In Deep by Maxine Kumin

4/5 stars

What's it about? Poet Maxine Kumin talks craft and country living in this volume of essays about managing a farm in New Hampshire while maintaining a writing life. A warm hearth of a book.

How’d I find it? I picked this up at Normals Books & Records in Baltimore, which has the kind of selection that makes me say, “Ooh!” and pluck a book off the shelf that I never even knew existed.

Who will enjoy this book? In Deep is for horse girls young and old, as well as for Mary Oliver and Henry David Thoreau acolytes.

What stood out? In Deep owes much to Kumin’s admiration of Thoreau, whose influence can be seen in essays dedicated to taxonomic descriptions of mushrooms and species of cattle as well as in “The Unhandselled Globe,” which centers on Thoreau himself. Kumin rejects the Freudian links to women who love horses and gendered assumptions about her mares; she and the animals she loves are the focus here, and glimpses of her human family are brief. She writes beautifully about the day-to-day labors of keeping a farm running, from building fences to keeping everyone fed.

Which line made me feel something? From the closing essay, “A Sense of Place,” an outstanding analysis of the stamp of home on Kumin’s poetry: “In a poem one can use the sense of place as an anchor for larger concerns, as a link between narrow details and global realities. Location is where we start from. Landscape provides our first geography, the turn of the seasons are archetypes for our own mortality.”

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

4/5 stars

What's it about? Sarah M. Broom unpacks her family’s history, her upbringing as the youngest of twelve children, and the social, cultural, and political realities of her native New Orleans East before and after Hurricane Katrina. A thoughtful accounting of homecoming and place.

How’d I find it? My spouse’s family has links to New Orleans and collected multiple copies of The Yellow House over the years.

Who will enjoy this book? This is a must-read for memoir lovers, especially because Broom manages to craft an intimate look at her family while remaining at a remove herself, a technique that serves her complex narrative well. The book evokes home in a way that reminded me of The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez.

What stood out? The first section of the book (“Movement I: The World Before Me”) draws the reader into its beautifully rendered portrait of heritage, gleaming with the author’s admiration for her family’s matriarchs. The Brooms and their wavelets of friends and ancestors comprise The Yellow House’s irreducible core, and you’ll yearn to return to them when the author focuses her attention elsewhere — another smart tool to reinforce periods of displacement. Despite some detours into platitudes (“namelessness is a form of naming”), Broom knows how to command the page.

Which line made me feel something? “When the presentation of the body stands in for all the qualities the world claims you cannot possess, some people call you elegant. Grandmother was that, yes, but sometimes elegance is just willpower and grace, a way to keep the flailing parts of the self together.”

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

4/5 stars

What's it about? Thoreau’s treatise on individualism and respect for the natural world originated from his two years of self-sufficiency beside the shores of Walden Pond. A blend of philosophy, memoir, and field guide, Walden urges readers to shed frivolity and experience life at its simplest.

How’d I find it? Though a longtime resident of the TBR list, Thoreau became a pressing read. I borrowed my spouse’s copy for the occasion.

Who will enjoy this book? Rather than who, Walden requires guidance on how to read it: ever so slowly. A chapter a day was the perfect amount to chew at a time. If you liked Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, this book will speak to you.

What stood out? The questions of truth and resistance in Walden are relevant no matter when you read them, and Thoreau’s descriptions of the flora and fauna he encounters around Concord provide context for his experiment in the woods. A time capsule of 19th-century Americana.

Which line made me feel something? “The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broke strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.”

Generations by Lucille Clifton

4/5 stars

What’s it about? Lucille Clifton sketches her family tree as she journeys with her family to her father’s home for his funeral. Each section is dedicated to one of Clifton’s ancestors, but others crowd in with their own tales and entanglements, mimicking the jockeying and overlappings within any family. Honest, powerful, and brimming with love and pride.

How’d I find it? I found this book by happenstance at Enoch Pratt Free Library and can never resist an NYRB title. This was gobbled up over beers while a football game held surrounding friends rapt.

Who will enjoy this book? At less than 90 pages, Generations is worth any reader’s attention. Folks who liked Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith, who opens Generations with a beautifully written introduction, will particularly appreciate this title.

What stood out? The structure of the book reinvents the memoir genre. Clifton curates an impactful collage of photos, dialogue, secondhand stories, memories, lines from Walt Whitman, and snippets of her journey to Buffalo. This is the experience of a funeral in real time, recreating the barrage of interconnectedness that loss unleashes, the lore we fall into when surrounded by the people who made us possible.

Which line made me feel something? “Things don’t fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept. ‘We come out of it better than they did, Lue,’ my Daddy said, and I watch my six children and know we did.”

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? This was a purchase at Politics & Prose, one of my favorite spots to spend a few hours.

Why not 3 or more stars? Spending time with Smith’s mind is always a pleasure. Wanderlust, curiosity in others, and capacity for wonder season everything she writes, and the result is a companionable literary voice that inspires you to reread a classic or marvel at the worn seat of an idol’s chair. Year of the Monkey counts among the reactionary responses to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, an event that spawned a cohort of creative work marked by outrage and bitterness. Smith’s account of disillusionment with the world melds with her grief over those who’ve passed in a memoir that reads more like an incomplete draft, a manuscript dragged from underneath her still-editing hands to join in time the wave of anti-Trump sentiment saturating the bookshelves for hungry consumers needing answers. Year of the Monkey would not have contributed much new to the conversation, but it was a time when artists felt the urge to speak out and channel their understanding of this slice of human history.

At least, that’s what I thought this book was. Imagine my surprise to discover that Year of the Monkey was published in 2019. Without the solid footing of the context in which they were composed, Smith’s diary-like ramblings feel dated, an echo of an echo of an echo. Much like the dream states Smith tries to recapture, they fade before you wake.

The Sirens of Mars by Sarah Stewart Johnson

1/5 stars

How’d I find it? I came across this book at Politics & Prose and added it to my growing stack.

Why not 3 or more stars? I hesitate to tag this book as anything but memoir, despite the tantalizing subtitle of Searching for Life on Another World. The focus is Johnson herself, who is a scientist and female. That’s it. That’s the “edge” here. While the book roughly sketches out the history of Martian discovery, I wanted much more astronomy and fewer forced analogies between interplanetary exploration and motherhood.

Shrill by Lindy West

5/5 stars

What's it about? Lindy West reflects on the experience of being fat and female in America in a gem of an essay collection. Chock full of humor and darn good writing.

How’d I find it? As a nursing student, I am frequently on long drives between hospitals, campus, and home. Audiobooks get me through the commute. DC Library provided this one, entertaining me during traffic or while wolfing down lunch.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Mindy Kaling, Joel Golby, Rax King, and Jia Tolentino will appreciate, but probably most millennials as well? I feel like Lindy gets all my references.

What stood out? The essays "Death Wish" and "Slaying the Troll" deftly knit together wit, anguish, and sharp social commentary. You can also listen to West perform a version of "Slaying the Troll," in which she confronts an internet troll whose cruelty focuses on her late father, on This American Life. I honestly wanted to begin rereading this book the second I finished it.

Which line made me feel something? I have long struggled to pinpoint why certain jokes in comedy make me uncomfortable, and West lays it out expertly in "Death Wish:" "People...desperately want to believe that the engines of injustice run on outsized hate — stranger rapes in dark alleys, burning crossing and white hoods — but the reality is that indifference, bureaucracy, and closed-door snickers are far more plentiful fuels."

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I borrowed the audiobook from DC Library and listened as I weeded in the late summer heat, arguably a double dose of anti-anxiety activity.

Why not 3 or more stars? I will preface this by saying how much I love the physicality of this book. The hardcover is designed gorgeously, and I have purchased this as a gift for readers who I think will enjoy it. That said, I'm not the right reader for this book. Think of First, We Make the Beast Beautiful as Anxiety for Beginners. Alas, I am no beginner and gained little from learning about what makes someone else anxious and how they cope with it.

The Shift by Theresa Brown

3/5 stars

What's it about? Theresa Brown gives an inside look into the daily work of an oncology nurse. We follow her through the twelve hours of a shift as she juggles four patient’s needs on a busy hospital floor. Brown captures well the hectic pace of a nursing shift and the struggle to continuously advocate for patients in a complex decision-making environment.

How’d I find it? With nursing school at its end, I wanted to see what contemporary books had to say about nursing. My thanks to DC Library.

Who will enjoy this book? This read would most appeal to those interested in the medical field but who don’t know much about nursing, such as high school or college graduates.

What stood out? Experienced nurses can have a reputation for being disgruntled, and Brown does not shy away from commentary on her coworkers and how hospitals function. Some of the negativity would have been better invested in fleshing out the patients in this book or sharing more about Brown herself. Without a stronger human element, the tone of the book is sanitized, distant.

Which line made me feel something? On nursing as storm chasing: “As a child I experienced only wonder while running after flashes of rain; I saw a world, a heaven. Now, grown up, I try to draw on my child’s sense of awe and commitment as I help Sheila confront, perhaps, the end of her time on earth.”

Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? On repetitive drives where I don’t have to check for directions, an audiobook is just the thing. I read this over a few days in both ebook and audiobook form thanks to DC Library.

Why not 3 or more stars? As a fan of Trethewey's poetry, I was excited to read this book. Poets who branch out to other genres are endlessly interesting to me (Hanif Abdurraqib and Ocean Vuong, for example). However, when I came across the word "wound" on the first page, I rightly feared that Memorial Drive was not my taste. I recognize that a page one "wound" is a strange pet peeve. But hear me out. Through my reading, I've discovered that writers with this word ready to drop at the jump typically rely on an arsenal of sensuous, relevant language that speaks to the culture of identity around which much of contemporary poetry revolves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I find that if I pick apart the loveliness of the word choices in many of these types of books, there's not much else to recommend. That is the case here.