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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.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“At the turn of the twentieth century, before Zionist colonization had much appreciable effect on Palestine, new ideas were spreading, modern education and literacy had begun to expand, and the integration of the country’s economy into the global capitalist order was proceeding apace.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman’s second victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at The Blue Ship.” Hǻkan Nesser, Borkmann’s Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery.

“In the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 28, 1917, someone knocked on Khalil al-Sakakini’s front door and brought him great misfortune, indeed almost got him hanged.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“We are the earth, the land.” Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.

“It was July 29, 2019—the worst day of my life., though I didn’t know that quite yet.” Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

“Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed.” Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

“In 1848 Will and Ellen Craft, an enslaved couple in Georgia, embarked upon a five-thousand-mile journey of self-emancipation across the world.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“My journal is a private affair, but as I cannot know the time of my coming death, and since I am not disposed, however unfortunately, to the serious consideration of self-termination, I am afraid that others will see these pages.” Percival Everett, Erasure.

“Mark Twain counted pockets among the most useful of inventions.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“They were still traveling, into the dark.” Denise Mina, Field of Blood.

“It was a November afternoon in Queens and Jie Zou was looking for a parking spot.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson.” Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto.

“A little more than two hundred years ago, Europeans contemplated the Islamic countries of the Middle East from afar and imagined rare silks and spices, harems, and gold—yellow gold, not the underground sea of black gold that modern Westerners associate with the region.” Nina Burleigh, Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.

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First Sentences

“At the turn of the twentieth century, before Zionist colonization had much appreciable effect on Palestine, new ideas were spreading, modern education and literacy had begun to expand, and the integration of the country’s economy into the global capitalist order was proceeding apace.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.” Percival Everett, James.

“An ocean mapper once told me about a sponge that had shaken up his perspective on surveying the seafloor—not some ordinary dish sponge, but a fantastic deep-sea sponge that is among the oldest life-forms on Earth.” Laura Trethewey, The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans.

“Nicole often wondered what had happened to the body.” Vanessa Walters, The Nigerwife.

“Vince McMahon, like many of his wrestlers, didn’t grow up with the name he now uses.” Abraham Riesman, RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.

“I have no hatred in me.” Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

“In the first five years that I lived in America, four of the five deadliest shootings in the nation’s history took place—at a school, a nightclub, a concert, a church.” Dominic Erdozain, One Nation Under Guns.

“So I’m writing again. Which is good news, I suppose, for those wanting a second book, but more unfortunate for the people that had to die so I could write it.” Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect.

“Chris Pearce grew up in the loud silence of his own mysterious origins.” Alexander Stille, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune.

“Nigel Bathgate, in the language of his own gossip column, was ‘definitely intrigued’ about his week-end at Frantock.” Ngaio Marsh, A Man Lay Dead.

“Eugene Pacelli sat in a chair beside the simple brass bed, watching as the once robust pope, his face shrunken, labored to breathe beneath his oxygen mask.” David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

“Simon Diggery and Ethel, his pet boa constrictor, were about fifty feet from Simon’s rust buck double-wide. Ethel looked comfy over a branch halfway up the tree.” Janet Evanovich, Hardcore Twenty-Four: A Stephanie Plum Novel.

“Heading out to dinner on a summer Saturday night, Byron and Emma Haines-Pescott (not their real names) couldn’t have expected much.” David Howard, Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man.

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First Sentences

“There was a time when the world’s largest airport sat in the middle of western Pacific, around 1,500 miles from the coast of Japan, on one of a cluster of small tropical islands known as the Marianas.” Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia.

“In those days, I was the one who came down from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the River Jordan.” Norman Mailer, The Gospel According to the Son.

“In the U.S. elections of 1834, the balance of power in Congress was up for grabs, and the tide was turning against President Andrew Jackson.” Mark Clague, O Say Can You Hear? A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner.

“Have you ever seen a town fall?” Fredrik Backman, Us Against You.

“To understand a civilization, consider its heroes.” David Gelles, The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy.

“Otto Burke, the Wizard of Schmoose, raised his game another level.” Harlan Coben, Deal Breaker.

“Of the many times John C.Frémont visited St. Louis, the most auspicious came in 1845.” Steve Inskeep, Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War.

“Money, Mississippi, looks exactly like it sounds.” Percival Everett, The Trees.

“Throughout the spring morning of April 14, 1876, a huge crowd, largely African American began to assemble in the vicinity of Seventh and K Streets in Washington, D.C.” David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

“Mike always teased me about my memory, about how I could go back years and years to what people were wearing on a given occasion, right down to their jewelry or shoes.” Ann Packer, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier.

“In the winter of 1921, Knud Rasmussen invited about one hundred of Copenhagen’s eminent citizens—politicians, artists, journalists and business leaders—to join him at the city’s prestigious Palace hotel for a special dinner.” Stephen R. Brown, White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen’s Fearless Journey into the Heart of Arctic.

“Like a beast, the net came steaming up the ramp and into the sodium lamps of the trawl deck.” Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star.

“The first thing I need to do is convince you something has changed.” Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized.

“That winter was the warmest in a hundred years.” Robert Stone, Outerbridge Reach.

“Legend tells us that the gerrymander originated in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts.” Nick Seabrook, One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America.