Jordan Mattox

1. A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) Ursula K. Le Guin 

Most people from my generation (mid-range millennials) grew up with Harry Potter and believed (wrongly, in my view) that J.K. Rowling’s (Tolkien’s series too) were the height of fantasy. For most of them (myself included), Harry Potter was the only fantasy series that we read. There is, however, a huge world of fantasy that has not broken mainstream that makes Harry Potter, even at its height, seem to exist in a lower league, both in the depth of ideas and the quality of the writing. This first book in Le Guin’s series may be one of the most enigmatic fantasies I’ve read and beautiful in the way it stretches your imagination. It is also from my understanding one of the first, if not the first books, to include a magic school. The story is complicated and not worth trying to summarize here, but worth diving into if you are looking for a new world to explore with one of our great science fiction and fantasy writers. 

2. Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land Jacob Mikanowski

Eastern Europe has just become a catchall for a place that people in the US understand little about. The war in Ukraine, however, has brought this region to the forefront of people’s minds, but, besides Russia, most of us probably couldn’t name any of Ukraine’s neighbors. Mikanowski is Polish, but grew up in the US. This book is part regional and family history, travel book, and a love letter to a perennially misunderstood part of the world. What I certainly walked away from this book understanding is how diverse Eastern Europe is and a general curiosity to explore peoples, cultures, and nations. Highly recommended. 

3. Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self Andrea Wulf

I loved Wulf’s book about Alexander von Humboldt, the great scientist and explorer who invented our concept of nature. This book is an outgrowth of that book exploring the scientists, philosophers, poets, and generally creative people who collided at the University of Jena, some of whose names you would likely recognize, like Goethe, and others, like Caroline Schlegel, you might not. It was at the revolutionarily open-minded University of Jena that all of these individuals, through mutual pollination and dialogue created Romanticism, the philosophical and artistic school of thought. The book is less about the ideas behind the school of thought and more about the lives of the people who made it. Highly recommended.    

4. Indigenous Continents: The Epic for North America Pekka Hämäläinen

Hämäläinen has written two books about about two of the more influential tribes/empire in the indigenous, the Lakota and the Comanche, and this book is a crystallization of his career studying the indigenous landscape of North America. The thesis of the book is that until very recently, North America was an indigenous continent, where Native Americans set the course of events. This an attempt to counter the narrative of the “passive Native” who was swept up in the storm of European colonialism and imperialism. Instead, through Hämäläinen’s narrative of the events, we see negotiation between groups competing for resources and space. The amount of detail is, at points, overwhelming and breathtaking. This will be the definitive book on the indigenous encounters with Europeans for a long time to come. 

5. The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin 

My library ordered this novella and I will be teaching it for our Academic Decathlon team next week. The story follows George Orr, a man living in a dystopian future, whose dreams can change reality. The power cripples him and sees a therapist to try to address the issue. The therapist sees his problem and power as an opportunity, and uses hypnosis and some kind of dream machine to control what Orr dreams. The book is fascinating on multiple levels, philosophically and emotionally. Like all books like this, there are a lot of twists and turns which leave you reeling and just trying to catch up. Combine that genre with a technician like Le Guin, you have a recipe for a mesmerizing story. 

6.  Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 

Hurston was a part of the movement called the Harlem Renaissance and this is perhaps her most famous of her four novels. The story follows Janie Crawford, who returns to her hometown in forties, and recounts her life story, which is a journey of awakening in midst a world of violent gender roles. The writing dips in and out of sublime transcendence at will and her attention to detail of the vernacular is mesmerizing–and also quite difficult to read, which I view as a virtue because it forces you to slow down.