religion

Book Two for 2025: “Memory Wall Stories”, Anthony Doerr

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While wandering around in the library, I found this book. His two more recent novels, ” All the Light We Cannot See” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land” remain two of the most touching and fascinating novels I have ever read so decided to try what he started with, short stories. These stories do not disappoint.

The title of the book comes from the first of the stories. It is a combination of science fiction and paleontology. Via an operation to his head a young boy in South Africa possesses the memories of an old woman. Through her memories he learns of a her deceased husband’s interest in rocks and fossils. This allows him to make a discovery that changes lives. In the next story, due to the death of her parents, a young girl in Kansas has to move to Lithuania to live with her grandfather and makes a myth come true. The following story, “Village 113”, won the O. Henry Prize. It details what happens to one woman, a keeper of seeds for an entire village, when the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. Another story tells what happens to a couple in Wyoming when they desperately want a child but cannot conceive. The shortest of the stories, “The Demilitarized Zone”, is well about that–sort of. The final story, like several others, is about memory, in this case the memories of a Holocaust survivor, who like many who survive horrible events when others they know do not, wonders why her.

I liked these stories so much that I ordered his earlier collection of short stories, “The Shell Collector.” He has won the O. Henry Prize for short stories five times and the Pulitzer for “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2015. I keep wondering how he knows so much about so many places. His short stories and novels are set in countries all over the world. The research must never end.

Book One of 2025: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store”, James McBride

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This is another great novel by one of my favorite authors. The book begins with the finding of a skeleton in a well in 1972. Since it is located near the site of an old synagogue, the police start to question a local, elderly Jewish man, Malachi, but get nowhere. Before they can come back to ask him more questions, Hurricane Agnes washes away the skeleton and many houses in the lower, wealthier part of town. When they do finally get around to hunting for him again, he has disappeared.

Then the novel goes back 47 years in this nondescript Pennsylvania town where the white people live in the lower, nicer part of town, and the Jews and black people live in or near an area called Chicken Hill, a poor area with little water and no plumbing. It is the story of a Jewish couple, Chona and Moshe. She runs the grocery store in the title, and he runs a dance theatre where he hosts dances, sometimes showcasing very famous musicians, mostly Jewish or black or Latino. It is also the story of some of their black neighbors, one of whom was Chona’s best friend in school, Jewish immigrants from Europe like Malachi, and a deaf black child, Dodo. When the state comes for Dodo because his mother has died and they think he should be institutionalized, Chona’s kindness and the courage of a local black worker, Nate Timblin, bring the black and Jewish people together to save him. While all this can be sad and serious, I also found myself frequently laughing. This novel reveals the quirks of all sorts of people, how they relate to one another, the dangers of racism, and ultimately the meaning of community, courage, and friendship and how much these things matter.

Book 50 for 2024: “Teddy and Booker T”, Brian Kilmeade

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I finished this book on New Year’s Eve, missing my goal of reading a book a week all this past year, but not by much. No excuses except one book I read was nearly 800 pages which took a bit longer.

This last book was full of surprising information. I had no idea that Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington were friends. This book is very detailed with loads of historical information about the lives of both of these men. Born worlds apart in terms of freedom, economics, and race, they both had a goal to further the status of Black people. In terms of his political future, Roosevelt made a big mistake when he invited Washington to the Whitehouse for a family dinner. Once this event became known, white people in the South were outraged. Jim Crow incidents, e.g. lynching, increased. Roosevelt felt he had to backtrack some to save himself and this included one his worst decisions in terms of racial equality. Meanwhile, they tried to hide their relationship more, did not visit each other as often, and Washington had to go to great lengths to appease some whites in the South to keep Tuskegee growing and flourishing. W.E.B. Du Bois viewed Washington negatively and thought he went too far to appease white people and did not do enough for his own race. Du Bois who had grown up free in the North did not understand Washington’s viewpoints and did not know what he did secretly to help Black people. If you are interested in the actual history of this period and how these three men affect the present, I highly recommend this book. There are 35 pages of references, notes, and documentation at the end of the books for those who want to read further on this topic and time period.

Book 46 for 2024: “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez”, Claire Jiménez

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The Puerto Rican Ramirez family lives on Staten Island. The book begins years after one of the three daughters, Ruthy, disappears at the age of 13 while on her way home after her school track practice. Twelve years later while watching TV, Jessica, the oldest daughter, sees someone on a reality show who looks like Ruthy. The woman on the TV has red hair like Ruthy and the same birthmark mole. Jessica tells her younger sister, Nina. They concoct a plot to go to the reality show site and bring Ruthy (if she is really Ruthy) home. They avoid telling their mother, Delores, who has never ceased struggling over Ruthy’s disappearance. Delores discovers their plot and insists on not only joining them, but also bringing her older Pentecostal friend who frequently falls into spiritual spells on the floor at church. Eventually, they all head to Boston where the show is located and all kinds of turmoil occurs.

The novel is told from the viewpoint of each sister and their mother, providing endless details about their Puerto Rican culture, their jobs, their views, and how they feel about each other, all done with dialogue. Sometimes it is loving, sometimes snarky as it deals with their experiences with racism, sexism, family secrets, and violence. As a reader, I, too, wanted to know what happened to Ruthy. Definitely worth the read.

Book 43 for 2024: “A Stranger in Olondria”, Sofia Samatar

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As a person who diligently never fails to finish a book I start, it is difficult to admit that I have finally failed to finish a book. I made it to Book Five and quit. Having already happily read two of this author’s other books, this failure comes as a surprise.

In this fantasy novel, the narrator’s quest to find the body of an illiterate girl from his own country (he has wandered far in search) whose ghost haunts his dreams became less and less appealing. Not sure why because I generally like fantasy novels. This novel does raise some interesting questions:

-Are burial/cremation practices so sacred that one must follow what is considered sacred in one’s culture or risk exile?

-Where is home?

Book 41 of 2024: “Crazy Horse”, Larry McMurtry

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One of the saddest books I’ve ever read, this short piece of nonfiction details not only the life of Crazy Horse but also the demise of the traditional lifestyle of the Plains Indians. Crazy Horse has been the subject of endless legends and myths, many of which apparently have nothing to do with reality. He was not a chief; he often defied traditional Sioux customs. He was very much his own person. Among his people, he was especially known for his kindness and support of the poorest and weakest and for his prowess as a warrior. Crazy Horse died young due to not only white betrayal but also that of some of his own people.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in this particular period of US history. At the end is a comprehensive list of sources with notes about each one of them.

Book 39 for 2024: “The Return”, Hisham Matar

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This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. The subtitle, “Fathers, Sons, And The Land In Between” indicates a bit of the subject matter–how sons and fathers relate, but in this case it is a tale of horrible grief and suffering when Matar’s father is arrested and imprisoned in the notorious prison of Qaddafi in Libya. For decades Matar tried to find out what happened to his father. There is no record of his death and no one knows what happened to his body. The book details the lives of his family and their search for news of, hopes he might be alive, and what happened to Matar’s father. To this day no one knows. In 2012, 22 years after his father’s kidnapping when Matar was 19, he returned to Libya to try to learn more, met with uncles who had also been imprisoned, some for 20 years. This is the tale of his family’s suffering and hope. It also relates in detail the horrors of Qaddafi’s reign, what happened to many in his most notorious prison, and the resilience of so many who managed to survive, including close relatives of the author.

Note: After Qaddafi fell, there was hope for a new, unified government. However, as of the present, Libya is ruled by two rival administrations and is a divided country.

Book 36 for 2024: “The Storyteller of Marrakesh”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

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A striking, foreign, young couple appear one evening in the Jeema of Marrakesh. The woman’s incredible beauty fascinates the observers. Suddenly, they disappear. Hassan, a traditional storyteller, invites those who observed the couple to tell what they saw and knew on that night as he presents his own stories to the crowd at the Jeema. His brother, Mustafa, has confessed to the crime of their disappearance, telling everyone he loved the woman whom he hardly knew. He is imprisoned for their disappearance. However, nearly everyone acknowledges that he had nothing to do with it. This novel presents all the different views of the couple, their disappearance, and what it means. Often observer stories contradict each other, raising the questions of what is truth, whose truth is factual, how can we know what is true and how do we define love. Hassan is determined in his quest which takes the reader through all these stories, Hassan and Mustafa’s childhood, the mysteries of the Sahara, and much more.

Book 33 for 2024: “Three Daughters of Eve”, Elif Shafak

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Shafak is a popular Turkish writer. One of my all time favorite books is her novel about the life of Rumi.

“Three Daughters of Eve” takes place one evening in Istanbul in 2016. Peri, one of the daughters from the title, is on her way to a fancy party when a thief snatches her purse out of the back seat of her car which is stalled in traffic. She parks the car and chases him through back alleys. As she fights him for her purse, an old photo falls to the ground. It portrays three young women and their university professor. This photo jars her mind, takes her back to her time at Oxford University when she was a student there in 2000-2002, her childhood in Istanbul in the 1980s and 90s, and her life. She thinks back to her life with her two friends, Shirin, an adventurous Iranian young woman, and Mona, a devout Egyptian Muslim who word a headscarf out of choice. And then there is the famous professor Azur, whose class on God either makes students hate or love him and the scandal that caused Peri to return to Istanbul.

Until her daughter, who was in the car and eventually chases her mother down in the alley, sees the photo, no one, except her husband, seems to have known Peri even went to Oxford. Her daughter mentions it at the party while everyone is arguing about East and West and politics and who has the most money and how they acquired it. Peri tries to deflect questions, changes the subject, and keeps remembering her past: her parents, a father quite irreligious, her mother a devout Muslim, their endless arguments and hostility, her brothers, her childhood and her stint at Oxford.

Through the story of Peri’s life, this novel explores personal identity, East-West history and politics, the meaning of marriage and friendship.

Book 31 for 2024: “Tender”, Sofia Samatar

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This book contains 20 fantastical and dystopian short stories. I found them fascinating with topics ranging from selkies to ogres to ghouls to jinns to witches (in this case positive ones). The settings range from US to Africa to a settlement in outer space (the story “Fallow”). Divided into two sections, Tender Bodies, Tender Landscapes, these stories address human frailty, anger, greed, extreme religions and how humans treat each other (both good and bad) and what might occur in the future if people do not behave better. “Fallow” is a sort of handmaid’s tale where instead of being on Earth–which has been basically destroyed–a group of extreme religious folks have made a place for themselves on another planet after escaping Earth. If anyone from Earth accidentally shows up, they are in big trouble unless they become just like the people already there. Otherwise, they do not kill them–that is wrong–but just sort of let them slowly die. These stories, both brutal and lovely, display an incredible imagination.