Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for November, 2017…

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by Jane Mayer – I picked up Dark Money on the recommendation of a coworker, and it was fascinating and truly eye-opening.  As a person who follows the news, I was aware of the Koch brothers and their political machine, but I had no idea how extensive the shadowy “Kochtopus” actually is, nor was I aware of many of the other wealthy families and individuals who have been quietly driving American politics.  Mayer’s reporting is excellent, and she shines sunlight into quite a few dark corners that – if I was missing them, I think most people are missing them.  I was particularly appalled to read about Ed Gillespie’s role in the gerrymandering that has taken place over the past decade – so that felt quite timely, since we were in the final days of the Virginia gubernatorial election when I was reading this.  After learning about Gillespie’s activities on behalf of the radical right-wing, I was even more relieved that Dr. Northam will be my next governor.

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng – Having just read Everything I Never Told You last month, I was particularly excited to get my hands on Ng’s new book.  Little Fires Everywhere, like its predecessor, takes place in suburban Ohio, opens dramatically, and presents a family saga as a page-turner.  When we first meet the Richardson family, their house is burning to the ground – the fire set by the youngest daughter, Izzy Richardson.  Izzy built “little fires everywhere” – setting up a campfire on each of her siblings’ beds “like a demented Girl Scout.”  The story then rewinds several months, and the reader learns how Izzy got to the point of setting her house on fire and running away.  It’s a twisting narrative of friendship, race, family and art, as Izzy and her siblings fall in with a mother and daughter who are newcomers to the town, and the entire community is shaken by a legal dispute over an adoption.  As with Everything I Never Told You, I blazed through Little Fires Everywhere, reading breathlessly and – at times – tearfully.  Ng is really a masterful writer – I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Coronation Summer, by Angela Thirkell – Not one of Thirkell’s Barsetshire books, Coronation Summer is a standalone novel about a young woman who, accompanied by family and friends, travels to London to join in the festivities surrounding Queen Victoria’s coronation.  It’s a very funny novel – particularly when it comes to the relationship between Fanny, the main character and narrator, and her best friend Emily, who is traveling with her.  Fanny likes Emily but doesn’t have much respect for her, and she drops snarky little asides about Emily, her speech and behavior, onto almost every page.  They’re rude in the most hilarious way.  Of course, Fanny’s satirical eye falls on almost everyone in her traveling group at some point.  Meanwhile, the reader is treated to an ongoing parade of activities – operas, concerts, parties, club breakfasts, melodramatic reveals of love poems hidden in books – the works.  And of course, Queen Victoria herself is spotted in a carriage.  It’s all good fun and utterly engrossing.

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, by Maya Angelou – I’ve read a few of Angelou’s poems before – the more well-known ones, like Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise, and On the Pulse of Morning – but had felt more drawn to her memoirs, especially the classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  So I’d never before sat down with her poetry and read her works one after the other.  On their own, they’re gorgeous, but read as a collection, they’re absolutely breathtaking.  I paged through this collection reading one poem after the next, and found myself awed, humbled, moved, and deeply sorry that the experience ended so quickly – a couple of days is clearly not enough time to spend with Angelou.  While every poem was meticulously crafted and beautifully moving, I think I still have the same favorite, and even the same favorite lines: You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

The Origin of Others, by Toni Morrison – I was in the middle of another book and had intended to finish it first, but after checking The Origin of Others out of the library, I couldn’t wait and had to dive right in.  This is a collection of lectures Morrison gave at Harvard University, speaking about race and “otherness” in literature and life.  Of course, it’s completely brilliant.  (And has the added benefit of being introduced by another writer I deeply admire, Ta-Nehisi Coates.)  Morrison tackles big topics such as the construction of the “other” and who it benefits to have a class of “others” or “strangers,” discusses the real historical events behind her most acclaimed novel, Beloved (which, to my detriment, I have not yet read – but I’m going to correct that soon), and sprinkles in bits of memoir and reflection on her own interesting life.  Coates, meanwhile, ties Morrison’s not-overtly-political lectures into current events, which gives an important perspective.  I read The Origin of Others in a couple of sittings over one morning – it’s a short book, but full of wonder – and was moved and inspired by every well-chosen word.

The Flight of the Maidens, by Jane Gardam – Three friends (Hetty, Una, and Lieselotte) learn that they have received prestigious state scholarships to attend universities.  Hetty is off to London to study literature, while Una and Lieselotte are bound for Cambridge and, respectively, physics and modern languages.  The Flight of the Maidens follows each of them as they go their separate ways over their last summer at home and the rest of the world adjusts to peacetime after years of World War II.  Hetty, who is nominally the main character, heads off to the Lake District to stay at a B&B and make some headway on her reading list; Una explores her budding womanhood with her Communist boyfriend, Ray, in a series of youth hostels; and Lieselotte – a Jewish refugee who has been living with Quakers in Yorkshire for seven years – doesn’t fly the coop so much as finds herself snatched away and “adopted” first by an elderly London couple and then by an eccentric American aunt.  So – I enjoyed this, but not as much as I’d expected to.  It was beautifully written, but I wasn’t engaged.  I expect that’s mostly a function of feeling like I had to read it (thanks to a library deadline) – so it seemed like work.  But I didn’t really enjoy any of the characters, with the possible exception of Lieselotte – everyone else just bugged me.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates – Like many, I was avidly anticipating the new Ta-Nehisi Coates, and he didn’t disappoint.  We Were Eight Years in Power is a look at the issues and conversations that were going on during the eight years of the Obama presidency (please come back!) via eight of Coates’ essays published in The Atlantic.  Each of the essays is prefaced with a short piece Coates wrote from the perspective of 2017, which read almost like blog posts.  I loved the essays – I’d actually read the last three: The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration; My President Was Black; and The First White President – in The Atlantic, so I was familiar with them already, but they greatly reward re-reading.  The best part, though, was the introduction Coates wrote for each piece.  He looks at each of his essays with a critical eye and is quite straightforward about what portions of each essay work well (in his opinion) and what he thinks could have been improved or stood the test of time.  It was fascinating to get a glimpse into the self-critical thought process of one of the major writers of our day.  Dare I say – I think I liked We Were Eight Years in Power even better than Between the World and Me.  (Don’t @ me!  Just read them both!)

The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery – There is an ever-dwindling handful of L.M. Montgomery books I have not yet read, and The Blue Castle was, until recently, among them.  I have been trying to parcel them out so they last me awhile, but I knew there would never be a better opportunity than when Naomi and Sarah announced their #ReadingValancy readalong event for November.  So I burned one of my precious twenty-four book credits (how I’ve been thinking of Project 24) on a beautiful Sourcebooks paperback, and then I inhaled it.  You can read my thoughts at length in my rambling readalong post here, but – suffice to say – I LOVED every word.  Valancy is a charming heroine, and her rise from colorless and cowering spinster to happy, fulfilled person and wife was a delight from the first page to the last.  I loved following her journey, desperately hoped for a happy ending for her, and eagerly (as always) drank in LMM’s beautiful descriptive nature writing.  The fall and winter scenes, in particular, were delicious – I can perfectly understand why Sarah and Naomi wanted to read The Blue Castle in November.  It was bewitching.

The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3), by N.K. Jemisin – The final installment of the story of Essun, Nassun, and the war between Earth and humanity, orogene and “still,” stone-eater and comm-dweller, is equal parts confusing and satisfying.  I am not normally a reader who insists on all installments in a series being published before I will read the series, but I can see the merit in that position, especially with a series like The Broken Earth Trilogy.  The books start out confusing, since the world is so complex and foreign and the terminology so unrecognizable, and reading them with long gaps in between doesn’t help.  I did read all three this year, I know, but it’s been months since I read the second book, The Obelisk Gate, and other than rough outlines, I’d pretty much forgotten what happened in it (and don’t ask me any questions at all about The Fifth Season, the opening installment, because I dunno).  I spent most of the book scratching my head and trying to remember who was who and what had come before in the narrative, and with a story as complicated and confusing as this trilogy, that really put me behind.  I did enjoy it, and did think that the ending was satisfying (won’t spoil it!) but a word of advice – these are all out now, so if you want to read the series, start from the beginning and read them in close succession.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater – I don’t think I mentioned reading this during my Monday reading posts, because it wasn’t my regular Metro- and post-bedtime-reading – it was so much better!  Mr. Popper’s Penguins was the first long chapter book that I read aloud to Peanut!  We have been working our way through it slowly, one chapter at a time, for about two months – reading a chapter most but not all evenings.  I chose it for a few reasons – (1) I hadn’t read it myself and thought it would be fun to experience something new along with Peanut; (2) the chapters are fairly short; and (3) Peanut and I have tickets to see the play version at the Kennedy Center in a couple of weeks.  The story was utterly charming and we had so much fun reading together and laughing at the penguins’ silly antics.  (And oh, that poor, forbearing Mrs. Popper…)  I loved the whole experience of reading a chapter book aloud to Peanut – that was something I’d been dreaming of and looking forward to since before she was born – and this was a perfect first readaloud.

China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians #2), by Kevin Kwan – I had sort of forgotten about Crazy Rich Asians, but with the publication of the third and final book in the trilogy and the announcement of the cast for the movie, I decided to revisit Rachel Chu, Nick Young, Astrid Leong, Kitty Pong, and the whole crew.  China Rich Girlfriend picks up a few years after Crazy Rich Asians ends.  It is virtually the eve of Nick and Rachel’s wedding, and Nick has not spoken to his mother since he and Rachel left Singapore, nor forgiven her for the way she treated Rachel.  Astrid has patched things up with her estranged husband, Michael, who has made it big and finally hit his first billion – but the money has changed him, and not in a good way.  Kitty, meanwhile, has thrown over Alistair Cheng and married a reclusive billionaire, but is finding it hard to break into high society in Hong Kong.  The plot is pretty thin, and the name-dropping of luxury brands is as obscene as it was in the first book, but GOLLY these are such good fun – and pure fantasy wish fulfillment for those of us who will never fly in our own private jets.  I’m rooting so hard for Nick, Rachel and Astrid, and even starting to have some sympathy for Kitty (who is a LOT of fun to read) as she stumbles through society (getting the better of everyone in the end, I might add!).  I have Rich People Problems, the third in the trilogy, on my library stack and I can’t wait.

What a November!  Eleven books – I think it must have been a long month.  Anyway, lots of good stuff here.  I had a gloriously fabulous time revisiting the Asian jet set in China Rich Girlfriend and poking around Victorian London in Coronation Summer, but I think the highlight of the month had to be The Blue Castle.  I just loved every moment spent with Valancy – my only wish is that there could have been more.  I know I’ll be coming back to that one again and again.  I’m also really pleased with the diversity of my reading in November – six out of eleven books, more than 50%, from writers of color.  Some Toni Morrison, some Ta-Nehisi Coates, some Celeste Ng, some Kevin Kwan – and more.  I’ve worked so hard to make sure that diverse voices are finding their way onto my reading list and making that commitment has truly enriched my reading life.  Now – onward to December!  I have a great pile of what I expect to be fabulous books to close out the reading year.  

What’s the best thing you read in November?