The List: Reading Around the World in 2009

My taste in books this past year has been notably inclusive, geographically and culturally speaking. Afghani authors, in particular, are represented prominently, and this makes some sense, given the present reality that regrettably entwines their nation with the US. Political climate notwithstanding, however, there is a universality to human nature that draws me in and fascinates, which is magnified by the otherness of the settings in such books. To learn who we are, we must cast our sights upon others. In them we may see ourselves reflected.

A neighbor in an adjacent cell to mine asked, several months ago, why it was I read so many books about people from different cultures. It wasn't a critical question; he was legitimately curious. I had no ready answer for him except to say that people were sometimes a mystery to me and I endeavored to understand them. Upon reflection, though, I realized: the whole point of reading is to be lifted from our comfort zone and shown a place wholly different from what we know — all without leaving our comfy chair. To always read without this goal misses the point. I am not ashamed to confess the joy I get from escapist hours lost to flipping pages, mind you, but there is so much more to it than entertainment — that crass and artless saccharine for the brain. So much more.

Regular readers of this blog (especially those of you whose queries about this year's reading list started coming in three weeks ago) may note that I have once again failed to meet my annual fifty-title goal. In 2009, I read just forty-one books. Unlike last year, I won't explain it away with specifics. It should suffice to tell you I don't have enough hours in my days. If anyone's got some unused ones lying around, I'm taking up a collection.

* * * * *

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Adam Davies, Goodbye Lemon

Toby Young, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Lyle Estill, Small Is Beautiful: Life in a Local Economy

Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases

Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach

Michael John Carley, Asperger's from the Inside Out: A Supportive and Practical Guide for Anyone with Asperger's Syndrome

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things

Jesse Ball, Samedi the Deafness

John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Andrew Miller, Oxygen

Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution

Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds

Barry Lopez, Resistance

Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl

Charles Wright and David Lehman (editors), The Best American Poetry 2008

Will Self, The Butt

Nelson George and Daphne Carr (editors), Best Music Writing 2008

William Conescu, Being Written

Davy Rothbart (editor), Requiem for a Paper Bag

Trey Hamburger, Ghosts/Aliens

David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames

William Gibson, Burning Chrome

Dobby Gibson, Skirmish

Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, My Guantánamo Diary

Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

Berhard Schlink, The Reader

Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language

Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life Oscar Wao

Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

Michael Chabon and Katrina Kenison (editors), The Best American Short Stories 2005

Digits

I hadn't even been in prison an entire week when this exchange took place. I was walking back to the cell, having just gotten off the telephone, when a muscular, heavily tattooed con with a dramatic keloid scar across his neck approached. "Hey man," he asked, "you call or write any females?" It's been more than seven years since the encounter, yet I remember it vividly as yesterday.

"Um, yeah," I managed, dumbfounded by the left-field nature of the question.

"Know any that wanna get to know a Saint Louis nigga?"

Speechless, exactly three befuddling issues arose at this point. First, I was waifish and lily-white and young — each quality on its own being a statistical strike against one's safety in this kind of place. A vision of this as a prelude to a bloody disfigurement (or worse) flashed momentarily through my head: Uh oh.

Second was the level of hubris that would allow this man to believe I would simply hand over contact information for any of my precious friends. What kind of an ass does that?

Third, and arguably most pertinent, was that my circle of intimates is made up predominantly of über-geeks, artists, and bohemian types who are about as far from identifying with, or understanding, the life of the typical con as you can imagine. They like indie films and art openings, or puns involving computer jargon, or dumpster-diving for home furnishings. Even if I did effect a connection, what would they talk about? Where would be found common ground? I was baffled.

"I don't know if they'd want me giving out their information to a stranger," I told him. As unvarnished truth goes, it should have been an inoffensive answer.

"Just 'cause I'm black — is that it? You racist or somethin'?"

As it turns out, handing out women's contacts to inmates you scarcely know is common practice around here. Rarely, if ever, are matters of shared interests or compatibility taken into account. It doesn't matter if Craig is an animal-rights activist and practicing warlock, and Rhonda is a Seventh Day Adventist who co-owns a factory farm — a connection would be made on the basis that Craig is a man (i.e., has a penis) and Rhonda is a woman (i.e., has a vagina), and that this ought to be enough for the two to hit it off famously. How naive of us to think otherwise!

I diffused the volatile stranger that afternoon, but it took supplying him with satisfactorily exhausting evidence against my assumed prejudice. (A third party, familiar with Kansas City schools, had to be called in to vouch for the fact I attended predominantly African-American ones, at the apex of this ridiculous exchange.) He also grudgingly accepted that none of the women in my life were commodities to be shared. Afterward, on the countless occasions others have come to me with the same question, I have been smart enough to employ the old middle-school DARE mantra and just say, "No."

Driving Lessons

I didn't get my driver's license until well after turning seventeen. In Europe, as in most of the rest of the world, this fact would have seemed far less freakish than it did in suburban Kansas, in the latter half of the 1990s. On balance, it wasn't so bad relying on rides and public transportation to get around. I had no problem calling friends for rides, or, from time to time, taking a cab or bus. I also felt no implacable need to flee my father's house; the stereotypical teenage yen to speed off, in a car, at 12:01 AM on the morning of their sixteenth birthday wasn't one with which I related.

When the time came, however, for me to stop being such a transportation cadger, it was my father who broke the news. We were at the breakfast table, eating silently, the aroma of fried eggs and Gruyère thick in the air. He set down his issue of Men's Health and, apropos of nothing I could discern, told me, "It's time for you to learn how to drive."

My reliance on him to get to work, though just a ten-minute drive, had worn his legendary patience somewhat thin, evidently. And of course, I'd been as oblivious as always. The sudden broaching of the topic went deeper, though. My father had seen a powder-blue 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse for sale at the little service station down our street.

"I could help you put a really big stereo system in there," he offered, once the debate began. Noting my absent enthusiasm, he added, "You could fit a couch in there too!"

With this, I started suspecting a third motive: his wanting me out of the house on some kind of long-term basis. (Else, why mention the couch?)

"I'd never be able to go out to eat. The restaurant staff would always be asking me to park it somewhere out of sight, where the other customers wouldn't see it," I said.

"Small price to pay for the bragging rights. Just imagine how jealous your friends would be: Oh, I only drive a hearse! That'd be cool."

"You obviously have no idea how my friends think. Your concept of 'cool' is also something you ought to examine more closely, I think."

"Well, girls would at least dig it."

"Sure, the spooky ones with fangs — the ones who think their lives are, like, tragic. No thank you."

With that, my father returned to his magazine. The debate over the hearse seemed complete, the one over my learning to drive forgotten. Alas, I was only half right. Within the week, I found myself behind the wheel of his cherished little Honda CRX, lurching to stop after stop, abusing its transmission with my violently inexpert shifting of gears, palms slick with terror-induced sweat. He told me at one point that he could appreciate that I was nervous. For one, it meant I would be more cautious about what I was doing, thus minimizing the odds of our getting into an accident. Also, he got a kick out of watching me squirm.

His lessons were long and relentlessly thorough. Learning to drive a vehicle with a manual transmission was just the first of his draconian conditions. I also had to learn to drive a larger vehicle — in this case, one of his work vans. Then I had to practice while pulling a boat trailer. Then I had to back up a long distance with the same trailer. Then there were lessons in heavy rain. Then there were lessons in merging, in driver etiquette, in high-speed handling. More than once, he actually had me run a light-pole slalom course in a supermarket parking lot.

One morning after a nasty snowstorm, we were both still in our robes when he herded me out to the car. He wanted to teach me how to handle on ice. He drove us to a nearby shopping mall, then traded me seats and made me brake over and over on the slick asphalt, just so I would know how to properly regain control in a slide. My father didn't even try to hold onto anything when we slid, just sat with his arms resting calmly on his thighs, laughing his sadistic ass off.

I still can't believe how lucky I was to have such a great instructor. Who else would've made me learn to change gears with a steaming cup of coffee between my thighs? You might be surprised how often that skill has come in handy.