What I Read: January 2022

Hello from 2022! I wrote an unusually large amount of words this month, so I’ll dispense with the intro and let you start reading. But first: something too good not to share with other readers…

Bookshop.org is hosting a “win free books for life!” contest (well, $600 per year, at least, which will at least get you through 6 months… ha!)! All they want is your name + email — easy, peasy. Use my affiliate link and enter here. Details:

Onto our regularly scheduled programming…

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Here’s what I read in January:

Homegoing: A Novel

by Yaa Gyasi

I’ve heard only good things about this novel, so when Ashley Brooks noted it as the book that helped reshape her worldview in 2021, I jumped over to the library and was pleasantly surprised to find it available to read right away. I love a story that follows generations, and so the premise excited me: the book follows the descendants of two different half sisters, both born in the 1800s in what is now Ghana. One is sold into slavery, making the journey across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and the other is given in marriage to a white British slave trader stationed nearby; eventually her son returns to the village of her birth. Each chapter alternates between the lineages, hopping from generation to generation until we reach present-day America. It’s intense and heartbreaking, as you would expect, and I heartily fell in love with almost every character, even when they only got 15-20 pages a piece. In contrast to the heavy overall story, this novel was a page-turner, for sure.

One of my favorite courses as part of my history degree was taught by Neil Kodesh called “History of Africa 1500-1875,” which traced the origins of the slave trade, but also explored some of the ramifications to the local villages after the official slave trade ended in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Homegoing gave me stories to map onto what I learned in that course, and the novel will stick with me for a long time.

I struggle to give star ratings to books like this, books that are good for me but are also hard to read in many ways. Books like Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson are so important, so impactful if we read them with open hearts and action-oriented hands. But they also — rightfully — leave us bruised. It is hard to read about people enslaving other people. It is hard to read the stories of abuse that hold hands with history. It is hard to know that today’s world and today’s America — our cities and towns where we live now — are impacted by the very kinds of actions books like these describe. And yet we need to read them, because if we want restoration, we must acknowledge that these atrocities existed and exist now and will exist for as long as we ignore them.

If you enjoy sweeping-and-hard generational novels about families, I’d also recommend Pachinko by Min Jin Lee or The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, and if you like books where the narration moves from character to character, I cannot recommend J. Ryan Stradal’s Kitchens of the Great Midwest enough.

Goodreads | Bookshop

Wild Women and the Blues: A Novel

by Denny S. Bryce

This was a pick by my neighborhood book club and the setup was so promising — two storylines intermingle, one in the 1920s Chicago where Honoree Dalcour is a cabaret dancer is trying to climb the limited ladder of success available to a Black woman, and one in the 2010s where film student Sawyer is trying to authenticate a long lost film by a popular Black director, a film in which Honoree appears. The two tie together as Sawyer interviews Honoree, now over 100, trying to uncover what happened in her life and the lives of those around her in mob-run Chicago. The plot is fascinating, but I found the writing to be a slog. It had too much dialogue, repeated itself too much, and “told” the story instead of showing us what happened.

If you love the back-and-forth kind of storytelling with a historical and present-day lens, I’d recommend The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane & The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs (a series featuring the Salem Witch Trials, a touch of magic & academia), Big Lies in a Small Town (a bit of a thriller/mystery, also discusses race & the arts, but loses the lens of the Black experience), or The Masterpiece (a lost art school in Grand Central Station + women making their mark on history).

I’d love to read more novels about the Black experience in the arts in the early 1900s. Any recommendations for me?

Goodreads | Bookshop

I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations

by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

We have been listeners and Patreon supporters of Beth & Sarah at Pantsuit Politics for a couple of years now, but I’ve never read their first book. I wanted to read it ahead of their next book, Now What? How to Move Forward When We’re Divided (about Basically Everything), releasing in May. This is a great read if you want to start talking to people who disagree with you on anything, but especially politics. If you’re a podcast listener, you can hear Beth & Sarah put these practices into action every Tuesday and Friday. The book is a great overview of what they try to do on the show, and I’m eager to read the new one and see how it takes the events of 2020 onward into account.

Goodreads | Bookshop

Call Us What We Carry: Poems

by Amanda Gorman

Gorman’s debut collection (which includes The Hill We Climb that she read at Biden’s Inauguration) is a time capsule of the here and now. It feels young and a little raw (she signed the deal in January of 2021 and it’s out in the world already), but tells the story of today in an immediacy that feels right. A perfect read for Black History Month that starts tomorrow. I’ll return to this one for sure (and the acknowledgements made me weep).

Goodreads | Bookshop

The Guncle

by Steven Rowley

I snagged this off the “Lucky Day” shelf at the library after seeing the cover floating around on social media. I knew nothing about it, and I think that is exactly how to enter this one. It is well-plotted, has great characters, and doesn’t shy away from hard stuff while remaining undeniably funny.

Goodreads | Bookshop

I’m also s-l-o-w-l-y working my way through both Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (excellent and dense) and Rewilding Motherhood by Shannon K. Evans. Maybe they’ll get reviewed in February!

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What I’m reading with the kids:

I promised last month to do a roundup of what books my kids got for Christmas once we were able to read them all… and of course, Arthur has chosen to read anything BUT what he got for Christmas. (Isn’t that the way it goes? He once refused to read any Christmas books the month of December until he finally relented a few days before the holiday and then he was hooked and begged me not to pack them away when we took the tree down.)

I’ll give you a rundown of what we got them, at least. Each of our kids get three books from us (one we open on Christmas Eve), and then some from friends and family as well. I’ll talk about when we buy new vs. used for kids at some point, but the short story is: they basically get new books at Christmas and birthdays, and everything else is second hand.

Arthur’s three books:

• Kai & the Monkey King by Joe Todd Stanton — a continuation of the Arthur and the Golden Rope series that we love. A cross between picture book + graphic novel, which is a sweet spot for Arthur at 4.

• This Is How We Do It: One Day in the Lives of Seven Kids from around the World by Matt Lamothe — This illustrates real families and their routines from all over. So good!

• A Cat’s Guide to the Night Sky by Stuart Atkinson and Brendan Kearney — This is part picture book and part science lesson, walking through how to identify constellations and what starts are really made of and all sorts of cool facts. We’re suckers for cats and stars around here, so I’m hoping we can learn some constellations and be able to name them when we walk to the bus in the dark in the mornings.

Tennyson’s three books:

• Sleep Tight Farm by Eugenie Doyle and Becca Stadtlander — Gorgeous illustrations, perhaps a bit long for Tennyson at 2. Hoping to read this with the kids as we prepare to garden in earnest this year for the first time in awhile.

• Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts — Part of The Questioners Series, this is about a smart but shy girl who loves to build things — but needs a little encouragement to share her inventions with the world. I’m only a little obsessed with Rosie the Riveter as a historical figure, so this might be as much for me as it is T.

• Chirri & Chirra On the Town by Kaya Doy, translated by David Boyd — This was a recommendation from our local bookstore, Mystery to Me, and it’s beautiful! The illustrations have so much to look at, even if the plot isn’t super intense. There’s a whole series of these, and I think we might try to read along with Chirri & Chirra as the seasons change.

I’ll dive into some others next month — hopefully we’ve read them all by then!

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That was so many words about books! Until next month… what are you reading?