BookTalkers

In first grade, when everyone else was split into reading groups, I was in a group by myself. At six years old, all I understood was that I was somehow different, and according to my mother I cried when we got home because there was nobody in my group. My mother had no idea what had happened, so the next day she called my teacher and explained my tears. She thought that maybe I was the worst reader in the class. To her embarrassment, my teacher explained that while she had two other students who were already reading, neither of them was quite up to my ability level, but that she would work to catch them up to me as soon as possible.

She never did catch them up, and reading in first grade was my very first independent study.

I read early. I read voraciously. And in a trend that continues to this day, I re-read books all. the. time. This makes my partner crazy. She wants to know what I get out of a story once I know how it ends. But that’s the thing: I don’t read to find out the ending, at least not once I’ve finished something for the first time. I read to feel. I read to escape, or to feel like I’m apart of something outside of my experience and knowlege base. I read to learn, to be entertained, to imagine. I read classics and history, romance and politics, glbt fiction, mysteries, police procedurals, true crime, and YA. I couldn’t tell you all the books that I’ve read in my life, but I wanted to talke a little about the books that matter to me.

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden: it’s dated. It was dated when I read it for the first time, under my desk in Latin class and sitting on the cold cement while I was supposed to be scorekeeping at a tennis match back in 1992. Dated or not, it was the book that made me see my life and my feelings through clear glass for the first time. I read that book, about two teenage girls who fall in love, and it was like everything made sense: why I always felt so different, why I wasn’t interested in boys. It took me another year and a half to even begin to admit to myself that I was queer, and another year beyond that to tell anyone.  But reading that book at fifteen changed my life.

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts: I was born in 1977.  AIDS has always been a part of my consciousness.  This is, to my mind, the most definitive history not just of the epidemic but of the evolution of queer activism post-Stonewall.  After you read this, read Paul Monette’s accounting of his own experiences in “the plague years”:Borrowed Time: an AIDS Memoir, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, and Last Watch of the Night: Essays too Personal and Otherwise.  

Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol: I read lots of books in college.  This is the one that has remained with me all these years.  I remember thinking at the time (fall of 1995) that the disparity between the have and have not schools Kozol profiled were kind of unbelievable.  Nearly twenty years later, I know that very little has actually changed, and that breaks my heart.

The Children by David Halberstam: In the early days of the burgeoning civil rights movement, a group of college students in Nashville set out to integrate the lunch counters downtown.  The story of these students, who hailed from all over the United States, begins in Nashville, but it does not end there.  Halberstam profiles activists like John Lewis, and chronicles the civil rights movement from those Nashville sit-ins through the founding of SNCC and CORE to the Freedom Rides, The march from Selma to Montgomery, and the March on Washington.  One of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.

The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin: A tale of love, loss, and redemption set against the backdrop of competitive collegiate swimming.  I honestly don’t know how much to say about this book without giving the whole plot away, but I will say this: there is such an amazing lyricism to Levin’s writing.  I aspire to write like her someday.  I read this in a single rainy Saturday when I was in college, and as soon as I finished I turned back to the first page and read the whole things again.

In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming (as well as the other six books in her Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series):  You’ll find this series classified as mystery, but I hesitate to describe the books that way.  Yes, there is a mystery that gets solved in each book.  Yes, Episcopal priest and former Army helicopter pilot Clare Fergusson is an amateur sleuth.  Yes, Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne is sort of plagued by Clare’s inability to keep her nose out of anything at all.  But these are not fluffy books; they deal with pertinent social issues (teen pregnancy, hate crimes, environmental concerns, childhood vaccinations, migrant workers, war and it’s impact on a community).  But what I love most about this series is the way Spencer-Fleming uses character and location.  She writes some of the best character-driven fiction I’ve ever read; Russ and Clare are real, imperfect people.  They could be any of us, or our friends and neighbors.  The small Adirondack town of Miller’s Kill is as much a character as the people are.  The stories play out not just against the backdrop of the town, but within it.  Each book leaves the community changed in some way.  If you want a good story, give the first book a try.  I’ve never steered anyone wrong with these books.  I go back to them again and again because they feel like old friends.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg: a coming out and coming of age story that begins in the 1950’s and follows Jess Goldberg as she struggles with her identity into the 1990’s.  This isn’t just a book about lesbianism or feminism or trans issues.  Feinberg delves into class and the labor community as well.  There is such a sparse beauty to the writing, and extremely frank discussions about the ways that we all can be failed by our community, whatever community that may be.  This is not an easy book by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe it’s a necessary one.  

I could write a million posts like this one, talking about other books that have influenced me or changed me or that just feel like comfort.  This is by no means a complete list.