Posted on by rjonakait

Books 2024

Two years ago, I wrote about my reading habits, which include listing all the books I have read in a year. (See “My Book List” of January 2 and 4, 2023.) I continue to keep such a list; it’s a good thing I keep it because I remember few of the books I finish. What I wrote previously still applies: “I do wonder why I read. I read few books closely. I remember well only a few of the books I finish. I do get some fodder for this blog from my reading. It produces the ‘First Sentences’ I occasionally post. Sometimes the reading gives me an idea for a post or a quotation to use. But I don’t read as if I am researching for the blog or anything else. I read because I read.” Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World typifies much about my reading. I remember that the book has a lot of fascinating information and insights, but I can’t now tell you what they are. As I read over this year’s list, however, I realize that a few still stick in my mind. These include:

Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song. Dylan’s musings about popular songs are often surprising and set me in search of many he wrote about. Thank you, YouTube.

Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. Bringley left his job with the New Yorker after the untimely death of his brother and became a guard for ten years at the Met. He writes movingly about grief and art.

Rupert Holmes’s Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide. A clever book. I would say it was Harry Potter-ish, but since I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, I’m guessing.

Vanessa Walters’s The Nigerwife, a striking mystery with a setting that opened a new world to me.

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. This is essential reading for making any sense out of the Mideast. It was the selection of two different book groups I attended.

Chris Van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food. This convinced me that I should not eat ultra-processed foods. And someday perhaps I won’t.

Abraham Riesman, RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. Is Trump’s best friend really Vince McMahon?

A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning. Amusing and insightful about our founding document and how we now often mistakenly regard it.

Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (illustrated by Kurt Wiese). I still enjoy the sly wit of Freddy the Pig books.

Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels. An old-fashioned delight from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message. Coates always makes me think and makes me check my assumptions.

Percival Everett’s James. At times this retelling of Huckleberry Finn took my breath away.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“For Thomas Williams, it was better to be no one than someone in Asbury Park.” Alex Tresniowski, The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP.

“Because he had enjoyed almost every advantage since birth, one of the few privileges denied to Benjamin Rask was that of a heroic rise: his was not a story of resilience and perseverance or the tale of an unbreakable will forging a golden destiny or itself out of little more than dross.” Harold Varner, Bonds: A Novel in Hernan Diaz, Trust.

“Every night at 10:01 P.M., the next day’s New York Times crossword puzzle appears online.” A.J. Jacobs, The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.

“My name is known to many, my deeds to some, my life to few.” Andrew Bevel, My Life in Hernan Diaz, Trust.

“The world Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen was born into on June 7, 1789, was the vast, sparsely populated coast of central western Greenland.” Stephen R. Brown, White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen’s Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic.

“Nurse’s thick accent somehow makes me feel my English is improper.” Mildred Bevel, Futures in Hernan Diaz, Trust

“Around 1860, a French singer named Mademoiselle Zelie went on a world tour with her brother and two other singers.” Jacob Goldstein, Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

“The paneled doors, shut to most of the world for decades, are now open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.” Ida Partenza, A Memoir, Remembered in Hernan Diaz, Trust.

“In October 1968—a year in which, as we all know, assassins made martyrs out of two good men, young soldiers with no other option waged a war while their privileged peers fought to end the same conflict, and a newly militant citizenry laid waste to their own cities and homes—Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain opened the door of his bright new white Cadillac for Bob Gibson.” Sridhar Pappu, The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age.

“A woman sat in a hotel bar, watching the door.” Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the middle of the 1800s, school was not the central experience of children’s lives.” Danielle Dreilinger, The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live.