Greetings fellow bibliophiles,
Again, I find myself making apologies for being absent.
I intended to post last month, but the first couple of weeks were crazy busy, then I kept delaying while on vacation, and now it's November.
I'm 7 books away from finishing my 2017 Read Harder Challenge; though I only need to find and read 3, the other 4 I've started and need to finish. This month's selections all fit nicely into a few of the categories.
First, the film version of André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is due to come out later this month in the US (not sure when we'll get it here in Japan), and in anticipation, I suggest reading the book. Through the voice of Elio, the 17-year-old son of Jewish Italian-American academics, Aciman spins a story of sexual awakening and coming-of-age. When Oliver, a postdoc student who comes to stay with Elio's family in Italy for six weeks during the summer of 1983, Elio quickly becomes enamored and sets in motion a series of events that will be felt far into the future from which vantage Elio narrates. A debut novel and an LGBTQI+ romance, Call Me by Your Name should fit nicely into your RHC.
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, NBCC's John Leonard Award, and a NYT and WP notable book, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi tells the stories of two half-sisters born in different villages in the Ashanti Empire and their descendants. Gyasi gives us Esi, who is captured by Fante warriors and sold into slavery, and Effia, who will be married to an Englishman. In a series of vignettes that could almost be read individually as short stories, she follows Esi's and Effia's children through the generations, recounting their struggles and successes while giving voice to centuries of history on both sides of the Atlantic slave trade. Set in both past and present Ghana and the United States, this could be a novel set within 100 miles of your location or over 5000 miles from your location (depending on your proximity to southern Georgia, northern Alabama, Baltimore, MD, NYC, and the southern and coastal Ghana). This is also a debut novel and a novel in which all point-of-view characters are people of color.
David Bajo's ambitious first novel, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, is about Philip Masryk, a mathematician and runner, and his search for his lover, the titular Irma, who disappears after bequeathing him a collection of 351 books. This is a complex mystery about books, running, mathematics, and human entanglements which, at times, becomes convoluted. With frequent references to a number of works of literature, Bajo raises interesting questions about how we choose to live and love. I first read it at the end of the summer of 2008, and I remember taking my time with it; often reading a chapter and then leaving it for a day or so to think before diving back in. This is the first book that I can remember having that kind of relationship with; slow-moving and thoughtful. It will go onto my list as a book I've read before, but could also fit as a book about books.
Lastly, in her memoir, Negroland, Margo Jefferson weaves together family anecdotes with forays into African American history to produce a fascinating recounting of a childhood spent in the privileged bubble created by the confluence of race and class, and the personal shattering Jefferson encountered during her adolescence and early adulthood. I found this book especially interesting because Jefferson and my own grandmother have a great deal in common. Born just under a decade apart, Jefferson in 1947 and my grandmother in 1938, were both the younger daughters of doctors. This afforded them the opportunities to attend exclusive private schools, camps, and clubs, though my grandmother was white and therefore didn't have to face the confounding menace of racism.
Happy reading!
Fiction
Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri by David Bajo
Nonfiction
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Margo Jefferson: interview by Tim Adams
