Books of 2020

It's that time again, LOBers! In early December, I always take a moment to take stock of the cultural artifacts that meant most to me, starting with book. Books have been a particular salve for me this year; during the height of the pandemic, I pored through a number of hefty novels. Kate and I also embarked on a project to read some of the classics that we'd neglected to read, including Voltaire's Candide, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Here are the some of the newer books that meant most to me this year: 1. Christina Baker Kline - The Orphan Train: Every once in a while a novel just jumps out at me and holds me rapt for the whole experience. Such was reading this lovely historical novel that Kate gave me for my birthday this year. It has several themes that are particularly relevant to my life right now. It involves the coming together of a young Penobscot Indian from Maine who, in order to avoid juvie, has to do community service hours with a 90-something woman who was part of an East Coast diaspora known as the the Orphan Train after the death of her family in a tenement fire. 2. Nate Chinen - Playing Changes: Nate Chinen’s survey of 21st century jazz is an insightful analysis of the future of the art form. Unlike many critics, Chinen predicts a positive future for a musical form that seemed stalled back in the late 80s, torn between the poles of neo-classicism and avant garde loft jazz. However, he no illusions that jazz is a popular music today - or, for that matter, that it will ever be again. In his exploration of the various elements of today's wide-ranging and fractured jazz scene, he imagines a bright future with brilliant music. 3. Jeanine Cummins - American Dirt: Cummins book engendered a furious Woke Twitter response earlier in the year; however, her heartbreaking story of Lydia Perez and her son Luca's fraught journey across the southern border worked for me. It's both a timely and a timeless story about the dream of a brighter future. 4. Humphrey Carpenter - A Great Silly Grin: As a kid growing up in 1970s Britain, I heard lots of legends of the post-war English humor boom, which challenged much of the orthodoxy of stuffy British society. Hancock’s Half Hour, Beyond the Fringe, the Goon Show, That was the Week that Was. Not only was I too young to have watched Monty Python when the original shows were aired in the late 60s - but these 50s and 60s pioneering influences were a distant but powerful memory on the UK psyche when I showed up with my family in 1972. Carpenter's exhaustive study of the period filled in a lot of the gaps for me. 5. Alexander Starritt - We Germans: I'm not one that usually enjoys war narratives; however, Alexander Starritt's intriguing novella was an exception for me. It focuses on the experience of one German soldier on the Eastern Front, as he details it in a long-form letter to his grandson and spares no gruesome detail of war's insanity along the way. 6. David McCullough - The Pioneers: I’ve enjoyed David McCullough’s work since he appeared in Ken Burns’ Civil War series on PBS years ago. Yes, he’s a mainstream historian; however, the Pulitzer Prize does still carry some cache in my book. His latest traces the early efforts of East Coasters to settle the Ohio Territories in the late 18th century, the precursor to the massive Westward Expansion period of the mid-19th century. McCullough emphasizes the romantic adventure of the these pioneers but he’s not uncritical of their efforts, especially when it comes to relations local indigenous groups. 7. Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Talents: This intriguing dystopian novel is part of a trilogy of novels about a utopian community built by survivors of an apocalyptic event. It is largely based on the journal entries of the founder of Earthlink. These entries have the unsettling quality of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or any number of sci-fi, fantasy or horror films. 8. Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses: I've enjoyed Kate Tempest's Cockney-accented garage music over the years, so I was delighted to dive into her debut novel, a searing look at comtemporary London life, through the eyes of a number of compelling characters. Kate's amazing skills of observation are littered throughout the novel, as she lays out a noirish tale of a drug caper gone wrong and its consequences for her characters. 9. William Fibkins - The Graveyard of School Reform: Fibkins history of the failure of corporate education reform is a useful resource for educators trying to navigate around the draconian accountability regime. Here's hoping that the incoming Biden administration will learn some of its lessons. 10. Daniel Chapman - 100 Years of Leeds United: To celebrate the return of my beloved Leeds United to the Premier League and to stoke my excitement for the start of the new season, I dived into this exhaustive club history with relish. It filled in a number of gaps in my knowledge of the early history of the club. Notable Others: * Deanna Fei - Girl in Glass * John R. Thelin - The History of Higher Education in the United States Disappointment: * Bill Bryson - The Body: Bill Bryson has been one of my favorite non-fiction authors for some time now. I’ve read just about every scrap that he's written over the years. I absolutely loved his travel writing; however, as he grew bored with that narrow vantage point and started to write more encyclopedic efforts, I’ve tried to make my peace with it; however, this turgid monograph about anatomy didn't hold my interest. Still waiting for you to write a book about your travels around Ireland, Bill!