Some of the books I read in 2021:
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.
Brit Bennett: The Vanishing Half (2020) – twin sisters, one passes for White, the other lives life as a Black woman. Their lives compared.
Eric Foner: Gateway to Freedom (2015) – the main book I used for my post on the Underground Railroad.
Connie Porter: Meet Addy (1993) – the first in the American Girl series of dolls/books that was Black. A slave in North Carolina during the Civil War, her family runs away…
Violet Moller: The Map of Knowledge (2019) – traces the history of books by Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy from Alexandria in the 400s to Venice in the 1400s by way of the Muslim world. Totally, utterly horrifying. My post on Gerard of Cremona was based on this book.
Phillis Wheatley: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) – her first book of poems, the first book of Black American literature.
Olaudah Equiano: Interesting Narrative (1794) – Millions were dragged off into slavery in the 1700s. His is one of the few written accounts. “Interesting” is an understatement.
Cal Newport: Digital Minimalism (2019) – the whys and hows of living a life less mindlessly digital.
Lao-tzu: Tao-te-ching (-500s) – the Ursula K. Le Guin translation. I have read this before, but I trust her translation since she took Lao-tzu seriously and can write.
John McWhorter: Woke Racism (2021) – Critical race theory, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi (listed above), Robin DiAngelo and their woke mob on Twitter are destroying America as we know it! They are the real racists!
Timeline:
- -500s: 1
- …
- 1700s: 2
- 1800s: 1
- 1900s: 2
- 2000s: 13
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
536
Abagond 
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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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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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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From gro jo on the Open Thread:
@ gro jo
Thanks. I am putting the comment here so that it is easier for me to find later.
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Added: Lily Brooks-Dalton: Good Morning, Midnight (2016)
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Added: Donna Tartt: The Secret History (1992)
Added: Julia Serano: Whipping Girl (2007, 2016)
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Added: Pat Barker: Silence of the Girls (2018)
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Added: Ibram X. Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning (2016)
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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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I have Four Hundred Soul in my Audible audiobook library to be listened to.
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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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@ Mary
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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Added: Kalynn Bayron: Cinderella is Dead (2020)
Added: Carol Anderson: White Rage (2016)
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Updated to the end of the year.
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