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Love , the latest novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, is a miniature tour de force . It's a story where seemingly nothing happens, nothing that you could really call a plot. Two men who have known each other a very long time, but haven't seen each other in many years, are having a pint at a pub.  It's familiar Doyle territory. Roger Rosenblatt, reviewing Love  in the New York Times , writes: When I tell you that Roddy Doyle's new novel , "Love," is about two 50-ish men talking well-oiled talk in a pub, you'll say you've heard that one before. You haven't. When I tell you that the novel isn't so much about what happens, or happened once upon a time, as it is about the mystically inaccurate nature of language, you'll say you learned that lesson long ago. You didn't, at least not the way Doyle spins it. When I tell you that in spite of these familiarities, you'll wind up caring about a bond that seems to rely mainly on words, you'll...

  In honour of National Read A Book Day, grab the book you are currently reading or the last book you read.  Open to page 56, and find the sixth sentence on the page.  Type the line in comments, plus the title and author of the book. I'll start: -- What? Roddy Doyle, Love  (2020) When we last played this game on wmtc in 2008, we had one of the longest threads ever on this blog... now wiped out. I continue to hope. Perhaps foolishly , but I can't live with the thought of thousands of comments being lost.

As I've mentioned many times, I keep a running List of books. The List dates back to the mid-1980s.  It's not a complete list of books I've read. I wish I kept track of every book I read, but because I didn't start this at the Beginning of Time, I can never start it.  The List is also not a to-read list. If it were, I would be too overwhelmed to read a single word.  The List is all the books I hear of or read about that sound interesting and attractive to me. The List is the universe of books that I turn to when looking for what to read next.  Books from the List comprise about half my reading -- meaning, I read many books that aren't on the List. This bothers me in ways I cannot begin to explain. I work hard to free myself from All Or Nothing thinking, but it pops up in all areas of my life.  [Strangely, for someone whose default setting is All Or Nothing, I don't care about reading series. I often read the first book in a series, and then, whether I liked it o...

I thought Black August was something newly created by Black Lives Matter, but it turns out it has existed since the 1970s. I'm sorry I haven't heard about it sooner, and I thank the Movement for Black Lives for bringing it to my attention. Black August commemorates the rich history of Black resistance. Revolutionary moments such as the Watts Uprising, Haitian Revolution, Nat Turner Rebellion, Fugitive Slave Law Convention, and March on Washington all happened in August. Also, many of our revolutionaries, such as Marcus Garvey and Fred Hampton, were born in August. Black August was started in California prisons in the 1970s by Black freedom fighters who wanted to honor the lives and struggle of Black political prisoners killed by the state. Fifty years later, groups like Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and New Afrikan Independence Movement continue the Black August legacy of celebrations by amplifying our history of resistance and creating spaces for Black people to come toget...

How To Be An Antiracist is an important, powerful, thought-provoking book. With unflinching precision, Ibram X. Kendi defines the roots of racism and explains how we can work to eliminate it. The structure of the book is disarming: the explanatory chapters are interwoven with the story of Kendi's personal journey from racist thinking to antiracist thinking. Yes, the author is Black, and he has had racist thoughts, and has engaged in racist behaviours.  He spares no mercy for himself as he looks back, cringing at his beliefs -- although understanding the tradition that they grew from. I hope Kendi's openness and his willingness to publicly criticize himself helps more readers approach his ideas with an open mind and less defensiveness. Kendi believes that our typical conception of racism as a product of fear and ignorance is wrong, and he makes a very strong case for that belief. He shows that racist policies are made by racist people in order to further their own interests. Ra...

Revolutionary thought of the day: "Institutional racism" and "structural racism" and "systemic racism" are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic. Ibram X. Kendi, How to be Antiracist

This Place: 150 Years Retold , foreward by Alicia Elliott. In keeping with my posts about political graphic nonfiction , here is a quote from This Place . The book is an anthology of 10 stories by 10 or 11 writers and illustrators. Each writer prefaces their story with context, including something about their personal connection to the material. Chelsea Vowel  begins her preface to "kitaskinaw 2350" like this. Dystopian or apocalyptic writing occupies an enormous amount of space in contemporary storytelling and in our social consciousness. We are told that the end is nigh, and that the world (or at least the world as we know it) will be destroyed, and that this is a Bad Thing. We are encouraged to imagine what life could be like during and after this supposedly inevitable destruction, but are steered away from dreaming up alternatives. Indigenous peoples have been living in a post-apocalyptic world since Contact. This entire anthology deals with events post-apocalypse! * * * ...

One of the many wonderful things about working in a library is having access to such a wide variety of books. This has greatly broadened my choice of reading material. In the past, I kept a list, mostly based on book reviews, and read almost exclusively from my List. I still have a list -- the constantly expanding, never-ending List of books I might one day read -- but I also grab books from displays and book carts and return bins, books whose titles and covers look interesting. Idiot Wind caught my eye for an obvious reason: the title is the name of a song I love.* I'm glad it has such a catchy title, because it turned out to be a really good read. When we meet Pete "The Hat" Kaldheim, he is escaping New York City with the clothes on his back and not much else. He buys a Greyhound bus ticket to the southernmost point his $36 will take him. He leaves behind friends who he has lied to, stolen from, and generally disappointed. He also leaves behind a cocaine dealer who wil...

I read Little House on the Prairie when I was very young, and eventually went on to read the whole Little House series. I didn't know any other girls named Laura -- there were at least five in my Master's program, but it wasn't a popular name back then -- and I was infatuated with the idea that the Laura in the story grew up to write the book I was holding in my hands. Even then, I wrote stories, and fantasized that I would write a similar series that children would love. The series was always said to be autobiographical, but it is also fiction. When I picked up Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, I was curious how much the books reflected Wilder's life -- and how that pioneer girl came to write such an enduring (if now dated) children's series. Prairie Fires is revelatory. It's meticulously researched, and the writing is both precise and accessible. It's a fascinating read. The elephant in the room We can't ...

Continuing the series, started here . I've decided not to review these books, but instead to post a cover image and a quote. It was difficult to choose quotes for these books, since they are books about ideas and events, with hundreds of different people quoted and referenced. After flipping through the books and seeing quote after beautiful, stirring, inspiring, infuriating quote, I decided to pull the lens back to more general thoughts from introductions and prefaces. Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World , edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (many contributors) The world of the Wobs was made up of immigrant workers without steady employment, health plans, social security or drug benefits (like the future that Republicans and many a Democrat envision), without any responsibility on the part of the filthy rich for the growing class of poor -- so much like the society around us today. The world of the Wobblies was one realized in its best moments ...

I have been collecting graphic nonfiction with leftist political themes. I just love these books and am indulging myself in buying them. I was planning to review them, but I've decided to simply post images of the covers, the names of the books and the creators, and a quote from the person, group, or idea the book is about. Dangerous Woman: A Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman , written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl, edited by Paul Buhle The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force--necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or slee...

Diary of a Young Girl , by Anne Frank, is many things to many people. It's the most widely read and recognizable Holocaust narrative. It's one of the most common ways to teach young people about the Holocaust specifically and genocidal in general. It's a book for all ages. I read it as a child, as a teen, and as an adult, and I understood it on different levels at different times of my life -- and that's probably a common experience. If you haven't re-read the Diary as an adult, I highly recommend it. The Diary has been translated into 70 languages and more than 25 million copies have been printed worldwide. It continues to be read in schools all over the world. This is partly because the first-person account personalizes the experience, makes it relatable, in a way that conventional histories cannot. But I believe the impact of the Diary endures because Anne was such a talented writer . This fact is often overlooked in discussions of the Diary, overshadowed by t...

On the final day of 2017, I wrote a short list of people and topics I wanted to know more about, authors I wanted to sample but somehow never did, and unfinished reading challenges: what i haven't read and what i'm not reading (again, a post that had a fair number of comments... still hoping to restore them).** From there, I dubbed 2019 The Year of the Biography (just for my personal reading, of course). I ended up reading three massive tomes on the lives of Frederick Douglass , Jackie Robinson , and Muhammad Ali . I also read three graphic biographies: the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl (which I hope to write about), and biographies of Muhammad Ali and Emma Goldman. These weren't the only books I read in 2019, but they dominated my reading time. Social distancing and the absence of library books inspired me to purchase three more biographies, and continue the trend for 2020: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline...

When I wrote my beyond-rave review of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma , by Bessel van der Kolk, I purposely omitted some personal reaction and connections I had to the book. Here they are. Moving forward with my own healing On the list of physical issues that can result from trauma, fibromyalgia is one of the most common -- along with depression, anxiety, stomach issues, and chronic fatigue. I've long ignored the connection between my past experiences and fibromyalgia, but now I feel ready to take it on. After resisting this for years, I want to try EMDR , for its potential to reduce my fibromyalgia symptoms. When I made this decision, I thought it might be futile, as I assumed I wouldn't be able to find a practitioner. To my surprise, there are many, not far away! Not in our town or region, but in the closest more populous area. That's about three hours away, but doable. (Funny how a three-hour drive now seems like no big deal! It ...

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma is famous among trauma survivors and the professionals who treat them. I can say without hyperbole or exaggeration that it's one of the most fascinating and meaningful books I've ever read. The Body Keeps the Score is divided into two parts. The first part of the book examines the brain's and body's physical response to trauma. There are essentially two kinds of trauma: the sustained, multiple traumas of childhood abuse and neglect, and adult trauma from a specific event. Many people, of course, survive multiple traumas, as both children and adults. For me, this part of the book was absolutely revelatory. Bessel van der Kolk explains the neuroscience of trauma -- and the many scientific studies and clinical observations that have led to this understanding -- in clear, plain language, using lots of analogies and examples. I am not a fast reader, and I struggle with poor concentration from fibromya...