Christmas Jars

Written by: Jason F. Wright

First line: Louise Jensen was sitting alone, licking her fingers two at a time and paying serious attention to her greasy chicken-leg-and-thigh-platter, when she heard muffled crying from the booth behind her at Chuck's Chicken 'n' Biscuits on U.S. Highway 4. 

Why you should read this book: This definitely falls under the category of "books that I read because they were there" (in this case, "there" being, "in this AirBnB where I'm reuniting with my family since we're all vaccinated"). It's a sappy sweet pay-it-forward Christmas miracle story about an orphan girl who grows up to be a journalist in search of her first big scoop. When her apartment is burglarized on Christmas Eve, her despair turns to wonder and determination after an anonymous stranger leaves a jar of money at her door.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Saccharine, predictable, and dully expository. 

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Written by: Michael Chabon

First line: Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.

Why you should read this book: In prose so lush you could graze a herd of cattle on it, Chabon creates an alternate history in which the State of Israel lasted a mere three months before before being overrun by enemies in 1948; subsequently, the United States allowed a large number of Jews to settle in a temporary district in Sitka, Alaska. Here, in the modern day, we meet Detective Meyer Landsman, seeking solace from his multiple losses in a bottle of Slivovitz until some yid he doesn't even know gets his ticket punched in the terrible flophouse where Landsman is biding time until the district reverts to American control and he loses his job and everything else. His new boss, who happens to be his ex-wife, childhood sweetheart, and the only woman he's ever loved, tells him to let it go, but Landsman finds himself compelled to follow the case to its bitter end, even though every lead leads him deeper into personal danger and troubled territory.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You have a limited vocabulary and no Yiddishkeit.

The Desert Year

Written by: Joseph Wood Krutch

First line: Scenery, as such, never meant much to me. 

Why you should read this book: A New England academic, captivated by his scant passing views of the Sonoran Desert, dedicates a sabbatical year and change to living among the saguaros so as to learn the secrets of this strange landscape. Meandering yet focused, the narrative begins afresh with every chapter, with some observation of plant, animal, terrain, or weather serving as a springboard to the author's thoughts about life on earth (human and otherwise), philosophy, sociology, spirituality, along with biology, zoology, botany, and any other scholarly pursuit that springs to mind. In the tradition of the amateur American naturalist, Krutch endeavors to sit with his environment until it makes itself known to him, and then, in his professorial capacity, turns to books and experts to make further sense of the revelations granted to those who learn to love the land as they love themselves. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I guess if you didn't like Walden when you were in college, you won't like this. 

 

The Artist's Way

Written by: Julia Cameron

First line: When people ask me what I do, I usually answer, "I'm a writer-director and I teach these creativity workshops."

Why you should read this book: You should read this book if you are a "blocked artist," i.e. a person who wants to find fulfillment in creative endeavors, but for whatever reason, can't seem to create the things you want to create. This twelve-week course in creativity has been around for decades and helped guide countless artists through various obstacles to their eventual success, in many cases, to very great success. With numerous activities, writing exercises, words of encouragement, and tough love deconstructions of the psychological barriers that hold us back, it offers an almost hundred percent guarantee of meaningful change of one sort or another for those who follow its specific but simple guidelines; I was certainly skeptical to start, but about halfway through the program I did start to experience some of the promised "magic" of the program. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I personally had some difficulty with its dependence on a "manifesting abundance" doctrine that I'm afraid feels inherently classist, and I didn't really find a way to completely embrace the discussion of a "God" that rewards artists. Also, some of the writing exercises are psychologically extremely difficult.

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

Written by: Terence McKenna

First line: A specter is haunting planetary culture—the specter of drugs. 

Why you should read this book: I suppose this will be the last of my COVID reads, but this is another book I've owned for close to two decades without cracking it open. McKenna's now-classic treatise on  psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and related plants delineates his theories on how they guided the development of human consciousness, archaeological evidence for their importance to ancient civilizations, how and why psychedelic experiences fell out of favor as civilization "progressed," what was lost in the transition, what was found when westerners rediscovered them, and what this all means for the future of our species. The book is, at times, heartbreakingly prescient in its discussion of the forces that continue to suppress the knowledge and practices that could heal humans, individually and as an animal species connected to a vegetable world, and yet containing kernels of hope that seem to pop every time another city, state, or country relaxes restrictions on marijuana and psychedelics. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a cryptofascist, or you work for the CIA, or you have a financial interest in the alcohol industry, or you really fell for that lazy D.A.R.E. information someone spewed into your head in the '80s or '90s. 

Cousins

Written by: Virginia Hamilton

First line: "You hear that?" Cammy asked Gram Tut. 

Why you should read this book: Cammy spends her free time sneaking into the care home to hang out with her elderly grandmother—her mom works and her brother can't keep track of her and she barely knows her dad—even though she's not supposed to be there without an accompanying adult. She loves Gram Tut, but she hates her perfectionist cousin Patty Ann, whose clothes are always perfect and who never does anything wrong, and she has mixed feelings about Patty Ann's brother Richie and her poor third cousin, Elodie. Cammy thinks she understands her world and her relations, until tragedy turns her understanding of that world upside down.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some heavy real world stuff for young readers: death, eating disorders, class, family problems. 

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

Written by: Anne McCaffrey

First line: Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector, was a golden G-type star.

Why you should read this book: Another of my "I've owned this volume for decades and never read it" pandemic reads, this is the seventh book in McCaffrey's Pern series, although it's a prequel to the previous six books, taking place so far in advance that the characters of this book are heroic legends sung about in ballads in the later books. Ironically, perhaps, this story is about a planet beset by a deadly pandemic that kills people and livestock and threatens an entire human civilization, and even though it was published in 1983, McCaffrey very accurately predicts the behavior of humans when confronted by a disease of this nature: most grudgingly obey the quarantine, some go for the super extra social isolation quarantine variant, some disregard the safety measures entirely, and some pay lip service to the restrictions while earnestly believing that those restrictions don't apply to themselves and their friends. Masterhealer Capiam recovers from the illness, realizes that his blood must now contain antibodies that can inoculate others, and rushes to produce a vaccine, which Moreta must figure out how to deliver before the second, and surely more deadly wave of the plague destroys the carefully balanced infrastructure required to survive on their hostile world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't believe public health measures apply to you, your friends, or you family. 

The Princess Bride

Written by: William Goldman

First line: This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Why you should read this book: When I was a kid, shortly after the popular film version of this book was released, I wanted to read the original book, but every copy I could find claimed to be an abridged version, and being the intellectual kid I thought myself to be, I wanted to read the full version; only many years later did I understand the concept of the frame story, and the literary devices that Goldman was using terms of pretending to be abridging a more famous and less interesting work when, in fact, he was just very cleverly writing a novel. At any rate, this is still the book you imagine it is, more or less, and while there are things that were changed, added, or left out of the movie, it's basically the same story of a beautiful girl named Buttercup, a poor farm boy called Westley, and the series of event that contrive to keep the true lovers apart until they are reunited at last at the very end. The writing is charming, funny, engaging, and just really smart, and while young readers likely will not enjoy or understand the narrative asides, you can certainly just read the "good parts" if you'd rather. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a good book, really, but some of it feels kind of misogynistic.

Beneath a Meth Moon: An Elegy

Written by: Jacqueline Woodson

First line: It's almost winter again and the cold moves through this town like water washing over us.

Why you should read this book: Poetic and haunting, this is the brutal story of a high school girl's descent into and ascent out of meth addiction. After losing her mother and grandmother in Hurricane Katrina, Laurel tries to create a new life for herself in a new town, but from the first hit of "moon," her hold on life begins to slip away until her demise seems inevitable. Shines a light on the stark reality of loss, addiction, and the meth epidemic in small town America.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Content warning for meth. Lots and lots of meth.

Root Magic

Written by: Eden Royce

First line: When Gullah people die, babies in the family get passed over the coffin so the dead person won't come back from the beyond to take them away.

Why you should read this book: This absolutely gorgeous novel weaves a rich story about two children who begin to study their family's ancestral knowledge, the traditional root work of the Gullah-Geechee people of South Carolina, after their beloved grandmother's death. It's the early 1960s and Jezebel and Jay must navigate a present made complicated by racism and classism along with the tangled details of the past revealed as they learn and grow and discover what magic is, how it works, and how they will choose to use it. A delightful page turner containing powerful messages about identity and empathy along with just enough spookiness to satisfy a young reader. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a crooked cop.