Other Women's Stories: What I'm reading this week (11/26/18)

Last week I finished:

Very occasionally, you get the chance to read a book for the first time again. Generally, this is because the second reading is so long after the first that the first barely matters anymore. In third grade, Mrs. DeJarlais read Where the Read Fern Grows to our class, and it devastated me. For decades I was phobic about reading books or watching movies where the dog dies in the end. I put off reading the end of Marley and Me for months because I didn't want the pain of burying Marley. Yet, that was about all I remembered from the book. It's been on my mind lately, ever since a man was walking his dogs on campus and introduced them to a student as Dan and Ann, which brought me instantly back to that third-grade classroom, my innocent little heart breaking. And when I read the entry for the book in PBS's The Book of Books, I decided I had to re-read it. This winter, I wanted to read something nostalgic, and I wanted to see if the ending affected me the same way all these years later. I didn't really expect, though, to fall in love with the book. But I did. I fell head over heels for this book. It hit my sweet spot. It also didn't fee like a children's book, which really impressed me. This is the partially biographical story of Wilson Rawls' childhood in the Ozark mountains. In it, the boy, Billy, wants nothing more in life than to have two coon hunting dogs. He saves up his money ($40) for two years and brings home Old Dan and Little Ann, two small red coonhound dogs. He teaches them to hunt, and then the adventures begin. Most of the story is spent on hunting expeditions. There is a tragic hunting death of a neighbor boy, there is a hunting competition, but best of all is the relationship between Billy and his dogs and between the dogs themselves. The family is a close-knit one where even the men cry. It was a good blend of gentle nostalgia and the hard realities of life. I loved everything about it. And as someone who knows nothing about coon hunting in the Ozarks, I was riveted by the vivid scenes. Highly recommended for readers of all ages, but especially boys from about eight to thirteen. My rating: 5 stars.

When Tucker Carlson took over Bill O'Reilly's timeslot a couple of years ago, I soon realized I didn't like his show. While I like Carlson and enjoy his intelligent arguments, he seems to enjoy the argument and slashing his guests' arguments to bits just a little too much, and frankly, I don't need more ginned up outrage in my life. I stopped watching after a week or so and haven't gone back. But when his book, Ship of Fools, came out, I heard several heartfelt reviews of it that focused on the strength of the writing, and I decided to get on the hold list at the library for the audio version, narrated by Carlson himself. It's a relatively short book--and he talks fast--but it packs a wallop. There is no downtime, no time when an argument is not being built. He moves deftly from topic to topic, and the book is rather stunning. He covers all the ultra-popular isms: racism, feminism, environmentalism, and shows the intense hypocrisy of the ruling classes. This is the kind of book I wish more liberals would read, but they never will. Because of where I work, I am constantly being forced into reading and discussing topics from the liberal point of view, but opposing views are rejected out of hand as racist, sexists, etc. So, those who disagree with Carlson will never read his well-reasoned arguments and have that "conversation" they keep saying we all need to have. The book made me irate, and it made me want to stop listening to the liberals too, which is a pointless place to end up. The hope, he says, lies in the American elites listening to those they rule over. If not, our democracy (any democracy, as history shows) will self-destruct. We'll keep signaling our displeasure by electing divisive personalities, driving the wedge between sides deeper and deeper. Or we'll decide to throw away our democracy in favor of communist rule (nothing scares me more than that). I don't like reading a book and feeling hopeless, even a very well-written book, and that's how I feel after listening to this one. But until they start listening, it would seem the only leverage I have against the out-of-touch insanity of the elite class is my vote. Let's hope American can hold on until the ship is purged of its fools. My rating: 4 stars.

Last week I also listened to Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. This book won both the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal not long ago. In it, Whitehead re-imagines the Underground Railroad as a literal railroad that runs underground, ferrying runaway slaves to safety. But we learn over and over that there is very little safety for a runaway slave. Our main character is Cora, who runs away and is caught several times. To criticize a book of this renown, and one about race, is a big no-no, so I'll keep this short and sweet. The book is important in that we can't let ourselves forget that we belong to each other, but we can never again believe that we own each other. It's probably even important to have stories about the brutality of slavery, lest we ever forget that, but I don't know if Colson made up the situations in his book based on real accounts or just imagined something horrible and wrote it. I think this makes a difference. My main issue is that the book isn't unique, only one more in a long series of books about the horror of the black experience in earlier American times. I was hoping for something different for a book that won so many awards. I didn't particularly care for the main character, and all the bad guys were wholly bad. I was hoping for a more nuanced account of the issues involved; I was hoping for the characters to be full, not foils. Slaves weren't owned because of hatred alone, and it's intellectually dishonest to present it that way. I guess I just expected more, and what I got was kind of average. My rating: 3 stars.

What I'll be reading this week: