The Penultimate Reviews: November Books

We are coming to the end of another year of reading.  Through November 30, I've read 61 books this year, including these 6 additional books in November.  It's been quite a pace.  For the penultimate reviews, here is the rating scale I use, followed by my reviews of each book listed in my order of preference.

*****        An extraordinary book: one of my Top 15 all-time favorites

****          An outstanding book: highly recommended

***            A good book: worth the read

**              An OK read, but you'd be better off finding something else

*                Not worth the read; avoid at all costs

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri (****)

This is the third book I've read this year by Jhumpa Lahiri.  Whereabouts remains my favorite of Lahiri's works, but this book is excellent too.  The Namesake is a story of a married couple from India who move to the U.S. in the late 1960s to find a better life, and it chronicles their lives, with a focus on their son Gogol.  Yes, his name is extremely peculiar, and this strange name, how he received it, and how it impacts his life form the core of the novel.  

In the jobs I had at the University of the Ozarks and the University of Central Asia, so many of my students and people I knew faced the challenge of moving to a new place or being uprooted. More than anything, The Namesake is a novel of what it means to be dislocated and how hard it is to establish an identity when you are not sure of where exactly you belong. 

As a person who doesn't really have a place that I feel comfortable calling home, I found The Namesake to be a highly relatable narrative that presents Gogol and his family in incredibly real, authentic terms.  

Highly recommended, especially for those whose lives bridge more than one culture.

A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart, by Martin Luther King, Jr. Penguin Books Great Idea Series (****)

This text is a collection of six of ML King's essays and speeches from the early 1960s where he outlines his struggles to achieve racial justice in the U.S., the strategies of non-violent resistance that were utilized to bring about change, and the continuing injustice imposed upon the African-American population.

The title essay is the heart of this small book.  King asserts that African-Americans, or any oppressed group, must be both tough-minded in addressing the social action their situation requires, yet always maintaining a loving stance towards one's oppressors, free from hatred and revenge.  The title essay explains how King used his philosophy to bring positive social change via the civil rights movement.

All six works are astonishingly well-written and incredibly profound.  The final essay discusses what needs to occur for the civil rights movement to move forward, including economic justice and systematic reform.  Sadly, almost 60 years later, many of King's suggested economic measures have still not been enacted in American society and some of the reforms he highlighted (such as the Voting Rights Act) have actually been revoked by reactionary and Trumpian forces.  African-Americans are still struggling to receive equal treatment and to experience economic security.  It is a national shame, but with white supremacy making a resurgence in the U.S., it's hard to imagine King's vision ever becoming reality in a cruel American society.

Every person should read ML King's writings, as he is one of the most powerful communicators in my nation's history, and his message is still relevant today.  This is another book that you should seek out (or find any anthology that gathers King's writings, sermons, and speeches).

Creating Dangerously, by Albert Camus (*** 1/2)

Camus is another of my favorite authors and I love both his fiction and his essays.  This volume is a collection of three of his speeches.  The title speech is outstanding and examines the role of the artist, arguing that the artist has a responsibility as he puts it to "challenge, provoke and speak up for those who cannot."

I am not capable of outlining Camus' argument with the conciseness needed to fit this forum.  Let me just say that everything Camus writes is brilliant and thought-provoking and these three speeches are no different.  In our shallow Internet world, elegant and detailed argumentation has all but disappeared, but I urge you to pick up this text from the Penguin Modern Series, or anything written by Camus.  I am always stimulated and inspired by his thought and challenged to think more deeply.  Give it a try.  You'll be surprised by the impact Camus will have in your life.

Media and Power in Southeast Asia, by Cherian George and Gayathry Venkiteswaran (Cambridge Elements, Politics and Society in Southeast Asia series)  (*** overall rating; **** is the rating for people like me who are highly interested in media; ** is the rating for people who really don't care about media)

I loved this book, but I have a B.S. and a Master's degree in communications, and almost completed a doctorate in mass media topics, so this was right up my alley.  It's a phenomenal book that fully describes the complex relationship between media and power structures of several countries in the region, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, but every Southeast Asian nation is covered to some degree.

I learned so much about issues related to journalism's relationship with political power in the region and how governments are adapting to new media technologies with increasingly subtle means of authoritarian control. Highly recommended for those fascinated with media topics like me, but people who are media-indifferent would probably find this book too academic and detailed.  If I were teaching a course in SE Asian media structures, I'd definitely assign this book, but I'm kind of a media and politics nerd. 

The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino, by Hiromi Kawakami (***)

This a very problematic book, like much of the Japanese literature I read, but that's often what makes Japanese literature interesting. 

It's about a man named Mr. Nishino who deeply enjoys women and having sex with them, but cannot ever seem to establish lasting relationships.  The novel chronicles ten relationships that he has with women throughout his life, one in each chapter, from the time he was in junior high school, each told from the perspective of the woman.  In some ways the stories tell us more about his lovers than they do about Mr. Nishino.

A few of the stories have very creepy elements in them.  In one story, Nishino's young lover witnesses him sucking the milk from his sister's swollen breasts, because they are incredibly sore as Nishino's sister's child has died and he does this to relieve her pain.  Yikes! As this is in the early part of the book, it comes across as a bizarre and creepy anecdote.  And there are other ways that Nishino's behavior seems odd or inexplicable in some of the tales.  However, by the final story, even this weird anecdote about teenage Nishino nursing with his sister makes sense, and all of Nishino's self-harm and odd behavior becomes comprehensible to the reader by the end.  In my experience as a reader, I found Nishino to be a very unsympathetic character in the first half of the book, but by the end, he becomes a figure one feels some compassion for.

That's why I call this a problematic book--it's strange and somewhat disturbing, yet it's also touching.  It's a fascinating psychological study if you can get past the bizarre psychology involved in many of the relationships.  Additionally, Kawakami's writing is lovely and the tone is engaging and by the conclusion it feels like you've been reading a beautiful book.  If you don't mind something that's unsettling and a bit out of your comfort zone, you might find this an interesting and memorable read.

The Lydia Steptoe Stories, by Djuna Barnes (***)  Part of the Faber Stories Series

These stories were written in the 1920s by American expatriate writer, Djuna Barnes, using the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe.  

Wow! These three totally wild short stories are almost impossible to describe, so let me quote verbatim from the book's dust cover:

"In these three stories, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening--accompanied by guns, whips and worldly innuendo.  A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become a 'virago' until her mother intercepts her first tryst by dressing up as her male lover. A boy of the same age is lured into the forest by his father's mistress.  A woman of forty falls in love and longs to kill herself, so unbearable is the return of the youth she thought she wanted. Barnes makes gender and desire seem slippery and joyful and makes fictional Lydia Steptoe a writer for our time."

Did you get all that?  Yeah, these are just wild-ass stories, decades ahead of their time.  But, I found them relatively enjoyable because Barnes has an incredibly mischievous wit and an elegant way with words, which makes these tales distinctive and memorable, even if they might seemed crazed to some readers.

And I also learned a fascinating new word--virago.  Just that fact alone made it worth picking up this collection, but this book certainly wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

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What a strangely diverse set of books this month's selection has been.  Your tastes may not range from as far afield as mine do, but even so, just pick up any book.  Reading has become such a lost art, yet it can transport you to lands you couldn't imagine.  So, even if you only read one book next month, you just might be surprised how great that can be.