Favorite Books in February: Thursday's Post

Are you looking for a good mystery series? Are you looking for an author with a nice-sized backlist, someone new to you? 

Well, you have come to the right place.

A series set in Toronto about a Muslim detective and his hockey-playing female detective has grabbed my attention. I have read the first two of the series by Ausma Zehanet Khan, and I really like the complex character development in these books. The characters are more important, it seems to me, than the nature of the crime being investigated. The first is The Unquiet Dead and the second is The Language of Secrets. I plan to request the third one from the library soon--I guess I better do that before you do! 

The author I have recently discovered is Madeleine St John, and I have read three of her books this month: The Essence of the Thing, which was nominated for a Booker Prize in 1997, A Pure Clear Light, and A Stairway to Paradise. Each of these is short, with snappy, engaging dialogue, and characters who may remind you of people in your lives. St John knows how to capture relationships that are more than what they seem on the surface. Some of the characters are in more than one of the titles, but they can be read in any order. 

The following books, however, are my favorites for this month. 

1. The Street by Ann Petry. As I read this book, I kept asking myself, "Why haven't I heard of this book before now?" Petry is an African American writer with more than one acclaimed book to her name. She wrote in the 40's and this was the first book by an African American woman to sell over a million copies, so it is not unknown. We read this for our couples' book group, and the woman who recommended it, a retired university English professor, said it ranks as one of the best books she has ever read, and I, just as breathlessly, agree. The street referred to is in Harlem close to the end of WWII and is the story of a woman raising her young son, trying to make it on their own. She believes in the words of Benjamin Franklin that if she works hard and saves wisely, she will be able to become financially independent and move out of the tenement where she is tormented by the "super" who stalks her. The   street in Harlem is as much a character in the story as Lutie, her son, or others Lutie encounters in her attempts to lift them into a better life. The story is at times hard to read, and even harder because it feels all too true today. Don't let that stop you. 


2. Made for Goodness and Why This Makes All the Difference by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu. When you are too discouraged to get out of bed, ask someone to run to your favorite independent bookstore and get you this book and then prop up your pillows and read. Let Bishop Tutu lift you up, just as he did in The Book of Joy, written with the Dalai Lama. What? You haven't read that yet? What are you waiting for? 
      Reading Made for Goodness is part of my self-guided Compassion 101 course. As you may have read in an earlier post, my word for the year is "fullness," and Tutu equates that with wholeness. I have underlined so much in this book, and I have no doubt you will find just as much that resonates with you. Here's a sample: 
      He lists the practices of goodness as "noticing, savoring, thinking, enjoying, being thankful," and the habits that allow wrong as "mindlessness or tuning out, inattentiveness, busyness of doing to distraction, and an ungrateful heart." 
      "God dwells in each of us. God dwells in each of us 
       even when we are unaware of it. It is radical not only
       in the sense that it is revolutionary. It is radical in that
       it is, literally, at the root of everything...The God who
       dwells in us is a part of us that cannot be destroyed." p193

I could go on and on. We each need this book.

It is almost March and I wonder what will be my favorites in the coming month. I have a big stack from the library next to my chair in the snug. Stay tuned and happy reading!

An Invitation
What did you read and love this month? I would love to know.