All the books I’ve read so far this year—My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin, Seven Days in June and The Perfect Find by Tia Williams, Yellow Wife and The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson, Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae, The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
I gave myself a goal this year—15 books. I’m proudly (and intentionally) back in my bookworm era. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (which admittedly is the one book I read last year but captivated me so that I must acknowledge and discuss it again) introduced me to a new love—historical fiction, which now dominates my little book library. And if I like a book, I explore more books written by that author, which is why you see multiple books by the same person on my list.
If I had a book club, my top picks would be Yellow Wife (my number one pick), The Covenant of Water, Small Great Things, and All the Light We Cannot See. All these novels sat with me in unique ways and lingered with me even after I closed the final page.
Most of these books have in common the beautiful interweaving of life—one person’s trajectory purposefully intertwines and affects another person.
Yellow Wife was my favorite; it is an absolute must-read! It is a historical fiction novel based on the life of Mary Lumpkin, a.k.a. Pheby Delores Brown, born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, who finds herself enslaved at the Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond. I eagerly sacrificed sleep to finish this book. The crazy thing is my mother’s maiden name is Lumpkin, so I had some curiosities going on (you never know.)
The Covenant of Water takes place in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family (from 1900-1977) that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.
It was the longest book I’ve ever read—over seven hundred pages. It was also, in some sense, one of the most challenging books for me to read—a historical fiction of another culture. My unfamiliarity (and inability to easily pronounce) some of the Malayalam words was a twinge. I wanted to know the language correctly. I did Google pronunciation of some of the recurring words. But even with my little language barrier, this story was unexplainably gripping (and very insightful). I thought about my neighbors from Sri Lanka—how would they feel reading this book? Would it incite the same emotions I felt when I read Yellow Wife? And then there is the caste system, which I was clueless about as presented in this story but still familiar with because….racism. Why is there such an ignorant obsession of humanity with granting or withholding respect, privileges, and kindness to someone based on their perceived hierarchy?
Did I also Google what a banana leaf looks like? Yes, so that I could adequately visualize what Big Ammanchi was serving her food on. And Big Ammanchi’s relationship with God was one of my favorite parts. Her frankness and humbleness were inspiring, causing introspection of my relationship with Him. There were so many good parts of this story.
Jodi Picoult’s blurb on the back of Seven Days in June made me look into what she had been up to since I read My Sister’s Keeper many years ago. And that’s how I came to read Small Great Things, a novel about a Black labor and delivery nurse and the racism surrounding her care of a white supremacist couple’s newborn son, apparently inspired by a 2012 news story from Flint, Michigan. The gist of it is a black nurse with 20 years of labor and delivery experience was doing her job, caring for a baby. The baby’s father called her supervisor into the room and asked that she not touch the baby or anyone who looked like her. He pulled up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. A note was placed on the baby’s file that no African-American personnel was to touch the infant. The nurse wound up suing the hospital. That was just eleven or so years ago, so does that qualify as “historical fiction”? (It seems more like current fiction or relevant fiction.) I have nothing against Jodi Picoult because I’m genuinely a fan. Still, Small Great Things left me asking how a writer checking (at least a few) physical attributes of a Karen writes from the voice of a black woman so accurately (and she was pretty darn accurate). It was something like confirmation that racial gaslighting is real. And how many copies did Small Great Things sell? (…it sold something like 14 million copies around the world. Things that make you go hmmm). Anyway, it is recommended reading.
I read The Perfect Find because I only like watching a movie based on a book if I read the book first to compare. So when I saw this would be a Netflix movie starring Gabrielle Union, I hurried to read the book first. The film was rather disappointing on multiple levels. The book is a fun (sexy) summer read.
Between The Covenant of Water and All the Light We Cannot See, I have an amazing new insight into the significance of the development of radios. And in one of these books, I learned a new word that I like: reticence.
I’m ten books down and already have my next five (for now) lined up. Including Sula by Toni Morrison, The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel, and Cutting for Stone, another novel by Abraham Verghese.
I’m in my bookworm era and like it here––when I come to the end of a book and look up, just four days have passed. But in that time, I’ve lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school (IYKYK).
What books have you read this year so far? Any recommendations?
