Jordan Mattox

1. Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro  

I loved Remains of the Day and was told that Never Let Me Go was equally good. That may have been an overstatement, but I did love the book. It begins as a typical British boarding school story, but slowly transforms, or evolves, into something more fantastical and sinister. I don’t want to give away too much, but if you enjoy a slowburn where was not said is equally as important as what is, this is the book for you. 2. Escape from Syria by Samya Kullab and illustrated by Jackie Roche 

I enjoyed this brief but potent graphic novel. The Syrian civil war is something that I feel I know a lot about and probably very little about at the same time. This story follows a family whose home is destroyed in the fighting and who are forced into a Lebanese refugee camp and then eventually are able to immigrate to Canada. The book is YA for sure, but it is well written and visually stunning enough to warrant a read by adults as well. 3. 

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne Katherine Rundell

This book has been recommended to me by more people than I can count. Rundell is a fascinating character herself, nevermind her endlessly fascinating subject of this book. She is mainly a children’s book author, having written novels about kids that live on rooftops, a story about a Russian wolf breeder, and many more fascinating topics. Her subject in this book is John Donne, who may main association is as a poet of the divine, but this book reveals that he is actually a man of the world and the body, an astute social critic, and ambitious machiavellian climber of the highest order. There is so much about this book to love, chief among those is her descriptions of Donne’s world. Highly recommended.

4. The White Darkness David Grann 

I picked this book up on a whim while perusing the stacks. Grann is the writer of the Killers of the Flower Moon, which is being adapted into a film Scorcese and starring Leo Dicaprio, which I am eagerly anticipating. This book is about Henry Worsley, a decorated special forces operator, who becomes obsessed with Ernest Shackleton, the captain and explorer who tried to reach the south pole first and then later to walk across Antarctica. Worsley’s obsession transforms into a desire to replicate his idol’s adventures, and subsequent worldwide fame. His ambition and blinding drive would ultimately become his undoing. 

5. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love Karl Ove Knausgaard 

This is the second in the series that I started in the fall. I will say that book two transcended the first book, which follows Knausgaard’s loss of his father. This one is about his second marriage, having children, and navigating a world he feels alienated from and desires which make him wrought with guilt. Knausgaard is peerless in his ability to write about the mundane in the most riveting ways. There are moments in this book that reach heights in what literature can describe and do that I only see in the very best books. I’ve started book three and plan and hope to get through all six volumes. 

6. Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It Richard V. Reeves 

This is understandably a controversial book. Reeves is a researcher at the Brookings Institute and has focused on the challenges of boys and men. To write or talk about these issues makes me uncomfortable. I am currently reading a book called Emotional Labor which goes into the ways in which women’s unpaid emotional labor props up the world economy and goes unappreciated and of course uncompensated. So to discuss challenges that the male portion of our species experiences feels insensitive. Ultimately though, each of us have boys and men in our lives whom we want to thrive and be successful. The book’s diagnosis is fascinating and solutions are equally thought-provoking. One that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, because it’s the domain of education, is the idea that boys should start school later than girls because they develop more slowly. According to Reeves, this could potentially alleviate the growing educational gender gap (girls are scoring way ahead of boys in reading and writing on almost all standardized tests). An interesting read; don’t agree with all of it, but it is something we do probably need to talk about. 

7. Evidence: Poems Mary Oliver

Oliver remains my favorite poet of the non-human world. I am always fascinated how her diction can be so simple, yet, like a forest floor covered in leaves hiding a world fauna and flora underneath, her simple words and images contain layers of meaning that make rereading a joy. 

8. Solaris Stanislaw Lem 

I’d watched the Soderberg adaptation/remake in college and told myself I’d read the book sometime. Nearly fifteen years later, I finally got to it, and found it even more fascinating on the reread. The story follows a scientist/psychologist who visits a space station hovering over an alien planet with an ocean that to all intents and purposes is alive and perhaps even sentient. Soon after arriving at the station, our protagonist finds one crew member dead, another locked in a room, and another bordering on madness. He soon realizes the source: beings that they at first call visitors. I will leave it there. Enjoyable and relatively short read with lots of mind-bending sections and heavy psychological drama. 

9. The Divine Comedy Vol 1: Inferno Dante Alighieri

This year, I’ve decided to read an old “classic” of some form every month, and this month I thought that I would try to plow through the Divine Comedy. I only made through the first third though, which is calle the Inferno. The Divine Comedy is the story of a man who makes a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. His guide through hell is Virgil, the famous Roman poet. Hell in Dante’s mind is pretty fascinating. One thing that stuck out was Dante’s contention, which he ascribes to Aristotle, that the worst forms of sin are crimes of deception and dissension. In other words, in Dante’s mind, someone like Bernie Madoff deserves stiffer punishments in hell than a serial killer or a war criminal. When I finished it, the first thought that came to my mind was an obvious one: why the hell did I just read this. Or, to put it another way, what does this book have to offer a worldly, mostly secular person in the 21st century. The conclusion that came is that Dante does have interesting things to say about human nature and why we do what we do and the downsides to some behaviors. Moreover, even though the subject is macabre at best and horrifying at worst, the writing is intricate and wildly imaginative.