This week, I’m jumping back into reflecting on some of the books I’ve had the chance to read this year. Again, these tidbits are by no means critical viewpoints, summaries, or book reviews; mostly, they are just a conglomerate of the feelings and thoughts that come to mind when I think of each book. Here are the last six books on my list, in no order of preference. 

Erik Larson: The Splendid and the Vile

I picked up this book from the library after stumbling upon the Mass Observation archive of the letters and diaries of those who lived through the London Blitz in World War II. A story of Churchill and his family during World War II, this book promised an intimate telling of what it was like to be under the spotlight of history — to feel the splendid and the vile parts of humanity that were just as overwhelming and inexplicable when it concerned one family as when it concerned millions. It delivered on this expectation, and also turned out to be something I never anticipated: a page-turner. By telling stories, from Churchill’s sudden outbursts of boyish joy, to his long days of brooding, to his unshakeable, contagious resolve to resist Nazi Germany, Larson captured Churchill’s contradictions and complexities: the man of a moment like no other. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: My Own Words

As both a feminist and a follower of the Supreme Court myself, Ginsburg’s life and career fascinate me. From litigating for gender equality before the law in the 1970s, to penning concise and pithy dissents from the bench during the 2010s, Ginsburg displayed a deep respect and understanding of her colleagues and the justice system that they served. Her life spanned decades of efforts towards equity and inclusion that transformed the fabric of US society. When she graduated first in her class at law school in 1959, she struggled to find a job at a law firm because she was a woman; six decades later, three women serve on our Supreme Court. When she was appealing to a 1970s Supreme Court consisting of nine men, she cleverly focused on how assumptions about gender roles in society negatively affected men as well as women; she often argued cases, such as Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld and Frontiero v. Richardson, where the law prevented men from obtaining certain protections or benefits because they were seen as the breadwinners of society. I believe that this idea – that gender inequality is about both men and women – continues to be relevant today.
(Fun fact: Ginsburg was one of Vladimir Nabokov’s students at Cornell University, and she cites him as one who changed the way she reads and writes.) 

9/11 Commission Report

This book caught my eye while perusing through the library a few days after 9/11. Although I will never fully understand what it was like to live through 9/11, I wanted to gain insight into an event that is so deeply ingrained into the American psyche and is a shared experience for so many of my fellow citizens. Exploring the information “wall” between the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of our government and trying to juggle the names of an endless list of organizations in my mind, I began to understand how large, complicated, and interwoven our government agencies and the problems they face are. Among countless fascinating ideas within the pages of this book, one is how globalization, which deeply changed the world from culture to trade to information, also transformed terrorism. How do we go after a terrorist agency that has no expensive equipment, no vulnerable attack locations, has hierarchies upon hierarchies of members who vary in the degree of their loyalty in every corner of the world, and cannot even be considered a nation under international law? Traditional warfare between great armies and powerful heads of state is no longer the only norm; the FBI estimated that the entire 9/11 operation cost Al Qaeda $400,000-500,000. How do we protect ourselves in an age where it takes so little resources by so few people bound by nothing but belief to cause so much damage? 

Erika Sanchez: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

The spunk and ambition of the main character in this book, a girl on the verge of going to college, resonated with me deeply. Julia reaches for books to travel beyond her home. She refuses to adhere to her parents’ conception of womanhood and is determined to go after life loudly, flamboyantly, and unapologetically. “I want to see the world. I want so many things sometimes I can’t even stand it. I feel like I’m going to explode.” Through her, I also met someone who, were she real, would have lived an hour away from me with her undocumented parents in a low-income Chicago neighborhood filled with gangs. I had spent so much time reading about the racial inequality and gun violence in neighborhoods of Chicago just over an hour’s drive away from me; but Sánchez brought that world to life and defined it in a way that we rarely see on the news. 

Anthony Doerr: All the Light We Cannot See

Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015, All the Light We Cannot See tells the story of World War II from the perspective of a German boy who became a Nazi and a blind French girl who lives with her great-uncle during the occupation of France. Slowly, ubiquitously, Doerr lets the reader into the inner life of his characters. Their social circumstances and their opinions shrink in importance as we learn what it feels like to be Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who loves natural history and her father and books and the world around her; we learn what it feels like to be Werner Pfennig, who loves radios and science and has dreams of greatness and state-of-the-art technology. For me, their stories are a reminder that heroes and villains are more complicated than they seem. One of my favorite quotes from this book is, “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever,” because it speaks to the ephemerality of life that is ever more acutely evident during wartime. 

Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In

What is feminism? What is gender equality? What is the right way to work towards them? These questions have inspired considerable debate and thought for centuries, and in Lean In, Sandberg, as the COO of Facebook, tells her story and explains her view on how women can claim their agency and achieve satisfaction in the workplace and in the home. I questioned her ideas on certain things, such as the complex, often theoretical, question of whether it is better to use methods that pander to traditional stereotypes to make it to the top yourself and then affect change for others, or to band together with your peers and make your voice heard (as part of a grassroots movement, if you will). Her advice given along the former lines contrasted with Charles Yu’s stance on how to dismantle oppression: “Working your way up the system doesn’t mean you beat the system. It strengthens it. It’s what the system depends on.” Nevertheless, as a girl who aspires to go into a STEM-related field where the gender gap persists, more so the higher you look on the corporate ladder, I felt inspired by Sandberg’s story.
(Fun fact: After reading this book, I wrote a column as a guest on the North Star called “Gender Inequality in the Workplace.” Check it out! ;D)