What I Read in May and June of 2020
I realize no one has been waiting anxiously for this installment of the blog post but for those of you keeping track at home: yes, I’m at least a month behind.
So taking a new approach, here, as my efforts to write about what I read in May took so much time that, by the time I almost had the blog post written, I realized I might as well just wait a day or two and add June’s reading in with it. Now we are halfway through July.
Perhaps this is not the style to continue with, here. Perhaps individual blog posts about books would be better. Or, maybe, themes. So stay tuned for what I do with my next of these—but for now, here is an overview of the twelve books I read in May and June and all the other books I partially read.
Books Finished in May and June:
May Books
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Beloved by Toni Morrison
CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Dan Piepenbring and Tom O'Neill
Apt Pupil by Stephen King
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson
Postal by Brock Wilbur and Nathan Rabin
The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
June Books
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Smiley’s People by John le Carré
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Books Partially Read:
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
Books Abandoned:
The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern by Robert Morrison
How May Went
May began in one world and ended in another. It began with me juggling a Stephen King novella with Toni Morrison’s Beloved with a non-fiction exploration of the Manson murders. The month ended with me digging through boxes of books I still had not unpacked from moving from Minneapolis to Hopkins and digging out We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates during the last few days of May, the days when the world looked frightening and hopeless, when the National Guard marched down the streets where my friends and family live and people—we still don’t know who, do we?—burned down and looted the stores and businesses across Minneapolis and the country.
Between these extremes I read a total of eight books.
Eight. That’s a lot, right? Have I read eight books before in a given month? I’m certain I have. Probably as a child. Maybe as a high school or college student.
Then there was June.
How June Went
I meant to write this blog post, earlier in June, but things kept getting in the way. I wrote the above in early June then began to spin my wheels. Distracted by the world around me and unsure how to write about it or whether it mattered to anyone that I read the books I did. More things in the way. Work, life, the house, and the reading I was doing.
I understand, now, why people favor listicles and reviews on scales of 1 to 5. Why most people read fewer books or don’t bother writing about every book they’ve read. I’m now grappling with this blog post about the twelve books I read during those two months—which, as I write this, was 19 days ago—plus the unfinished ones that I’m almost done reading but that definitely deserve coverage here.
The Books, Again
Here is a photograph of a few of the books I read:
I’ve decided the easiest thing to do is to provide a one liner for each of the books mentioned so far, followed by some longer thoughts below as needed.
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King: I do not love the movie The Shawshank Redemption but it’s certainly better than its source material.
Beloved by Toni Morrison: One of the best novels I’ve ever read. I should have read it sooner.
CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Dan Piepenbring and Tom O'Neill: I think one could consider this book meta-non-fiction, in its depiction of one man’s inability to finish his book about every Charles Manson conspiracy theory ever, including many that he seems to have invented (or discovered) himself.
Apt Pupil by Stephen King: A disturbing novella about a child who wishes he was a Nazi and the retired Nazi fugitive he blackmails into mentoring him. Gets particularly disturbing as both characters start murdering homeless people. If they made an adaptation of this book today, both characters would be wearing a certain style of red baseball hat.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson: I think I better understood 1950s America after reading this; I wrote more about the book and its connection to Mad Men here.
Postal by Brock Wilbur and Nathan Rabin: One of the strangest, funniest books I read this year; perhaps the only book I’ll ever read about a video game; one of the strongest uses of voice I’ve encountered in a book lately.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré: I’m stunned by John le Carré’s use of narration and perspective. At times his novels seem to be using the Greek chorus, although it appears no one has ever pointed that out so I wonder if I’m onto something or not here.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro: A beautiful tale of sadness, grief, and—to my surprise—a riff on a few classic tales that I will not mention specifically so as to avoid spoilers.
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro: A beautiful book; a study in unreliable narration; a novel that seemed to build toward a magnificent payoff that unfortunately never paid off.
Smiley’s People by John le Carré: A perfect conclusion to the trilogy that began with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A lot could be learned from this novel if one wants to study what third installments in trilogies should look like.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin: No one needs my review of The Fire Next Time, but everyone needs to read The Fire Next Time.
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates: This book is another must-read. It’s not an easy read. Nothing about it is easy. But that’s sort of the point.
The Book Abandoned
I think the book I abandoned is appropriate to mention now, if anything because I’d like to get it out of the way. It wasn’t what I needed. I tried The Regency Years again, briefly, and it intrigued me but it’s not a book I need to read right now. Maybe one day.
Are Novellas Books?
I think they are. But I ask this because two of the books on the list above are novellas by Stephen King, part of his collection Different Seasons. They were never published independently. The Wikipedia article for Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption listed it as a short story… until I edited that article to list it as a novella. (I’m sure there is a deeper article to be written about this act alone.) Either way, my love/hate relationship with Stephen King continues… and yes, I read one more novella by him this July, to be discussed in August.
On White People and their Book Clubs
During May and June, I read three of the books that white people are reading these days. Beloved and The Fire Next Time and We Were Eight Years in Power.
Or, white people were reading these, for their anti-racist book clubs, when they tried to figure out what to do about the world around them. This is not to say that white people shouldn’t read books like this, but I think it’s important we understand that reading books like these are a piece of the work, not an endgame in itself. (This editorial by Tre Johnson got me thinking a lot about this.)
I do not know how to editorialize my experience of reading these books. It certainly isn’t my job to review them. But they got me thinking about the sort of thing I think about a lot these days: we all have a lot of work to do, and white people have a lot of listening to do.
More to Say…
Yes, I have more to write about these books. In particular, I think Postal needs a longer review from me because it doesn’t have very many reviews so far and it deserves more. But the more I try to drive this blog post toward perfection, the farther away it gets from being published. For today, we can consider it complete, and you can wait for the next installment.