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What I've been reading: Books No. 53-54
Nov. 2nd, 2018 01:56 pmBook No. 53 was "Lottery" by Patricia Wood. The book tells the story of Perry Crandall, a "slow" man with an I.Q. of 76 who lives with his grandmother. When she dies, nobody in his family seems to care what happens to Perry, until he suddenly wins millions of dollars in the lottery. The book is about how Perry tries to live his own life all while his family is scheming to get his money. I can't help but compare this novel to "Wonder," which I read earlier this year. While I did like Wonder, two of my criticisms were that the protagonist, "Auggie" was way too perfect and nice and didn't have much agency. Things happened TO Auggie instead of him doing things. I also felt that the author wasn't able to write very authentically about Auggie and his condition because the ending reeked of "inspiration porn." While Lottery was written by an able-bodied person, Patricia Wood does have a developmentally disabled brother-in-law and also has a father who won the lottery, so she brings a lot of authenticity to the novel from that insider knowledge. Perry has his faults, and he is chock FULL of agency - it's just that others don't seem to want to let him exercise it. One review I saw said that developments late in the book seemed far-fetched, and I can't entirely disagree, but overall, I loved this book and would recommend it. In general, I only recommend books on the disability experience that are actually *by* disabled folks, but Wood does one of the best jobs by an outsider that I have seen, with the other exception being "Good Kings Bad Kings" by Susan Nussbaum.
Book No. 54 was "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life" by Andy Miller. When he began the blog that turned into this book, Miller was a married British fellow approaching middle age and had recently had a toddler with his wife. He had a background managing a bookstore and as an editor at a publishing house, but he'd given up reading anything more challenging than "the DaVinci Code" after becoming a father. Determined to get back to reading "great" books, he came up with a 50-book "List of Betterment" and determined to finish it in a year. In the book, he talks about how challenging himself to read "great" books changed his life. He doesn't go into detail about every single book, but goes deep into some and just talks about how the process affects him overall. He also talks about his approach to "great books" that he finds difficult. He suggests that a reader commit to 50 pages a day, and if there's something that doesn't make sense or makes you feel lost, keep going, and trust that the book will reveal itself to you. (Miller does have to go back and re-read a couple books before he feels he's completely understood them, though.) The book is much funnier than I expected, and I devoured it in a few days. It inspired me to keep after my own list of "classics to catch up on" that is sort of my own "list of betterment." One thing I thought was interesting was that there are British equivalents to America's "cult classics." I hadn't really thought about that, but books like "On the Road" by Kerouac and even "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are quintessentially American books, and Britain has a few of its own that I'd never heard of before, like "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressell. I loved this book. I found it inspiring. Anybody interested in Andy Miller's List of Betterment can check it out on his blog.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
Book No. 54 was "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life" by Andy Miller. When he began the blog that turned into this book, Miller was a married British fellow approaching middle age and had recently had a toddler with his wife. He had a background managing a bookstore and as an editor at a publishing house, but he'd given up reading anything more challenging than "the DaVinci Code" after becoming a father. Determined to get back to reading "great" books, he came up with a 50-book "List of Betterment" and determined to finish it in a year. In the book, he talks about how challenging himself to read "great" books changed his life. He doesn't go into detail about every single book, but goes deep into some and just talks about how the process affects him overall. He also talks about his approach to "great books" that he finds difficult. He suggests that a reader commit to 50 pages a day, and if there's something that doesn't make sense or makes you feel lost, keep going, and trust that the book will reveal itself to you. (Miller does have to go back and re-read a couple books before he feels he's completely understood them, though.) The book is much funnier than I expected, and I devoured it in a few days. It inspired me to keep after my own list of "classics to catch up on" that is sort of my own "list of betterment." One thing I thought was interesting was that there are British equivalents to America's "cult classics." I hadn't really thought about that, but books like "On the Road" by Kerouac and even "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are quintessentially American books, and Britain has a few of its own that I'd never heard of before, like "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressell. I loved this book. I found it inspiring. Anybody interested in Andy Miller's List of Betterment can check it out on his blog.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
