2019 Reads

The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
This first-person tour de force relays the life of a half-Vietnamese, half-French double agent placed high in the South Vietnamese military .The unnamed narrator’s escape from Saigon on the eve of its fall occupies the first 50 pages. The narrator goes onto a life in Los Angeles, still tied to his former general while taking on odd consulting jobs (making sure Vietnamese are represented properly in a film that serves as an Apocalypse Now stand-in) before joining a doomed-from-the-start incursion back into Vietnam.

The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, Colin Calloway
A new perspective on Washington’s time as a surveyor and soldier in the French-Indian War leaves little doubt that colonist attitude toward Native Americans was embedded earlier. The displacement and genocide in the century following Washington was coming, and the brutality was already there in the colonial actions.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell
Hard to forget short stories from Russell, ranging from a funicular in Italy where the vampires fly to the Chinese factory where women are manipulated into spinning silk.

We Bought a Zoo, Benjamin Mee
I saw this book on a library endcap and decided to try it out. After the Sympathizer, I needed a lighter read. Attempts to lump Mee’s book with Marley & Me and other pet memoirs don’t hold up – he and his family mortgaged their future to buy a zoo in southern England, teetered on financial insolvency just trying to renovate the park. These middle-class folks took a huge risk and endured all sorts of setbacks and tragedy (don’t read the dust jacket – I didn’t and nothing was spoiled). It isn’t funny when dangerous animals escape, or the jaguar enters the tiger pen – we see Mee and staff balancing the risk to humans and the animals risk to each other, trying to resolve these faceoffs without killing the zoo’s prize inhabitants. There’s a lot that goes unsaid in We Bought a Zoo, and I think it works for that. Mee had to compartmentalize his life to oversee the zoo renovations, and that is evident in the book.

Ready Player One, Earnest Cline
Another best-selller turned into a movie, this was a book club selection. A lot of exposition goes into creating the world of 2045, but once Cline establishes his world, the story of the hunt for a reclusive billionaire’s fortune rockets away. Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny, Edward Jay Watts After centuries without a king, Rome slid back under the heels of a dictatorial emperor as its politicians effectively stopped caring. The last century before the rise of Julius Caesar set the stage for the republic’s end, and Watts’ book is entirely too effective as a cautionary tale for the U.S. in the 21st century as democracy suddenly feels fragile.

The Searchers: Making of an American Legend, Glenn Frankel
Instead focusing on the film, Frankel delves back into the early days of Texas settlements in Comanche territory, giving us ample background on the kidnapping that inspired the book and movie, the influence of Comanche Chief Quanah Parker and the liberties taken by Hollywood. Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken McCracken weaves a story of a house and a bowling alley through the various people and families that run and occupy them. Good notes of magical realism throughout.

Platte River, Rick Bass
Moving to Colorado left me craving some Rick Bass. I landed on these three novellas at a used book shop. A little more magical realism inhabits these stories than standard bass, from the farm tended by Mahatma Joe to the giant friendly man who rows his canoe down and up the river. The last tale sags a little, devolving into a fishing trip, but overall, it’s Bass doing what he does best.

Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Megan Mayhew Bergman
All these short stories are brutal in their way, dealing with the characters of the coastal Carolinas.

Where You Once Belonged, Kent Haruf
A never-do-well who ripped off the local grain operation returns to town as his crime reaches the statute of limitations. The newspaperman who had been acquainted with him throughout high school and college gets involved with the man’s ex-wife, and nothing good comes from what happens next. It’s a downtrodden small town Colorado tale that only Haruf can tell.

Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, Ben Westhoff
Fentanyl is not a new drug. But only now in its 100-year history is it growing into the biggest killer of the opioid epidemic, a drug prone to causing overdoses among unsuspecting opioid addicts. Yet these drugs are easier than ever to acquire, as our author discovers through a trip to China. No sooner do we schedule a drug than a new version emerges. Blaming China isn’t as simple as it seems, and the spread of these high-powered drugs feels impossible to stop.

Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
These short stories about Indians and Indian-Americans are equal parts brutal and touching.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Gracey Paley
Short stories I was reading well till I lost the book. This might make the list next year if it turns up.

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, Timothy Winegard
Mosquitoes have been around hundreds of millions of years longers than humans, but it’s impossible to tell human history without the impact of mosquito history. Empires rose and fell, mosquito-borne disease decimated native populations across the New World, and their evolution has helped them adapt to multiple attempts to wipe them out. New diseases make mosquitoes dangerous again time after time.

Dark Matter, Blake Crouch
 Just try to put this one down. A man who had a moment where he could have been aground-breaking physicist congratulates a friend/colleague who has gone onto greater things, then faces kidnapping at gunpoint. Saying anything else would spoil the plot, which is fast-paced, poignant and hard to forget. It will be a movie in no time.

Lone Wolf, Jody Picoult
A family patriarch and wolf behavior expert lies comatose, and his state brings his estranged family back together. This one was a bit of a slog at times due to the inevitability of many plot points, but the changing first-person chapters from different characters helps, especially those about the patriarch and his years in the wilderness trying to join a wolf pack.

Same Place, Same Things, Tim Gautreaux
An excellent set of short stories set around Louisiana, A half-drunk train conductor flees after causing a wreck that poisons a small town. An exterminator exceeds his station by playing matchmaker with his clients. An old drunk steals a derelict truck to sleep in, and the truck’s owner isn’t so quick to let it go.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, Raphael Bob-Waksberg
The creator of Bojack Horseman does an admirable job in his first collection of short stories, regaling readers with tales of bizarre wedding rituals in imaginary cultures, a scientist losing hold on his life in one reality as he spend more time in another, and a man who plays Chester A. Arthur in a presidential theme park and plots moving to a more respected president, among others. Fans of the series will recoginize his warped sense of humor and sometimes gut-wrenching twists.

I am C-3PO, Anthony Daniels
About what you would expect from the witty British actor who has played the golden robot in 10 Star Wars films. But it has good behind-the-scene moments, such as the friendships that developed with the cast, Daniels anonymity despite being in one of the biggest movies of all time, and of course, his frosty relationship with the late Kenny Baker, who played R2-D2.