So to Speak (Hayes)

I’ve been a fan of the last few Hayes collections, but this one did not engage me as much. First, it didn’t seem to cohere. It seemed like a gathering of leftovers made into a book, rather than a book with any particular design or intention. And there also seemed to be more cleverness and experimentation than I’ve read from him before. I’m all for him trying out new things. Heck, he can try whatever he wants. I’m just not sure they all should have made it into a book.

The Young Lords: A Radical History (Fernandez)

I knew the name – ‘The Young Lords’ – and that was about it. One day, I saw a piece of a documentary about the group taking over a hospital, and I was intrigued. And this book is a comprehensive history of what, for me, was a surprisingly brief period of pretty productive activity from The Young Lords. And Fernandez has it all – from their education sessions to their work with that hospital (which was much more than just a takeover). I appreciate the way she examines the movement itself, the human beings behind the movement and that she’s willing to both celebrate and criticize.

If the book comes off as a bit textbookish at times, that’s easy to look past because of the compelling nature of the content. Granted, I may have gotten a little lost in the discussion of Marx, but fortunately, they weren’t long and I got the gist of them.

Highly recommended if this is a gap in your knowledge you want to fill.

Anyone know the name of that documentary? I’d like to watch it all now.

Razorblade Tears (Cosby)

Cosby’s newest book is getting all sorts of praise, but a friend suggested I begin with this, his first. As far as first novels go, this is outstanding. Cosby develops characters and takes on issues like he’s making sure that if this had become his only novel, he would not be accused of leaving anything out. It takes courage, I think, to make your main characters not wholly likable. Even if I did figure out a bit of the mystery before the end (and I never do that), all is forgiven. Cosby writes well. “Honestly” is the word that comes to mind. I hope time has tempered the violence in his subsequent novels. It’s not that I don’t think such a plot requires some violence. It’s just that I have a limited ability to accept how much violence a body can take.

Alive All Day (Jackson)

I don’t know what to call this kind of poetry. Perhaps it’s prose? Perhaps it’s stream-of-consciousness? But the ability poets like Jackson (Sean Thomas Dougherty fits here too) to weave together different strands of, if not stories, then observations, into one rhythmic, always forward-moving poem, is just remarkable. As with Dougherty, these are probably better heard directly from the poet’s mouth, but if you take a breath and read one like you are trying to go as far as you can underwater, I think you’ll get the spirit of the thing.

In his final poem, “Acknowledgments,” Jackson ends by sayuing, “so I leave you this instead, the truth, all there is.” Such powerful truth indeed.

Molloy (Beckett)

After reading a series of modern novels in a row, I thought I should go back to a classic as a change of a pace, so I picked up the Beckett trilogy. So maybe I swung the pendulum too hard in the other direction. I’ve read that he was trying to change the perception of the novel as a form. It is certainly different. One man is going, slowly, to see his mother. Another, (perhaps) different man, is sent to find him. And yeah, that’s it. Both men move slowly, both because of their remarkably similar ailments (so are they the same man?) and because they want to share their every thought with us. Want to know how to make sure you can properly rotate 16 sucking stones? There are pages in here for you. Still, it’s hypnotic. The man going to see his mother – his narrative gets no paragraph breaks – so it is hard to stop. Even if he needs to stop regularly because of his legs. Trust me; it’s Beckett. I’ll go on to the next one. Just not right now.

Tom Lake (Patchett)

I am not a Chekhov fan. I don’t exactly why not. Perhaps it’s because I overdosed on productions of his plays for a while. So that part of the premise of this story concerned me when I first heard about it. But Patchett is coming my way at the end of this month, and I wanted to read this in advance of her visit. And I loved it.

First, Patchett completely owns the Chekhov nod. There’s no attempt to be subtle or coy. Second, I think, timing-wise, we’re going to see more and more work coming out that is set during the pandemic, and this is a gente introduction to that subgenre. The pandemic lurks over the novel, but it doesn’t dominate it. Everyone is home because of the pandemic, and Lara is grateful for that. Besides, they need everyone at home because there are cherries to harvest. And because there are cherries to pick (and apparently it’s not a very mentally consuming task), there are stories to tell. More specifically, Lara, the mother, has a story to tell about how her life intersected with that of a famous movie star.

Patchett moves the story back and forth in time fluidly. She captures the spirit of summer stock theater perfectly, I think. I didn’t want to Google it, but I have to believe there is a Tom Lake or at least a place that inspired it. And Patchett displays such honest passion for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town that I kept flashing back to the first time I saw it, the images of certain scenes still fresh in my memory.

Patchett wisely keeps the characters to a minimum in each setting, and this allows her to develop them fully. What I admired most here is that Patchett just gets on with the business of telling the story. Yes, there are time changes, but the need for these time changes is organic. They are not even broken up by chapter breaks. There is, quite literally, a story within a story, because it’s a time (the pandemic, cherry picking) when a story would be told.

I was also grateful that Patchett didn’t wrap the ending up too neatly. Not every piece of a story can or should be told. Not every happy story ends happily. Secrets remain. The epiloies, if you will (Patchett doesn’t call them that), may seem like afterthoughts, but I think they are important and true.

Now is Not the Time to Panic (Wilson)

This? This is the kind of book Kingsolver used to write. Two awkward teenagers find each other and then they make something. And then decide to share that something and its impact is far beyond anything they could have imagined, both in terms of how it impacted their own lives and how it impacted their community. Wilson lets us ask the questions about creativity, originality, mass production, the Internet, mob behavior and growing up. He allows us to decide for ourselves what we think of these characters and their choices – to recognize the reality of the moment through the eyes of people who likely remind us of our neighbors. This novel is just as ambitious as Kingsolver’s but it feels no need to announce its ambitions. Instead, it tells a story.

Demon Copperhead (Kingsolver)

I was starting at a new school, and they’d given me the summer reading list. At some point, I got to The Bean Trees, and I was hooked. I remember exxactly where I was sitting when I read the first few papges and then I remember reading them again and then reading them out loud to my wife. Once I finished it, I consumed everything she’d written to that point. I even wrote her a fan letter.

I know a lot of people swear by The Poisonwood Bible, but I found it uneven. I found Prodigal Summer underwhelming, but got to see her when she was on a book tour and I was, coincidentally, teaching The Bean Trees. I labored through Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and didn’t care for The Lacuna at all. Thus, she fell off of my list.

I was pleased about her success with this book. I liked the interviews I read explaing why she’d farmed it like David Copperfield. They resonated with me in terms of what I thought had been disappearing from her books – character, plot. With all of her passion for her causes, I thought she’d been forgetting to tell a story. Her novels had become didactic, tiresome – the Message always delivered with a hammer.

Still, I held out. I was waiting for the paperback. Then I saw it was not due until April of 2024, and I gave in. In the end, this one is okay. I certainly appreciate the ambition, and this is a story that needs to be told. (I’m just wondering whether narrative non-fiction has improved enough that it has actually been told.)

So I admit I carried a lot of baggage with me before I even picked up the book. In the end, I think this one is just okay. I found it so hard to get absorbed in characters and story because Kingsolver just seems unable to resist her set piece spokesperon scenes. But I found the rhythm of the thing and became more invested. And then, that waterfall scene. I thought it was just a disaster. Still, I pushed through to the least surprising ending ever.

Pulitzer Prize? Fine. For ambition. For getting there first. For getting the details right. Taken together with Hernan Diaz’s Trust, I wonder what we should learn about the United States?

Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (hooks)

I think the key word in the title is ‘wisdom.’ There is so much in this book. The only thing I would like more than reading this book is an audio of hooks herself reading it. I think this one is going to school. There are 32 pieces of wisdom here, and I think it will be useful to re-read one each day. This is the kind of book that you want to put under your pillow so it gets absorbed into your brain. A great gift for first-year teachers – for every teacher.