My Weeks in Books
I’ve been reading some heavy stuff lately. First there was lynching, then wartime naval attacks and finally family feuds resulting in murders, suicides and rapes.
And yet… the books were pretty good.
Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper
I am acutely aware that a lot of people in the United States have giant hole in their knowledge of our country. I hear it when they talk aghast of atrocities happening in other countries but seem confused when you relate foreign events or more local current events to our own recent past. The history of race relations in the U.S. is an important story to tell and one often told badly.
In Stella by Starlight, Sharon M. Draper does a good job of presenting the segregated South in a way children can understand. Targeting kids ages 9 to 13 (and adults in their mid-30s…), she talks about the challenges black communities faced in general and the very real dangers they faced because of racism and the Ku Klux Klan. What’s amazing about Stella by Starlight is that Draper tells a story that gives so much, without going into any gory details. She gives the main character, Stella, a great voice by showing her both as the narrator but also as an author of some sections, helping to bring forth important parts of our history.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
I’m not typically drawn to non-fiction books. I read a handful a year and am usually happy that I have, but my preferences always lean to fiction. Erik Larson, who also wrote Devil in the White City, which I loved, has a special talent of making something I think is pretty darn boring fascinating. At book club I was trying to describe Dead Wake and kept saying, “I mean, nothing is really happening. But it’s so good.” And it was. I was reading it at the gym, where normally an exciting plot pushes me through a workout, and I was enthralled by the minutia Larson compiled about the Lusitania. I’ve found myself referencing the book in conversation.
This book is good. Read it.
I’m not actually done with Juliet by Anne Fortier just yet, but I will be by the end of today. The book is a sort of retelling of Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet. Or, rather, many retellings of that classic story. Jumping back and forth between a present-day Romeo and Guiletta and the original classics, Fortier explains the history of the love story and how the rivalry between families (the Montagues and Capuletsin Shakespear’s version and the Tolomeis and the Salembenis in this book).
The first two thirds of the book had enough mystery and intrigue that I was really hooked. The latter part of the book appears to be turning into a straight-up romance novel and I’m losing steam. (Right as it gets steamy!) But I do enjoy hearing how classic stories have different versions told throughout history.
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