Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2021-06-30 08:33 pm
sophinisba) wrote2021-06-30 08:33 pm
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Books on a Wednesday!
I read three good nonfiction books by Black American men in the last few weeks.
In my last books post three weeks ago I said I'd listened to the beginning of the audiobook of Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy and thought it was good but possibly too heavy and dark for me to handle and that I might not finish it. But a little while after that Juneteenth was coming up and I thought okay, I should try reading/listening to some challenging writing by Black authors, and I also realized that I could check out the ebook from the library at the same time as the audiobook. So then that weekend I was going back and forth between the two formats so I felt much better oriented, and it was a very good book. It often made me feel uncomfortable, especially some of the parts about sexual abuse for obvious reasons but also parts about being a Black student and later a Black professor at several predominantly while colleges, and how badly he was treated by white professors. (I am a white professor at a predominantly white college, and I have a lot of uncertainty around my interactions with some of my Black students and to a lesser extent colleagues.) My favorite parts of this book were about learning to write and to revise. He also talked a lot about reading, and at one point talked about reading James Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time over and over, and that rereading was like revision, and that was very neat for me to hear, especially since I happened to be reading The Fire Next Time myself that same weekend. I'd had this paperback copy that I'd picked up years ago and just never got into. We also watched the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro that weekend and it helped give me a sense of his way of making sentences and that added to my pleasure of reading. I felt like a lot of this book went over my head, that it was very thoughtful and very dense, but that that was okay because I would come back and read it again another time. In fact, I then got the audiobook of The Fire Next Time out from the library, but I haven't started listening to it yet, and maybe I won't right now.
Also right after I finished reading that I checked out both the ebook and audiobook of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This was another dense and challenging book that I had tried starting before and not gotten very far in, but this time I pushed through and it was very good, and I will probably read it again sometime. It didn't work as well as for the switching between formats because it only has three very long chapters, so I wouldn't be able to find my place in the audiobook, so I mostly just stuck to that, and it was good. It was also read by the author.
So that was some pretty good June reading! I also finished a book I'd been reading for work, which was fine. I have now finished sixteen books in 2021, which makes me feel very optimistic about meeting my secret goal of thirty for the year. Of these 16 books, only four are by men, and three of those were the ones I talked about in this post.
Some other books I'm currently reading small bits of are the history book American Colonies by Alan Taylor, which is not super recent or hugely revelatory but is interesting and feels more balanced than the US colonial history I learned in school; and the novel Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, who also wrote Pachinko, which I loved. Yesterday I stopped at the physical public library for the first time since before the pandemic and checked out another novel by a Korean American author, Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. I've heard good things about this book but haven't started it yet.
I got my assignment for the Summer Podfic Swap a few weeks ago and that's kicked off a really enjoyable spate of reading and rereading fanfics related to what my recipient requested, sometimes because I think it might work as a podfic and sometimes just because it's great fic. I've also been writing, but maybe I'll make another post about that.
In my last books post three weeks ago I said I'd listened to the beginning of the audiobook of Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy and thought it was good but possibly too heavy and dark for me to handle and that I might not finish it. But a little while after that Juneteenth was coming up and I thought okay, I should try reading/listening to some challenging writing by Black authors, and I also realized that I could check out the ebook from the library at the same time as the audiobook. So then that weekend I was going back and forth between the two formats so I felt much better oriented, and it was a very good book. It often made me feel uncomfortable, especially some of the parts about sexual abuse for obvious reasons but also parts about being a Black student and later a Black professor at several predominantly while colleges, and how badly he was treated by white professors. (I am a white professor at a predominantly white college, and I have a lot of uncertainty around my interactions with some of my Black students and to a lesser extent colleagues.) My favorite parts of this book were about learning to write and to revise. He also talked a lot about reading, and at one point talked about reading James Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time over and over, and that rereading was like revision, and that was very neat for me to hear, especially since I happened to be reading The Fire Next Time myself that same weekend. I'd had this paperback copy that I'd picked up years ago and just never got into. We also watched the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro that weekend and it helped give me a sense of his way of making sentences and that added to my pleasure of reading. I felt like a lot of this book went over my head, that it was very thoughtful and very dense, but that that was okay because I would come back and read it again another time. In fact, I then got the audiobook of The Fire Next Time out from the library, but I haven't started listening to it yet, and maybe I won't right now.
Also right after I finished reading that I checked out both the ebook and audiobook of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This was another dense and challenging book that I had tried starting before and not gotten very far in, but this time I pushed through and it was very good, and I will probably read it again sometime. It didn't work as well as for the switching between formats because it only has three very long chapters, so I wouldn't be able to find my place in the audiobook, so I mostly just stuck to that, and it was good. It was also read by the author.
So that was some pretty good June reading! I also finished a book I'd been reading for work, which was fine. I have now finished sixteen books in 2021, which makes me feel very optimistic about meeting my secret goal of thirty for the year. Of these 16 books, only four are by men, and three of those were the ones I talked about in this post.
Some other books I'm currently reading small bits of are the history book American Colonies by Alan Taylor, which is not super recent or hugely revelatory but is interesting and feels more balanced than the US colonial history I learned in school; and the novel Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, who also wrote Pachinko, which I loved. Yesterday I stopped at the physical public library for the first time since before the pandemic and checked out another novel by a Korean American author, Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. I've heard good things about this book but haven't started it yet.
I got my assignment for the Summer Podfic Swap a few weeks ago and that's kicked off a really enjoyable spate of reading and rereading fanfics related to what my recipient requested, sometimes because I think it might work as a podfic and sometimes just because it's great fic. I've also been writing, but maybe I'll make another post about that.
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