8. best book/book series of the year?
I’ll do one for fiction and one for non-fiction.
For fiction: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh. It’s an older book and historical fiction about the on-the-ground experience during the Partition of India written.. roughly a decade after the fact, so everything was still fresh in everyone’s minds when it came out. What I like the most about this book is how the author did something SUPER clever with the passage of time and the trains and carried through with it. The most discordant the train schedule became, the more discordant society was.
For non-fiction: White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones. I got turned onto this book because of a talk I attended through work. The American religious experience isn’t precisely my focus, so a lot of the information included in the book was new to me. However, what impressed me the most about this book in particular was how the author, a native Mississippian, went to the effort to point out how baked in religiously-inspired racism occurred in every region of the US, not just The South as everyone is so keen to assume.
18. what surprised you the most this year?
Just how MUCH I enjoy working from home. My mental and physical condition is SO much better because of the break I’ve taken from going into the office. Also, the quality of my work has improved as well. I always thought I would hate wfh as a lifestyle, but now I’m wondering how I’m ever going to go back. Or what I can do to continue working from home after this is all over, even if it’s just a few days a week.
