San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Ayear for reading
Remember the “American Dirt” controversy? That was this year. Funny how a pandemic can warp one’s sense of time.
The year started with a surreal streak. How else to describe a January that included a surrealist young-adult novel by the Butthole Surfers’ Gibby
Haynes and “American Dirt,” a highly touted novel that drew immediate backlash for cultural appropriation. Around the time that controversy simmered, well, we all got a lot more time to read with a nine-month period of quarantine.
My intake certainly increased. I’m not sure it was necessarily affected by the pandemic, as pandemic books will probably begin to flood the market next year. That said, in 2019 I couldn’t have imagined two books about birds making my list of favorite titles from 2020. So certainly, the books below bear some quarantine influence.
“How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” C Pam Zhang: Maybe what the Western needed wasn’t a replacement for a broken wagon wheel but rather a magical mode of transportation. Enter Zhang’s beguiling, gritty story about a pair of Chinese immigrants on a journey during the Gold Rush. Their burden is the corpse of their father, and their story proves a meditation on family and home. There are deliberate nods to previous fiction (“As I Lay Dying”), but Zhang here imagines a brilliant world of her own.
“Deacon King Kong,” James
McBride: A drunk with a gun shoots a drug dealer outside a housing project in Brooklyn, N.Y. In McBride’s hands, the story becomes a commentary on the connectivity in communities and an investigation into the unreliability of information. He tells the tale with a dancing wit and a rough musicality in the language.
“The Falcon Thief,” Joshua
Hammer: Kind of like “The Dinosaur Artist” with eggs instead of bones and a degree of daredevilry in thievery that is astounding. The weirdest mix of nature book, true crime and action thriller.
“Memorial,” Bryan Washington: Washington’s first novel is a document of a couple in trouble and also a probe into the ways cultures absorb and repel each other. It touches on life, love, family and death. The collision of people, sights, sounds, smells and foods absolutely feels of Houston.
“Alright Alright Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s ‘Dazed and Confused,’ ” Melissa Maerz: An entertaining account of the making of Houston native Linklater’s second film. But amid the amusing anecdotes is deeper content about youth in Hollywood, creative process and the push/pull between art and money.
“Jesus of the East: Reclaiming the Gospel for the Wounded,” Phuc Luu: A Houston-based theologian and teacher, Luu doesn’t set out to coddle anybody’s faith. His book focuses upon Christ’s tending those suffering rather than the notion of saving the sinner. Those drawn to Dietrich Bonhoeffer should find much here to interest them.
“What It’s Like to Be a
Bird,” David Allen Sibley: Already renowned for his field guides, Sibley here gets into bird biology and behavior, with little blocks of information that are enlightening and at times amusing.
“What Is the Grass,” Mark Doty: This is as good a portal into the work of Walt Whitman as I’ve encountered, while also serving as a memoir about selfdiscovery. One passage involving Doty’s purchase of a used copy of “Leaves of Grass” is as profound a commentary on culture and knowledge as I’ve ever read.
“Song teller,” Dolly Parton: This one functions just fine as a coffee-table book to be gazed upon and admired. But crack it open because there’s insightful stuff inside about the life and creative process of an American original.
“Ghost Notes,” Michael Corcoran: Corcoran’s career has been spent in the corners of the attics of Texas music, and here he reveals some of his findings on lesser-known “pioneering spirits” such as Don Robey, Jimmy Bowen and Hattie Burleson. Tim Kerr’s illustrations make it a visual treat as well.
“Northernmost,” Peter Geye: Imagine showing up to your own funeral. Welcome to Geye’s novel that offers fresh snow for new footprints in an Odyssean tale. Geye then splits his narrative into a two-part story about family and time and family across time. The connecting of the stories a century apart is masterful.
“Grieving: Dispatches From a Wounded Country,” Cristina Rivera Garza: Available in English for the first time this year, University of Houston professor Garza — named this year as a MacArthur Fellow — works here to change the codified language that has been used to describe violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Hers is an empathetic collection of writings that dispenses the generality of phrases such as “drug war” to assign a human cost to devastating policies and practices.
“Accidentally Wes Anderson,” Wally Koval: A lovingly assembled collection of photos and short essays about places not famous enough to make any normal tour guide. Instead they have a symmetry or bright color or melancholic solitary vibe that suggests the work of a beloved Texas filmmaker.
“The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood,” Sam Wasson: I’m not one to knock the first two “The Godfather” movies, but something about “Chinatown” continues to resonate, thanks to the dark corners of America. Wasson digs deep into the troubled lives of its creators (including director Roman Polanski) and the strained production that created an ageless masterpiece.
“Pew,” Catherine Lacey: I admired Lacey’s slim novel more than I enjoyed it, but then, I think the purpose was to provoke thought not provide entertainment. By placing a child without gender or identifiable race in a Southern church pew, she prompts contemplation about the body, a persona and the ways our communities are formed.