Todd Stewart's Picks for Kojo's Winter Reading List 2007

Fiction

Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Small)Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard
A collection of stories. A new book by Shepard is always a pleasure. One of the finest writers at work today, and woefully unknown by many--maybe this year's National Book Award nomination will help to change that.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven BearsThe Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
A first novel that takes place among the African immigrant community in D.C. Touches on issues of race, assimilation and gentrification, and is wonderfully written, too.

Rawi HageDeNiro's Game by Rawi Hage
This novel offers a unique view of the Lebanese Civil War, following two young men in Beirut as they must decide how to live among the violence. Hage grew up in Beirut during the civil war; this is his first novel.

 

The Pirate's DaughterThe Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
A sliver of truth--Eroll Flynn's settling in Jamaica in the late 40s--is the springboard for this novel exploring both a mother/daughter relationship and Jamaica as it moves towards independence.

Mister Pip (Small)Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Another novel exploring relations between colonizer and colonized, this time in a small village on an unnamed island in the South Pacific in the throes of civil war. The last white man in the village (married to a native) takes up the role of schoolteacher, reading Dickens' Great Expectations to the children, with unexpected consequences both tragic and life-affirming.

 

Nonfiction

 

All the Rage (Small) All the Rage: The Boondocks Past and Present by Aaron McGruder
Final collection of The Boondocks comic strip. Also contains interviews with McGruder, and a number of strips that were censored. See the strips the Washington Post didn't think you should!

The Slave ShipThe Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker
A wonderfully written history of a grim subject. Explores slavery and the Middle Passage through the lens of the shipping of human cargo and what that meant to the formation of Western society.

The Art of Political MurderThe Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman
Novelist Goldman's first nonfiction work reads like a thriller. He worked seven years on this, following a group of human rights workers as they try to find the truth behind the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi two days after Gerardi released the Nunca Mas Report detailing the Guatemalan Army's role in the deaths of 200,000 civilians in that country's civil war.

Crazy '08Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy
A baseball book to help you through the winter months until spring training starts up. Murphy covers the 1908 season, which she says was the most exciting ever (I vote for 2004, when the Red Sox broke the Curse).

 

Art

Evolution Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. DriskellEvolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell by Adrienne Childs
This is the first comprehensive collection of Driskell's work, the catalog of an exhibit currently on show at the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora (that's a mouthful) on the campus of the University of Maryland. His work is influenced both by African art and Modernists such as Matisse, Picasso, and Gauguin. Portraits, landscapes, boldly colored and designed. Great stuff.