What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[Mexican Wolf]

Just finished reading Willa Cather on Writing. I've read three of her novels, several short stories, and many essays on her. Definitely a fascinating author, even though I disagree with her artistic viewpoints about half the time.

[Mexican Wolf]

Recently finished reading Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison.

I found her argument that white authors' depiction of black people in American literature reflected and reinforced the constructions of their own white identities as well as the identities of the "others" fascinating and thought-provoking.

Her prose always sweeps me up, even if I'm not always exactly sure what she's trying to say.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just finished Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. A pretty good debut novel about first contact with aliens and negotiating language and cultural differences.

[Mexican Wolf]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

Back in one of my creative writing classes in college, we read Nathan Englander's story based on this, "What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank," which focuses on the two couples' different views of what it means to be Jewish. Then we each wrote stories using the same basic structures as both of these stories and incorporating a famous historical figure in some way (I chose President Truman).

It was a pretty interesting experiment.

[Mexican Wolf]

It definitely sounds so. Although to be fair love as a concept is what really stokes my emotions so I am not sure if I would find as appealing to read about the meaning of President Truman or of Judaism.

Haha I should've clarified; I included Harry Truman in my story, but it was actually about Japanese characters reflecting on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 70 years later.

[Mexican Wolf]

Spirit Run by Noé Álvarez. It's a memoir about the author growing up as a second-generation Mexican immigrant in Yakima, Washington, and his experience joining an annual Native American/First Nations-organized run across western North and Central America.

It's been a brisk read so far, but it's a fascinating personal and cultural story.

[Mexican Wolf]

Has anyone here read the Amie Parnes book about the Biden campaign yet? I'm trying to decide whether to order it from Amazon or to wait until it appears in one of the Free Library boxes around my town.

A little late to the punch, but I just read Shattered and Lucky last weekend. Lucky was a pretty interesting read, although the ending felt very rushed compared to how the post-election actually played out. I guess you could argue that wasn't really part of the main focus of the book, though. Their depiction of Trump also seemed oddly different from what I actually remember watching in the 2020 election.

[Mexican Wolf]

Finished reading Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn last week. I said on another thread that I'd call it a magical realist or low fantasy novel, but in the author interview at the end of the book, apparently Washburn disagrees with both those labels.

Will be starting on The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue by Bobbie Holaday soon. Maybe this is just because I'm searching in the wrong places, but it's been really hard to find books specifically about Mexican wolves compared to other wolf species (especially timberwolves), or books that talk about Mexican wolves outside of a single dedicated chapter. Thankfully, I've also got some Web resources on Mexican wolves bookmarked, too.

[Mexican Wolf]

I'm a little over halfway through The Return of the Mexican Wolf. So far, most of the book has focused on the author's and her wildlife group P.A.WS' efforts in the 1980s and 90s to raise awareness about the Mexican wolf and convince the Arizona and New Mexico Game Departments, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and ranchers and other environmentalists to support wolf reintroduction in the Southwest.

It's frustrating to learn about the many governmental hurdles P.A.WS had to overcome to get a reintroduction plan passed and implemented. It's also been interesting to see all the familiar names in government who supported and opposed wolf reintroduction in the Southwest. A couple of chapters ago, then Governors Fife Symington and Gary Johnson both sent letters to the USFWS where they opposed wolves returning to the White Sands Missile Range because they said that the wolves would threaten humans and the department overstepped its boundaries, even though these claims weren't accurate.

I was hoping there would be more information about the biology and behaviors of the wolves themselves, but seeing as the wolves were just released into the Blue Range Wilderness Area last chapter, maybe the book will start focusing more on them.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just bought and started reading Frankly, We Won This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael Bender. [I figured since I read Lucky earlier this year, I should also read about the 2020 election from the Trump campaign's side, too.]

Some funny/interesting tidbits so far:

- The "Front Row Joes" were a group of 1,500 Trump supporters who regularly travelled all over the country to be the first in line at Trump rallies and to be interviewed by reporters after the rallies. One woman had been to thirty-one Trump rallies before his Battle Creek one in December 2019, while another man quit his job and used a $120,000 family inheritance to travel around the country to these rallies.
- Trump banned snow machines at his rallies after some fake snow that tasted disgusting landed in his mouth.
- Trump would regularly say his girlfriends were more attractive than Warren Beatty's in New York tabloids, and at one point, Warren Beatty considered running for president.
- In early February 2020, Brad Parscale shared the results of an incomplete poll with Trump that showed him winning Colorado and New Mexico and topping 400 electoral votes.
- Trump flip-flopped back and forth on having witnesses called during the impeachment trial to try and embarrass Democrats, but was discouraged by his legal team and Mitch McConnell.

I just started on the chapters on the outbreak of COVID-19 earlier.

Sure, the book is a little too gossipy or obvious at points, but so far I'm finding it interesting.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just started reading Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits.

[Mexican Wolf]

Finished The House of the Spirits earlier today. Very fascinating novel, especially how Allende depicts her recollections and interpretations of Salvador Allende's presidency and the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship.

My order for This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila just shipped today, so that's the next book I'll be reading once it arrives.

[Mexican Wolf]

Currently reading Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves by Brenda Peterson. Just finished the chapter about 06, one of the most famous wolves descended from the original wolves released in Yellowstone in 1995.

[Mexican Wolf]

Currently reading The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, about a family who moves from Washington to Alaska in the 1970s after the dad inherits a cabin from a friend he served with in Vietnam. Not a big fan of the style or the slow pace so far, though.

[Mexican Wolf]

Books I read in 2021:

Spirit Run by Noé Álvarez (nonfiction)
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (nonfiction)
Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (nonfiction)
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn (fiction)
Fealty by Ricky Ray (poetry)
The Soul of the Earth Singing to Herself by Ricky Ray (poetry)
Quiet, Grit, Glory by Ricky Ray (poetry)
The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue by Bobbie Holaday (nonfiction)
Frankly, We Won This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael Bender (nonfiction)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (fiction)
This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila (fiction)
Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves by Brenda Peterson (nonfiction)
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (fiction)

This is probably the first year in a long while that I read more nonfiction than fiction, probably due to the campaign books I read this year. Not a surprise that The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf and Wolf Nation were my favorite nonfiction reads this year, while This is Paradise, a short story collection about Hawai'i, was my favorite fiction work.

I'm looking to start/spend a good part of new year with Dream of the Red Chamber once I'm able to find a full English translation.

[Mexican Wolf]

One more book for 2021: A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer.

[Mexican Wolf]

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska by Heather Lende. Also bought her most recent book Of Bears and Ballots to read afterwards. Been on a bit of an Alaska craze recently.

[Mexican Wolf]

Finally started reading Of Bears and Ballots after finishing If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name last month. So far I'm enjoying the descriptions of local politics and the backgrounds of various candidates for the assembly in Haines, Alaska.

[Mexican Wolf]

Still working my way through reading and taking notes on Of Bears and Ballots as well as Native American Almanac by Yvonne Wakim Dennis, Ablene Hirschfielder, and Shannon Rothenberger Flynn. Finished the Alaska Native section yesterday and read through the First Nations part today. Really fascinating and insightful discussions of native histories and cultures and profiles of famous members of various tribes.

[Mexican Wolf]

I'm currently about halfway through What The Elders Have Taught Us: Alaska Native Ways, a collection of essays written by members of ten different Alaska Native peoples. After that, I'll be reading The Raven and the Totem: Alaska Native Myths and Legends.

I'm considering rewriting an old novel I wrote about Alaska for Camp Nanowrimo this year, so I've been trying to do a lot of research about Alaska Natives since my protagonist is an Upper Tanana Athabascan.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just started reading The Upper Tanana Dene: People of this Land by William Simeone. So far I've only read the introductory essay, but I'm learning some pretty interesting things. For instance, the Dene extend the concept of personhood and agency to all living things and consider animals non-human people. So, for example, the term grandfather is used for both humans (tsay) and grizzly bears (neettsay).

I also find it interesting that due to the relative inaccessibility of their traditional lands and the difficulty of navigating the Tanana River, the Upper Tanana people experienced minimal effects of American colonialism until the completion of the Alaska Highway.

[Mexican Wolf]

Almost finished The Upper Tanana Dene: People of This Land (just reading through the appendices now). The firsthand accounts of elders written in both Upper Tanana and English were fascinating and very informative.

My favorite chapter was about the Upper Tanana's potlatch traditions of hosting parties and sharing numerous gifts between clans to promote societal wellbeing, though I imagine it would've been very difficult to keep up with the restrictions afterwards:

"After a potlatch, the host was once subject to a number of restrictions. For 100 days he could not sleep with his wife; he could not eat meat from the heads of animals but had to subsist on soup made of animal fat. He had to suck drinking water through a swan-bone tube and not cut meat lest he get blood on his hands.... For shorter periods, the host was not to extend his legs when lying down; when sitting, he had to keep his arms folded over his hands." (125)

I also enjoyed the discussions of how the Upper Tanana viewed harming or abusing animals or wasting any part of a hunted animal as injih (taboo or bad luck) and what methods the different clans used to show respect to the animals they hunted and the ones they didn't. They also considered it injih to speak directly about animals or brag about hunting:

"It is injih to make explicit plans because that is considered bragging and could lead to reckless behavior. It also disregards the animal's autonomy and equality. In this regard it is injih to say 'my moose' or 'my animal' because humans do not own animals and it also suggests an unwillingness to share...
'Boy say, 'I kill moose today!" Man say, "Injih!" Say instead, "Maybe today, I see moose."'" (21)

All in all, I'm very glad there's such a detailed account of the Tanacross and Upper Tanana people out there like this book.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just read The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich while spending the weekend attending a wedding in a BRTD precinct.

Gotta say I wasn't expecting a novel about a group of Ojibwe tribal members fighting against Congress's proposed termination of reservations and assimilation of Native Americans in the 1950s to have a subplot where one of the protagonists gets roped into performing as Babe the Blue Ox in a water tank at a seedy nightclub in Minneapolis while searching for her sister.

I've always loved Erdrich's control of multiple perspectives to fully flesh out her characters, settings, and the real world history that inspired them, and the novel was a great reading experience.

[Mexican Wolf]

Finished reading the Native American Almanac the other day. Now starting on Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz.

[Mexican Wolf]

I'm a little more than halfway through The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and The Most Elusive Tribe on Earth by Adam Goodheart. It's a broad-ranging history of the peoples of the Andaman Islands and the many, many attempts the British and Indian governments and private individuals have made to establish communication with, exert control over, or protect the health and culture of the North Sentinel Islanders. Goodheart also describes a few mostly unsuccessful visits he made to North Sentinel Island in order to study their native inhabitants.

He also writes some pretty good introspective passages about why "uncontacted" tribes like the Sentinelese fascinate outsiders so much and how successful and unsuccessful efforts to create and develop relationships with these tribes have positively and negatively affected the lives of native and non-native peoples living in the Andaman Islands.

I also appreciate how he dives into and challenges long-standing beliefs that the North Sentinelese are less developed or civilized than other modern people due to their relative isolation from the world and their use of bows and arrows as their main weapons.

Overall, it's a deeply fascinating book about a unique area of the world.