Books of 2022: Reading List

Or, technically, read and re-read books. Mostly off my own shelf, but also borrowed and reviewed titles.

Listed in chronological order of my reading:

1. The Essential Gandhi (1983) wherein I find he’d never written “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” or something like that. Bookmark the Quote Investigator, which suggests that Gandhi may have spoken these words on multiple occasions, but didn’t use it in his published articles—none in this anthology of his writing, to be sure.

2. Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (1993) by Mark J. Plotkin. An ethnobotanist’s sensitive journey through the Amazon to discover how the environment and cultures heal (or kill).

3. A Land of Ghosts (2007) by David G. Campbell. More botanical research in far western Amazonia. A little less culturally and environmentally sensitive than Plotkin’s book, in my opinion. Good on the history of imperial exploitation and the collapse of a resource-based economy (rubber) when synthetics are invented.

4. “What’s the Deal, Hummingbird?” (2022) by Arthur Krystal, New Yorker, January 24. Somewhat stream of consciousness reflection on our quarantine. The kind of thing I wanted to write.

 

5. In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (2018) by Nathaniel Philbrick. More Washington than hurricanes, and actually more about how much the French Navy helped America win independence. I love Philbrick’s writing. Will read more.

4. The only book so far that I just could not get myself to finish reading: Loon Lake (1979) by E. L. Doctorow. One of my favorite writers, and I don’t mind a fractured and confusing narrative; it was the child rapes I could not abide. Bought it at the thrift store, and it’s back in the outgoing thrift bag.

5. All’s Well That Ends Well (play) by William Shakespeare. Re-read. I get a lot of the comedies mixed up, so it’s worth a second or third or fourth indulgence. I love smart heroines like Helena the doctor’s daughter.

6. Maggot and Worm, and Eight Other Short Stories (1969) by M. M. Liberman (who shared my birthday). Stories from before he was my Grinnell professor. It can seem strange reading several first-person stories with different protagonists, and especially strange when you know (knew) the author. Literature that reminds me why I never wanted to teach (or write) literature. (I liked but didn’t love it.)

7. Great Expectations (1860) by Charles Dickens. (Re-read) How come the only thing I remembered from my initial reading decades ago is the decaying bridal gown on the jilted Miss Havisham? Anyway, a good reminder of why I love Dickens: character, language, theme, and perfect storytelling. How come I only have five Dickens books on my shelf? (GE plus Pickwick, Oliver, Two Cities, and the Carol)

8. Silent Spring, and Other Writings on the Environment (2018 Library of America Collection) by Rachel Carson. The poisoning of the baby boom. Brought back memories of the green plastic poison-injecting stick Dad had us use to treat the dandelions at one house, the mandated gypsy-moth spraying at another house, and the sweaty bandanna Dad wore up at our orchard in West Virginia, working his own poison-spraying machine. Amazed we all survived. Rachel’s own life chronology had me weeping.

9. The Editor (2019) by Steven Rowley. Novel about a writer who is blown away to meet his glamorous editor, Jacqueline Onassis. I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction (I know, I know), but I picked it up because: Jackie. A good companion to the Clint Hill memoirs of guarding the Kennedy FLOTUS.

10. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991) by Daniel Yergin. Borrowed from my brother’s bookshelf, with a boarding-pass bookmark indicating the timeliness of the book when he started reading it. I do like resource-focused histories, and this one is a good study for me in the geopolitics. More enlightening, though, is the role of energy and other resources in war. Logistics. Came up again with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as in General Grant’s memoir (see below).

11. Emperor of the Air (1989) by Ethan Canin. Short story collection. More first-person literature. Six months later I don’t remember any of the stories, but I remember enjoying the writing. When this collection came out, Canin was working on his first novel. He did a story reading at one of the long-gone bookstores in town. I miss those days. I remember telling him, as he signed my copy, that I wrote my first novel in three weeks. Obviously it never got published. (But see how long it took me to read his work.)

12. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1991) by Doris Kearns Goodwin. A more psychologically analytical critique than I was expecting in a biography. She reveals more of LBJ’s breakdown in the-end-of-presidency years than is hinted at in Robert McNamara’s memoir (see below). Note: Also on my bookshelf but not yet read is John Dickerson’s The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency, which deals extensively with Johnson but also with the most-recent one-termer. I need more time before I consider this a safe “history.”

13. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (1992) by Daniel J. Boorstin. I expected more art and artists in this, but “creation” includes the creation of ideas about creation itself. So: mythology, philosophy, and religion. Nonwestern thought is included, but not as extensively as Western. Not many women, but, as I noted in my notes, “Thanks for Virginia Woolf.”

14. “The New Dress” (1927) by Virginia Woolf and “The Madonna of the Future” (1887) by Henry James (both in one of my anthologies, Masters of the Modern Short Story, 1955). The stream of consciousness by Woolf apparently was revolutionary (per Boorstin, see above). James’s “madonna” was about the artist who would portray his madonna but [SPOILER ALERT] never did, so it was really an unactualized work of art. Which you could say is what the future is.

 

 

15. The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885; my cheap 2012 edition with multiple typos collects volumes 1 and 2). Describing his early years, Grant reveals a wry sense of humor but little of his personal life once he meets and marries Julia Dent. And of course he died shortly after his account of the Civil War. Since Grant had spent time as a quartermaster, much of the war strategy was about getting food and arms to the men. It was also about resources and geography. Logistics! (See The Prize, above.) If only, if only he’d been able to write about his presidency. I imagine it would resemble McNamara’s In Retrospect. Their accounts of the wars they directed were remarkably similar, high on personal responsibility, low on assigning blame.

16. A Room with a View (1908) by E. M. Forster. All I remembered from the movie was Daniel Day Lewis as Cecil. [SPOILER ALERT] I didn’t really see the happily-ever-after ending coming. The novel is included in an anthology with Howard’s End and Maurice. On my list of books to clear off my shelf, but I guess I should read the other two first? The movies were really enough.

17. Art as Therapy (2013) by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong. On understanding art as a way of working out our own lives. Maybe. The lessons are well laid out, but I can’t see taking the book with me every time I go to a museum to look at art. Maybe Visual Intelligence by Amy Herman is a better choice for looking at art and seeing the world (outside of oneself, that is).

18. Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943) by Max Shulman. Midwestern American humorist (viz. “Dobie Gillis”) looks at college life and the intellectual (or anti-intellectual) influences of the day as proposed by the variety of co-eds the guileless protagonist pursues. Much of the fun is with the naming of characters, more heavy-handed than even Dickens and Wodehouse: Yetta Samovar, the communist; Alpha Cholera, the fraternity.

19. Voluntary Simplicity (1998) by Duane Elgin. Anecdotal, survey-based. The psychological impacts of changes individuals made in their lives for the sake of environmental preservation and just simpler living. I would like to have had more how-to pointers and lists. I guess that’s the magazine editor in me. From my notes: “I feel like I’m trying to read the safety instructions card while the plane is going down. It’s 2022 and here we go.”

20. A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway. One of those classics I’d never read, but what great writing! A slice of World War I (medical corps of Italian campaign) I know nothing about, mixed in with a love story. I’d read two of the other novels in this collected works (The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises) but not For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’ll have to read/re-read all eventually.

21. Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984) by Fay Weldon. Lecture-y but tender. Made me want to re-read Emma, which I have done (see below).

22. “Phaedo” in The Portable Plato. Dialogue. On the death of Socrates and the immortality of souls.

23. Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s (2010), edited by Robert W. Rydell et al. Academic companion volume to the exhibition at the National Building Museum, which was overloaded in the captioning (hence my purchase of the book). Essays are scholarly (lofty but flat), and the reproductions are crap. Interesting, nevertheless, for the art and cultural history.

24. Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare. One I’d never read or seen. How sad! The story, I mean.

25. The USS Emmons: Eyewitness Accounts from Survivors of the Battle of Okinawa (2020), transcribed by Cheri Yecke. Re-read in preparation for presenting a copy to the Navy Heritage Center (Robert Smith, archivist). I still think it’s better than a Spielberg movie.

 

with Rear Admiral Frank Thorp (ret_USN)
at Navy Heritage Center

26. Breaking New Ground: A Personal History (2013) by Lester R. Brown. The life and work of my favorite “futurist,” an environmental and agricultural researcher and policy analyst who started life as a tomato farmer. (His writings about sustainability in The Futurist had the most influence on me personally.)

27. Art of the Twentieth Century (1976) by Maurice Besset. One of my college textbooks, which I probably only dipped into at the time. Really kind of appalling how hard it is to read textbooks. I’m surprised I learned anything in college. Also appalling how few women artists are included. Love me some Paul Klee, though, and he’s treated well here. (Yes, I’ll say it: I’m a Klee-mate.)

28. “Extricating Young Gussie,” aka “The Man With Two Left Feet” (Saturday Evening Post, 1915) by P. G. Wodehouse. Noted as the first appearance of Jeeves. (I needed something to help get me through Art of the Twentieth Century.)

29. King John (play) by William Shakespeare. Another one I hadn’t read or seen before. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys right away without actors showing you. But once you get to beloved young Prince Arthur you know. And you cry your eyes out.

 

30. How Right You Are, Jeeves (1960) by P. G. Wodehouse. Included in a three-volume collection with Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1962) and Jeeves & the Tie That Binds (1971). There’s no point to summarizing the plot. The language is the thing.

31. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995) by Robert S. McNamara (with Brian VanDeMark). A survey of the mistakes and failures that comprised the Vietnam War. Like General Grant in the Civil War, McNamara is reluctant to blame anyone, including Johnson, for all that happened. But, he emphasizes, Johnson should have been less secretive. See Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on the subject of Johnson’s pathological need to control all information.

32. The Republic by Plato. Last of the dialogues included in The Portable Plato. Terrifyingly accurate description of the tyranny confronting us as the threatened successor of democracy (due to growing popular resentment of some people’s profligate expression of their rights and freedoms). On educating the future guardians of his ideal republic, Plato (in the character of Socrates) argues against teaching literature (fiction/poetry), such as is found in Homer where it is unauthentic (lies). I thought he was being sarcastic, since he cites Homer a lot. If Plato is the imitator of Socrates, does that mean he, too, is removed from Truth?

33. Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds (2022) by Jim Dator. Sociology, futurism, memoir, diatribe. Reviewed for Foresight Signals. Dator is one of the best known and most revered futures academics of our time. I liked the memoir and (Trump-directed) diatribe parts the best.

34. Emma (1815) by Jane Austen. Re-read because Fay Weldon seemed to admire it the most (see above). Well, yes, it is pretty perfect. None of the melodrama of scoundrels defiling maidens (Wickham, Willoughby).

35. Much Ado About Nothing (play) by William Shakespeare. Still my favorite comedy. Re-read in preparation of seeing modernized version at Shakespeare Theatre Company (Spamalot alum Rick Holmes as Benedick).

36. Wait Till Next Year (1997) by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Memoir: on being a young girl who loves baseball, specifically the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. A detailed and moving reflection on the 1950s and its terrors, from polio to McCarthyism. DKG herself is as interesting as the subjects she writes about as a historian.

 

37. The Stranger (based on Stuart Gilbert’s 1946 English translation) by Albert Camus. A novel about a seemingly disengaged man who is tried for a murder but is really found guilty for not feeling sorry enough about his own mother’s death in a nursing home. His biggest emotional outburst is directed at the cleric who foists religious beliefs on him at the end. Contemporary readers either view the narrator as a monster or “diagnose” him as having Asperger’s syndrome. But is he not “existentialist” in the sense of accepting present conditions (such as his mother’s death) as they occur? His intolerance of heat and bright light suggests sensory issues, but I wouldn’t call his nonbelief in the afterlife “monstrous.”

37. The Tempest (play) by William Shakespeare. Re-read in preparation of seeing Teller’s magical interpretation at Round House Theatre. I’d forgotten how much of the play was about forgiveness. (The RHT production’s magic tricks were distracting, but I forgive it. It was a jump-to-your-feet standing ovation performance.)

38. Becket, or The Honour of God (play, 1959) by Jean Anouih. Henry II and Thomas Becket the martyr. Sorry, hated it. Henry and Thomas were both pretty despicable. I remember seeing T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral years ago, but I don’t remember disliking the story this much. Maybe someone could recommend a good history?

39. A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving. Religion, baseball, the 1950s, Vietnam. Friends and mothers. Broken people. It’s been a while since I’d read John Irving. He is masterful with the details, just as Doris Kearns Goodwin is with her own memoir of the same era and themes. The narrator (author?) is as angry with Reagan as many of us (specifically Dator, see above) have been with Trump.

*Addendum: At some point while reading the Gen. Grant memoir I took a Sunday off to re-read Othello, again in preparation for attending a related production, Red Velvet, at Shakespeare Theatre Co. Sunday afternoons have always been good Shakespeare-reading times, going back to my Shakespeare Readers days.

I find memoirs to be my favorite window on history. I loved every one I read this year, from U. S. Grant to D. K. Goodwin. As for the history plays, Shakespeare’s kings, Anouih’s martyr, I will only say my mind’s eye is an insufficient interpreter. Give me dramaturgs, directors, designers, and actors.

There was also more philosophy and religion in my readings than I even expected with my Gandhi and Plato, to wit, Camus’s Stranger and Irving’s Owen Meany. These readings are broadening my understanding of misunderstandings. And I like how Irving describes faith itself as a miracle.

Lastly, turning obsession into an art form (and trust me, the point of this was not puzzle solving. It was inspiration), a compiled layout of the privately printed Stories My Words Tell. Nobody seems to have gotten the point of it. I apologize for the "stories" not being legible. Inquire within. Love, hosaa

Stories My Words Tell, C. G. Wagner.
Hint: open the image link in a new tab and zoom in.

Reading 2020

Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to keep better track of the books I read during the year, and I’ve done so by marking start and finish dates on my wall calendar. And with a newly catalogued personal library of more than 600 volumes, I reminded myself that I had no need to buy new books. (We do many things despite lacking an immediate need.) So most of the books I picked out had been on my shelves for years/decades.

Some good books.

I continued my practice of consuming a good mix of readings, including fiction—novels, short stories, poetry, and plays—interspersed with nonfiction—predominantly history as told through biographies and memoirs of figures in a variety of fields. 

U.S. presidential history became a frequent topic on my reading schedule (usually weekday afternoons), and I began and ended the year’s reading with this subject. But despite the urgency of current events, I had no problem resisting temptation (in fact, there was no temptation) to buy or read any of the pieces coming from anyone acquainted with the 45th U.S. president. (This was a person I’d made good effort to ignore since the mid-1980s, up until Clay Aiken forced me to watch Celebrity Apprentice.)

Sorry for the ado, so without further, here’s what I read in 2020, roughly in chronological order:

1. America’s Political Dynasties by Stephen Hess. Political history/biography. Started reading in 2019, going one or two chapters (dynasties) at a time. I got sidetracked with the transition between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt with the mention of their mutual friend and aide, Archie Butt. Interesting person (a hero of the Titanic) who could be the subject of a good play. 
2. Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich. Political memoir. Bill Clinton’s first-term secretary of labor has since become one of my moral touchstones on Twitter.
3. “Holiday” by Katherine Anne Porter. Short story.
4. “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty. Short story. (Re-read)
5. “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison. Short story.
6. Sanditon by Jane Austen. Fiction (unfinished novel). I was inspired to pull this off my shelf by the Masterpiece Theatre version completing the story. The 11 chapters Austen wrote were wrapped up about half-way through the first of the TV series’ eight episodes. The rest was not Austen. At all. 
7. Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) Of everything I read this year (this was in January), this is the one I simply don’t recall. No wonder I keep having to re-read Shakespeare! I might have to turn in my fangirl Bard card.
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Fiction. Part I reads like a series of Wile E. Coyote misadventures! The episode on which the famed ballet is based is described in no more than about five pages; I don’t remember enough of Man of La Mancha to know what that’s based on, except that there is no real encounter with “Dulcinea” (Aldonza) in the novel. I could only think a page-by-page adaptation of the whole novel would make a great Netflix series. 
9. King Lear by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) While I did read this straight through on my own, I also took advantage of an online Zoom-around-the-table reading starring Stacy Keach, reprising his Shakespeare Theatre Co. performance (without the nudity).
10. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Fiction. (Re-read) It had been long enough ago that I first read this that it was like reading it new. The fun part was going online after I finished it to find other Austen fans offering their reviews of the story and its heroine on YouTube. Try it! Was Fanny the worst Austen heroine or one of the best?
11. Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter. Environmentalism, economics, current affairs. Journalist Minter (author of Junkyard Planet) traces the global journey of your stuff after you (or your survivors) finally get rid of it. He also advises putting your copy of the book into the resale market, but mine’s staying on the shelf awhile.
12. “Protagorus” by Plato. Philosophy. Chapter from The Portable Plato, which is about all I could handle.
13. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman. History. Plagues, populist uprisings, and religious and political conflicts have played a very long role in human history. Tuchman used one hero, Enguerrand, as a narrative focus, which made the storytelling more compelling. And I keep falling in love with heroes like this, being noble and all.
14. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Fable(?) Malory translated French tales of the medieval King Arthur and the knights he enlisted at his Round Table. There are other versions of the knights’ legends, such as Camelot and Spamalot (musicals), Tristan and Isolde (poem, opera). I realized while reading A Distant Mirror I should have reversed reading this one with Don Quixote, at least to stay chronological and to understand the importance of chivalry in the work of knights errant. (And to understand that “errant” didn’t mean error-prone, necessarily. It meant “extant”: knights out in the world doing good deeds, like rescuing ladies from ogres and such.) 
15. Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 by Cokie Roberts. History. One of Roberts’s excellent series on women who helped shape the United States, both through their direct activism and through their grace and charm in Washington salons.
16. Foresight Investing (draft manuscript) by James Lee. Finance. One of the privileges of retirement is choosing your own pro bono editing projects and learning from experts one trusts (and being paid in chocolate). Jim is self-publishing this book on using principles of futurism to better evaluate businesses worth investing in. The book should be out soon. 
17. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fiction. (Re-read). I tried re-reading this a couple of years ago and couldn’t get past the first page. Too purple-prosey for me just then. This time it only took a couple of days to absorb. Timely tale of the indifference that unearned wealth breeds. Still too many unlikeable people in the story, however.
18. Push Comes to Shove by Twyla Tharp. Autobiography/arts. Great modernist choreographer tells her life story in terms of how it shaped her dances. Chronicles her affair with Mikhail Baryshnikov, among other episodes.
19. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Philosophy. Words of wisdom, some very timely: “To what use am I now putting the powers of my soul? Examine yourself on this point at every step.” (V, 11) “To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.” (VI, 6) “I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.” (VI, 21)

    

    Some more good books.

    
    
20. The Tulip by Anna Pavord. Natural science/economics/history. Come for the beautiful tulip illustrations, stay for one of those great explorations of cultural and economic history through the lens of a single subject. (Other single-subject cultural histories I’ve loved include Coal by Barbara Freese and Rain by Cynthia Barnett.)
21. Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Play. One of the few I hadn’t already read. Better than the movies! And, as it turns out, pretty close to the recorded history:
22. “Antony” chapter from Lives of the Noble Romans by Plutarch. History. I need to read more of the ancients. Maybe some Homer next year?
23. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Play. Starting my deal-with-the-Devil binge reading.
24. “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Short story. Dealing with the Devil.
25. Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde, including “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
26. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Fiction. Dealing with the Devil. Enough of that already.
27. Pygmalion by (George) Bernard Shaw. Play. Source material for the musical My Fair Lady includes Shaw’s lengthy explanation of why the artist (Higgins) does not end up with his beloved work of art (the flower girl). See “My Fair Freddy, or Saving Pygmalion.”
28. Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Political history/biography. Focuses on influences and critical events in the lives and administrations of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Among these leaders’ shared traits are empathy, charm, curiosity, humor, and humility.
29. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Short story, reprinted in The New Yorker. (Re-read, but it’s been awhile.)
30. “A Village After Dark” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, New Yorker archives.
31. “The Summer After the War” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, Granta archives. Both of these early works by the Nobel laureate seem to be precursors to novels, all of which I would love to re-read before the publication of Ishiguro’s forthcoming book, Klara and the Sun. Thanks for answering my 2019 Ish wish!
32. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Fiction. I probably read this classic in school at some point. This Easy Reader edition hit the highlights (with decent illustrations to boot), but I still couldn’t answer the questions at the ends of the chapters. My retention is shot.
33. “The Old Man in the Piazza” by Salman Rushdie. Short story, in The New Yorker. (I subscribed this year to get access to the Ishiguro stuff in their archives. I’ve been reading their poems but confess I almost never understand them. I’ll stick with the articles. And cartoons.)
34. A Promised Land by Barack Obama. Political history/memoir. Great storytelling that also provides historical background for the policy issues and events the 44th president faced in his first term. Illustrates many of the traits Goodwin outlines in her Leadership book (see No. 28 above).

It was a year of fat books with breaks for short stories, plays, and poems (mostly New Yorker) that I could get through in a sitting. I made a point of finishing everything I started, whether I liked it or not, but it turns out I liked everything I read. Lucky year! 

Love, hosaa

(Observation of the year: Reading is fundamentally easier than writing.)