Good Books: "Figuring" and "Deaf Republic"

The National Book Awards are given tonight.  We've had announcements of the long list and the short list, and tonight, we find out who won.

I am not one of those readers who reads every book on the list, although I will often refer to these kinds of lists when I'm casting about for something good to read.  This year, I'm surprised by some of the books that aren't on the list.  Last year, I would have included Jill Lepore's These Truths.  This year, I'd have included Maria Popova's Figuring.

I took that book with me a few weeks ago when I went to the women's retreat.  I knew I would likely have time to read, so I decided to focus on making progress on that book.  I knew that if I wasn't intentional, I'd never get around to a nonfiction book that's longer than 500 pages.

Even though it's a book of nonfiction, it was riveting.  It's an amazing exploration of science and creativity and creating an authentic life. The book focuses most of its time on amazing women throughout history.  I had heard of some of the women, particularly the writers like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.  But many of the early female scientists I had never heard of--what revelations!

The book is an amazing accomplishment because it weaves so many storylines together, moving back and forth in time, never losing the reader.  And Popova offers interesting insights along the way.  Here's an example, from page 184:  "One of the greatest betrayals of our illusion of permanence, one of the sharpest daggers of loss, is the retroactive recognition of lasts--the last time you sat across from a person you now know you will never see again, the last touch of a hand, the last carefree laugh over something spoken in the secret language that binds two people in intimacy--lasts the finality of which we can never comprehend in the moment, lasts we experience with sundering shock in hindsight."

I was able to make so much progress on that book because I had an unplugged week-end at the retreat.  Yesterday, I had an unplanned unplugged morning, when my computer was sluggish after an automatic update.  So I read Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic, a book which in on the shortlist for tonight's National Book Award.

I'd heard so much about it that I included it in an Amazon order when I needed to get to the minimum purchase to get free shipping.  Yesterday, I reached for it first, knowing that it might get the award tonight.

It's a curious book, a combination of many things, like a play, sign language (real?  made up?), poems that can stand alone, a sort of history of Eastern Europe.  The last poem in the collection is what makes the whole thing brilliant, the way it connects this history recounted in the poems, a history that seems from a remote village in the 20th century, to events--particularly involving police brutality--in recent years.

I've had the kind of reading month, and the kind of reading year, that I lately have to work hard to achieve.  I have to be intentional about seeking out good books--I no longer read enough books to have them tumble across my path.  I'll say more about this year as we get to the end of the year.  Now I need to get ready for the day.