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In beige, with flashes of white and red, the background image looks like a collage or a wall where messages have been posted and torn down repeatedly.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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In beige, with flashes of white and red, the background image looks like a collage or a wall where messages have been posted and torn down repeatedly.

by Ben H.

Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

James Baldwin 

Ta-Nehisi Coates opens The Message with the above quote, and it’s a great frame for his book. Coates, the esteemed public intellectual from Baltimore and author of many excellent works such as Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power, explores three places in The Message: Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine. Returning to the Baldwin quote for context enriched and expanded my understanding of the book.

Coates first takes us to Senegal, “I had indeed come home, and ghosts had come back with me.” He processes his own history, constantly referencing his parents, and the history of slavery and the slave trade. Coates intermingles the unbearably heavy and the humorous in the same way those things blur together in real life. He visits the “Door of No Return” and eats a delicious meal by the ocean. He stays at a luxurious hotel and thinks about, “blood in the bricks and ghosts in the attic.” He regrets the fancy hotel. The juxtaposition of heavy and humorous stretches back to his childhood and the “inheritance of the mass rape that shadows all those DNA jokes” he and his friends would make. Though we come from different backgrounds, I find Coates constantly relatable. 

After Senegal, he moves us to South Carolina. He’s flying to South Carolina to support Mary Wood. Wood, a high school English teacher, assigned Between the World and Me to her class but was ordered to stop teaching the book. What is censorship and the uproar about Critical Race Theory other than an attempt to control the intangible inner life of people to keep it from having a tangible effect on the world? Coates writes, “the arts tell us what is possible and what is not, because, among other things, they tell us who is human and who is not.” As a librarian, this chapter dealing with representation in the arts, censorship, and education felt written for me. 

After South Carolina, he visits East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Coates opens in Yad Vashem with the Book of Names. The Book of Names is a project to collect the names of all the Jews murdered in the Holocaust and display them. It’s overwhelming. Coates considers genocides and how the efforts to remember them, memorialize them, or recognize the horror of them can result in a second tragedy where the murdered men, women, and children are “reduced to a gruel of misery.” Coates is devastated by the holocaust memorial and crushed by the suffering of Palestinians. 

Coates sees Palestinians living, at best, in a Jim Crow state. He can’t unsee this connection to his own country, life, and history. In the Jim Crow South, there was a privileged group with full rights and a disadvantaged group with partial rights. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, he sees a privileged group with full rights and a disadvantaged group with partial rights. He drives on roads with his Israeli guides that he can’t drive on with his Palestinian guides. As he travels with Palestinians, he feels the “glare of racism,” and he sees soldiers with the “sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs.” His narrative is compelling; his argument is strong. I think his assessment of the situation is accurate.

What ties Coates’s journeys together? What connects Senegal and South Carolina and the West Bank? Let’s return to Baldwin’s quote and assume that Coates included it for a reason. All three situations reflect the tangible effect of the interior life of people. The interior lives of his mother and father had a tangible effect on him as a child and he expands on this in Senegal, constantly wondering what his father was thinking or how he thought about things. The high school in South Carolina wanted to ban his book for fear of the tangible effects that would result from the change in interior lives. The heartbreaking suffering and misery in Gaza is the horrendous tangible effect of generations of interior lives.

I appreciate Coates’ approach. He’s not a sophist. This isn’t an empty academic argument or intellectual exercise. He calls his books his children. He puts his whole self into his writing. His whole being is in his work. If you’ve seen his interviews or headlines about his book, but haven’t had time to read it, I think it’s worth the time.

Ben loves his job at HCLS Project Literacy. When he’s not at work, you might find him walking around Lake Kittamaqundi (on his break), playing pretend with his daughter Annika, reading, peeling garlic,  weeding his tiny lawn (Canada Thistle, leave me be!), eating chocolate, or listening to baseball games on the radio.

A black and white photo of a crowd of men wearing old fashioned suits and hats is faded behind the large white letters of the title and author.

Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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A black and white photo of a crowd of men wearing old fashioned suits and hats is faded behind the large white letters of the title and author.
A sepia toned photo of people crowded around the step and balcony of a city tenement appears behind the strong lettering of the title and author.

Isabel Wilkerson’s indelible books The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent have, both of them, won awards and have been properly lauded; they don’t need to be touted by me but tout them I shall. They are meticulously researched, precisely written, and pack a devastating emotional punch.  

I have a long commute to work (shout out to my 795 and 695 buds), and I need to fill that time with something. I’m obdurately old school and prefer CDs and radio to podcasts. When NPR is too much (Esther Ciammachilli is never too much) and the Orioles aren’t playing, I check out nonfiction audiobooks from the library. I listened to The Warmth of Other Suns a few years ago and Caste this year; I learned so much from both. The sheer number of primary documents cited is overwhelming. The personal narratives are enlightening and heartbreaking.  

Side note: I’d listen to Robin Miles read a Comcast contract. She narrates both books and she’s a national treasure. I feel like she should win an Oscar or a Grammy – or something. 

The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of the Great Migration, the movement of millions of African Americans from the South to more Northerly states, through the lives of three people who made the journey. It is intense. I’ve been known to cry in the car, and there were tears.  

Caste is an incredibly persuasive comparison of the caste systems in Nazi Germany, India, and the United States. Wilkerson’s central conceit is that the caste system in America is, in many ways, the most oppressive or violent system. She writes, “Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe, African-Americans in the antebellum and Jim Crow South, and Dalits in India were all at the mercy of people who had been fed a diet of contempt and hate for them” (151). The results of a diet of hate and contempt are unfortunately predictable. Wilkerson explores the grotesque, hateful, and banal violence of the caste system in depth. She writes, “African-Americans were mutilated and hanged from poplars and sycamores and burned at the courthouse square, a lynching ever three or four days in the first four decades of the twentieth century” (155). I won’t focus on the physical violence in this review, but it is all here, and it is terrible.  

Wilkerson includes illuminating episodes from her own life along with historical comparisons. While traveling for the book and for work (at the New York Times), Wilkerson is mistreated by academics, flight attendants, businessmen, and small-business owners, as well as being unjustly accosted by the DEA, all because of her position in America’s caste system. Based on her personal experience, she writes, “this was the thievery of caste, stealing the time and psychic resources of the marginalized, draining energy in an already uphill competition” (223). Outside of the obvious physical violence wrought by the caste system, Wilkerson highlights the daily mental and emotional violence, and that seems really important. 

I’ll end this review with a few more words from Wilkerson on the more subtle ways the caste system continues to do harm. She bluntly writes, “The friction of caste is killing people” and “Societal inequity is killing people” (304). This is not someone who writes for dramatic effect without evidence to support her claims. To back up her claims, she cites a study by a Harvard scientist, “’High levels of everyday discrimination contribute to narrowing the arteries over time,’ said the Harvard social scientist David R. Williams. ‘High levels of discrimination lead to higher levels of inflammation, a marker of heart disease” (306). This struck me. This internal manifestation of external discrimination is horrendous.

The American caste system is real and it is, overtly and insidiously, violent. The study goes on to find that, “People who face discrimination…often build up a layer of unhealthy fat, known as visceral fat, surrounding vital organs, as opposed to subcutaneous fat, just under the skin. It is this visceral fat that raises the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease and leads to premature death” (307). There are dozens of powerful and insightful passages I could have highlighted, but I wanted to highlight the above passages because they so powerfully illustrate how the American caste system continues to destroy black and brown bodies from without and within.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson is available in print, large print, e-book, e-audiobook and audiobook on CD.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson is available in print, e-book, audiobook on CD, and as a Playaway.

Ben works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

A black and white photo of James Baldwin, looking to the right. The author and title appear in fine type in the upper left corner.

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

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A black and white photo of James Baldwin, looking to the right. The author and title appear in fine type in the upper left corner.

by Ben H.

“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters come floating back to them, poisoned.” 

James Baldwin writes gorgeous prose. I copy lines that I find memorable, but I find myself copying down entire pages. If you’re still waiting to read Baldwin, don’t wait! Read now!   

In No Name in the Street, Baldwin writes about his experience traveling in the southern states for the first time. Baldwin, never at a loss for words (check out this incendiary debate on YouTube), writes about his first impression of southerners, “what struck me was the unbelievable dimension of their sorrow. I felt as though I had wandered into hell.” What a first impression!

This theme of sorrow surfaces in another memorable passage where Baldwin describes his visit with civil rights leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Shuttlesworth’s Alabama home had recently been bombed and destroyed by the KKK. Baldwin writes about Shuttlesworth, “It was as though he were wrestling with the mighty fact that the danger in which he stood was as nothing compared to the spiritual horror which drove those who were trying to destroy him. They endangered him, but they doomed themselves.” The idea of racism being a cancer, a parasite that dooms the host and turns it into something less than human, is a theme that Baldwin returns to many times in No Name in the Street. The sorrow that he refers to is the byproduct of this loss of humanity.

That said, not every passage is heavy. Baldwin has the rare ability to combine the tragic and the humorous in the same sentence. He insightfully, humorously, and poetically describes things such as grits (“a pale, lumpy, tasteless kind of porridge which the Southerner insists is a delicacy but which I believe they ingest as punishment for their sins”) and buying whiskey in dry states (“where whiskey was against the law, you simply bought your whiskey from the law enforcers”).  

Baldwin’s color commentary of historical events is a crucial part of the story of America. Statistics and reportorial accounts of racism in America don’t paint the full picture. Baldwin writes the narrative and helps the reader taste it, hear it, and feel it. I find that tragic historical events can sometimes, through familiarity, fade into the timeline of history; but reading about the phone call that Baldwin and Billy Dee Williams received when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated highlights it in technicolor. 

On a personal note (as if the rest of this hasn’t been personal), I consider myself well-read and aware, but I still only have my lived experiences. The following passage about well-meaning folks without first-hand experience of discrimination struck me, “These liberals were not, as I was, forever being found by the police in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood, and so could not have had first-hand knowledge of how gleefully a policeman translates his orders from above. But they had no right not to know that; if they did not know that, they knew nothing and had no right to speak…” By reading books like No Name in the Street, I grow my understanding, if not experientially, at least academically and empathetically, and that is no small thing. 

Ben works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

Cover features the suggestions of an old map, a decorative border, and an illustration of a large whale in the center between the title and the author.

Moby Dick; or, The Whale

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The stormy blue cover shows a small boat being capsized by a giant whale.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to absolutely no one.
– anonymous review of Moby Dick

by Ben H.

Moby Dick; or, The Whale, Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece, is a perfect summer read. It’s long – good for those endless summer days at the beach. It’s a great conversation starter – good for extra time spent with family. It’s the source of many pop culture references – great for the extra entertainment consumption that sometimes happens in the summer. Lastly, it’s a great book full of memorable lines.  

Ishamel, of “call me Ishmael” fame, is the insightful and piquant narrator of this tragic seafaring saga of revenge. He joins Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, because he’s hit the doldrums. He tells us, “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet…I quietly take to the ship.” As one does when one feels down, Ishmael makes for Massachusetts and becomes a whaler.  

If he’s too interested in the semantics of whaling, I forgive him because he’s a fabulous companion, consistently thoughtful and funny. It’s through Ishmael that we meet the rest of the crew: Ahab, the peg-legged monomaniacal captain bent on revenge; Pip, the cabin-boy who loses himself in the vastness of the ocean; Starbuck, the weathered, faithful first mate; Stubb, the philosophizing, chain-smoking second mate; Flask; the steady, simple third mate; Fedallah, Ahab’s harpooner and “evil shadow;” Queequeg, Ishmael’s best friend, “wife,” and harpooner; Tashtego, Stubb’s harpooner and the one who falls into the squishy head of a dead whale; etc.  

Moby Dick has a great narrator, a wonderful crew of characters, and plenty of Shakespearean drama. Starbuck has a soliloquy worthy of Hamlet; Stubb and Flask have Dogberry-level banter about whales and Fedallah. Stubb also takes a turn as Mercutio when he has a Queen Mab moment. After Stubb describes his dream in detail, Flask responds with an appropriate, “I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'” Anyone who bores a friend, family member, or coworker with the details of a dream deserves the Flask treatment. 

Speaking of dreams, the giant squid sighting is a brief but memorable episode. Melville calls the squid the “Anak” of the cuttlefish tribe. His reference to a race of giants is one of many biblical references. With one word, Melville describes the squid and sets an ancient and mysterious tone.

Another perfectly haunting episode happens when Ahab works the crew into a fervor on the quarterdeck. He stabs a gold coin high into the mast, promises it to the one who first sights the white whale, and gives a demonic revenge speech. His speech, and the healthy amount of grog he sloshes around, sets off pandemonium and “infernal orgies.” Starbuck, too stoic to partake in such revelry, remarks, “heathen crew…the white whale is their demogorgon…” Try googling demogorgon without getting lost in an avalanche of Stranger Things fan sites. Starbuck, ever the ray of sunshine, adds, “Oh, life! ‘tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee.” 

I’ve highlighted a few episodes to provide you, gentle reader, with trenchant examples of the mood of the novel; it is equal parts mystical, dark and humorous, and quotidian. 

The narrative falls into a pattern: look for a whale, find a whale, kill a whale (unsurprisingly, Moby Dick is not safe for animal lovers). The Pequod also encounters a surprising number of other whaling ships: Jereboam, Rachel, Jungfrau, Delight, Rose Bud, etc. The suspense builds as Ahab begins to hear of Moby Dick sightings from the other captains. Melville continues to up the tension by scattering prophecies and Julius Caesar-level augurs of doom throughout the text.  

As I mentioned in the introduction to this interminably long book review, Moby Dick casts a long shadow. For example, in the The X Files (the best show of all time), Scully’s dad’s nickname for her is Starbuck. Once you’ve read Moby Dick, you’ll make a fun connection between Mulder and Ahab. Is Scully the Starbuck to Mulder’s Ahab? Will Mulder’s quest doom them both? 

Another fun example: Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s landmark 1975 film about a giant bloodthirsty shark. At one point, the brave but foolish men hunting a giant shark in a tiny boat sing a little song – first sung by the crew of the Pequod:  

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! / Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! 

One last reference is a little out there, but for those of you who play videogames, I feel that the entire catalog of Dark Souls games is rife with thematic references to Moby Dick. If the pop culture references aren’t enough to draw you in, there are tons of one-liners perfect for inspiring the armchair philosopher in all of us: 

  • “But clear truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter” 
  • “Never dream with thy hand on the helm!” 
  • “Away, and bring us napkins!” 
  • “Oh! My friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life…” 
  • “Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?” 

My wife told me not to spoil the ending, so I won’t. If you want to know, set sail for your local branch and pick up a copy! If you’ve made it through this Chapter Chats review, you can make it through Moby Dick!

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

The cover of the book shows an old house with two turrets silhouetted in black and white against a black background. Beneath it, against a white background, is a red outlined reflection of the house's shape, illustrated to resemble a vampire bat. The red and black lettering is in a Gothic style and gives the cover a retro, pulpy feel.

Devil House

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The cover of the book shows an old house with two turrets silhouetted in black and white against a black background. Beneath it, against a white background, is a red outlined reflection of the house's shape, illustrated to resemble a vampire bat. The red and black lettering is in a Gothic style and gives the cover a retro, pulpy feel.

It’s changed since you were here, or else it hasn’t
It was special, it was deadly
It was ours and then it wasn’t
– The Mountain Goats

By Ben H.

An entertaining book full of mystery, empathy, and suspense, Devil House is also a thoughtful examination of authorial responsibility. John Darnielle excels at building meaning by layering stories. As the frontman of The Mountain Goats, he’s a storytelling genius. He’s magical and efficient. He’s an all-time great songwriter.

Speaking of authorial responsibility, I should state upfront that I think Darnielle is a better songwriter than he is novelist. Devil House would have benefited from heavy editing. That being said, I like the book and I consider my responsibility as the author of this review now satisfied.

Devil House is the story of true crime writer Gage Chandler. Chandler fictionalizes true stories for money, the job of all novelists, really, but he isn’t Thomas Wolfe writing about Asheville. Chandler writes the new Hulu documentary about a mother who poisoned her kids or a couple who killed boarders and buried them under the hyacinths. Chandler writes books that are adapted for the small screen and become the must watch shows of the week. He approaches the gruesome devil house murders of Evelyn Gates (the greedy landlord) and Marc Buckler (the sleezy real estate mogul wannabe) the same way he approached previous cases, but things get complicated.

The titular house is the center of the novel and serves as a cipher for all the characters. Chandler, Buckler, Gates, Seth, Alex, and Derrick all revolve around its foundations in one way or another. It’s Chandler’s next project; it’s work. Buckler and Gates see it as an asset or potential asset. High school students Derrick, Seth, and Alex use the abandoned house as a hideout. They make it a castle. It’s a safe place to sleep at night. Many of the highlights of the book occur when Chandler describes the boys and their relationship with the house.

Chandler’s methods are extreme. He’s the Daniel Day Lewis of true crime writers. Joaquin Phoenix ain’t got nothing on Gage Chandler. He lives where the crimes were committed (he literally moves into the building known as devil house). He holds items held by those involved as if they were talismans. He haunts eBay looking for paraphernalia tangentially connected to the case. He becomes the victims. He becomes the murderer. Chandler recreates lives based on evidence left behind. He imagines conversations and relationships based on the contents of a junk drawer. He establishes character and personality based on notebooks full of doodles. He gives his characters depth. He uses empathy to create details and narratives for his characters; but has he cold-heartedly monetized empathy?

While living in devil house, an old case that involves the murder of two students by their high school teacher, which Chandler turned into the book The White Witch of Morro Bay, comes back to haunt him. He receives a devastating letter from someone questioning his depiction of a certain character. Chandler prides himself on being fair to his characters, but how can you be fair to someone’s son when to you they are just a character you have partially fleshed out? His resolve shaken, he questions his methods and his career.

For those thinking that what this book sounds like it needs is a medieval section in middle English, you’re in luck! For me, this strange interlude emphasized the depth of the world-building that Derrick, Seth, and Alex were doing. It’s like I always say, “whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.” I also always say that if you can cut the section in middle English from the book you wrote in 2022, you should.

As in Wolf in White Van, Darnielle moves back and forth in time, weaving patterns and stacking stories. The payoff is well worth it. I reread the reveal a couple of times because it was so satisfying. The obvious takeaway for me was a critique of true crime books, shows, and movies. Devil House also offers a commentary on how society treats its vulnerable members. Whatever meanings you find inside Devil House, I think you’ll enjoy exploring most of its pages.

Harbor me when I’m hungry
Harbor me when I’m hunted
– The Mountain Goats

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

A circle filled with the white "negative" space of different sorts of ferms and plants against a green and red background sits above the title and author.

Losing Eden by Lucy Jones

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A circle filled with the white "negative" space of different sorts of ferms and plants against a green and red background sits above the title and author.

by Ben H.

What can a casual reader take away from Lucy Jones’s 2020 book Losing Eden: Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and its Ability to Heal Body and Soul? I’d like to say I’m not just a casual reader, but I am. Losing Eden isn’t as entertaining as Rhythm of War, as helpful as The Korean Vegan (I can’t stop making the spicy and crunchy garlic tofu!), or as cathartic as rewatching The Return of the King. But, it’s totally worth your while!

Losing Eden is informative, thought-provoking, and well researched. I found inspiration in its pages. I found it comforting and distressing. Sometimes it’s comforting to read a whole book about how the world is hurtling toward disaster instead of dozens of headlines, short articles, op-eds, and social media posts. Reading Losing Eden made me feel like Ethan Hawke in First Reformed, except I have a daughter and I don’t pour Pepto-Bismol in my whiskey.

Losing Eden is glued together with memoir paste, but it’s mostly an academic, research-based treatise on the importance of time spent outdoors, the immense value of plants and animals, and the urgent need to protect the natural world. Jones uses climate change, mental health, socio-economics, and racial equity as reasons to care about this green world. She also references dozens, if not hundreds, of studies, books, and research projects running the gamut from the social effects of green space in Chicago to the importance of the Białowieża Forest, a primeval area in Poland and Belarus. 

She cites Robert Pyle’s theory of the extinction of experience. Pyle’s general idea is that the less we interact with nature, the less we will care about it. Extinction leads to extinction of experience and then to more extinction. Jones writes, “Over the past fifty years the populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish have fallen by 60 percent worldwide.” Passages like that are distressing.  

Jones explores the possible emotional impact of spending time outdoors. The answer might be in the dirt. A bacteria found in dirt, mycobacterium vaccae, has been linked to increased happiness. In 2004, oncologist Mary O’Brien created, “a serum that contained M. vaccae, a species of bacteria found in soil.” It did not have the desired effect, a cure for cancer, “but, strangely, those who received the immunization reported feeling happier.” Dr. Christopher Lowry was separately working on a similar research project and found that ,“mice injected with the bacterium exhibited fewer anxiety- or fear-like behaviour and were 50 percent less likely to have stress-induced colitis.” It’s dangerous to label nature as a panacea for mental health issues, but I think Jones makes a compelling argument, while being careful not to stray into an irresponsible reliance on nature as a magical cure.  

Jones also mentions chronic inflammation and its connection with mental health. She writes, “people with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and other neuropsychiatric disorders have been found to have higher levels of inflammation biomarkers.” Cytokines are a biomarker for inflammation, and “studies show that just two hours In a forest can significantly lower cytokine levels in the blood, soothing inflammation. This could partly be caused by exposure to important microorganisms.” If you’ve never heard of shinrin-yoku, this book is for you.

She also approaches the topic from a socioeconomic angle. She writes that “people in lower socio-economic groups or from racial and ethnic minorities usually have less access to green space and parks than those who are white and affluent.” She traces this issue back to the 17th century and the enclosure acts in England: “the practice of enclosing land from the British people began in earnest with the passing of over 5,200 Enclosure Acts between 1604 and 1914, which fenced off 6.8 million acres of previously common land.” I particularly loved this part of her book because the enclosure acts were an integral part of my thesis on pastoral poetry. If you’re ever in the UMBC library, check out: “Borrowed Weeds: Courtiers in Disguise in Renaissance Pastoral.” I guarantee you’ll be the first person to ever check it out.  

Jones saved one of her most compelling arguments for last. She cites the research of Professor Rich Mitchell from the University of Glasgow. His idea of “equigenesis” is full of real-world applications. The basic idea is that “If an environment is equigenic, it may reduce the gap between the rich and the poor by weakening the link between socio-economic inequality and health inequality.” Prof. Mitchell realized that the massive changes needed to address inequity weren’t going to happen, so he searched for other solutions. A 2015 study looking at more than 20,000 people in 34 European countries showed that, “access to nature was the one characteristic that reduced socio-economic inequality in mental well-being (by 40 percent).” 

Her evidence is compelling. Jones accumulated loads of research and attacked the question from many angles. I had a lot of takeaways from her book. I should definitely encourage my daughter to play in the dirt. I should garden. I should spend time outdoors. Should I buy a chicken to diversify my microbiota like Jones did? Maybe? 

I’ll definitely encourage my daughter to continue to watch squirrels, look for the moon during the day, and watch for chubby hawks in the trees.  

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

The black cover serves as a backdrop to delicate repeating patterns. A second white incomplete circular design on the bottom half draws your eye to a vanishing point.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

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The black cover serves as a backdrop to delicate repeating patterns. A second white incomplete circular design on the bottom half draws your eye to a vanishing point.

By Ben H.

Foundation, the first book in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, is a sci-fi touchstone. I’m sure it’s been called a towering work of genius or a staggering work of brilliance. More importantly, it’s just been adapted for the small screen (I haven’t seen the show, but I’ve heard good things). The story’s three protagonists are a scientist, a politician, and a trader. Asimov explores big scientific, political, and economic ideas, and his protagonists give the reader a clue.

Asimov speculates that we will one day be able to predict the future using science. Psychohistory is born from the blending of (I bet you can guess) psychology and history. It’s used to predict the movements of large groups of people (the masses of humanity living their quietly desperate lives). We meet Hari Seldon, the most accomplished psychohistorian the galaxy has ever seen, on the planet of Trantor. Seldon tells Gaal Dornick, the scientist protagonist, that the current and seemingly stable galactic empire will fall and the galaxy will be plunged into thousands of years of chaos and barbarism. Seldon has a plan that, if executed properly, will save the galaxy thousands of years of chaos. Don’t get too attached to Gaal. Asimov moves through narrators pretty quickly. 

According to the plan, Seldon establishes the first Foundation on the remote planet Terminus. He tasks scientists and academics with compiling an encyclopedia of the galaxy’s vast knowledge. They attack their goal with fervor. Meanwhile, the rest of the galactic empire is resting on its laurels and starting to collapse. 

Fast forward a few decades and Salvador Hardin is the next narrator (the political narrator). Hardin is a very 60s sci-fi cool customer, space cowboy narrator. At this point Seldon reappears as a hologram (being dead) to provide hints or tips to keep the galaxy moving in the right direction, according to his plan. Hardin, the mayor of the planet Terminus, helps the planet through the first Seldon crisis, which is a time identified as a key turning point in the future of the galaxy. Each crisis must happen a certain way for the plan to be successful. 

The last narrator is Hober Mallow, a trader working for The Foundation. At this point, The Foundation produces technological marvels that they trade to the surrounding planets. Most traders spread the religion Hardin created and tied to The Foundation’s technology to new planets. The new planets buy the technology, sometimes accept the new religion, and become regular customers. The traders make money and the surrounding planets become dependent on The Foundation. 

Foundation is full of big ideas. Bloated bureaucracies, social elites, centralized governments, hyper-specialized professionals, cynical capitalists, zealous religious fanatics, and downtrodden regular folk populate the pages. It’s a thought-provoking story of the collapse of an empire.

Foundation is also available from HCLS in eBook and eAudiobook format from Libby.

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

A cover of stripes, from top to bottom: yellow with the eyes and nose of a young girl's face; Light blue with a dive bombing plane reads A Tale; deeper blue with waves reads For The; mint green with a red book read Time Being; yellow with a brown field and pine trees reads Ruth Ozeki.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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A cover of stripes, from top to bottom: yellow with the eyes and nose of a young girl's face; Light blue with a dive bombing plane reads A Tale; deeper blue with waves reads For The; mint green with a red book read Time Being; yellow with a brown field and pine trees

by Ben H.

“Time itself is being and all being is time…In essence, everything in the entire universe is intimately linked with each other as moments in time, continuous and separate.” 

Dōgen

Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being is a lovely book. Part meditation on time and presence, part drama, and part mystery, Ozeki balances her story between two narrators connected by a diary written in the shell of a repurposed copy of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust. 

Nao is the teenage author of the diary. She now lives near Tokyo with her mom and dad. Nao faces bullying, parental drama, homesickness for California, and severe depression. Ruth, a novelist, now lives with her husband on a remote island in British Columbia. She faces writer’s block and homesickness for Manhattan.

Nao’s diary washes ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox and Ruth becomes fascinated with it. Nao’s diary is witty, emotional, and bracingly frank. Ozeki phenomenally recreates the way a diary juxtaposes the quixotic and the realistic, the banal and the devastating, the humorous and the tragic. Nao is viciously bullied at school. The bullying is brutal, both physically and emotionally. Nao reports it to her diary in a light tone, but it’s heavy stuff. Suicide is also a common topic in the book, as multiple characters plan to kill themselves. Nao finds refuge from the bullies when she is left with her 104-year-old grandma Jiko, a feminist Buddhist nun, in a crumbling monastery in the mountains for the summer (ghostly hijinks ensue).

Ruth (the character not the author) fills her chapters with lovely descriptions of the natural world. In her displacement, Ruth doesn’t face anything as dramatic as Nao does, but Ruth is out of her element. She’s still searching for her identity on her new rural island. One of my favorite parts is when Ruth takes another diary from the Hello Kitty lunchbox (Nao’s great uncle Haruki #1’s secret diary written in French to hide it from his commander in the army) to Benoit to be translated. Benoit manages the dump on the island and has carved out a perfect little niche for himself, complete with a library full of books rescued from the garbage. Managing a dump on a remote island might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it sounds nice to me.

In some structural ways, A Tale for the Time Being reminds me of Don Quixote (Ozeki even makes a Don Quixote reference). There are embedded narratives for everyone. There are hidden diaries and lost books and real texts and fake texts. Nao even reports in her diary on the texts she sends to Jiko while writing her entry. The transference of meaning between all of the texts, the way they bring new elements to the story or change the context, creates a rich background for the main thrust of the narrative. I totally escape reality when I get lost in a story buried in another story. Instead of getting immersed in ONE book, I’m immersed in a letter reported in a diary reported in another diary reported to me through a character in a book. I’m gone.

Ozeki, a Buddhist priest, fills the book with quotations from Buddhist masters. Even Ozeki’s structure, the interlinking stories, illustrates Dōgen’s ideas of the connectedness of the universe. Nao explores time in her diaristic musings, as does Ruth. In Ruth’s case, she finds herself searching for lost time in a way I think we can all relate to. The internet, the great thief of time, is one of the main culprits behind Ruth’s writer’s block. Ozeki wields form, font, and white space to visually represent how It feels to waste time online, as only a person who remembers a time before the internet can.   

Sometimes you read a book and you and the book just click. A Tale for the Time Being was one of those books for me. If none of the things in my review have piqued your interest, A Tale for the Time Being also features at least one ghost, a magical crow, an episode in the multiverse, and a cute cat.

A Tale for the Time Being is available from HCLS in print format, as an audiobook on CD, and as an eBook and eAudiobook from Libby/OverDrive.

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

 

A young woman faces to the right, wearing black clothes and a fluttery grey cape holds a knife in each hand looking determinedly ahead, with a shadowy urban landscape full of towers behind her.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

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A young woman faces to the right, wearing black clothes and a fluttery grey cape holds a knife in each hand looking determinedly ahead, with a shadowy urban landscape full of towers behind her.
The cover of Mistborn: The Final Empire.

by Ben H.

What happens if the chosen one fails? What if the hero fails to defeat the dark lord? 

Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy imagines what that could look like.  

Full disclosure, I haven’t finished the trilogy yet, but I love the first two books so much (The Final Empire and The Well of Ascension) that I can’t resist writing a review. I’ll write a retraction if the third book is garbage (but it won’t be). 

A thousand years ago, someone gained access to a source of power, defeated something called the Deepness, and… remade the world into a dull, cruel, lifeless, ash-strewn place. He is now the Lord Ruler and has ruled over the world for a thousand years in what he ominously calls the Final Empire.  

The nobility live in finery in castles and vast manors, and the skaa are their hopeless and ragged servants. There is no middle class. Skaa are treated as subhuman.  

Vin is our protagonist. She is a half-skaa street urchin, thief, and con-artist. A mysterious thief named Kelsier rounds up a thieving crew for one huge job. He collects those with magical abilities and Vin rounds out his team.  

The magical systems are Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy. Allomancy is the most common and the most relevant for this review. Magic users ingest tiny amounts of metals (like copper, steel, or gold) and “burn” them in order to gain abilities. Some metals make you powerfully strong, some metals allow you to pull and push against other metals, basically giving you the ability to fly or hover, and some metals allow you to influence people’s emotions. 

The books mostly take place in Luthadel, a city that feels like Dickensian London seen through an Orwellian lens. There are elements that feel steampunky to me (Yes, I do think steampunky is a totally acceptable adjective). The main thrust of the plot for The Final Empire is the preparation for Kelsier’s big heist. À la Ocean’s Eleven, we slowly get introduced to each character and each character’s ability. 

Once the crew is assembled, Kelsier reveals that the scope of the heist is grand beyond imagining. Sanderson does a phenomenal job writing action sequences using his magic systems. They are a blast to read with real page-turning action.

If you read Mistborn, pay attention to the theme of disguise and appearance. I’d argue that clothing and dissimulation are major themes. Can the clothes you wear change how you feel? Change your personality? Change your characteristics? Are you a fraud if you look like something you don’t feel you are? What happens when you start to feel like the thing you’ve been pretending to be? Vin and company wrestle with a lot of these questions as the story unfolds. 

Speaking of epic-fantasy (smooth segue and recommendation alert), Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series is incredible (and set in the same extended universe as Mistborn). 

He is also the man responsible for finishing Robert Jordan’s sprawling The Wheel of Time series. Sanderson wrote the last three books of the 14-book series, and he wrapped up the epic story beautifully. Although it took me about 10 years to finish, you might be able to finish the books before the series premieres on Amazon on November 19.  

If you have the fantasy itch, try Sanderson’s Mistborn books. You won’t be disappointed. If you are, come talk to me at the Central Branch and I’ll try to convince you that you’re wrong. 

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).

Against a red background, two sets of chopsticks hold noodles in long swoop that looks like an H.

Crying in H Mart

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Against a red background, two sets of chopsticks hold noodles in long swoop that looks like an H.

by Ben H.

I’d be remiss to write about Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart without mentioning Psychpomp, the 2016 Japanese Breakfast album that served as a preview for the memoir that debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times‘ best sellers List. Passages describing the creation of the album are brief, but lyrics are scattered throughout the memoir like Easter eggs.  

Zauner recorded the album in Eugene in the months after her mother died. Zauner’s mother is on the album cover, reaching toward the camera. It’s a rad shoegaze album full of great lyrics, and it’s my 2-year-old daughter’s favorite album. Kiki’s been listening to it since she was born. She points to this album cover when she wants to bop: 

Two Asian woman look down into the camera, one reaching out. They are under a blue sky and wind is blowing their hair.

Zauner, who was born in Seoul; raised in Eugene, Oregon; went to school in Philadelphia; and now lives in Brooklyn has a real Maryland vibe (whatever that means). Maybe it’s just me, but I felt close to Zauner after reading her book. It’s honest and intimate (I know that’s a book cover cliché and I still can’t help myself). 

The memoir is incredible. Her mom was only 56 when she died, and Zauner had a complicated relationship with her. She illustrates their relationship by detailing a series of events from childhood conversations to her mom’s final word. The book is only around 250 pages, but Zauner uses anecdotes and conversations like a pointillist uses points to create a full portrait. Her mother is down-to-earth, glamorous, pragmatic, whimsical, frustrating, mysterious, and lovely.  

Zauner writes about eating food, making food, storing food, watching videos of other people make food (Maangchi gets her own chapter), and it’s all great. The passage where she makes her first real batch of kimchi is one of my favorites. Food is the constant in her relationship with her parents: “What they lacked in high culture, they made up for by spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhood was rich with flavor – blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table.” 

After her mother’s cancer diagnosis, her mental fantasies to cure her mom are heartbreaking. We’ve all tried to barter with the universe or with God to get something, and in that vein, Zauner writes, “I spent an hour on the treadmill. In my head I played a game with the numbers. I thought to myself, if I run at eight for another minute, the chemo will work. If I hit five miles in half an hour she’ll be cured.”  

The details of Zauner’s childhood in Eugene and her visits with family in Seoul are highlights, but I found myself returning to the intimate moments between Zauner and her mother. Crying in H Mart is officially going to be a movie; I can’t wait for the screen adaptation, but I think it’s going to be a tearjerker. 

You can place the book on hold, as many other folks want to read it right now, but it’s worth the wait. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook.

Ben Hamilton works at Project Literacy, Howard County Library’s adult basic education initiative, based at HCLS Central Branch. He loves reading, writing, walking, and talking (all the basics).