I’ve been encouraged by school boards like Greenwood and Los Angeles coming out with cell phone bans in the wake of books like ‘The Anxious Generation’ by Jonathan Haidt (my review here, my favorite pages here and here).
Up here we're getting set for lots of family time—which means lots of reading time—and I’m packing a giant duffle bag full of books. Heavy! Back-jabby! But nothing beats setting up a little bookshelf wherever you land.
Thanks for landing here with me this month.
Now let’s get to the books…
Neil
1. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie. “Dad, is that fiction or non-fiction?” my son asked while staring at the freaky 3D blade popping out the cover of this book as it lay on the floor beside my bed. “Uh, non-fiction…”, “But it says attempted murder?”, “Yeah…”, “As in somebody tried to kill him?”, “Yeah…”, “What did he do?”, “Uh….well….” I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t really know the details. So I looked into it. Salman Rushdie was born 1947 in Bombay to an Indian Kashmiri Muslim family. At 17 he moved to England for boarding school before getting a degree at Cambridge and starting to write novels in his 20s. Wild novels! Magic realism on steroids. The plot of his first book is about “a young Native American man who receives the gift of immortality by drinking a magic fluid who then wanders the earth for 777 years 7 months and 7 days searching for his immortal sister and exploring identities…” Not exactly light reading! Rushdie says he was influenced by books like Mikhail Bulgakov’s 'The Master and the Margarita' (6/2021). But it was his fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses,’ published in 1988, that prompted the fatwa he is likely most famous for. It’s about two Indian Muslim actors flying to England on a plane that gets hijacked by Sikh separatists. The plane explodes! But the two are—magical realism style—miraculously saved before being turned into other beings who then, for the rest of the book, alternate between real life and dream sequences. In one of the dream sequences the prophet Muhammed is depicted and the so-called "satanic verses" from the Quran play a role in the plot. The book was hailed by literary critics as a masterpiece and simultaneously considered blasphemy. 10,000 people in Pakistan gathered to burn the book. The Indian Prime Minister banned it. Six months after the book came out the Ayatollah of Iran issued a “fatwa” on Salman Rushdie. “I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill him without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing.” He offered a $6 million prize. Margaret Thatcher’s British government put Rushdie into hiding. The Italian and Japanese translators of ‘The Satanic Verses’ were both stabbed—one to death. A wild and near-unbelievable story that died down through the 90s and 2000s, allowing Rushdie to leave hiding and live a more normalish life. But then, decades later, as he puts it in the opening sentence of this book: “At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the amphitheater in Chautauqua to talk about the importance of keep writers safe from harm.” So begins this harrowing, absorbing 209-page memoir that reflects on the incident, the attacker, the state of politics and free speech in the world, and often just feels like a wild conversation between you and an exceptional man lucky to be alive. Rushdie talks about “experiencing the best and worst of human nature simultaneously,” talks about what losses around privacy and dignity feel like, discusses the importance of art and free speech and religious freedom. Honest and captivating. Highly recommended. (P.S. I just took pictures and posted my favorite pages from the book right here.)
2. Owl Babies written by Martin Waddell and illustrated by Patrick Benson. We share a fear of abandonment. Being left alone without care—I’m sure it’s one of the root emotions from that pre-memory space of moving from being fully enclosed by our parent to being unenclosed in a suddenly brighter, colder, louder place. This 1992 picture book is essentially a captivating poem with deep-feeling illustrations that scratch and eventually soothe that ancient scab. Three baby owls awaken in a dark forest to find Owl Mother is GONE. (“Where’s Mummy?” asked Sarah. “Oh my goodness!” said Percy. “I want my mummy!” said Bill.) In vivid, dark “from the nest” illustrations the owls get curious, introspective, and brave on the branch together, before anxiety sets in. (“Suppose she got lost,” said Sarah. “Or a fox got her!” said Percy. “I want my mummy!” said Bill.) And then, in a dramatic two-page spread, just before the story finishes, when the tension is at max boil she—well, I don’t want to spoil the ending. But if you must know, you can have the whole book read to you on YouTube. Please curl up on a carpet before hitting play. The publisher says it’s for Ages 2-4 but, as usual, I’m 40 years older and loved it. Highly recommended.
3. Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. Trevor Noah was 32 when he put out this 2016 memoir telling the fast-paced story of his remarkable childhood. This book is refreshingly free of anything recent—no behind the scenes at the Daily Show stories!—but rather a deep zoom into South Africa in the 80s and 90s from the perspective of a mixed-race kid with a hustling single mom. The book’s 'epigraph' is the 1927 South African Immorality Act which was created “To prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives and other acts in relation thereto” and then Trevor chiming in about it: “Where most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of their criminality.” He grows up in marathon church crawl Sundays, is thrown out of moving vehicles by his mom to escape gangsters, and is “five or six” when Nelson Mandela is released from prison and violence erupts around him. “The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.” Mesmerizing and charming book told in long, sweeping stories that have a The Moth-like mix of real, strange, and profound mixed into a wonderfully sweet-and-sour slurp. Highly recommended.
4. The Women by Kristen Hannah. And now it’s time for this month’s Leslie’s Pick, a book read and recommended by the woman I’m lucky to be married to: “One of my favorite books of all time is 'The Nightingale' by Kristen Hannah, so when my book club picked her new book for our June read I ordered it before even reading anything about it. Equally captivating, similarly a 'her-story of a major historical event,’ speckled with romance, and braided with themes of female resistance, strength, and determination amidst war, trauma, mental health challenges, and family drama, this book definitely delivers! The epic story follows Frankie as she enlists for Vietnam as a naive and hopeful nurse and dives into the graphic traumas of soldiers dying in her arms, dressing amputations and chest wounds amidst nearby explosions, and tending to innocent women and children injured by the war. She evolves into an incredible skilled front line worker and the story then follows her into her post-war challenges and beyond for a hopeful finish."
5. The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been by Jake Berman. “Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.” That’s the wonderful epigraph of this book from Eddie Valiant in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ Sadly, Eddie was dead wrong, as Jake Berman tells us in his Introduction when he says “I had assumed that cars in Los Angeles where just a fact of life, like beaches, palm trees, and tacos. But that wasn’t case at all. Gridlock was a choice that the people of Los Angeles had made.” A fascinating and fascinatingly obsessive book about the dream of mass transit to clear traffic and move people around futuristic metropolises and how that dream was chucked in the waste bin after World War II so we could all sit in cars in traffic jams instead. Jake zooms in on 23 North American cities and tells us stories like “a short history of a never used subway” (Cincinnati), “the mob takeover of twin city rapid transit” (Minneapolis-St. Paul), “the only city to open a subway and then close it” (Rochester), and “the subway as political football” (my hometown of Toronto). There are no winners here! Every city gets their own 10ish page red-faced history of the highs and (mostly) lows of their subway system—racist votes, illegal campaigns and all—complete with endless colorful pages of beautiful subway maps and old posters. Ultimately about what might have been, the book does an incredible job of filling in a history too few people know about.
6. Is This ‘One Of Those Days,’ Daddy? by Lynn Johnston. For29 years from 1979 to 2008 Lynn Johnston created a cartoon strip unlike any other with the contemporary vaguely suburban, vaguely Canadian family of Ellie, John, Michael, and Elizabeth Patterson growing up in real-time alongside readers. The strip was read in thousands of papers, meaning it had one of those pre-social media followings in the millions. If you grew up with “For Better Or For Worse” you know how special it was—with simple strips complemented by weightier issues like midlife crises, divorces, bullying, and the coming out of Lawrence, Michael’s best friend, in 1992—more than a decade before Spain became the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage. (Even today only 20% of the world’s population lives somewhere gay marriage is legal.) The strip isn’t all heavy though! Far from it. It’s both an artistic gem, with characters feeling lifelike as they invisibly grow from children to adults with children over the years, and a light-sided reflection of home life mirroring the values of the time. On Page 52 Ellie says no to her son Michael nagging her for treats in the grocery store for six panels before caving in and then concluding in a thought-bubble in the last panel with wide-open eyes of regret “Sometimes it’s a toss-up between being consistent or remaining sane.” Like Bill Watterson, Lynn Johnston elevates what a comic strip can do—in this case I feel like her greatest strength is constantly contrasting private thoughts to illuminate greater empathy towards everybody. A sample from page 99 when Michael is thinking in the first panel “I bet it’s neat being a grown-up” and then in the second panel “They can do what they want, an’ go where they want… they’re free!” before the scene opens into the third panel where Ellie and John’s silhouettes are now colored in with stressed expressions and thought bubbles reading “Bills! Bills! Cook! Clean! Organize!” and Michael concluding in the last panel “Boy … sure must be nice.” Many of the collections are out of print so it’s worth rummaging around second hand bookstores or at online shops like SecondSale or AbeBooks. I love this copy I found of her second collection from Doug Miller Books complete with a December 25, 1982 inscription in cursive blue pen reading “Dearest Dad, Love + Best Wishes, Janice and Phil.”
7. Letters To His Daughter by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Maria Popova has read more ‘letters’ and ‘diaries’ than anyone I know. Perhaps more than anyone—period. (She’s talks about diaries a bit in her wonderful conversation with Krista Tippett from 2015.) Check out her posts on The Marginalian featuring the letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, Bruce Lee, and W.E.B. Dubois. Since the only diaries I’ve ever read are from Anne Frank and Adrian Mole, Age 13 ¾, I decided I needed to go a bit deeper. First I came across this wonderful 'Letter To His 11-Year-Old Daughter In Camp' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and then I went ahead and ordered the whole book! It’s out of print so I ordered a used copy online. It’s stamped “Chesterfield-Marlboro Technical Education Center Library” and I can see from the borrower card at the back that it was signed out by Barbara Brewer on March 1, 1972, Joyce Miles on March 31, 1983, and seven times in between. Written mostly to his then 17-19 year old daughter Frances—who he calls “Pie,” Darlin’,” “Darling,” “Dearest,” “Scottina,” and “Scottie”—while she was at Vassar, all the way up till he died of a heart attack at age 44 just weeks before she graduated. In the flap copy the publishers say Fitzgerald was “trying to maintain his integrity and hope as a writer to be both father and mother, mainly by long distance, to his only child.” Writing from MGM Studios in Hollywood on November 25, 1938 he writes “I never blame failure—there are too many complicated situations in life—but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.” There’s a wonderfully erudite 1930s father-daughter tone throughout like when he writes “Your letter was a masterpiece of polite evasion” or cautions her about working too hard at the school play: “Amateur work is fun but the price for it is just simply tremendous. In the end you get ‘Thank you’ and that’s all.” But the best letter in the lot might be from his daughter! She writes the 'Introduction' and begins by saying “In my next incarnation, I may not choose again to be the daughter of a Famous Author. The pay is good, and there are fringe benefits, but the working conditions are too hazardous. People who live entirely by the fertility of their imaginations are fascinating, brilliant, and often charming, but they should be sat next to at dinner parties, not lived with.” She drops melancholic-twinged observations. “Good writers are essentially muckrackers, exposing the scandalous condition of the human soul.” And “I was an imaginary daughter, as fictional as one of his early heroines.” But eventually, generously, concluding: “Listen carefully to my father, now. Because what he offers is good advice, and I’m sure if he hadn’t been my own father that I loved and ‘hated’ simultaneously, I would have profited by it and be the best educated, most attractive, most successful, most faultless woman on earth today.—Scottie Lanahan” She sounds pretty faultless to me! Published in 1963 with Scottie’s intro added in 1965. A wonderful peek into a fascinating private relationship.
