House of Smoke, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, The Score, Strangers
Here’s a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read in the last few months:
House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home (John T. Edge): I’ll always love a good story of someone trying to figure out how they fit with where they come from and how a place has shaped them. Read this one for a primer on Southern Foodways Alliance and for its founder’s (i.e. the author’s) thoughtful grappling with what the organization means and the spirit in which it was built. (For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the perhaps strange desire to visit Oxford, Mississippi — the Faulkner influence, undoubtedly! — and this snappy read rekindled that.)
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (Yiyun Li): I don’t shy away from hard content in fiction. Nonfiction is a sometimes harder sell for me, and I don’t think I can read Li’s recent, Pulitzer-winning second memoir about her two sons who both died by suicide. But I could do Dear Friend, which chronicles the author’s own mental health crises, woven with memories of her childhood in China, her mother, and her acclimation to the US. This one contains literary touchstones accompanied by Li’s thoughts on what a book might “mean” and how readers relate to a piece of literature.
The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game (C. Thi Nguyen): I ingested this book about the philosophy of games — and how basically everything is a metric-focused game now — so fast that maybe I should have earned a ring on my watch for it. (#referential) Nguyen, a philosophy professor, commingles the academic and conversational tone just right. I really should have added this to the recommendation list at our gathering!
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage (Belle Burden): If you’re not aware of this buzzy book, it’s the retelling of a marriage that disintegrates seemingly out of the blue. Burden is the granddaughter of NYC icon Babe Paley, so the intrigue of privileged Manhattan looms large. Even though I could’ve done without the osprey imagery (editor influence?), this is an excellent, engaging recounting of how the technicalities of marriage (finances, logistical roles) can become negatively enmeshed with romantic ideas of partnership.
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