What do book lovers have queued up on their nightstands and ready to read before lights-out? We asked a few of them, and here’s what they said.
Ruben Castaneda:
I’ve gone through periods where I read nothing but fiction, and at other times I’ve devoured a specific genre of books — such as memoirs or works about Mexican drug cartels — for professional reasons. Right now, I’m reading several nonfiction books which tackle some of the most divisive and pressing issues of our day:
I’m about two-thirds of the way into Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill) by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston. Both books describe how the United States Congress has, since 1983 or so, engineered a massive redistribution of wealth to the 1 percent and big corporations. Johnston, a former tax-policy reporter for the New York Times, meticulously shows how wealthy individuals and corporations (like Wal-Mart) not only legally evade taxes, but grab as much taxpayer loot as they can. Sports teams use a similar gambit, insisting that taxpayers shell out for new stadiums or arenas. Corporate chieftains evade taxes by setting up a P.O. Box overseas; taxpayers subsidize 35 percent of the cost of corporate jets. These books are chockfull of amazing facts about the inequity of our tax system and the cravenness of elected officials who cater to big donors. I can only read so many pages at a time because I get so angry.
I’m also about two-thirds of the way through Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, by another decorated journalist, Sam Quinones. This book is an amazing feat of reportage. With exquisite detail, Quinones reveals how the current heroin epidemic came to be. Its roots go back at least to the ‘80s, when many U.S. doctors [mistakenly believed] that few patients became addicted to opiates and [so] began prescribing such drugs with greater frequency. This helped create a large pool of people addicted to opiates. Then came Purdue Pharma, which released the highly addictive OxyContin. Perhaps the most impressive part of the book, though, is the thread on the Mexican farmers who cultivated poppy fields, which they processed into black-tar heroin. Beginning in the early ‘90s, enterprising young men began selling this heroin in places one wouldn’t associate with smack dealing — like Ohio, Kentucky, and Utah — but where large numbers of people were already hooked on opiates. Quinones weaves the storylines together masterfully, revealing the big picture by telling specific stories.
As soon as I finish these three, I’ve got another trio of books loaded in my book-reading chamber: Perfidia, the prequel to James Ellroy’s brilliant L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz); The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt; and Hick by Andrea Portes.
A former Washington Post reporter, Ruben Castaneda is author of the memoir S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C.
Keith Donohue:
At the bottom of the bedtime reading stacks are a couple of books that I read halfway through once upon a time and fully intend to finish — Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and Anne Carson’s The Autobiography of Red — but they have been in the same place for so long that I would need to start over. Daunting in complexity or length, they need to get off the night table and into a suitcase for some leisurely vacation if they ever expect to be read. We’ll talk.
I’m working on a novel that features puppets as characters, so there are books about puppets: Kenneth Gross’ Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life; Eileen Blumenthal’s Puppetry: A World History; Victoria Nelson’s The Secret Life of Puppets; and a translation of Collodi’s Pinocchio, which provides a tonic to the Disney version, if only for the treatment of the cricket.
Added to all that are a couple of books I am actually reading for fun:
The Dirty Dust by Martin O Caidhin is a long-awaited translation of Cré na Cille, a comic novel first published in Irish in 1949. It is the story of a woman who feels she has been buried in the wrong part of the cemetery. One by one, she encounters the others who have been buried in the churchyard clay, the newcomers bringing the latest gossip and rumors from the village above. I’d been wanting to read it for decades, and the closest thing available is a 2007 film from ROSG in Ireland with English subtitles. It’s a great story about how to hold a grudge even after you’re dead.
Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel. The story of the legendary Mitchell, famous for his profiles that appeared in the New Yorker and later reprinted in an omnibus edition that I devoured when it first came out. Mitchell was famous, as well, for what he didn’t write. For 30 years, he showed up for work but published nothing — one of the famous “disappearing acts” in American letters, along with J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee. I think every writer has that secret fear that it will all go away.
Voices in the Night by Steven Millhauser. Ever since I came across Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright, I have read everything by Millhauser, who is haunting, odd, uncanny, funny, and irresistible. One story each night is my limit, and I will be sad when I come to the end.
The Art of Richard Thompson by David Apatoff is a retrospective on the remarkable cartoonist and creator of “Cul de Sac,” which made the comics worth reading. I have a soft spot for the funnies, the books of Edward Gorey, the Fantagraphics collections of every “Krazy Kat” cartoon. Another treasure to dip into before Slumberland.
Keith Donohue is the author of four novels: The Boy Who Drew Monsters, Centuries of June, Angels of Destruction, and the New York Times bestseller The Stolen Child. His novels have been translated into 20 languages.
Erika Johansen:
I’m about to finish The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I realized a few months ago that while I understood the causes of World War II in broad strokes, I knew almost nothing in terms of specifics and chronology. While Shirer’s book is a bit more military than I was hoping for — I’m not interested in watching wars fought over again so much as in seeing how they came about — it’s a very well-written and comprehensive look at the Nazi government.
At any given moment, I’m re-reading something by Stephen King, because I love his books too much to leave them alone. Right now it’s one of my favorites: It. Among his many other gifts, King has great skill at documenting the life of small towns, and whenever I open the cover on Derry, Maine, I feel like I’m revisiting an old haunt, unpleasant but utterly compelling. Plus, you know, Pennywise.
I’ve just started Ain’t I a Woman by bell hooks. I’ve been a committed feminist since I was 11 years old, but now I’m also an embarrassed one because, until very recently, I had no idea of the extent to which the American feminist movement has historically ignored women who aren’t white. Now I’m doing my best to learn, and hooks’ books are both instructive and humbling.
I’m also re-reading Filth by Irvine Welsh. I love several of Welsh’s novels, but this one astounds me. Bruce Robertson is surely one of the most loathsome protagonists ever created, and if I ever met him in real life, I would want to punch him in the face. Yet Welsh is so skilled at bringing me into his wretched characters’ heads that I almost find myself rooting for this cretin sometimes. I’m also addicted to Welsh’s use of phonetic language and free-flowing profanity, which makes for wonderfully lyrical prose.
Sara Paretsky’s new book, Brush Back, comes out in July, and I will be waiting outside the door when the bookstore opens. In the meantime, my upcoming reads are Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, and Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear. I’ll probably also re-read Sue Townsend’s wonderful Adrian Mole books, as I seem to do every summer.
Erika Johansen lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She went to Swarthmore College, earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and eventually became an attorney, but never stopped writing. She is the author of The Queen of the Tearling and The Invasion of the Tearling (coming out in June), and is currently working on the final installment of the Tearling trilogy.
