This is Word Savvy Every-Other Week It's a newer book, an older book, and a little something else cool, every-other week! My "newer book" this week is a stunner, sure to land on my list of top ten reads of 2019, and I can't wait to tell you about it. You can always find me on Twitter or Instagram or respond right to this email if you want to say hi or tell me what you think about the books I recommend. I'd love that! Cheers,
Kathleen West
Author of MINOR DRAMAS & OTHER CATASTROPHES, coming 2/4/20! | A Newer Book I'm deep in the process of writing my second novel, and as such, I've been having a hard time concentrating on anything else--anything else except Mira Jacob's excellent book, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. This work is frankly magical. Jacob writes and draws and collages the conversations that force her to question and clarify her identities. She begins and returns to exchanges with her six-year-old, based on his hilarious and also heart-wrenching queries: Was Michael Jackson brown or white? Are white people afraid of brown people? Is Daddy afraid of us? As a reader, you also question and clarify your identities. AND I thought about culture, race, complicity, family, honesty, and love. I also cried a little while I remembered the nights when Obama and Trump were elected. Read this. It gets all the gold stars. (See an excerpt here, too.) | An Older Book I've been big on the memoirs these last couple of newsletters, and I'm going to keep it going with Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. I recommend the audiobook, performed by Noah himself. These are engaging and sobering stories of The Daily Show host's growing up in South Africa during and after apartheid. Topics range from petty larceny to church-going to Noah's complicated relationship with his white father. Noah's mother becomes the throughline here, with the book beginning and ending with tributes to her strength. I always love a book read by the author, and Noah's narration is excellent - funny, heartfelt, and brisk. It's also helpful to hear the stories, as so many words appear in various languages of South Africa - Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans - all of which he speaks. | Something Else Cool Maybe everyone knows this already, but each day, the NYTimes makes a mini crossword puzzle. I'm not that great at crossword puzzles in general, but I'm pretty good at the mini. I like to try to solve it as fast as possible, and then I like to check my leaderboard to see if I've solved it faster than my friends. (Because life is better with winning, right?! Gold stars?!) With the mini, I almost never win (my friend Joe, for one, beats me at least 19 of 20 days), but I always have fun. Feel free to friend me. Send me your leaderboard link right to this email. | Other Stuff Congratulations to Jill, Daphne, and Casey who were the random email openers who won ARCs of MINOR DRAMAS two weeks ago! Congratulations also to Nicole, Christy, and Patti who won reusable sandwich bags! I hope to do another giveaway here soon because, well, winning is fun. You can always PREORDER the book, which really helps me and takes care of things just in case you don't win. READ my latest essays for The Debutante Ball. I wrote about distractions and finding a literary agent. I ALSO WROTE ABOUT how, for most of my teaching career, I've cut up my wallet-sized photos and given them to my adult friends. It turns out giving people copies of my book feels a little bit the same. | |
