Bibliophobia Archives - Bob on Books

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Black History

I began reading David Greenberg’s John Lewis: A Life this week. It’s my main Black History month read. You might ask why a White guy is reading Black history. To answer that, I will talk about why I wrote on my local home town for ten years. First of all, it helped me understand so much about my background of which I was not aware growing up. I also became aware of how rich the culture of my home town was. And I discovered a number of people I greatly admired who helped build the city. Finally, I learned lessons from that history, such as the folly of a town building its economy around one industry.

It’s like that with Black history. Although I’m not Black, Black history is a fundamental part of my national history. My understanding of where we’ve come from is immeasurably poorer without that history. Likewise, it is such a rich history of spirituality, music art, food, accomplishments, resilience, and the effort to call us to our collective best. There are people (including Lewis) whose lives have inspired me. And, just as Germans aware of the Holocaust remember that history with a resolve to say “never again,” there are sad lessons to learn from Black history to which I want to say “never again.”

None of this is about White guilt or fostering racial divisions. Rather it is learning all I can to foster the “beloved community” Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned. I’m not sure why some want to suppress this history. It seems to me that when you try to suppress or erase the history of someone, it is the first step toward suppressing or erasing them. That is how it would come across to me if someone wanted to erase my family history or the history of my home town.

So, I will keep reading about John Lewis and review the book. And I’ll recommend other books about Blacks, other people of color, women and other marginalized groups. It’s not about politics for me. It’s about being human. And it’s about believing the children’s song I learned in Sunday school: “Jesus loves the little children/All the children of the world/Red and yellow; black and white/Jesus loves the little children/All the children of the world.”

Five Articles Worth Reading

Speaking of Black History Month, JSTOR posted a cornucopia of articles on Black history under the heading, “Celebrating Black History Month.” It was like a crash course in Black history, much of it new to me.

Feel like you have too many choices? You are not alone. The New York Times posted a review this week of Sophia Rosenfeld’s The Age of Choice, asking “Does Having Options Really Make Us Free?“

Cartoonist Jules Feiffer died on January 17. Paul Morton remembers him in “‘This Will Be Fun.’ On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer.“

It’s hard to imagine how those of us who love books might come to fear them. “In Search of the Book That Would Save Her Life” reviews Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, a memoir of how a mental health crisis precipitated a fear of books in a woman whose life was reading.

“Local bookstores, dealt another blow by L.A. fires, become ‘community touchstones’” Bookstores have often been used as examples of “third places.” It appears that this is especially true after the L.A. fires.

Quote of the Week

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.“

Charles Dickens, born on February 7, 1812, made this observation. It seems so important in this time of fake news and the normalization of lying that we refuse to accept deception and keep telling the truth ourselves.

Miscellaneous Musings

When I finished Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Wall I discovered that Murakami has been trying to finish this story for a long time in his postscript to the novel. I have to admit that the story feels like one in search of a resolution. Still pondering whether Murakami landed it.

I’ve found Jill Lepore’s The Story of America a delight. The book is a collection of essays on historiography, following the chronology of American history. Her essay on Noah Webster was absolutely fascinating, and a tribute in a way to this pioneer in creating a dictionary of American English.

Went to my optometrist this week. All in all, the eyes are doing OK. I do have cataract surgery in my future, explaining why I need more light than ever. There is a tendency toward macular degeneration in my family and I’ve pondered what I would do if I could not, or read easily. I guess I’ve read enough that I can savor them in memory…and as long as the hearing holds up, there are audiobooks!