book-loops

Obviously books and reading are always polyrhythmic and reverberate off each other in a jazz-y way. But I've been looping through book connections recently in ways that made me smile. 

Kadiatou is a character in the new Chimamanda Adichie novel Dreamcount, and when I read Christian Cooper's Better Living Through Birding (our city's "Grand Read" book; Cooper will be here next month) I was reminded that Kadiatou is also the name of the activist who used the 3-million dollar settlement from the unlawful gunning down of her son Amadou Diallo by NYPD to start a foundation to help other immigrants.

I was quite taken by Anand Giridharadas's The Persuaders, which had great suggestions on how to be persuasive and change people's perspectives and thought I'd try Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind which sounded similar... except that Pollan's book is about how to change your mind through the use of psychedelics (including LSD, psilocybin and MDMA). Ha! He makes the point that middle age is the time to do this since we're probably stuck in habitual ruts though. Consider me sold.

When I mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass yesterday, Sarah mentioned how awesome Kimmerer's second work, The Serviceberry, is and mentioned giving her firstborn a copy. My firstborn gave me The Serviceberry for Christmas and that's what got me into rereading Braiding Sweetgrass!

And finally, the work of two wonderful authors I know. I wish I could introduce them to each other. Sunny Singh who met with my students in May has a new book of short stories called Refuge out! And as David Shulman's latest article in the New York Review of Books  was a couple of months ago I'm rereading Tamil, one of his classics. David was the head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem when I was there in 1998. Both Sunny and David have been forthright and outspoken about the genocide in Gaza from the beginning and I am so grateful for their moral clarity. 

Pic: I piled all the books I mentioned here on the table for a glamshot.