One year of reading ends and another begins. I am not going to list all the books I read in 2021 here, but I will include links to the previous monthly installments at the end of this post for those who just can't get enough. This is the first year in many that I actually posted a reading list every month. In fact, there may have been months when I believe that is all I posted.
I read more books in 2021 than I did in 2020, and in both years I read far more than my yearly average over previous years. I hadn't really thought about this very much until I sat on the fringes of a conversation regarding reading, where the others involved noted that they had in fact read less than usual since the Covid-19 pandemic began. I noted, to myself, that I had read substantially more, but didn't jump in because the conversation was actually far more interesting without my input, which would have served no purpose other than bragging rights.
As for my own increased reading there were several factors involved. To begin with, I had decided to read more in 2020, even before the pandemic shut-down began, and then, like many others, I went through a period of ennui where I was unable to read. I overcame that however. To some degree I simply. read more because I went out less; there were fewer social obligations to distract me. I also have to admit that health issues may have contributed; it would be naive to deny this. My television viewing also increased exponentially, and that I do blame on health struggles and lack of energy. My heaviest television use occurred at those times of greatest listlessness.
I also cut back on social media in many ways. One would think that in a time of greater social isolation, greater social media would enhance one's sense of connectivity. But that was not what I found. Yes, zoom was a godsend and I have friends I zoom with, and friends I talk with regularly. But otherwise it seemed to me that I found social media sites polarizing. Pandemic shut-downs were hard enough for everyone, but there were times that I felt that the combination of the news and social media, especially combined with a lack of one-on-one human interaction, were more isolating, and made conversations and interactions, if anything, more high-strung and volatile, as if none of us could completely get out of our heads. Books helped me with this.
At any rate, I have been happy to be a reader, and I still wish to see myself as a reader. I have no regrets over any book I have read, no matter if it was difficult or mindlessly simple, no matter if I found myself agreeing with the author, or disagreeing vehemently. Each and every book showed me some perspective on the world outside of my own, and often I was most surprised by the books I least expected to be surprised by.
Still my plan is to read less in 2022. My goal is 60 books, and I would be very happy if that is all I read. I will also be happy if I read more, or even less. I have other things I want to do with my time, and although those things do involve social engagement, I also find I have no desire to be out in the world as much as I was prior to 2020. In short it is all an adjustment. Who knows where it will all lead.
Note that already my reading was tapering off in December: 6 books, 5 of them fiction. The one non-fiction book, Avrum Bluming's Estrogen Matters, was a reread. I had read it the first time in April, so technically, although there are 140 books listed, that one was listed twice, for a total of 139 books.
135. Edwige Danticat: Claire of the Sea Light.
136. Alice Hoffman: The Marriage of Opposites.
137. Joy Jordan-Lake: Under a Gilded Moon.
138. Avrum Bluming: Estrogen Matters.
139. Louise Penny: Still Life.
140. Jean Stafford: Boston Adventure.
Edwige Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light takes place in Haiti in the seaside village of Ville Rose. The center of the novel is the occasion of Claire Limye Lanme's 7th birthday and in many ways the action of the book weaves its way around this center, much like a circular maze, using Claire's story to tell the story of the village, its history, its residents, as well as the story of Claire herself. In the first part of the book we get a fairly straight-forward explication of Claire's story up until the time of this birthday, and Claire closes out the novel, making a decision about her own place in this intricately woven web. In between these two points, the story moves forward, backward, and often sideways, showing us the interconnected lives that make up this place, and which make up the underlying foundation on which Claire's life is built. It is a fascinating, and often poetically told story. Despite the name of the novel, Claire is not the main character, she is simply a point of light around which all these other stories come into focus and are told. It is a beautiful and compelling novel, although the story line is often convoluted and will frustrate the less than focused reader. It is as much the story of a place as of a person, and in fact the story of each person is as much the story of the place and the people that shaped them. Claire initially seems as much an idea, a creature of mist and yearning as she seems a child, just because of the way the story focuses around her but not on her. As the stories weave together, the reader also begins to see how Claire will, herself, become interwoven into the story of this place, and this place will be interwoven into her own story.
Alice Hoffman's The Marriage of Opposites also takes place in the Caribbean but it is an entirely different kind of novel, much more in the vein of classic historical fiction. It is the story of Rachel Pomie Petit Pizarro, the mother of the painter Camille Pissarro, beginning with her childhood in the prosperous Jewish community in Saint Thomas and ending in France. Hoffman paints a fascinating and occasionally maddening portrait of Rachel and through this rather good historical novel she also allows the reader to explore the precarious situation of women in early 19th century colonial life. Rachel's stories, and her descriptions of Saint Thomas seem to flow from some of Pissarro's work. I am certain this is intentional as Hoffman tries to weave together the little we know of Pissarro's family with what we do know of his work as an artist. I found the story also fascinating because it explores the Jewish culture of St. Thomas, where there had been a strong sephardic Jewish community since 1700. Hoffman's description of the synagogue itself is particularly beautiful, blending a bit of magic with historical reality in the understanding and eyes of a child, the young Rachel. The telling drove me back down memory lane, allowing me to relive my own experience of visiting the synagogue of Congregation Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasadim in St Thomas, which is one of the oldest standing synagogue I have personally been to. This one is the second oldest building built as a synagogue in the Untied states, having been built in 1832, and it is still in use.
From there, and continuing in the historical fiction vein, I read Joy Jordan Lake's Under a Gilded Moon, which concerns the Vanderbilts and the building of the Biltmore Estate in nearby Asheville, North Carolina. This was a book club choice, I believe partially chosen because it is about local, or at least regional history. The novel shows the sharp dichotomy between the Vanderbilts, including their friends and kin, and their attitudes toward the poorer residents of the region. I felt it was particularly good at describing the beauty of the scenery. It suffered from attempting to add in too many "real people" and "real places", as if somehow it had to be a survey of all that was once here, at the expense of the story line. It was clear a great deal of research went into the novel but the detail overwhelmed the story, resulting in inconsistently tenuous connections and gaps in the plot. Still the novel did open a discussion into the roots of the divisions and attitudes, between rich and poor, attitudes that we still struggle with to this day.
For my other book group, i reread Still Life, the first of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels. I enjoyed reading it the second time as much as I had the first, which makes me think I will enjoy it again and again, and it was good, from this perspective to see how many of the characters who might take center stage in later novels are introduced here.
Lastly I read Jean Stafford's early novel Boston Adventure, which proved to be a difficult choice. The novel itself was good although at times tedious. It is a carefully painted and studied portrait of Boston Society in the mid 20th century told from the perspective of an outsider, a poor girl, who is brought into the circle but who is never really a part of it. In many ways it is a fascinating study of social isolation, perhaps not the best thing to read when our entire culture has been experimenting with a different vein of social isolation. It is also a fascinating study of the cruelty that is often contained in social "kindnesses", in the way that persons of one class or milieu often, in the name of "helping", create effective prisons without explicitly meaning to do so. It was a worthwhile novel, but not perhaps the best airplane reading, where I would have done better with one (or four) short frivolous novels.
Previous months:
January, February, March, April, May, June, July1 and July2, August, September, October, November.
