Chaparral 2021-2022: 30.2 What Are You Reading?

I'm reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959) because it's spooky season! And because Joanna Parypinski highly recommended it during the reading of her own haunted house story. I was in the mountains at dusk recently and I thought about Theodora and Eleanor racing back to the house in panic before the sunset in the "long shadows" of the "growing darkness" in the "unattractive hills" – gave me chills! This book leaves an impression.

The library has a copy: The Haunting of Hill House

Becka Cooling
Library

My daughter (7 months now!) loves hearing the story and seeing the pictures in Lebron James' I Promise. The message is powerful, the images really beautiful, and the book is simple enough to appeal to very young children. I recommend it wholeheartedly. Besides being one of the best athletes (and people) of my generation, "King James" launched an incredible program in Akron, Ohio. Here he is reading his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMGTQmskG-o

Reut Cohen Schorr
Journalism

Over the summer, I read Stealing Home : Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the lives caught in between by Eric Nusbaum, available in our library. If you love the Dodgers or local history, you'll appreciate this nonfiction book that tells the history of the largely Mexican immigrant communities of the area we refer to now as Chavez Ravine, whose land was paved over for the eventual construction of the Dodgers Stadium parking lot. The author weaves the stories of the Aréchiga family, activist Frank Wilkinson, and the legacy of baseball in Southern California, to give the reader an excellent overview of this shameful period in Los Angeles history. I also recommend Don Normark's Chávez Ravine, 1949 : a Los Angeles story as a great visual companion piece.

Margaret Lopez
Library

I just finished Skinship, a collection of short stories by Yoon Choi. Each of the stories takes us into the hearts and minds a different Korean-American immigrant or first-generation character or family. While each story is a short vignette from the character's life, we can see and feel the pains, sometimes multi-generational, of leaving one world behind and navigating a new one, or more often, straddling both. At the same time, I felt the human connection to the difficulties we all face in our complicated relationship as a mother, sister, daughter, wife. Read Maureen Corrigan's excellent review of this book, which prompted my reading: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/25/1030611449/skinship-review-yoon-choi-short-story-collection

I also would like to highly recommend Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing from 2016. It's the GCC Faculty/Student Book Club selection for November 16.

This book contains a series of connected stories of two half-sisters in Africa some 300 years ago, one who remains and another who is captured in Africa and enslaved in America. Each story illustrates the experience of another generation of this lineage and the lasting and intergenerational effects of environment. Yaa Gyasi does this so effectively through her powerful writing and deeply developed characters. Her stories come together to give us a deeper understanding that we are also a sum of our past.

Seeing this choice for the November GCC Book Club, I am looking forward to rereading it and joining in the discussion. I hope you will, too.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/yaa-gyasis-homegoing

Caryn Panec
Noncredit Business/Life Skills

I’d like to recommend The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.  

Wonderfully inspiring book.

Synopsis: Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

Yvette Vartanian Davis
Board Trustee

I’m reading Mande Music by Eric Charry.

Traditional and modern music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa

A wonderful survey of some great music. I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in W. African music and culture. It's a great resource for our GCC W. African Ensemble and my Music Through Culture course.  

Paul Sherman
Music

What happens when a possible vampire moves into a small town and the only ones aware of the danger are the ladies of a local book club? That’s what The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix explores. Dealing with belittling husbands, the little dramas of family life, reputations that must be maintained, and a mystery surrounding the disappearance of  children in the woods, these women prove themselves far more capable than the world gives them credit for. A great read for spooky season!

Joanna Parypinski
English

I’d like to recommend Anxious People by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. It’s about a bank robber on the run who accidentally takes hostage a group of people touring an apartment open house. The characters are memorable, and the novel is quirky, funny, sad, and heartwarming. It was my first encounter with Backman’s work, and it motivated me to seek out more of his writings.

Cathy Durham
Title V

I am reading Scam Me If You Can by F. W. Abagnale. Excellent book that I wish I had read earlier: it would have saved me a lot of trouble. I recommend it to everyone.

Jean Lecuyer
Physics