I like to think of myself as someone who is open to all styles and authors and viewpoints. Having said that, I also decided some years ago that I would bail out of a book if it wasn’t worth it. There is not exactly a scientific approach to arriving to the idea that the book isn’t worth it. But there are factors you can weigh. What is this author’s reputation? Is she writing about something interesting? Do I need to know what comes next?
So all of these books passed at least that test. And all these people on the list are authors I read for the first time, so for me, the story and style of writing was all I had to go on. Here goes:
1. “The Start-Up of You” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha: This is not a 2016 book, but this book changed the course of my life. I am not exaggerating. It caused me to consider how I approached my career (emphasis on “my”) and made me ask the question: “What am I doing to improve myself and the world around me?” I’m not a cheap person, but I don’t purchase every book I read. After I moved for the first time, I decided to never keep enough books to fit in a standard moving box because that’s heavy. So I buy the books I know I will refer to heavily. I do not own every book on this list. I own “The Start-Up of You.” And it’s currently on loan. If you need a professional kick-in-the-pants, this is for you.
2. “Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay: This is a book of essays by an author I had never even heard of until this summer. I am ashamed of that fact because Gay is basically my critic twin. Her biting humor, cynicism and observation makes even an essay about “50 Shades of Gray” worth reading. (I tried to read the “50 Shades” books, and she definitely took one for the team.) I have never read a volume full of opinions that I completely agreed with before until reading “Bad Feminist.” But even if I didn’t, even if you didn’t, you’d still appreciate her writing style and the straightforward way she approaches the prickliest of topics. Also, she shares my opinion of “Titanic:” https://twitter.com/rgay/status/679180868242579456
3. “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates: I’m not a black man. I guess I have always lumped together the experiences and history of black people in general by race and never gender. And it turns out there is a huge difference in the way a black woman and a black man views the world. Gay offers a perspective that closely matches mine because we can check off two of those boxes and we both have parents of West Indian heritage. But Coates’ book, written as a letter to his son, is tightly knit in its narrative and powerful in his observations about what it means to be a black man in America raising a black son. It’s painful to read and it makes your heart hurt and it makes you understand that you never really understood the thing you thought you understood. Like the path your own brother must have navigated through this world, and that it was/is very different from your own.
4. “Year of Yes” by Shonda Rimes: So I have this problem. I never thought it was a problem, but it’s a thing and I think I need to address it. When people start going on and on about how great something is, I automatically assume it’s all hype. If everyone else likes it, I won’t even try it. This is probably a byproduct of a journalism career full of skepticism. This is why I have never watched one episode of “Scandal,” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” (I also haven’t seen a nighttime soap opera since “Dynasty,” though. But then I saw Rimes’ TED Talk about her Year of Yes and she is honest, funny and direct. So then I had to read “Year of Yes.” Rimes taught me about balance and also told me it was OK to want a family and to also want to succeed at your craft. We just happen to share the same craft: writing. And I never appreciated her craft until now. So I guess 2017 will bring me the opportunity to at least try “Grey’s Anatomy.” And maybe Beyonce’s music.
I might need to slow down a bit here.
5. “Writing my Wrongs” by Shaka Senghor:
If you read my post from last week about my favorite podcasts, you might have noticed I have a thing about the criminal justice system. This thing led me to “Writing my Wrongs” by Shaka Senghor. Senghor is a confessed, convicted murderer who found faith and redemption in prison and his story about finding a way out of the criminal cycle he was in is not a perfect one. It was a struggle. It’s a struggle to read this book, too. It’s not the writing style or anything like that. It’s just messy is all. If you’re like me, who has never seen the inside of a prison cell, this is an important read. Because no matter what anyone has done, prison shouldn’t be only a punitive place. It should be a place where criminals can be reformed. Senghor was lucky. He found a way to a fruitful life despite the prison system. It’s food for thought — as is “Writing my Wrongs.”