September Readings

...began with Zusak's heart-tugging memoir about his pets & what it means to have pets as part of the family, instead of mere ornamentations. Then I rolled through retired LAPD detective Rick Jackson's true-crime memoir of a memorable murder case, followed by a revisit of Vonnegut's "autobiographical collage" in Palm Sunday. All 3 books are highly recommended.

But then my nephew challenged me to read Infinite Jest with him. It would be my 3rd trip through DFW's magnum opus, and it took me more than 2 weeks. But it was worth it. I had forgotten how laugh-out-loud funny this book is. And it was sobering to see that what was once absurd when Infinite Jest first came out is now a little too on-the-nose.

Maria Ressa's book, which came out shortly after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is must-reading for anyone trying to grapple with today's weaponized surveillance economy and how journalism, as the 4th Estate of any working democracy, must adapt. Orwellian is almost too-tame a word for what Ressa went through and is warning us about.

And Harp's true-crime dive into the criminal underworld of Fort Bragg serves as further evidence of something I've known for a while: secrecy is inherently poisonous. It is a breeding ground for the worst of our impulses. A secret may be a situational necessity, but it should always be a temporary condition. Otherwise, it is deeply corrosive, providing cover for all sorts of atrocity, even from people who would otherwise not be capable of such.

Attica Locke's Guide Me Home is the conclusion of her Highway 59 trilogy, and it's a book that almost requires a reading of the first 2 novels. But I did enjoy it.

And Mary Roach is a national treasure. All of her books should be required reading, and Replaceable You is a strong addition to her catalog. She is funny, informative, and she writes in an infectiously conversational style that makes her subject matter truly delicious to digest.

Finally, a prompt from someone online (a para-social contact, if you will) led me to revisit Powers's The Yellow Birds as an audiobook. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship with audiobooks, but they're just so damned convenient. More on this later, but The Yellow Birds is such a lyrically-written book, so full of emotional authenticity, that it's hard to criticize. It begins with a well-worn trope: a young man going to war. But then the book goes somewhere (forgive me) completely novel. I recommend it.