Sputnik! A new word in a strange language identifying a giant achievement. Sixty-Five years ago I was in Sixth grade squatting in one quarter of the borrowed auditorium of somebody else’s school while my new school was under construction. My coon-skin cap was barely used and now I had to switch to wiggling antennae and beep-beeps to rival the roadrunner?
A few years later I was driving home at night with my father after a successful day of fishing. The road was straight, lined by tall eucalyptus trees and up in the sky an Echo satellite arched across the darkness. On the radio they announced that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead.
I graduated High School and University. While studying William Wycherley in my impoverished graduate student apartment I watched a man walk on the moon. I also watched the Mets win the World Series on that second-hand television.
And none of that really qualifies me to recommend what you should read but I’m going to suggest anyway. Anything catch your interest?
- 09-01-22 – Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen — Alix Shulman
- 09-02-22 – The Ravaged — Norman Reedus
- 09-03-22 – I Who Have Never Known Men — Deborah Eisenberg
- 09-04-22 – The Revolutionary Thoreau — R. H. Lossin
- 09-05-22 – Our Country Friends — Gary Shteyngart
- 09-06-22 – Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
- 09-07-22 – A Coffin For Dimitros — Eric Ambler
- 09-08-22 – The Romance of Reality — Bobby Azarian
- 09-09-22 – Some Came Running — James Jones
- 09-10-22 – Bitch: On the Female of the Species — Lucy Cooke
- 09-11-22 – Diary of a Void — Emi Yagi
- 09-12-22 – Lapvona — Ottessa Moshfegh
- 09-13-22 – The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam — Barbara W. Tuchman
- 09-14-22 – Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance — John Waters
- 09-15-22 – Acceptance — Emi Nieffeld
- 09-16-22 – The Pink Hotel — Liska Jacobs
- 09-17-22 – A Divine Language — Alec Wilkinson
- 09-18-22 – Welcome to Hard Times: A Novel — E. L. Doctorow
- 09-19-22 – Unaccompanied — Javier Zamora
- 09-20-22 – On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old — Hendrik Groen
- 09-21-22 – Portrait of an Unknown Woman: A Novel — Daniel Silva
- 09-22-22 – Everything Inside — Edwidge Danticat
- 09-23-22 – The Kingdoms of Savannah — George Dawes Green
- 09-24-22 – An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West — Konstantin Kisin
- 09-25-22 – Black Lamb and Grey Falcon — Rebecca West
- 09-26-22 – The Fortunes of Jaded Women — Carolyn Huynh
- 09-27-22 – Big Girl — Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
- 09-28-22 – Queen of Spades — Michael Shou-Yung Shum
- 09-29-22 – La Rose — Louise Erdrich
- 09-30-22 – The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century — Steven Pinker
A Celebration of Reading 