American Dirt is a brutal, violent, and necessary novel. Author Need book recommendations? Check out all 301 (and counting) books that I've read at Dad's Bookshelf.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (Zambia)
Emily said she appreciated the story's honesty and eye-opening to both the beauty and sorrow of life. The author shared a unique perspective of a white girl living in Africa during the period of political independence.
When We Believed in Mermaids
Emily liked it.
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
This is Stanley Tucci's life told against the backdrop of food. It brought to mind another truly great food memoir: Life is Meals by James and Kay Salter (it's my favorite book—by my favorite author—to give as a house warming gift or a thank you after someone hosts a particularly spectacular event). Tucci's writing is rife with self-deprecating humor and gossipy details: who knew he and Ryan Reynolds were buddies?! An added bonus for the reader are the numerous family recipes that he shares throughout.
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Today everyone knows the name Patagonia and on a cold winter day you can't go too far without seeing the familiar logo on someone's sweater or jacket. But nearly 50 years ago, the global company was just what we'd today call a side hustle—its founder, Yvon Chouinard, focused on making better rock climbing gear that he started selling to enable his hobby and passion. The memoir cum business blueprint's prophetic title speaks to Yvon's quest for freedom as he sought (and continues to seek) to marry a love of the outdoor life with a way (i.e., a business) to fund and preserve that same environment.
The House of Sand and Fog
My daughter bought this National Book Award finalist novel for me at a thrift store and it sat next to my bed for several months. When I finally started it, though, I finished it in days. Author Dubus can flat out write—he describes an aging husband's soaring heart as his wife leads him to the bedroom: "my heart was a flat stone moving over water and my breath was held like the boy counting the skips of his good fortune." Author Dubus unwraps a tension-filled narrative that spans the spectrum of the American dream from the hope and promise of a new immigrant family to the crumbling discord of a marriage and family where the slighted children never emerge from the background...until it is too late. It's a heart-breaking read that I'm reticent to recommend unless you are prepared to carry the story's sadness with you in the days after you finish.
An Italian Education
Published a quarter of a century ago, many of Tim Parks’ observations from An Italian Education still ring true in 2022 Italy. Chocked full of short vignettes that capture a Brit’s experience raising his bi-national children (his wife is Italian) in fair Verona, the book manages to walk the fine line of humor and self-deprecation without veering into snarkiness and offense. As someone who has now lived in Italy for a year, I read Parks’ stories with the satisfaction of a clubby insider as I’ve witnessed first hand the over-indulgent attitudes of parents with their children (usually only one or at the absolute max two) here and daily meet the gaping incomprehension of our five children! My full review is here.
The Long Way Home: Discovering the Fullness of Life in the Father
Pastor Matt Carter uses the biblical story of the prodigal son to grapple with the idea of faith in a broader church community where youth are struggling with depression in record numbers and leaving the church in droves once they reach adulthood. Carter’s central thesis is that as believers we need to taste Jesus’ love in a personal way within an authentic community. The book concludes by highlighting the supreme comfort in knowing that our God isn’t waiting for us on his throne to come groveling back to him when we fall short, but instead he’s out in the field waiting and looking for us from a long way off. My full review is here.
In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership
Father Henri Nouwen taught for 20 years at Harvard, Notre Dame, and Yale but began to feel his own spiritual death developing (what many Christian leaders may identify as burnout). So he prayed a simple—but very brave—prayer: “Lord, show me where you want me to go and I will follow you, but please be clear and unambiguous about it!” And God called him away from a prestigious teaching career to l’Arche Daybreak—a community in Ontario where people with and without intellectual disabilities live together in homes and do life together. Henri suddenly found himself in a place where only his “vulnerable self” was valued (not his degrees, books, and accomplishments). Henri derived the book from a series of speeches that he gave on what he saw as the future of Christian leadership. Warning: this is not an easy feel-good devotional style book—it is gut-wrenching in its challenge to Christians. My full review is here.
Transcendent Kingdom (Ghana)
In a departure from her grandiose debut novel Homegoing, here the author chooses to focus on the life of one brilliant young scientist and her life as a daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who struggles with her identity as a black woman and as the daughter of a mother struggling with depression and sister of a brother battling addiction. Her identity quest is all filtered through her charismatic religious upbringing—which she left behind following her brother’s tragic overdose. To her credit, Gyasi refrains from both Christian and anti-religious stereotypes and treats both sides with a compassionate eye for detail and nuance. My full review is posted at Beyond Achebe: Reading the Continent here.
Behold the Dreamers (Cameroon)
Excerpt: The novel’s power comes in Imbue’s ability to capture both the strengths and the hollowness of the promise of America. The reader sees the rise and good fortune of Jende as his chauffeur position gives him relative wealth and burgeoning opportunities for his family. As his wife enjoys the fruit of this labor her attitude toward America slowly shifts as does her resolve to stay in the country. My full review is here.
Lion Mountain (Tunisia)
Excerpt: In the story, famed Tunisian author Mustapha Tlili paints a secluded village modeled on Feriana, the home of his youth. It’s an ancient place lost amidst the desert steppes but which has persisted through the centuries--sheltered always under the shoulder of Lion Mountain. He describes “a geography more than physical or human: sacred...In this mystical topography, landmarks determining the rights of each and every individual were perfectly clear.” My full review is here.
The Desert and the Drum (Mauritania)
Excerpt: “From the moment they arrived, the strangers stole something essential from us, without us feeling we had the right to protest.” This comment by the young Bedouin narrator Rayhana encapsulates the modern-day struggle that Mauritanian author Mbarek Ould Beyrouk seeks to describe in The Desert and the Drum. In Rayana’s case, these “strangers” were a mixture of fellow countrymen and foreign investors looking for minerals. The theft in question is not one of gold or ore but of proximity and privacy. My full review is here.
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (South Africa)
You may know Trevor Noah as the host of the Daily Show but long before he entered the mainstream he was a derelict kid born to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father—one who appeared colored* to those around him but who was raised in the Xhosa culture.
*In South Africa, the term colored is a self-descriptive and does not carry the same pejorative/racist meaning it does in the U.S.
The Dissent Channel (Sudan/South Sudan)
During a Famous Rivers Africa Group session, we discussed the memoir with the author Lizzy Shackleton. You can read co-founder Fadji's summary of the excellent book here.
The Promise (South Africa)
Excerpt: Of course one isn’t awarded the Booker prize for penning a surface-level story about a white family in South Africa. Rather Galgut has written a soaring multi-decade exposition on the promise of a post-Apartheid South Africa writ large. It’s a story that encompasses South Africa’s promises to its black and coloured people (click here for further background on the use of the word "coloured" in South Africa), the ANC’s promises to its constituency (more on those lapsed promises here), as well as the psychic overstep of whites deigning to keep promises that never should have been had to be made in the first place. In the latter case, the promise (even when well-intentioned) can become more about the giver than the recipient. My full review is published on "Beyond Achebe: Reading the Continent" here.
Missionaries
Excerpt: Reading Marine veteran Phil Klay’s (author of National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment) new novel forces readers to step back and consider the “progress” and globalization of American warfare since 9-11. The novel accomplishes this by examining the decades-long Colombian civil war through the converging lives of a weary American war-zone journalist, an American Special Forces Officer, a career Colombian Army officer, and an orphaned Colombian village boy-turned-killer. DoDReads published my full review here.
Homeland Elegies
Excerpt: Pulitzer-winning author Ayad Akhtar charges that America is a “buffer solution” that “keeps things together but always separated” in his unforgettable novel-cum-memoir. DoDReads published my full review here.
Quiet Cadence
Excerpt: The novel’s violence is unrelenting, random, and total. Its first death is a dead body literally flying through the air. Bloodied appendages, spilled guts, burned bodies, sheared limbs—the gore stacks up with each patrol. The reader dreads turning each page knowing it will bring only more pain, more loss. The newly arrived 19-year-old Marine narrator PFC Marty McClure captures the constant terror after one booby-trapped explosion: “Then the panic hit me: Do I have all my parts? Propped on my elbows, I began a terrified inventory, slowly, in no logical order.” DoDReads published my full review here.
Talking to Strangers
Excerpt: As a society we are not equipped to talk to strangers so when things don’t go as expected--we blame the stranger as our immediate reflex. Instead we need to recognize our own limits to decipher and truly understand strangers and instead embrace humility and restraint. DoDReads published my "backpage notes" here.
American Dirt
Excerpt: This is a brutal, violent, and necessary novel. Author Jeanine Cummins holds nothing back as she pulls the reader into the suffering and anguish that propels countless migrants to make the dangerous journey. My full review is here.
Project Hail Mary (Audible)
Martian author Andy Weir returns to outer space with a tale that is equal parts nerdy and hokey as he introduces us to Ryland Grace, a failed scientist and reluctant hero. When scientists discover that the sun is slowly being sapped of its power, Grace finds himself in the middle of a race to save earth (and possibly the universe) from extinction. Hail Mary stands as an ode to the STEM community as Weir doesn’t shy away from the complex math and science required to give earth even the smallest chance for survival. That he’s able to package complex technical information amidst a bracing narrative is a testament to the author’s writing prowess.
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (Audible)
An eye-opening (and heart-opening) look at one woman's experiences growing up and working in "a world make for whiteness." She writes beautifully and with a vulnerability and urgency that asks the reader to wake up and caste aside complacency. “I need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice.”
Steal Away Home: Charles Spurgeon and Thomas Johnson, Unlikely Friends on the Passage to Freedom (Audible)
An incredible tale of friendship, faith and sacrifice. Charles Spurgeon is, of course, the renowned "prince of preachers." Authors Matt Carter and Aaron Ivey tell the story of his friendship with African-American missionary Thomas Johnson against the backdrop of Spurgeon's own struggles with depression, anxiety and gout.
Raising Up a Generation of Third Culture Kids
While this book is targeted towards parents' raising kids overseas, most of it applies to military families. The author posits that kids growing up as "third culture" (i.e., in a culture that is not the same one as their parents) often end up with enormous amounts of grief/trauma. If this isn't productively processed throughout their formative years they will end up with a "grief tower" that grows and grows until it tumbles once they are young adults in their 20's. We actually went through the author's course/study with friends while living in Addis.
The Happiness Advantage (Audible)
This book was just okay. Save yourself and watch his Ted Talk here. His takeaways are good though and focus on positive psychology and how you can boost your happiness through meditation and focus. “Even the smallest moments of positivity in the workplace can enhance efficiency, motivation, creativity, and productivity.”
How Beautiful We Were (Audible) (Cameroon)
The problem with America is that it makes you dream.
This may well have been the last unspoken dying sigh of Thula—the protagonist in Pen/Faulkner Award-winning author Imbolo Mbue’s second novel How Beautiful We Were (see my review of her terrific debut novel Behold the Dreamers here). The novel brings the macro story of America’s violent clash with the African continent down to the micro, local level as the reader witnesses the village of Kosawa’s multi-generational struggle with the fictional American oil company Pexton. As the story unfolds, however, it’s clear that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. If only Ta-Nehisi Coates were present at Kosawa to echo the same warning he gave to his own son in Between the World and Me (see my review here):
“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.”
My full review is posted at Beyond Achebe: Reading the Continent.
The Power
In this novel, author Naomi Alderman imagines a world in which the global patriarchal power structure is a buried memory. The novel unfolds retrospectively as historical research describing the roots of how women came to dominate all facets of society in this future world. The shift comes when women develop a skein across their collarbone that gives them the power to transmit electricity from their fingertips. Any woman with the power can then awaken it in other women. In an instant, women suddenly have the power to shock and kill. Chaos quickly ensues in this dystopian narrative as the world struggles with this new world order.
A Caring Life: How Each of Us Can Change the Trajectory of an UnCaring World
I met author Aaron Santymire during my first embassy tour in Madagascar where he served as a medical missionary. He's spent his entire adult life serving and caring with his family on the African continent and this beautiful book is the accumulated outpouring of his wisdom.
The Fortune Men (Somalia)
"Somalis have got the right idea, you wrong someone and you’re forced to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life unless you make amends. You deal with each other face to face. Only cowards live by prisons and cold hangings.” My key quotes from the book are here.
The Gendarme
Its protagonist is an Ottoman gendarme who slaughtered Armenian men and women during the 1915 genocide. Along the way, he also falls in love with one of the Armenian deportees—a love that remains unconsummated and seemingly unrequited over the course of more than 70 years. In a surprising feat, the author turns an outright villain into an almost-sympathetic old man by giving him a battlefield head injury during the war which wipes out most of his memories. It’s only in his 90’s as he discovers that he has a brain tumor that his memory starts to return in graphic dream-seizures. He’s spent the last 70 years knowing in his guts that he committed some manner of horrific crimes but unable to recall what he actually did. full review is here.
Supernova Era
While not as polished and developed as his later works, I tore through this quick-paced narrative in a two days. The premise is intriguing—a supernova event (I think that's what it is at least—the technical science in the book was way over this English major's head) occurs that kills off the entire adult population in a matter of months. A cycle of hope, order, chaos, war begins as the children harness technology to govern in ways both frightening and eye-opening.
The Anomaly (Audible)
I first heard about this novel in a NYT article that mentioned the now available translation of the book that had enraptured France during the COVID lockdowns. The premise is that there's some sort of time-continuum split where a flight lands with the same people and same plane that had landed months earlier. The narrative follows the lives of various passengers (to include an assassin) and the governments' attempts to deal with the fallout.
The apartment building that we lived in during Covid had a community library of sorts on the garage level. Stocked by the hundreds of residents, the three shelves carried a rotating assortment of fiction, self-help books, partisan political tomes, and biographies. It was there that I picked up The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk. I'd heard of this fairly prolific Turkish writer but I'd never read anything by him other than leafing through his well-reviewed Snow at a bookstore once. 
The name of this 1949 memoir was taken from the English poet John Donne’s poem of the same title: “Death Be Not Proud.” In it the author and father John Gunther recounts the life and death of his son who passed after a struggle with a malignant brain tumor. Much as Donne pushes back against death’s supposed power, so does Gunther as he celebrates the vitality and beauty of his son Johnny’s life saying that the book’s purpose was for him “to write, as a mournful tribute not only to Johnny but to the power, the wealth, the unconquerable beauty of the human spirit, will, and soul.” The book’s power comes from the author’s keen power of observation coupled with a very measured, controlled level of sentimentality. A good example comes in retrospect as Gunther considers what it means that Johnny is gone: “All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch.” 
One review of this book noted that you begin thinking this book is about one thing and it ends up being about something totally different. That's an astute observation as the book begins in the aftermath of the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami and ends in the aftermath of the death of the author's sister-in-law Juliette from cancer at the age of 33.
by Nicoloas Bouvier.
by Beatrix Beck
