Books Purchased:
P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe
Going all the Way by Dan Wakefield
Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff
Londoners by Craig Taylor
Chronicles of Old London by Kevin Jackson
A Traveler’s Companion to London edited by Thomas Wright
Books Read:
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Pastoralia by George Saunders
Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith
On Looking: 13 Walks With Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz (audiobook)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (audiobook)
Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff
In a month full of wonderful books, Rules of Civility was my favorite. Set in pre-WWII NYC, it has my ideal duo of successfully transporting you back in time and introducing you to perfectly developed characters that you will grow to think of as friends. A great novel to read at any time, but perfect for travel because you won’t want to put it down.
George Saunders publishes short stories in many of the literary magazines that arrive at my doorstep, so I’d read and enjoyed many of his stories over the years. But the amount of love I had for Tenth of December made me want to go back and read his story collections in full. I started with Pastoralia. My favorite story in the collection was “Winky,” perhaps because I was also listening to The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson at the same time and there seemed to be a lot of symmetry between fictional characters in Saunders’s short stories and the real life subjects of Jon Ronson’s interviews. I am usually reading several books at once, and listening to an audiobook as well, and lately it seems the books I’m reading and listening to have a lot of unintentional harmony. (While I was reading Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg I was also listening to Drinking With Men by Rosie Schaap.)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of my favorite novels of all time, and yet I had never read anything else by Betty Smith. It felt time to remedy that with Joy in the Morning. It’s a lovely novel about a young couple starting out their lives together, appreciating the small, good things in their days and trying to scrape by with very little money. It’s no ATGIB, but it’s lovely in its own right.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann had been sitting on my TBR shelf for several years. I’m happy to report that it lives up to the hype. I was reluctant to start it because all I knew about it was that it was centered around the man who walked between the world trade center on a high-wire, and I never seemed in the mood to read about that. It turns out that most of the book does not center around his story – that event ties all the other narratives together. But his story, though sort, was one of the best parts of the book. After reading this, I watched the documentary Man on Wire, which was fantastic.
I listened to the audiobook of On Looking: 13 Walks With Expert Eyes, mostly while walking myself. Alexandra Horowitz embarks on a quest to walk more mindfully, and notice things in the world around her that normally escape her attention. To do so, she takes walks with 13 different people, including her dog, an urban sociologist, Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. This book is a treat, and yes, will most likely help you open your eyes wider and notice the world around your neighborhood that’s still foreign to you. If you like audiobooks, it’s a great one – especially while walking.
Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff is a fascinating and honest look into the rise and fall of America’s auto capital. Detroit is the only American city to have reach 1 million residents only to fall back below that mark. (Current population is around 700,000.) It’s been left with poverty, corruption, racial tension, and depression. I think it’s important for Americans to understand what happened there. It’s a great book, and a heartbreaking reality.
