My Year in Reading — 2017
For the fourth year running, a recap of my last twelve months in books. Prior lists here. The list is late this year, I know. I’ve been busy with a proper kickoff for 2018.
POETRY
Roughly ordered by how broadly I would recommend a title to others.
The Sumac Reader, ed. Joseph Bednarik
Used bookstore find: Jim Harrison and Dan Gerber ran a magazine back in the day, for just a few years publishing the likes of Levertov, Merwin and Simic alongside a canto of Ezra Pound and translations of Tu Fu and Lorca and scores of others. I don’t subscribe to poetry magazines but if the likes of Sumac started up again I’d subscribe in a heartbeat.
Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith
This book is the reason Smith is our new poet laureate, containing both a moving tribute to David Bowie and a careful witnessing of America’s lust for violence under the last Bush presidency. I read most of this on the 4th of July, which seemed to me the appropriate way to honor the day.
This Glittering Republic, Quenton Baker
This should be right next to Rankine’s Citizen on your bookshelf.
Her Animals, Emily Johnston
The moral clarity of Johnston’s poems shines nearly as bright as her actions.
From the opening:
I. I’m sorry.
II. By the time that we understood, the winds were so hard against us.
III. You cannot imagine what it felt like.
IV. Every day, waking up in this ravishing world. Knowing.
V. Some days, it was possible to forget. Not many.
Present Company, W.S. Merwin
A book of odes to the sublime mundane.
An Ark for the Next Millennium: Poems, Jose Emilio Pacheco, with Francisco Toledo
Absurdist and tragic poetry about animals, in both English and Spanish, accompanied by surreal and whimsical sketches. Some favorites: “Discourse on Crabs,” and “Every Time I See Elephants I Think of the Punic Wars.”
The Present Moment: New Poems, Gary Snyder
Maybe not his best collection, but still Snyder.
The Folding Cliffs, W.S. Merwin
Took for reading on my first-ever trip to Hawaii. You probably didn’t think people told historical tragedy in verse anymore, but if anyone were capable of doing it well, it would be Merwin, who brings the history of colonization of the islands into full color and full feeling.
Death of the Kapowsin Tavern, Richard Hugo
Making my way through Hugo’s collected, one section a year.
Commons, Myung Mi Kim
An imagistic dissection of colonization and war that surely went over my head at times but then cut right through me at others.
Butterfly Valley: A Requiem, Inger Christensen
Lacked the energy and momentum of Christensen’s alphabet, which I love, but still worth the read.
Silence in the Snowy Fields, Robert Bly
This was nice. Probably best enjoyed by those who have some fondness for those middle portions of the country others coldly designate as ‘flyover.’
Odes, Sharon Olds
I think there were a lot of odes to various body parts in this one? Meant to be comic but most were predictable and forgettable.
FICTION
Ordered by likelihood of my rereading.
The Portable Veblen, Elizabeth McKenzie
A protagonist whose life is shaped by meditations on capitalism inspired by her namesake talks to squirrels, navigates her given and potential families, seeks love, and then handles a little corporate intrigue and evil-doing along the way. Thoughtful and comic — what I want from a novel.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeannette Winterson
Winterson’s first book is a riot punctuated with melancholy.
Tinkers, Paul Harding
Harding’s book shocked me again into understanding just how much change in the world recent generations have experienced within a single lifetime. The world in its particularity is fantastically wrought, reminding us how much the shift from late 19th century rural life to mid-20th century suburban or city life surely felt like magic.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, Ayana Mathis
How do pain and love both snake and morph their way through generations? Mathis’ book will show you.
The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck
An interesting lesson in propaganda, which Steinbeck fully intended this book to be, as a way of supporting the resistance of WWII. He was critically shunned for suggesting that those under occupation might have empathy for the occupiers, and that Nazi soldiers were not always ubermensch but very fallible, often scared and lonely men. But his depiction proved powerful to those actually under siege, and the book was reproduced and smuggled throughout the war.
The Good Lord Bird, James McBride
A wallop of a tale, as some might say, this book shifted the entire imaginary I keep in my head around what the world was like just before the Civil War. You might think you know how to use language, but you will meet McBride’s protagonist and understand that you are mistaken.
The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson
It was Winterson. It was fun. I sold my copy back to the used bookstore where I bought it.
California, Eden Lepucki
This book garnered a lot of attention the year it came out, but I’m pretty sure it’s only because of that whole Amazon scuffle. I made it to the end but remained disappointed.
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FICTION READ OUT LOUD
Chronological.
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Please tell me no one needs me to blurb The Hobbit.
The Trumpet of the Swan, EB White
I had fond memories of this book, read aloud in my third grade classroom, which were upheld for the first several chapters. After that, we kept asking, “What is EB White doing with this book?” It appears he was trying to teach strange lessons about intergenerational indebtedness, in which younger generations of swans are forced to pay back their parents financial debt or are literally handed over into bondage to fulfill the capricious rules of zookeepers.
Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck
The episodic nature of the paisanos’ adventures has elicited critique from some, but makes it well-suited for reading aloud and was the obvious follow-up to Cannery Row, which we did last year.
NONFICTION
Favorites:
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
At this point I’d read anything by Kimmerer that you put in front of me. There’s nothing like finding a new writer who is also a genuine teacher, weaving the world together for you in new but familiar ways.
The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
Sometimes I like to think about Annie learning to chop wood.
Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
Contains the famous essay about watching a solar eclipse which everyone else reread this year too.
The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal
You’ve never read history with this much attention to its materiality, nor likely seen such deft weaving of layers of the past normally kept apart.
H is for Hawk, Helen McDonald
Was swept away by this as its many recommenders said I would be. What surprises me is that what seemed on first reading to be the most boring and overdone parts — those about T.H. White — are what have stayed with me nearly a year later.
The useful:
Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals, Jonathan Matthew Smucker
The second half of 2017 was a deep-dive back into the world of community organizing, and Smucker’s book gave me a means to describe what I wanted to shed and what I wanted to save from my previous experiences in activism.
Trauma Stewardship, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk
Read on the recommendation by my therapist. The self-help pieces of the book didn’t do so much for me, but the framework of thinking about my organizing and work on climate change as trauma work was eye-opening.
Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh
Seemingly simple, and yet not at all simple, like all of Hanh’s writing.
When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron
I can attest from my bookselling days that many people buy this book and give it to friends who are dealing with grief, which I cannot imagine doing, as it’s the equivalent of saying “Got grief? Try Buddhism!” That said, if one is already exploring down that road, Chodron’s book did help open up a space for pausing and reflecting that I found useful.
Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places, Gary Snyder and Julia Martin
How do lives become interwoven over great distance? This collection of correspondence and interviews felt like a nice compliment to 2015’s Distant Neighbors.
The generally informative:
Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America, Eboo Patel
We’d be a lot worse off when it comes to fighting the Islamophobia instigated by the Trump regime if not for the work of interfaith leaders like Patel and others at Interfaith Youth Core.
Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, Rory Carroll
Pulled from a library shelf when I realized I still knew nothing about Venezuela, I finished this book thankful that Trump has not emulated Chávez and literally turned governance into a reality TV show.
No is Not Enough, Naomi Klein
This is like a primer to Klein’s past work and journalism. Need a recap of No Logo, Shock Doctrine, and This Changes Everything? Klein applies the various analyses from each book to the current president and political moment. Which I didn’t find particularly encouraging…
Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, ed. William Zinsser
An anthology from early on, when memoir was just beginning to be understood as a genre. Pretty okay.
Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology, various including David Abram, Gary Snyder, Thich Nhat Hanh, Allen Ginsberg, and Joanna Macy
I managed to read two anthologies this year containing Snyder’s “Smokey the Bear Sutra.” Which is almost enough to make any collection worth picking up, though there was a lot of stale material in this one. Still: “Drown their butts / crush their butts / drown their butts / crush their butts”
World as Lover, World as Self, Joanna Macy
Macy’s translations of Rilke are brilliant, her workshops and analysis thought-provoking and moving. But too much of her writing feels stilted and sluggish. There’s much to be learned from this book, when the words don’t get in the way.
The rest:
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, Dubravka Ugresic
Same shtick as so many books I read: picked up because of critical acclaim, managed to finish, kind of bored, what was everyone talking about? etc.
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison
My writing instructor wouldn’t shut up about Jamison’s book no matter how much I said I tried reading her and didn’t like it. But finish it I did, and I remain in awe at the overwhelming impression of narcissism Jamison manages to give in a book ostensibly about empathy.
Hiking Alone: Trails Out, Trails Home, Mary Beath
My sense of identification with the author couldn’t overcome the mediocrity of most of the writing. There’s a fascinating essay about corn buried in here, though.
BOOKS IN 2017, BY THE NUMBERS
Poetry — 13; Fiction — 11; Nonfiction — 19.
BEGINNING 2018 WITH…
Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom; Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap; Bond and Exley, Rules for Revolutionaries; Ben Lerner, 10:04 (re-reading); Ursula Le Guin, No Time to Spare, Ken Gerner, The Red Dreams.
