Photo credit: Hildreth Willson
One of the things we love most about the Law Library’s Reading List is that it’s just not like all the others. The Law School community reads widely and well. And this Summer Reading List is no exception - so many wonderfully varied recommendations you won’t see anywhere else. Thanks to all our reviewers once again for taking us over the finish line.
Have a great summer everyone. You’ve earned it.
THE BERKELEY LAW LIBRARY
Click on book cover to read review.
Robert Harris has written historical novels set in World War II, including an alternate history where Hitler wins the war, ancient Rome, Pompei, and nineteenth century France. Act of Oblivion is set in seventeenth century England and New England, following the death of Oliver Cromwell and the end of the English Civil War. The monarchy has been restored, Charles II has been crowned king. Parliament enacts an “Act of Oblivion”, granting amnesty to most supporters of Cromwell and the brief republic they established after executing Charles I. Exempt from amnesty and mercy are the 59 “regicides” who signed Charles I’s death warrant. Most are hunted down and executed. This is the fictionalized story of the manhunt for those regicides, specifically two of them, Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, soldiers and staunch Puritans. Whalley and Goffe are relentlessly pursued on both sides of the Atlantic by Richard Naylor, the fictional and obsessed secretary of the Privy Council’s regicide committee. They escape to New England, where unlike most other regicides, and with the help of sympathetic new world Puritans, they elude capture for years. Harris doesn’t take sides in this war and its aftermath, neither royalists nor rebels being without blemish, though the fanatical Naylor has maybe more than most. This historical novel was one of those happy reading surprises for me – set in an era I knew very little about, and had not been interested in - I thoroughly enjoyed it and found the story and the history it is based on fascinating.
In early 2023 obituaries of a writer I'd never come across before appeared in the Guardian and New York Times. British author Ronald Blythe had died at the age of 100 and both obituaries mentioned his 1969 "classic," and never out of print, work on English rural life, Akenfield. Blythe was from rural Suffolk and spent time in the 1960s interviewing generations of his neighbors in the surrounding villages. Blythe created a series of monologues keeping the style of the speaker intact but changing the names of the participants and setting it in a fictionalized village called Akenfield. The participants included farm workers, farm owners, clergy, blacksmiths, saddlers, thatchers, teachers and even the local gravedigger. The book captures a pivotal moment in time when the nature of rural life of England had undergone fundamental change. Many of the older participants are able to vividly recall the harsh nature of tenant farming from the pre-World War One era and the younger residents are increasingly making the decision to leave to work in nearby towns in non-agricultural jobs. This was truly a fascinating, unsentimental insight into country life, channeled through the distinctive voices of ordinary people.
I have not finished reading this book yet but I can wholeheartedly recommend it already. I have been fascinated to read about the very beginnings of a professional women’s tennis circuit. Remember Billie Jean King came up in a time before Title IX, when women were considered the weaker sex. She grew up in a very conservative, religious household but her parents supported her passion for tennis – as long as she didn’t let her piano lessons/practice slide. Fun fact: Billie Jean King’s husband, Larry King (not that Larry King), got his law degree from Berkeley Law! Students of the art of negotiations, collective action, and the drafting of contracts will be drawn into the story of the creation of the Virginia Slims Circuit. Feminists and LGBTQ activists will benefit from a look back at where we’ve been and what progress we’ve made. I can’t wait to finish reading this compelling and deeply personal story.
Check it out from our Popular Reading.
From Amazon: Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary - one who was equally ambitious but who possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock's uninhibited style of "action painting" triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain's most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen.
This light fantasy tale is another easy summer read, written with obvious sentiment and sympathy for its several characters. It takes place at a hundred-year-old coffeehouse in Tokyo, where certain time-travel events occur according to a strict set of rules and limitations. Maybe because it began as a stage play, the entire story takes place in the tiny subterranean café and each of the four chapters (or episodes) proceeds as basically a two-character scene, involving a young couple; long-married partners; sisters; and a mother and daughter. Along the way, the author adds detail and background so that the staff and regulars become familiar acquaintances, which makes their predicaments, while predictable, take on some added richness and poignancy. This is a sweet and warm-hearted book. And it’s the first in a series, so if you like this one, you can check out the sequels.
If you don't mind some shameless promotion of my spouse David's concise, provocative, deeply researched, beautifully written, and timely book, I'll recommend Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular by David A. Hollinger. This book traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism’s influence on American life. Hollinger shows how the Protestant establishment, embracing progressive ideas about race, gender, sexuality, empire, and divinity, liberalized too quickly for some and not quickly enough for others. Since 1960, mainline Protestantism has lost members from both camps— progressives to secular activism and conservatives to evangelicalism. A Protestant evangelicalism that is comfortable with patriarchy and white supremacy has become the dominant Christian cultural force in the U.S.
In lieu of my own pitch, here is an excerpt from Linda Greenhouse's review:
"[A] nuanced account. . . . [Christianity’s American Fate] offers a path to greater understanding of how a transformation occurring in full view over decades escaped the notice of many who watched in bafflement and horror as the events of January 6 unfolded. Rather than another January 6, the greater threat that Christian nationalism poses to American society may be, as Hollinger warn[s] us, its normalization."—Linda Greenhouse, New York Review of Books
This is one of three book reviews written by our own Savala Nolan for the New York Times Book Review last December that she shared with us and are reprinted here.
In her captivating and lyrical debut, A Coastline is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir, Mary-Alice Daniel reaches boldly into her past across Nigeria, England and the United States to inspect the pressures and nuances of mythology, ancestry, colonization and religion.
The result is as much the story of Daniel’s life — her parents’ escape from post-colonial Nigeria soon after her birth, their doctoral programs in England, their jobs in Tennessee — as it is an inquiry into the things that surround and supplant biography itself: memory, belief, doubt, hope. “My directive is unearthing,” she writes, finding the “root” of the histories that created her, “feeling my way to bare, buried fact.”
Based on a true story, this historical novel tells the story of a doctoral student and bookworm from Kyiv who becomes a decorated sniper in WWII. After Hitler invades Russia and Ukraine, the protagonist Mila enlists to fight back the Nazis leaving her young son behind with her parents. Part of the story tells of the experience of snipers on the Ukrainian front in WWII, and part of the story recounts Mila's Soviet Union-sponsored propaganda visit to convince the U.S. to join the war effort. In D.C., she meets Eleanor Roosevelt and a subversive plot emerges. Both storylines are engaging, but the wartime experiences of a woman insisting on fighting the Nazis and becoming such a deadly sniper that she is nicknamed "Lady Death" are fascinating. The book covers now familiar geography in Ukraine during an earlier historical period with different political alignments. It also explores how Mila faces sexism and disbelief in her sharpshooter abilities throughout her military career, and even includes some wartime romance. I have to admit I enjoyed reading about a female bookworm with nerves of steel killing Nazis, and the historical notes at the end of the book were engrossing.
Like her Bishop O’Dowd High School colleague Thien Pham (see review for Family Style), art teacher Briana Loewinsohn used the pandemic to challenge herself as an artist and storyteller. She, too, pledged to draw every day and to turn those drawings into a story. The result is, in my opinion, the most beautiful thing to come out of the pandemic. Ephemera is a moving, thought-provoking memoir that gives the reader a new insight every time it is opened.
“Take a break and remember that some things are easier to fix than others,” the young woman in Briana Loewinsohn’s breathtakingly beautiful graphic memoir tells herself as she works to revive a garden. This gorgeous stylized work lives in a world where the memories of longing and quiet confusion exist alongside the beauty and solace of nature. As she works, the young woman shares the lessons she’s learned from her mother about the plants that thrive, easily soaking in light and water and the fragile plants that grow alone and struggle to survive. Important lessons about connection, love and resilience are represented in Loewinsohn’s whimsical yet amazingly exact illustrations. Clearly the flowers, trees, plants are drawn by a talented artist with not only a precise knowledge of each leaf but also with a reverence for the mystery and wonder held within each plant. The pain of loss, the bewilderment of loving someone who is unable to be present, and the struggle to understand the past are palpable in these pages, but so too is the importance of engaging with the beauty that co-exists in sadness and using that power to move on.
If you follow Thien Pham on Instagram (@thiendog) – and you should – you’ve seen his powerful book Family Style serially workshopped panel by panel, but the slow reveal is nothing compared to the impact his story makes bound and in print. Thien Pham (or Mr. Pham, to those of us at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland where he teaches), committed himself to drawing every day of the pandemic, and the result of this commitment is the graphic novel Family Style, the harrowing and touching story of his journey from Vietnam to the present. Family Style is not available until June 20, and it's a shame the reading public has to wait even a minute to get ahold of this amazing book. Don’t miss out – pre-order your copy immediately, and if you have the chance, be sure to attend any of his upcoming Bay Area book talks.
Thien Pham was born in Vietnam and came to the US when he was just five years old. Family Style is his love story to this journey and his family as told through a lens of food.
Pham’s memories, from a terrifying sea encounter with pirates on his way to a refugee camp to the joys and challenges that ultimately lead him to become an American citizen are anchored in an array of foods. In each chapter, a particular dish sets the tone for Pham’s story. For instance, in “Salisbury Steak” we learn of the strong, resilient and supportive Vietnamese community that offers everything from a place to sleep to tips on how to access an ATM. In “Banh Cuon” we root for Thien’s mother – a savvy and determined woman with an entrepreneurial spirit. With “Ham and Cheese Croissant” and “Com Tam Dac Beit” we experience the childhood wonder of a Chuck E. Cheese party and the teenage questions of identity and belonging.
Family Style is also a delight to behold. In cartoonist style, Pham uses color to lead the reader through flashbacks and dreams. The round style of drawing is soft and welcoming, reflecting the comfort of the community that supports Thien and later the community he builds in the US.
After the Pham family has been in the US for a while, Thien’s mother, relishing her son’s love of potato chips and his improved English language skills, tells him: “This is your story now.” And indeed, it is. Thien Pham tells his story of risk, love, kindness, hope, humor and identity. It is Thien’s story but it is also our story, a story for everyone who believes in the dream of America and in our individual responsibility to keep the dream alive for others.
Queen Elizabeth II granted Sally Bedell Smith unprecedented access to the Royal Archives collection of her parents’ letters and diaries as well as the letters of close friends and family for Smith’s research. This book casts additional light on the British Royal Family’s life prior to WWII, George VI’s ascension to the throne following Edward VII’s abdication, George VI and his wife Queen Consort Elizabeth’s steadfast support for Britain during the darkest days of WWII, and the immediate postwar years leading up to George VI’s untimely death from lung cancer in 1952. As with all family stories there is the obligatory airing of dirty laundry. In particular, Edward VII from his early days as the Prince of Wales to his abdication was selfish, spoiled, lazy and ill-suited to say the least to lead his country - honestly they dodged a bullet there given his overall lack of character and Nazi sympathies. And it’s clear that from a very early age everyone from the reigning King George V on down saw the future Queen Elizabeth II as the proper heir to the crown. Despite the machinations surrounding royal marriages, George VI and Elizabeth’s marriage was indeed a love match even if she did turn him down the first few times he asked. His dedication to duty, her remarkable ability to connect with the public, and their joint desire to stand with the British people throughout the war are admirable. This is an interesting backstage account of those crucial moments in Britain’s history and the central figures involved.
I dedicate this review to our departing associate director and resident Brit, Michael Levy, who has always bemoaned my preoccupation with the British monarchy.
This is the perfect summer read-- light and entertaining, but well-written with colorful characters and a vividly-drawn locale. Alka Joshi's debut novel takes place in Rajasthan, India in the decade after independence. Two sisters, who never knew the other existed until the death of their parents, find themselves reunited in Jaipur. Lakshmi, the eldest, fled an arranged marriage and has become a henna artist and herbalist to upper caste elite families. Lakshmi must take in Radha, her wide-eyed teenage sister who has just arrived from their home village. Lakshmi must navigate her ambition, the social traps created by class and caste, and a new relationship with her sister. For anyone who has been there or wanted to go, Joshi's writing brings to life the sights, sounds, and food of Rajasthan while telling a compelling tale.
Edgar Gomez writes about coming of age as a gay Latinx man. Among his adventures, he is sent to his uncle's in Nicaragua to "toughen" him up. His uncle takes him to his bar, where cockfighting is the major attraction. He also sets him up with a woman. Nothing happens. Instead, he hangs out on the balcony and talks with the cross-dressing prostitutes. A witty story beautifully told, High-Risk Homosexual is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Male Bio/Memoir. Highly recommended.
Full disclosure, I will admit that this book started off very slow for me because it has a couple of elements that I don’t care for: first-person narrator who is very chatty and too smart for their own good, and it is written in a cozy style. If you are unfamiliar with “cozys”, they are a genre of mystery writing. It isn’t my cup of tea but people really love those types of books. Also, this book is advertised as Southern Gothic. Other than taking place in the south, it isn’t really gothic in that sense. So why am I reviewing this and trying to get you to read it? Well, it’s good for starters, but ultimately this odd story turns into a Lovecraftian style tale. Kingfisher really did their homework concerning Thelemic magic and of many of the principle players. It’s quite a history lesson. And wait till the “ghost” is revealed, trust me it is worth it. I have never read anything quite like that and I have to say it was very interesting. Is this book going to scare you? Probably not, but it is an entertaining yarn. I am including a few books below for additional reading if you’d like to flesh this out and get a little information on some of the real people referenced in the story. Once you start digging you may find it hard to stop. Summer is coming so why not while away the day with a fun book with a good bit of magical history and a little bit of suspense?
Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter, Robert Anton Wilson (Introduction)
Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley by Lawrence Sutin
The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death by H. P. Lovecraft (or any Lovecraft really, this is just a particular favorite)
Starting off with a very attention grabbing title this is a hard-hitting memoir of McCurdy’s abuse at the hands of her narcissistic mother. The story moves along at a good clip and never labors over any of the individual instances of abuse, instead she basically states it like it is and then moves on with the story. As a young child, McCurdy’s mother pushes her into acting where she is successful, becoming the primary breadwinner for the household. Her big break comes when she lands a spot on the Nickelodeon show iCarly. She often refers to her discomfort interacting with the producer whom she does not name, but we all now know was Dan Schneider who was accused of hyper sexual behavior and storylines on his show. There is a long list of young stars from his programs that have now become very troubled adults. Jeanette is lucky that despite that abusive environment and the physical and mental abuse she suffered daily, well into adulthood, at the hands of her mother she has managed to turn her life around and create some much needed stability for herself. I hope that she has the chance to continue to pursue her own personal dream, to be a writer. Well written, matter of fact, and not for the squeamish. It’s worth checking out.
Remember when you would drive your car and the front would be covered in smashed bugs? Or in the summer when you would be swarmed with mosquitos and midges? Or the twinkling lights of fireflies? Today there seems to be a dearth of any of these insects you remember from childhood and it is not your imagination. The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World by Oliver Milman is a stark review of an unfolding and sweeping die off of insect species around the globe. Chalk up this quiet extinction to the usual suspects: Habitat loss, overuse of pesticides, climate change. And you may ask yourself “So what? It’s just bugs.” As with anything in this world nothing is “just” anything. We face species loss, a lack of fertility in the soil, and…extinction of many of the foods we eat. I bet that got your attention. It can be a little technical at times but not too bad. At the very least this book will make you look at bugs in a different light.
Cathleen Schine’s latest novel follows the Kunstlers, Jewish emigres from Vienna brought to Los Angeles in 1939 by a motion picture fund established to help Jewish artists escape Hitler’s persecution. The story begins just prior to Covid when twenty-something Josh Kunstler is sent to LA to take care of his 93 year old grandmother Salomea “Mamie” Kunstler, when his New York parents become fed up with his failure to launch. Soon after Josh’s arrival the Covid lockdown begins and, while isolated with Mamie and her quirky housekeeper Agatha, Mamie draws Josh in with her stories of 11 year old Mamie and her family emigrating to LA and their strange new life there. Schine has a humorous spin on Mamie’s stories, and her descriptions of LA are wonderfully evocative. Mamie’s mother notes on their arrival, “Why are all the cars so big and the houses so small.” As emigres who escaped the concentration camps they are both grateful for their new life but carry their survivor’s guilt with them and face varying difficulties in assimilation. Mamie spins fairy tales - Garbo gives her a puppy, Arthur Shoenberg teaches her tennis, they get a car from Christopher Isherwood, go to parties with Thomas Mann - but Mamie is not the least bit sentimental and the fairy tales all have a bite. Mamie’s stories provide Josh a grounding for his future and remind us the importance of memory and what we inherit from those who came before us.
Recently there have been a number of books about emigres in Hollywood, both pre and post war - Anthony Mara’s Mercury Pictures Presents, for example, is excellent - and they highlight an often overlooked part of film history and the lives of those emigres.
Told in the voice of three generations of bears. From Amazon: The Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as “Yoko Tawada’s magnificent strangeness”—Tawada is an author like no other. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany: they are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a bestselling autobiography. In chapter two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son—the last of their line—is Knut, born in chapter three in a Leipzig zoo but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away...
Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and “the intimacy of being alone with my pen.”
The title pretty much sums up this bestseller from South Korea, which is a satisfying, quick read—perfect for summer. The plot, about a professional killer (a “disease control specialist” in the parlance of the corporate agency managing the assignments), manages to rise above the standard crime thriller by having as its protagonist a 65-year-old woman (code name “Hornclaw”) who may be starting to lose her edge. Despite the straightforward title, there are actually layers to this novel, describing Hornclaw’s traumatic past along with her growing insecurity in the present as her efforts are undermined by rival forces and her own sense of change and decline. Each facet of the crime story becomes an analogue for the plight of the aged—particularly women—in society, with Hornclaw trying to complete her mission and end her career with dignity and on her own terms. The book includes a gripping fight climax and clear-eyed resolution. While reading this novel, I really hoped it could be made into a movie.
The Old Woman with the Knife can be found in the Law Library’s popular reading section.
Perhaps it's a bit of a cliché for a librarian to read and love this book. The story is about Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950), J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian. I had never heard of her before reading a review of this book and the story is amazing. While it’s a novel, it's based on her extraordinary life and work.
Initially hired to curate Morgan’s rare manuscripts collection, she became one of the most knowledgeable and powerful people in the art and book world in New York and beyond. However, she had a secret. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She was the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard, a graduate of the University of South Carolina law school, a diplomat to Russia, and a well-known advocate for equality and racial justice. Belle and her family were able to pass as white in order to secure jobs as teachers and, in Belle’s case, a librarian. This led to the divorce of Belle’s parents and caused the entire family to live in fear of being exposed.
The book is told in the first person and each chapter is like reading her personal journal. As you read the book, you learn how she carved a career and a life in a racist and male dominated world. Now some of this book is certainly editorial license, but the novel is based on what is known of her life and accomplishments. If you have ever visited the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, you can thank Belle for creating its rich collections of books, manuscripts, and art. Read more about Belle and her career at the Morgan Library’s website.
For my book review, I chose Phoebe and her Unicorn, a graphic novel by Dana Simpson. This fun book explores the friendship of a human girl named Phoebe and a unicorn named Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. I'm not kidding, that's her actual name. They meet one day when Phoebe is skipping rocks across a pond and accidentally hits Marigold, who was trapped in her own reflection. Throughout the book we see them overcome frenemies, start a detective agency, and find what best friends do, as well as encounter a candy-breathing dragon and learn about the Shield of Boringness.
What I really enjoyed about this book was the friendship dynamic between Phoebe and Marigold, they felt accurate to a lot of friendships. Another thing that I enjoyed was that it was very funny, the parents were kind and understanding, and the characters were charming. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a sweet, magical, graphic novel centered around friendship.
Potboiler but based on a significant actual murder mystery in British-mandate Palestine of the mid-1930s. From Amazon: It’s 1933, and Ivor Castle, Oxford-educated and Jewish, arrives in Palestine to take up a position as assistant to the defense counsel in the trial of the two men accused of murdering Haim Arlosoroff, a leader of the Jewish community in Palestine whose efforts to get Jews out of Hitler’s Germany and into Palestine may have been controversial enough to get him killed.
While preparing for the trial, Ivor, an innocent to the politics of the case, falls into bed and deeply in love with Tsiona, a free-spirited artist who happened to sketch the accused men in a Jerusalem café on the night of the murder and may be a key witness. As Ivor learns the hard way about the violence simmering just beneath the surface of British colonial rule, Jonathan Wilson dazzles with his mastery of the sun-drenched landscape and the subtleties of the warring agendas among the Jews, Arabs, and British.
And as he travels between the crime scene in Tel Aviv and the maze-like streets of Jerusalem, between the mounting mysteries surrounding this notorious case and clandestine lovemaking in Tsiona’s studio, Ivor must discover where his heart lies: whether he cares more for the law or the truth, whether he is more an Englishman or a Jew, and where and with whom he truly belongs.
A spate of articles following Patricia MacLachlan’s death in 2022 prompted me to reread her most well-known work, Sarah, Plain and Tall. Set in the late 19th century, it tells the story of Sarah who moves to the prairie from her home on the coast of Maine in answer to a newspaper ad from a widower looking for a wife and mother to his 2 young children - Anna and Caleb. The story is told from Anna’s point of view - will Sarah be nice, will she stay, will she like them - the prose is beautifully spare yet affecting. In her acceptance speech for the Newbery Medal for this book, MacLachlan talked about “the heroics of a common life” which perfectly captures the novel’s spirit. Both my daughters loved reading Sarah, Plain and Tall as children, and I was happy to find the book holds up to the test of time.
There were 5 books in this series, and several, including this one, were made into Hallmark Hall of Fame movies starring Glen Close and Christopher Walken.
Prompted by widespread acclaim for his poetry—”Geoffrey Hill is the strongest British poet now alive,” wrote Harold Bloom—I tried and failed to consume a collection of Hill’s work in the mid-1980s. The verse is dense, allusive, and thus elusive. Fast-forward to 2023 and I’ve given it another try with some success. Somewhere Is Such a Kingdom is a collection of three of Hill’s early books, For the Unfallen, King Log, and Mercian Hymns. If the titles aren’t already a giveaway, Hill’s poetic context is medieval and British, though not exclusively. He also writes about more recent events, such as the Holocaust. My initial attraction to his work is to the not too cautious commitment to form—mostly regular meter arranged in mostly consistent stanzas—but especially to the sound, which is typical for how I read poetry. I enjoy the music before I try to get the sense. Hill’s music depends on a hearty supply of near rhymes that adorn the formal rigor: “God,” “blood;” “happen,” “weapon.” Thus, the lyrics proceed subtly like fine art songs, rather than mechanical nursery rhymes. These four words also reflect Hill’s themes: war, history, religion, death, violence. And, as Bloom and others note, poetry itself. One poem is even titled, “History As Poetry.” Therein he invokes Pentecost, Lazarus, “Selah!,” and “Fortunate / Auguries.” What is “History As Poetry” about? I would say “the speechless dead,” which is what Hill’s poems are often about as they seek both to comment on and participate in literary tradition. That’s no exegesis, but it’s about all I can say.
I loved this beautiful memoir by Hua Hsu, a graduate of UC Berkeley. Hsu is now an English professor at Bard College and a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he writes about the intersection of race and identity, music, and pop culture.
Stay True explores connection, grief, and identity through Hsu’s unlikely friendship with Ken, a charismatic fellow Berkeley student, during their college years in the 90s. Hsu described his 18-year-old self as someone who wore vintage cardigans and an “audible amount of corduroy” and who spent his extra time scouring Bay Area record shops and making music ‘zines. When they first meet, Hsu describes Ken as “a genre of person I actively avoided - mainstream.” Ken was in a fraternity, donned backwards baseball caps and Abercrombie & Fitch, and listened to the Dave Matthews Band. They are both Asian American, but in contrast to Hsu’s parents who had immigrated from Taiwan, Ken’s Japanese American family had lived in the U.S. for generations. Despite these outward differences, they develop a deep friendship over their shared love for pop culture, long drives, late-night food runs and everyday college adventures. I’m trying to avoid any spoilers, so that’s it for a description of the story.
Fellow Berkeley folks will enjoy Hsu’s detailed descriptions of days as a Berkeley student - dorm life in Ida Sproul Hall, go-to spots for food on College and Bancroft, and favorite professors. The audio version is terrific (narrated by Hsu and named as one of the NYT’s 2022 Top 10 audiobooks), and the print version is available in our collection.
Erik, long time Berkeley resident, class of 1970, and author of NYT best seller, Face Time, has written a smart, witty, and thoroughly enjoyable novel. With the backdrop of fundraising for the SF Opera he explores essential human relationships. The brilliant dialogue is so precise and concise the reader will find her/himself rehashing the conversation in their mind long after reading.
This fall and winter there was finally enough water in the Rio Grande River at Big Bend to permit pleasant canoeing, so I took off for a two week trip. I stopped at the Front Street Bookstore in Alpine,Texas, and purchased the latest book, Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau, by one of my favorite authors, Craig Childs. Like him, "I walk [and I would add, canoe] long distances through undulating terrain, snow and rock ledges... expanses for no other purpose than to see."
The book is divided into short chapters, each containing his descriptions of, reactions to , and meditations on rock art scratched on sheer faces of large rocks and canyon walls that follow the many rivers, empty and dry, in the American Southwest. As he informs me, "I am writing this book for you, whomever you are standing with me at the foot of this cliff, watching light fill this mysterious figure and the companion on its shoulder."
I got about a third of the way through the book before I lost it. I capsized on a Class II rapids on a tight curve up against a canyon wall. No real excitement. The short rapids give way to a wide calm stretch where I was able to locate all that was not tied down. But the book was waterlogged. Completely. And remained so during the five days of rain that followed. So upon my return trip, I stopped by the Front Street Bookstore one more time, and purchased another copy of Tracing Time. I plan to finish it on the paddle with my son on the Green River this June. Perhaps it was meant to be. I've seen many more petroglyphs walking up the side canyons of the Green than I have on the Rio Grande. What I am certain of is that I will have two good companions on this trip. And, if you want to slow down to geological time--well not quite--this one way to do it.
From Amazon: In Uncommon Wrath, historian Josiah Osgood tells the story of how the political rivalry between Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. As the champions of two dominant but distinct visions for Rome, Caesar and Cato each represented qualities that had made the Republic strong, but their ideological differences entrenched into enmity and mutual fear. The intensity of their collective factions became a tribal divide, hampering their ability to make good decisions and undermining democratic government. The men’s toxic polarity meant that despite their shared devotion to the Republic, they pushed it into civil war.
Deeply researched and compellingly told, Uncommon Wrath is a groundbreaking biography of two men whose hatred for each other destroyed the world they loved.
Violetta by Isabel Allende is a marvelous book. After a depression deprived her family of its wealth, Violetta went to live in a remote part of Chile and she learned how to live a different kind of life than she had expected as a young child.
This is one of three book reviews written by our own Savala Nola for the New York Times Book Review last December that she shared with us and are reprinted here.
Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul is neither “strictly” memoir nor a dieting story, Evette Dionne states up front, but rather “an excavation of a culture that hates fat people.” She deploys empirical data from celebrity culture, television and music videos, while also examining experiences like living through the Covid-19 pandemic, online dating and the institutions of marriage and motherhood, to illuminate just how pervasive fat-phobia truly is.
Along the way, Dionne, a former editor of Bitch Media, includes vulnerable, richly detailed personal stories that give this data a place to land. Statistics about anti-fat bias in medicine feel more poignant and troubling when we experience them through the context of her diagnoses with heart failure and pulmonary hypertension, a disease she chronicles with painstaking insight. Her critique of online dating as a fat person is more trenchant because she recognizes her own internalized fat-phobia, which manifests as a hesitancy to date other fat people and her regrettable feelings of moral superiority toward people who are bigger than she is.
This is one of three book reviews written by our own Savala Nola for the New York Times Book Review last December that she shared with us and are reprinted here.
Elegant, determined, courageous — these are words Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal dancer with American Ballet Theater, uses to describe Raven Wilkinson, one of the first Black ballerinas to sign a contract with a major company, in 1955. They also describe The Wind at My Back: Resilience, Grace, and Other Gifts from My Mentor, Raven Wilkinson, written with Susan Fales-Hill, which recounts Wilkinson’s hard-won entry into the ultra-white world of ballet amid racial segregation in the United States, and Copeland’s own racialized battles in the same world five decades later.
The love and mutual aid between Black women has always been abundant, but not always celebrated. Here, the friendship between two extraordinary Black women forms the book’s core. In warm, plain-spoken prose, Copeland details Wilkinson’s bravery: from joining the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo after years of study, becoming the company’s first (and during her tenure, only) Black ballerina; to enduring the racism of her artistic directors, the pressures to pass for white and harassment by the K.K.K. (burning crosses appear more than once). She gets kicked out of segregated hotels and receives death threats. Wilkinson loved ballet so much that she said she’d “die to dance” — and she nearly did.
Copeland traces this arc alongside her own difficult ascent to ballet’s highest echelons — the physical damage (her toes like cement in her pointe shoes, her muscles and bones “wrecked” by rehearsals and travel), the anguish of dealing with a racist press, the soul-crushing indignity of being “told to dust my skin with white foundation and powder to fit in with the white dancers.” We also feel the transcendent joy that floods her when she dances; the juxtaposition of ballet’s exquisiteness with its particular toll on Black dancers is startling.
This book is a generous, sincere love letter to Wilkinson, who died in 2018, but it’s also a love letter to liberation. Among Wilkinson’s lessons were to dance with a “purpose beyond my performances,” and that one could “defeat hatred with beauty.” Ballet emerges as a way for Black women to claim their right to existence. “To be marginalized from a culture,” Copeland observes, “is to be marginalized from citizenship.” This bighearted memoir is an antidote to that marginalization.