summer reading

Last year I joined Now Read This, the online bookclub sponsored by PBS and The New York Times. Why did I join? To expand my exposure to books I might not otherwise read, to learn, to explore, to interact with others reading the same books.

I rarely read fantasy or science fiction. This summer has become an exception. The June choice, The Fifth Season by Jemisin, won the Hugo in 2016. The other two books in the trilogy won in 2017 and 2018. I wanted to know what happened to the characters so I read them all. The spine says Fantasy. I think they are more science fiction. Even people who claimed they did not like either fantasy or science fiction became like me and read them all. This series tells a futuristic tale extremely applicable to events, both social and political, in the world today, how prejudice kills both overtly and covertly, how fear of those who are different affect everyone, what it costs to live in a world where certain attitudes exist.

It took me two days to finish the July title even with chores, touchup house painting, all the things teachers attempt to do during summer break. Although I had previously read at least three books by Luis Alberto Urrea, I had not read this one, The House of Broken Angels about a family who lives back and forth across the border–San Diego and Tijuana. It is a tragic-comedy about the endurance, hopes, dreams, cooking, living of several generations. His non-fiction book, The Devil’s Highway, is a must read for those who want to understand what occurs along the US-Mexico borderlands.

In the midst of all this, I went back and reread Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Wow, no wonder it caused a stir when it was published in the 1960s: a whole country where everyone switches back and forth between male and female and those who cannot do this are considered perverts. Additionally, the main character is described as having very dark brown skin and those who do not behave exactly as they should or politically protest are sent off to a stark camp where they work in excessive cold and eventually die.

Then I read an article about Toni Morrison and authors who do not write for people based on a certain audience, e.g. black, white. They write about what they know, what they feel, for a different purpose. One book listed was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a fantasy, all of which takes place in what we now think of as Nigeria. It has not one single white character in it. I kept thinking, wow. I read a lot of literature from Africa, Middle East, and Latin America. Most of the time, for better or worse, characters from other cultures show up, usually European and usually for the worse. Not in this one. If you go to a book store looking for it, look in Young Adult. Jemisin’s can be found in Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy. When I mentioned to someone I could not tell why some are categorized one way and some another, I was told there is less graphic sex in YA. Really? I cannot tell the difference.

Next on my list? I annually act as a judge in a literary contest. Three novels arrived in yesterday’s mail. Guess I need to get busy.

A habit I acquired years ago, perhaps even during my childhood, is reading just before I go to sleep. Picking the right books remains key unless you want to stay up half the night either reading or thinking about something horrifying or depressing you’ve read. Lately, my reading has not been conducive to sweet dreams. Earlier this week I finished Among the Ruins, an Iranian mystery of sorts, by Ausma Zehanat Khan. It’s fiction but one of the characters writes letters from prison which are anything but cheery. Now I am reading the Pulitzer Prize winner, The Return. Since Hisham Matar never saw his father again after he was captured and hauled off to a Libyan prison, sleep inducing it is not. Last night I decided perhaps for bedtime I needed to find something not exactly boring but somewhat less stimulating. It may take me all summer given that The Silk Roads, A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan is 505 pages. If I get bored with that, I can go back to two books I reread off and on and save for bedtime reading, When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams and Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz, Selected Works translated by Edith Grossman. Both inspire reflection and contemplation. For those who do not know Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz, she lived in Mexico in the 1600s. She became famous for her intellectual capacity, her poetry, and was referred to as “the Phoenix of Mexico” when women rarely rose to such heights.

What are you reading this summer?