As One Does . . . (mostly about books)

Book Suggestions for February: The Alternatives, Palestine, Sister Deborah, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Phantom Tollbooth, The Bride, Seasons of Migration to the North

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Welcome to February, which in NYC has been damp and cold, or alternatively, frigid and windy. Good weather for sitting inside and losing yourself in a book while ignoring both the freezing temperatures and the erosion of the US democracy. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere else—well, in my mind it’s always a good time to read a book.

I thought this month I’d give you lots of suggestions; last month’s newsletter seemed a little skimpy. Lots of people I know have more than one book going at a time. I can’t quite manage that, unless I’m in the middle of a research project, in which case I have a “work book” and a “fun book.”

At the bottom of the book list, you’ll find a few fun things I found on the internet, including an idea for Valentine’s that won’t break your bank or clutter your house.

Current Reads

The Alternatives, Caoilinn Hughes. If you liked Ann Napolitano’s Hello, Beautiful, you will love this book: four sisters in contemporary Ireland, each trying to overcome their tragic childhood in radically different ways. When one of the sisters disappears, the other three have to put aside their lives—and their tangled, angry histories—to try and find her. Their family relationships collide and evolve, against the background of contemporary Ireland and the global climate crisis. Even if you didn’t read Napolitano’s book, if you’re a person who has a family, moments in this book will resonate with your life.

Palestine, Joe Sacco: Like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Palestine is hard to categorize: it’s a novel, a memoir, a travelogue, a news story. . . Sacco is sometimes known as a “comics journalist,” whose visual style is similar to that of R. Crumb. For anyone interested in “what it’s like over there,” this book might be a good place to start.

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz. I posted about this book on my Instagram feed but it’s worth adding to this newsletter. It’s the first-person account of the last year of Auschwitz, written by József Debreczeni, a Hungarian journalist and translated into English for the first time by Paul Olchvary into English. There are no glib morals, no Hollywood-style heroism, just a clear and precise detailing of how the Nazis and their enablers perpetuated mass destruction—and with that clarity, also the implicit admonition that it should never again happen anywhere. (The hardback is available in bookshops; the paperback will be released later this year.)

Sister Deborah, Scholastique Mukasonga (translated from the French by Mark Polizzoti). I noticed this book sitting on the “librarian recommended” shelf at Jefferson Market Library because of the title—I had no idea that Mukasonga is a prizewinning Rwandan writer. The plot is thin: a young girl is healed by the mysterious Sister Deborah and then as an adult tries to determine how Deborah came from America to 1930s Rwanda—and then why she suddenly left the country. Within that plot, however, are explorations into faith, politics, colonialism and Rwandan women’s resistance to colonialism.

For kids (and grownups who like good books)

Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s novels, which are great choices for middle-school readers: Egypt Game, The Velvet Room, Witches of Worm. Snyder wrote a lot of books, but these are my favorites, all published in the late 1960s. The books might seem a little tame for today’s readers, but the books all take seriously the world as it looks to kids and were, for their time, quite progressive: Jessica’s anger and her destructive actions in Witches of Worm; the way an inter-racial group of friends come together to solve a murder and befriend an old man, in Egypt Game; and the Depression-era difficulties faced by Robin and her family, who find a temporary home as apricot pickers, in The Velvet Room, which triggered my life-long desire for a house with a turret with a velvet-covered window seat.

And, in honor of the recent death of Jules Feiffer, The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), written by Norm Juster and illustrated by Feiffer. Milo, the boy who pays attention to nothing, opens a mysterious package containing tollbooth—and then finds himself in the Kingdom of Wisdom, which has fallen into sad disarray because the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason have been exiled. Far be it for me to draw any comparisons between what happens when people stop paying attention, in this novel, to our own current situation. Let’s just say that without Rhyme or Reason, nothing works very well. Very young kids will love the drawings but miss most of the puns; on the other hand, reading it aloud is delightful because it’s so damn funny. And Feiffer’s illustrations deepen the book’s satiric wisdom.

The Terrible Trivium, ogre of wasted effort

Classics

In December, Bapsi Sidhwa, the brilliant Parsi Pakistani writer, died. She wrote in English and lived in the US for much of her adult life. Of her many novels, I like The Bride best (it’s published in the US as The Pakistani Bride). It was the first book Sidhwa wrote, but wasn’t published until 1983. The novel focuses on three central characters: Qasim, a young man from the harsh and beautiful country of northern Pakistan; Zaitoon, an orphan he adopts during the chaos of Partition in Lahore; and Carol, an American woman married to an American Pakistani, who comes to Pakistan full of romantic notions that collide with reality. If you’re interested in knowing a bit more about Sidhwa’s impact, you can read this essay by my friend Sabyn Javeri.

My final suggestion for the month is Seasons of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, which is perhaps one of my favorite books of all time. Written in Arabic in 1966 and translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, the book tells the story of two men from Sudan, both educated in England, both of whom return to a small village on the shore of the Nile. The narrator, whose name we never know, becomes fascinated with the other man, Mustafa Sa’eed, whose return to the Sudan comes after a cataclysmic stay in England and a failed career as a preeminent economist. The novel not only critiques colonial rule (it was published in the aftermath of Sudanese independence), but also the greed of Sudan’s government, and the treatment of women, in both England and Sudan. Can any society consider itself civilized if it treats women as pawns? A good question—and one that you might hope would no longer be relevant.

A few nifties:

Great news! Bookshop.org now has ebooks!

Looking for a Valentine’s Day present? How about adopt a bird?

The Recommendo newsletter mentions this site, which is the Wiki of Enigmas. Such a cool idea.