National Book Award

Book Five for 2026: “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”, Omar El Akkad

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“What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else’s suffering?”

This book won the National Book Award for Non-fiction in 2025. I started reading it before book four but had to take a break. It is very serious and details a lot of dreadful recent and not so recent history. The author discusses in detail the gap between Western ideals and the reality the West enacts using examples from Gaza, his stint as a journalist in Afghanistan and other war torn places. He notes the betrayals of free speech, the betrayals of indigenous people, the betrayals of people of African descent. Some parts talk about reckoning and questions whether such will occur, who will remember, and will it matter and to whom.

El Akkad was born in Egypt, but grew up in Qatar and Canada as the family followed wherever his father was able to find work. He now lives in the US and states his current home is his 17th or 18th. His family had to move so much he remains uncertain.

This is a serious read for people who want to think about what has occurred in the last 20-30 years, what is occurring presently, and how all this will affect the future.

Determination

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People tell me I have a lot of determination. If they know about it, they use this example: I just finished my 659th day of walking at least 10,000 steps per day never missing a day. My average is over 13,000 but it was higher until the rain came. It forced me to dance, jog, and run in place inside my house, not exactly a fun endeavor.

Three years ago as part of a Story Circle Network class, I read about book written by a woman who read a book per day for a year in order to help her deal with her grief over the loss of young family member who died too soon. I figured if she could read a book a day, surely I could read a book per week. First year I made it, second I fell one short, and in 2025 I read 53 and reviewed them all on my blog.

Today, I finished book one off 2026: “We Are Green and Trembling” by the Argentinian writer Gabriela Cabezon Camara. It won the National Book Award for translated literature. A sort of fantastical, historical novel, it portrays the life of a real person, Antonio de Erauso. Now identifying as a man, he writes letters to his aunt who is the prioress of a Basque convent. When a small girl, his parents placed her in the convent hoping she would someday replace the aunt as head of the convent. To flee the narrow confines of such a life, she escapes and disguises herself as a man. Through his narration and letters to his aunt, he tells of all his adventures, including working as a mule skinner, then becoming a conquistador in South America among other endeavors. At the time of the novel, he has escaped the military captain for whom he fought and rescued two native Guarini girls from enslavement along with two monkeys. The smallest girl and the monkeys were in cages and near starvation when he rescued them. Pursued by the military they escaped, they now reside deep in the jungle aided by the natives who live there.

Through this novel, the author manages to criticize colonialism, the tyranny of strict religious beliefs, the treatment of women, and the horrors inflicted on native peoples.

One Book a Week-19: “The Round House”, Louise Erdrich

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Winner of the National Book Award in 2012, and narrated by the 12-13 year old son of a tribal judge and a professional, tribal woman, this novel details the story of a family nearly destroyed by the brutal attack on the boy’s mother. Even after the identity of the attacker is known, he is set free because she will not tell or cannot recall where the attack occurred, whether on tribal land or just outside its boundary. This leads to the boy’s determined quest to obtain justice for his mother. This page turner perfectly illustrates the continual problem of justice for indigenous women who are 2-3 times more likely to be raped (and often killed in the process) than white women and with no one ever charged.

Given the seriousness of the novel, it is surprisingly funny at times with the antics of teen boys and other characters, including some colorful and interesting older tribal members and an ex-Marine priest. The reader will also learn a lot about Ojibwa culture. Once you start, you have to keep going in hopes that somehow justice will prevail in the end.