books I read in 2021

Tue Feb 23rd 2021 by abagond

Last updated: Fri Jun 11 01:33:05 UTC 2021.

Some of the books I have read so far in 2021 (to be updated throughout the year):

Nicholas Carr: The Shallows (2010) – how the Internet is making us shallow thinkers and knowers. Books still matter, says this book.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Strongmen (2020) – compares and contrasts right-wing authoritarian rulers of the past hundred years, from Mussolini to Trump. In US history, Trump sticks out, but not in world history.

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (1813) – considered one of the best romance novels in the English tongue. I still prefer “Wuthering Heights” (1847) by Emily Brontë.

Lily Brooks-Dalton: Good Morning, Midnight (2016) – post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, bleak but makes you think about life. A Hollywoodized version is now on Netflix as “The Midnight Sky” (2020).

Donna Tartt: The Secret History (1992) – rich White college kids kill one of their own and get away with it. All but a founding text of the dark academia aesthetic.

Julia Serano: Whipping Girl (2007, 2016) – the nature of sexism, gender, transphobia. The book that gave us the word “transmisogyny”.

Pat Barker: Silence of the Girls (2018) – the Trojan War as told by a woman. What a wonderful idea. But Barker was unable to shake Homer’s militarism and male gaze.

Ibram X. Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning (2016) – a history of anti-Black racist ideas in the US, from their roots in the Portuguese slave trade in 1453 to Sandra Bland in 2015.

Kalynn Bayron: Cinderella is Dead (2020) – the Disney Version becomes a handmaid’s tale.

Carol Anderson: White Rage (2016) – the US government goes out of its way to cut the bootstraps of Black people, in voting, housing, education, etc. Racism is the US shooting itself in the foot.

What I am reading now: I am reading the following three books of history in sync, century by century. I have already read chapters here and there of the first two, but now I am reading them cover-to-cover:

Audrey and Brian D. Smedley: Race in North America (2012) – a good, solid history of racism in North America, from its roots in Spain and England before 1619 to the beginning of the 21st century. The main source of several posts, like Spanish racial identity in 1492 and slaveries compared.

Nell Irvin Painter: Creating Black Americans (2006) – a good overview of US Black history from 1619 to 2006.

Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, editors: Four Hundred Souls (2021) – subtitled “A Community History of African America, 1619-2019”. Divides Black US history into five-year periods and has an expert write a few pages about each, from “1619–1624: Arrival by Nikole Hannah-Jones” to “2014–2019: Black Lives Matter by Alicia Garza”. What a wonderful idea!

Suggestions: If you want to suggest or recommend a book, please leave it in the comments below! Thanks.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

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Posted in stuff | 13 Comments

13 Responses

on Wed Feb 24th 2021 at 05:59:05 plaintalk2010

I recommend strongly – Nobody Cages Me and Jimi Hendrix Black Legacy. They are on sale as a combo for 25 dollars on this site http://www.jimibl.com

Or on Amazon and B&N.

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on Wed Feb 24th 2021 at 19:30:55 Duskhor Dechen

Just a casual remark on the three latest items. Having hanging around this community for about three years, I still cannot fathom that American trick of the artificial race-based construct of national identity – and damn me if I ever will be able to. Some things are better to remain absoultely unfathomble as they are.

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on Thu Feb 25th 2021 at 16:48:11 Bobbie Jean

I am currently reading Defining Moments In Black History–Reading Between the Lies by Dick Gregory. I’m willing to bet you have read it.

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on Mon Mar 1st 2021 at 13:48:38 abagond

From gro jo on the Open Thread:

“Abagond, you might be interested in reading and reviewing this book since IQ comes up quite often on your blog.
Genes, Brains, and Human Potential: The Science and Ideology of Intelligence (Columbia University Press, 2017)”

@ gro jo

Thanks. I am putting the comment here so that it is easier for me to find later.

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on Mon Mar 8th 2021 at 13:37:48 abagond

Added: Lily Brooks-Dalton: Good Morning, Midnight (2016)

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on Tue Mar 16th 2021 at 03:24:26 abagond

Added: Donna Tartt: The Secret History (1992)
Added: Julia Serano: Whipping Girl (2007, 2016)

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on Wed Apr 7th 2021 at 03:32:49 abagond

Added: Pat Barker: Silence of the Girls (2018)

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on Tue May 4th 2021 at 12:47:01 abagond

Added: Ibram X. Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning (2016)

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on Thu May 20th 2021 at 21:13:28 Mary Burrell

I finished a very good book Britt Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. A New York Times Best Seller. Beautiful prose and snappy and crisp dialogue. It was a page turner that kept me enthralled. Two twins that live in a town where all the people who live there are light skinned Black people. They become adults and one separates from her twin sister to assume an identity as a white woman. The other light skin twin marries a dark skinned man, and has a very dark skinned child. The subjects of colorism, racism, lgbtq, Alzheimer’s are key factors in the telling of this story.

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on Thu May 20th 2021 at 21:15:03 Mary Burrell

I have Four Hundred Soul in my Audible audiobook library to be listened to.

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on Thu May 20th 2021 at 21:18:14 Mary Burrell

Cicely Tyson’s Just As I Am is so beautiful. She lead a beautiful and extraordinary life. Beautiful pictures she was such a beauty.

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on Thu May 20th 2021 at 21:29:53 abagond

@ Mary

“I finished a very good book Britt Bennett’s The Vanishing Half.”

Yes! I want to read that. I am on the waitlist at my library. Hopefully I will be able to read it later this year.

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on Fri Jun 11th 2021 at 01:35:46 abagond

Added: Kalynn Bayron: Cinderella is Dead (2020)
Added: Carol Anderson: White Rage (2016)

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