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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.

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First Sentences

“Three Lives & Company is a 650-square-foot bookshop on a corner in New York City’s West Village.” Evan Friss, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.

“I wonder if there isn’t a lot of bunkum in higher education?” Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels.

“On the outskirts of Nashville, tucked between open pastures and suburban cul-de-sacs, stands a museum dedicated to the memory of Andrew Jackson.” Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land.

“So you have decided to commit a murder.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“Benjamin Franklin, forty-six years old in June 1752, strode into a field just north of the burgeoning village of Philadelphia.” Richard Munson, Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.

“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said.” Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake.

“When I was a very young man and became very successful in the movies very quickly, I harbored a notion that I had not earned my accomplishments, that I hadn’t done the requisite work, that it was all merely a fluke, that I didn’t deserve it.” Andrew McCarthy, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.

“As requested, they had all assembled in the Library before dinner.” Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book.

“It is predawn in Macon, Georgia, and at four o’clock, the city does not move.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“Alice and Emma, the two ducks, sat on the bank and watched the breeze crinkle the surface of the duck pond into a sort of blue and silver carpet.” Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (illustrated by Kurt Wiese).

“Florie’s Papa had sent a letter.” Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy.

“No. Nup. That wouldn’t do. It reeked of PhD. This was meant to be read by normal people.” Geraldine Brooks, Horse.

“It is worse, much worse, than you think.” David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. (Thanks to Steve Newman)

“I learned of Samuel’s death two days before Christmas while standing in the doorway of my mother’s new home.” Dinaw Mengestu, Someone Like Us.

“The House of the Vampire arrived in 1907, with a pinch of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a dash of Swinburne, and a major crush on Oscar Wilde.” Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

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Snippets

“But how aboutism” is rampant. Trump is indicted. And indicted again. And again and again. A constant response from the right: But how about the Biden family? But how about Joe Biden’s lies? But how about Joe Biden’s being on vacation? A response to the right’s how aboutism is, How about the Trump family? Questions are raised about Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. A response: How about Sonia Sotomayer’s book deal? And so on. Such how aboutism is just another way for us to talk past each other. Perhaps the how abouters address legitimate issues about Hunter Biden’s sleaze, but that says nothing about Donald Trump’s behavior. The concerns about the Trump family’s grifting are important, but it says nothing about the appropriateness of the behavior of the Biden family. We should address the important issues that confront us, not just try to deflect attention from them.

The liberal cable-news host was talking about the vacations and other things very, very rich people have given to Clarence Thomas. The host insinuated that if Thomas wanted to live like the extremely wealthy, he could do that if he left the Supreme Court for a position in a private law firm. Thomas, however, the host said, wants to retain his power, and so do some conservative richies. Thus, in what are extremely friendly gestures that almost none of us will ever encounter, Thomas has taken vacations regularly not on his dime, but on the tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands, of others’. What struck me, however, in this report was not only the slippery ethics of donor or donee, but also the host’s comment that Clarence Thomas gets only “a middle class, an upper middle class” salary as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He makes $265,000 a year. The median household income in this country is about $70,000 per year. Clarence Thomas alone, even without considering what his wife Ginni Thomas procures,  makes more than 95% of what other households make. Please, let’s not call this middle class of any sort.

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Woody Allen

“Money really isn’t everything. If it was, what would we buy with it?” Tom Wilson

Did you ever wonder how the fool soon parted from his money got the money in the first place?

“When I was young, I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness. . . . I was right.” Gahan Wilson.

In the small-town bar, as I waited for my beer, a picture of Donald Trump came on the television. Without stopping to think, I said, “Trump is a horse’s ass.” The guy on the next stool socked me in the nose and stalked out. As I was stuffing paper napkins up my nostrils, I somewhat apologetically said to the bartender, “I should have realized that there could be Trump lovers in here.” The barkeep replied, “He’s not. He is a horse lover.”

“He was like a cock who thought that the sun had risen to hear him crow.” George Eliot.

A wise person said, “A windbag is a person who is hard of listening.”

Another wise person said, “The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.”

“There is only one rule for being a good talker; learn to listen.” Christopher Morley.

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Snippets

As is my wont, I was wondering in an old rural graveyard. Below the name and dates on a fading headstone, the inscription read: “Buried here is a lawyer and an honest man.” And I thought: “Two men in one grave.”

On my subway rides to meet a friend for a Saturday night dinner, I saw many young women dressed for going out. Generally they were in groups of five or six. I saw no similar groups of young men, and I wondered about that imbalance. Although I did not see the same outfit on two different women, the clothing of many seemed almost indistinguishable—short skirts with low tops almost always in black (I saw two notable exceptions, one on a subway platform and one on the sidewalk both of whom were wearing what to my untrained-in-fashion eye looked to be bright red slips.) And I thought, as I have before, if that is what they are wearing, then I am supposed to check out their thighs and cleavage. I also thought, as I have before, all cleavage is noteworthy, but all cleavage is not attractive.

“Fashion. n. A despot who the wise ridicule and obey.” Ambrose Bierce.

“Only God helps the badly dressed.” Spanish proverb.

As I walked to the subway one day, I heard a street person in a doorway say to no one in particular, “Did you see that old couple who just walked by? They did it.”

In our politics and in our courts, evangelical Christianity has outsized power. I say outsized because I read that church attendance has dropped and more and more people claim to have no religion at all. On the other hand, I believe in the adage: “Faith will not die while seed catalogs are printed.”

Christopher Morley said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” I would add: You have not converted anyone by forcing them to say a school prayer.

“When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.” Prince Otto von Bismarck.

When I learn about how climate change is altering this planet and its societies, I think what I have read about Manhattan when the Dutch and English first settled there. The island and its surrounding waters were a hunting and fishing paradise with deer, bear, and fox. Whales and porpoises were off shore where 10 foot sturgeon and six foot salmon were so often taken that servants often stipulated that they would not be served salmon more than twice a week. Oyster beds were so plentiful that the mollusks were for sale out of barrels as a street food well into the nineteenth century. Man has changed that environment.

Many states are having elections for governors. These, of course, are gubernatorial elections. How did gubernatorial become the adjective for governor instead of something else?