Living the Book Life
In the News
U.S. Court ruled Internet Archive infringed copyrights by scanning and lending books. This is a win for publishers and authors.
HarperCollins is publishing a new illustrated edition of The Hobbit which features Tolkien’s own maps and drawings. Sign me up!
Book Lists
Over at The Atlantic, Bethanne Patrick has a list of 15 Books You Won’t Regret Rereading. One of the books on the list was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro which I reread last year and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters which is on my list of those I want to reread.
Are you a rereader? Leave your recommendations in the comments section.
Here are five books I pick up again and again:
Pride and Prejudice or any other Jane Austen title.
Assassin’s Apprentice is the first book in The Farseer Trilogy series by Robin Hobb.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Add to that The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead which I finished a second go at this past week.
Quick Review of The Underground Railroad
I like to think that one hundred years from now students will be reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad in high school and college courses. The students read the book on paper or the words appear above their individual heads as they read. Some listen to the audio narrative and at any moment they can pause and learn more about the history of slavery in each of the Southern states as they follow the heroine Cora on her journey across the South. The students learn that the Underground Railroad did exist but Whitehead in his book imagined a real railroad underground making the book take on a bit of a magical quality. These young people are learning the history of their country because they also know that to move forward you must know and understand the past, no matter how tragic and dark.
I have another vision, though. One more apocalyptic. Our history has been swept under a rug and only a few have access to books like The Underground Railroad thanks to the work of groups like Moms for Liberty and politicians who decided it was better to keep us in the dark about our past and as a result, took our Freedom to think and read away from our classrooms and libraries. Physical copies of The Underground Railroad are hidden and then passed along by hand. I see someone receiving a copy through their secret offline network and then after reading a chapter or two, they lock their book away in a secret compartment hidden in their attic or in a box buried in their backyard to come back and read when the coast is clear of government AI agents and patrolling neighborhood vigilantes looking for contraband.
The book is presented as an unflinching look at slavery and our country and one heroine’s escape to the North. Along the way, Cora makes stops at different states and regions. Whitehead uses each of these stops to explore another chapter in our past. Whitehead makes each of the characters—even the bad guys fully realized characters with backstories. But Cora is the heart of the story—her backstory, her courage in standing up for herself, her wisdom and strength, and most important her resourcefulness.
This book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1917 and I’ve been reading all of Colson Whitehead’s work with a group at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum. We started with his first novel, The Intuitionist, which also had a wonderful female lead, and we have worked our way up to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad. I had read the book previously and was curious to reread it with a group and as part of his entire canon. It has been a fascinating ride so far reading Colson’s work and we aren’t done yet—I have both The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle to go.
Here is a reading with Colson Whitehead about The Underground Railroad that took place at Politics and Prose bookstore in 2016.
What I’m Reading
I couldn’t stop at Middlemarch and am now reading Adam Bede by George Eliot.
I’m halfway through Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman and loving it—although it’s due back at my local library tomorrow!