it would be up to me.“
Three Flames: A Novel by Alan Lightman — I adore Lightman, a physicist who wrote Einstein’s Dreams. He also founded The Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia,” and has received the gold medal for humanitarian service from the government of Cambodia. This story is told by various members of a farming family from 1973 to 2015 and explores the powerlessness of females, the victimhood felt in post-Khmer Rouge times, the lack of opportunity in rural communities, and how that impacts this particular family. I think the way that Lightman jumps from perspectives and time periods shapes the story perfectly, portraying deep pain as well as the possibility of change.
The story reminded me that I raised funds to build a girls school in Cambodia in 2008 after learning about the struggles that girls face there and hearing about a man who was building schools in rural areas. I recall being amazed that there was a concrete thing that I could do to help, and I didn’t stop until I’d collected every last small donation. I mentioned it to my daughter, who was amazed that I did this and kept asking questions, especially about how I’d never told her about this before. I remember that my philanthropic boss encouraged me and matched what I raised, so that we ended up meeting the goal, but I don’t remember how much it was. I also remember that I was invited to the dedication of the school once it was built, but that by then I had a newborn and so I didn’t go. Perhaps now Sweet Girl will believe that one person really can make some sort of difference in the world.
The Matchmaker’s Gift: A Novel by Lynda Cohen Loigman — The tale of a woman who is able to see a string of light connecting two soulmates, and her granddaughter two generations later who also finds she has this gift. Each of their lives are a tale in themselves. However, it’s not that trite, I promise. It was so engaging that I read it in a day. The story unfolds perfectly and heart-warmingly, with characters who are real and relatable, and is written in such a way that I was continually amazed at the courage of these two women. I was reminded that it’s far better to fight FOR something than against its opposite.
Inside the Middle East: Entering a New Era by Avi Melamed — Wow wow WOW is this book amazing. Melamed published a book in 2016 and most of his predictions in that one have come to be. This one is an update with new observations to help us navigate the international and regional factors that are reshaping the contours of the Middle East. I learned a great deal about militant Islam and the differences between the various factions as well as the historic power struggle between three regional civilizations—Arab, Persian, and Turkish. Melamed’s descriptions of Iran’s gaining control of more area and resources are frightening.
“Five things may be able to curb or prevent Iran from realizing its hegemonic dream:
• Growing challenges inside Iran. • The Achilles heel of Iran’s agent-proxy model. • The fact that Iran’s aggressive policies have resulted in the strengthening of nationalism and patriotism in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. • The emerging counter alliances to block Iranian ambitions. • The rise of the new power in the Middle East—China.”
How amazingly relevant is this paragraph to events of the past 24 days (The book was published in February 2022)?
“When all narratives are valid, it devalues the pursuit of knowledge comprised of facts, context, the sequence of events, cause and effect, actions, and reactions. When the database of knowledge narrows, history and the present become subdued to buzzwords, concepts, narratives, and theories. When critical thinking and media literacy are diminished, conveyors of knowledge are exempt from accountability for the accuracy of their theories and opinions. The combination of facile narratives, disregard for data, and a dearth of critical thinking and media literacy has led to an environment in which a complicated multi-layered Middle East is flattened into a two-dimensional Westernized soundbite and discussions about the Middle East scarcely reflect the complex reality on the ground. Policy failures do not stem from a lack of resources, capacity, or dedicated and committed professionals. They stem from a systemic flaw that prevents an accurate interpretation of the Middle East reality and compromises the ability to navigate an increasingly complex global reality.“
Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome by Aparna Nancherla — I listened to the author read her book and enjoyed her self-deprecating humor immensely. As a female and a minority, she feels that she is the most unlikely standup comic. Nancherla tells about her struggles with anxiety and depression with such candor and openness. I enjoyed her thoughts on formulating material for her routines and how authentic she decided to be.
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan — Hilarious. A shy introvert living in London puts herself in uncomfortable situations to expand her social network. I identified with many of the emotions that Pan described. She has life-changing experiences: she takes classes at a comedy club to ultimately do a stand up routine, she travels to new places, she talks to strangers, and she ends the year hosting a dinner party in her apartment for all her various new friends. Pan also has some deeply-thought out strategies about the best way to connect with people.
“As I study my new classmates, I realize this could double as group therapy. It’s clear that everyone here must have some hole in their life: professional, social, or romantic. No one really seems to be here to actually become a comedian professionally—they are here to try on a different part of their personality, to meet new people, to escape the safe, boring clutches of normal life. We have each looked at our status quo and decided: something needs to change.“
“I learned a lot about loneliness. As an adult, sometimes if you’re lucky, you have close friends from childhood nearby, but when you move away from home or outgrow your old friends, you have to find your people. And it’s so hard. It can take years. You have to actively go out and get them. You’ll need them for when life gets dark or one of your loved ones has just gone into the operating room for major surgery and you’re standing in the hospital corridor, scared out of your mind and you really, really need someone to sit beside you.“
Romantic Comedy: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld — Remarkably similar to The Happy Ever After Playlist, but compelling just the same. A love story between an award-winning comedy writer who thinks she is nothing special and a famous, yet humble, musician. The difference between the two books is that the writing in this one seemed more engrossing, more astute and much more charming. Learning about the behind-the-scenes happenings of a Saturday Night Live-type show was fascinating, especially after enjoying watching Mrs. Maisel’s last season. The only downfall, despite its extreme predictability, is that I found the main character’s never-ending insecurity started to annoy me.
“Aren’t we all just looking for someone to talk about everything with? Someone worth the effort of telling our stories and opinions to, whose stories and opinions we actually want to hear?”
East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” by Philippe Sands — The author writes much more than a personal memoir. This is an unfolding background of two human rights lawyers who coined the apparently competing terms “Crimes Against Humanity” and “Genocide” leading up to the 1945 Nurenberg trials. Both men studied with the same professors a few years apart in Lemberg, now Lviv, which was also home to the author’s grandfather. I hadn’t read anything about the trial itself and this book went into background of the legal arguments of Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, pioneers of today’s human rights movement. Lemkin focused on group persecution; Lauterpacht on individuals. Sands also tells the story of one particular Nazi, from his point of view, which gives a strangely detached perspective of his involvement in mass slaughter.
A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe — 1950s Manhattan housewife who finds personal fulfillment by secretly helping the FBI. It’s about how much mothers juggle their newfound responsibilities and are in danger of losing their identity. Part spy story, part self-determination meets the Cold War era.
“I am a very small dot in this world. My actions are of little significance. But put together with the actions of many, they could have great significance. I want to move the country in the right direction. Then when I’m terribly old and terribly unimportant, I can say that I walked the right path.”
The Breakaway: a Novel by Jennifer Weiner — completely predictable but such a good story! It’s chick lit, but Weiner touches on many worthwhile topics like mother-daughter relationship and communication, taking care of yourself, mother/daughter dynamics and communication, body positivity, mental health and abortion.
