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| Art for everyone, everywhere, every day. Annapolis, Maryland June 2026 |
Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in July. Another slow reading month. If it weren’t for two 5-hour flights, this list would be even shorter. More later on where we went and what we saw.
Book 1
Let Us Begin, Again
Day six arrived. I scrolled through the “just checking in” texts, appreciative but also slightly irritated with everyone who thought they were more anxious than me for the moment we were waiting for.
Book 2
The week before the 2016 presidential election, Donald J. Trump took a break from campaigning to attend the ceremonial opening of his new hotel a few blocks from the White House.
Here is that very hotel.
In 2017, I defiantly spat on the ground on this spot.
Book 3
“For tonight’s debate, I will prove that the pen is mightier than the sword. For it is the poets… the artists… who provide us with a language of resistance, the ability to see the future, to dream of a better world. History has shown that brute force may be able to occupy a land, but the minds of the people will remain free. It is poetry which reminds us of our innate freedom. That is why tyrants always fear the artist… as they should!”
Dreaming of a better world
Book 4
Chapter One: A Very Rude Person
It is useful, people generally agree, for a wife to wake up before her husband.
Book 5
A Child of Air
Reema Baladi
Amal calls it “the thing” too, but I hear she’s getting rid of hers.
Did Not Finish
Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur–a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds–and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us
By Anna Malaika Tubbs
384 pages • first pub 2025
nonfiction gender sociology
If you haven’t read anything about patriarchy or fascism or intersectionality, this could be a good place to start.
The book’s premise is that patriarchy in the US is more than just men having undue power; rather it’s the whole system of hierarchy that the current ruling white men want to enforce. The author hammers on this point - telling us about intersectionality without ever using the word. And in fact, the whole book is about fascist ideology, but she never uses that word. For leaving out those two words, this book might be very effective for some readers.
I found the book rather repetitive, and I was already familiar with most of the concepts and examples. (but I needed to hear them again). One exception was the super-hero she highlights – someone I had never heard of and won’t give away the name now.
Identity
by Emma Amos
on exhibit at the
Allen Memorial Art Museum
Oberlin, Ohio
Book 2
Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig
519 pages (the text is 450 pages) • first pub 2024
nonfiction, biography, politics, true crime.
I love that Storygraph classifies this book as true crime. Just about everything that man has done is truly a crime.
While the subject matter was disgusting to me, I kept reading because of a sort of macabre fascination with the crimes and the hubris. I found the book easy to understand, not a trivial feat for the authors, tackling the arcane subjects of real estate, high finance, and tax law. They did a great job.
In this book, there are 676 uses of the world “million” and 74 uses of the word “billion.” As in dollars. The $millions and $billions are just flying around in this book like swarms of wasps. Or maybe flies swarming around a pile of excrement - that’s a better metaphor.
The way the book tells it, the family fortune was amassed by the patriarch who was a tax cheat and a skinflint, but who was actually careful about protecting the fortune. The favored son followed his father’s example on the first two counts, but showed little prudence or care about either the fortune or other people. He’s consistent in one thing - he flings around our tax dollars just as he did the wealth he has raked in from his various shady endeavors. Come to think of it, he tosses human beings around in the same way. He has no notion of kindness or love for others. Everything is a transaction or a grievance.
This book has not a single mention of that particular friend of the family who had an island, so I mark the book down half a point. That relationship needs to be mentioned every time we read about this loser.
Book 3
Mrs. Orwell
Text by Andrea Chalupa, art by Brahm Revel
224 pages • first pub 2026
fiction, biography, graphic novel, historical
Suggested by L.R.
read in physical format from library
The artwork and characters are compelling. I appreciated learning about Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair and Eric Blair (nom de plume George Orwell). They were both fiery, strong-willed characters. But the story was hard for me to follow in some parts because it relies entirely on the frames, with no words, and it was hard for me to distinguish just from the drawings which character was which, and exactly what was happening. Nevertheless, I believe I got the gist of what happened to these two extraordinary people.
The Afterword is well worth reading. Andrea Chalupa is a hero – I remember listening to her podcast in early 2017, in which she warned that the Orange Menace was deeply connected to Vlad & Co. I concluded that Chalupa was absolutely right but her podcast was too intense for me at the time.
“In Mrs Orwell, I tried to give voice to the woman who helped shape one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and to remind us that truth still matters, especially when it’s under siege. Eileen’s life teaches us that even in times of fear, betrayal and chaos, it’s still possible to fight for beauty, for integrity, and for a future worth believing in.”
– Andrea Chalupa.
Book 4
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #8)
By Alexander McCall Smith
213 pages • first pub 2007
fiction mystery
Second read, for the start of my vacation. Finished it on the plane to the faraway destination. These books are the literary equivalent of a long lovely bubble bath, notwithstanding the implied sexism of that opening line. There is a bit of role reversal in this book.
Book 5
Behind You Is the Sea
Susan Muaddi Darraj
246 pages • first pub 2024
fiction literary
Not really a novel but short stories woven together, about characters in the Palestinian American community in my childhood hometown of Baltimore. I appreciated the characters but - content warning - there is a good deal of nastiness, domestic violence, foul language, and cheating they dish out to each other.
In the first line I quoted above, “the thing” is pregnancy. The extended family does not deal well with that character having an abortion.
Did Not Finish
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
416 pages • first pub 2022
fiction contemporary literary
This is one of those books that everyone else seems to like, but I don’t. It was for book club, so I gave it a valiant try, but stopped when the abuse of one character became too much for me to read about.
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Your turn - what sort of book do you like to read on vacation? What book did everyone else like but you?
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| Hope. March 2017. |
