Becoming, by Michelle Obama

In a nutshell, Becoming is a remarkable and inspirational story of an extraordinary woman. The book is a coming-of-age story; a love story of a pair of opposites; and a political saga by a woman who was skeptical, if not downright scornful of politics, but who became one of the most popular first ladies in American history.  

In telling her story, Michelle takes readers by the hand on an intimate tour of everyday African-American life and ambition, while recounting her rise from modest origins to the closest America has to nobility. Gracefully written and at times laugh-out-loud funny, she invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her from her childhood to the White House.

I particularly liked the titles of the three sections of the book. The first third (Becoming Me), covers her childhood, growing up in lower middle class in southside Chicago, with parents who made their high expectations clear. Despite her family’s challenges and her ‘female blackness’, she managed to go to Princeton, then Harvard Law, and then to work at a prestigious law firm where she met Barack, fell for him and his wanderlust, while Barack was grounded by her traditionalism. In the second section (Becoming Us), she covers their marriage, marriage counseling, raising two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare, winning the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and making it to the White House. But she never takes any of it for granted. On the contrary, her tone is one of wonderment as to how this all happened. Over and over again, from high school to the White House, she asks, “Am I good enough?”

She closes the last third of the book (Becoming More), talking about the stress of being in the spotlight, her desire to make an impact as First Lady, and the opportunity to offer her vision.  She knew that she would be held to a different standard, her every gesture scrutinized. Her story is not full of Washington gossip and political score-settling, though she does lay bare her contempt for Trump, who she believes put her family’s safety at risk with his false birther conspiracy theory.

Becomingis a warm, wise, revelatory and intimate, deeply personal coming-of-age story of a strong-minded girl who grew up to become one of the most powerful and influential black women in America. Her memoir sold more than 1.4 million copies in its first week and quickly became the best-selling book of the year. Through it all, her outlook is optimistic, her voice clear, witty, candid and insightful. She talks straight, with an openness and honesty rarely seen. She is gifted in her ability to express her emotions with meticulous attention to details, writing with tremendous insight and sensitivity from beginning to end. I loved it.

— Kenn Johnson

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

This is an intriguing murder mystery, woven through the painfully beautiful story of Kya, a young girl abandoned and left to survive on her own in the marshes of North Carolina.

Kya is no stranger to the beautiful but treacherous marshes. Deserted when she was just six years old, eventually “Marsh Girl” learns to survive, thrive and find solace in the beauty of the nature all around her.

Kya, lives in a shack with her dirt-poor family “squeezed together like penned rabbits”: a caring but worn down and helpless mother, a cruel, abusive father and four older siblings. One by one they desert Kya, saving themselves from the frequent, vicious beatings of their father, who is the last to desert her. Her mothers’ leaving is the most heart-breaking and frightening for Kya. “Ma” leaves, letting the door slam with finality behind her. No good-by. Not even a wave to her 6-year-old daughter. Finally, Kya is truly alone, except for the beautiful sea gulls who swoop and dive in to eat the grits she tosses to them each evening.

She becomes a wild child, living completely on her own in the marshes with the seagulls, snow geese, doves and crows as her only companions. She takes herself to school, but stays for just one day because of the cruel mocking from her classmates. So most of what she knows she learned from the creatures with whom she shares the swap. Nature nurtured, tutored, fed and protected her when no one else would.

She grew up navigating the family’s motorboat through the marshes and is able to dock near the small general store where she can buy simple supplies, mostly grits, which she cooks with scrambled eggs, cornbread, biscuits and sometimes beans just like her mother fixed.

Kya grows older and develops into a tall, skinny, tanned teenager with hair as black and “thick as crow wings.” She begins to long for companionship, and thinks “If anyone would understand loneliness the moon would.” She becomes increasingly aware of the older boys she sees in town. And they begin to notice her, especially

Chase Andrews, the handsome only son of wealthy parents. She also becomes good friends with another young man,Tate. Tate loves and becomes protective of her, especially as he sees the questionable attention Chase pays to Kya. Tate tells Kya that his father taught him that “A real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul and does what is necessary to defend a woman.” Kya opens herself to Chase and Tate and to a new life.

And then…the story develops into a murder mystery and a very unpredictable ending. As my fellow St. Timothy’s Book Club readers and I discussed this book (which we all loved) – we agreed NOT to discuss the ending until all members had finished the book. It’s that unpredictable and that well done. So I certainly can’t disclose, or even hint at it, to you, Blog readers. I’ll just say it’s definitely worth the wait.

Crawdads is a wonderful, very well-told story with beautiful language and gentle descriptions of nature woven throughout. And there is wonderful poetry that appears, often when least expectedly. You might want to pay attention to it. It’s beautiful, well-written and more important than you might expect.

A word about the author, Delia Owens. She is a wildlife scientist who has coauthored three international best-selling, award-winning nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa. She is much admired and respected for her extensive writing about nature. She holds a BS in Zoology from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Animal Behavior for the University of California at Davis. This is her first fiction book. We hope it is not her last.

About the title “Where the Crawdads Sing”- Kya said her Ma used to encourage her to explore the marsh. “Go as far as you can, way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” Google couldn’t help me learn if crawdads really do sing. But I did learn that they are like small, very tasty lobsters. Maybe it’s better if they don’t sing. Could ruin our appetite for lobsters.

—Gail Stilwill

1984, by George Orwell

Among the influential texts of the 20thcentury, Nineteen Eighty-Fouris an exceptional work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. After political satirist George Orwell watched as the Soviets created an authoritarian state much like Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,  in 1949 he published his nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world in the future, and together with Animal Farm, they have sold more than any two books by any other 20thcentury author.

1984 describes a Dystopia, the antithesis of a Utopia, where Big Brother makes Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini look like sissies. His world is divided into three states, originated from the ashes of World War II: Oceania (the Americas, British Isles, and Australia), Eurasia (the rest of Europe and Russia), and Eastasia (the rest of the world). Continuous war between those three is required to keep the society’s order and peace. WAR IS PEACE

I first read this book when I was in the eighth grade, but I’m not sure why we were required to read it at that age.  I wish I could recall the substance of the discussions by my group of hormonally-challenged teens, but now think that this is a book that is better understood and appreciated long after your first pimple. So, I decided to re-read the book as an adult, hoping I could gain a better appreciation of the classic. Well, it did more than that – it absolutely floored me.  “We shall meet in a place where there is no darkness” sent chills up my spine.

The book is in three parts. The first describes Winston Smith’s predictable life as an unimportant party member.  The second is his life with Julia involving courage, love/lust, and betrayal. And, the final part is about the consequences of those actions, and the methodology of converting political prisoners to embrace Big Brother before disposing of them.  

In the end, Smith is broken, not only physically, but mentally, and after torture of unimaginable dimensions, he completely surrenders, body and soul, to Big Brother. But, in the end, they fix him and he’s happy again – or something — an idea I don’t believe I was able to fully appreciate in middle school.

The brilliance of the novel is Orwell’s prescience of modern life – the ubiquity of television and cameras, the distortion of language, and his ability to construct the possible nightmare and danger of a society without civil liberties and a government with complete control. His idea that truth can be arranged through media (fake news, e.g.) is perhaps the most relevant idea for us today. The part of the  horror of 1984 is that his future is recognizable in 2019, where our President Trump attempts, through manipulation and propaganda, to maintain control simply for satiating his own power hunger. Truly, in this era of “alternative facts’ and an increasing racial intolerance take on society, today’s reality has caught up with 1984.

But, the book is far from perfect. Orwell is a much better theorist than he is a writer. While not a particularly good novel, 1984 is a very good essay, and its ideas are greater than any book. It is bleak, grim, dreary, frightening and upsetting. His characters lack depth, the rhetoric is sometimes didactic, and I believe most writers would have avoided including the lengthy Goldstein treatise, snappily titled “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivisim”, which alters the novel like a scar disfigures a face.

But all that doesn’t matter, because he got it right.  Simply put, 1984 is unquestionably the most memorable and disturbing novel ever. I have always thought that one of the most important qualities of science fiction is that it frees the author to take controversial, politically charged issues, and create a possible future, and in doing so is able to present a compelling and critical argument for change.  With apologies to Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke, no one has ever done a better job than Orwell.It was a hard read, but a MUST read. But, remember – Big Brother is watching!!!

— Kenn Johnson