Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath

As ashamed as I am to say it, this oral history, Voices from the Storm, is something I'd usually never pick up at a bookstore, and the only reason I got it was because it was on sale for $5.00 at Timothy McSweeney's garage sale. Once I received my copy, however, the stories absorbed me within the first ten pages. The meticulously edited interviews with fourteen survivors of Hurricane Katrina--young, old, single, mothers of nine, black, Arab-American, American Indian, white--were compelling not just for the stories they were telling but also the way in which those interviewed spoke. Many of the interviewees' very poor education hadn't even equipped them with the vocabulary to describe the atrocities they witnessed. The surprising variety of their stories amazed me also: one man, after weeks of rescuing neighbors and strangers, was arrested and held in jail without bond or a phone call under suspicions (unfounded and racist) of terrorism. (For more on this man Abdulrahman Zeitoun, explore Dave Eggers' recent work of nonfiction, Zeitoun.) Many families were stuck in New Orleans' infamous housing projects; one man was wrongfully imprisoned for a traffic violation the night before the storm hit and was trapped inside his cell when guards abandoned the prisoners. Each story is affecting in its own way, and definitely allowed me to better understand the magnitude of the suffering Katrina--and, to a large extent, the U.S. government--inflicted upon hte residents of New Orleans.

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, Michael Chabon

My dad gave me Maps and Legends because he'd read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (an essential for next summer's reading list) and loved Michael Chabon's prose style. I did too--at first his unbelieveably long sentences and the occasional archaic word threw me, but I soon adapted and grew to admire the individuality of his writing. Maps and Legends is a collection of essays--Chabon's first--and one worth reading. The collective theme of the book lies in its subtitle; Michael Chabon is writing in defense of borderlands from literary to ethnic, on which he writes remarkably well, considering his passion for both genre literature and his Jewish heritage. The collection inspired me to add Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, to both The List and the hold shelf at the library; I hope to continue my foray into Michael Chabon's writing.

A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman

Many know Diane Ackerman for her most recent novel, The Zookeeper's Wife. While I haven't read the latter, A Natural History of the Senses urged me to investigate. My second nonfiction selection of the summer, Ackerman's book lives up to the promise of its title--and more. Getting dry only near page 250 of its 300-plus pages, the rhythm picks up shortly thereafter, leaving the reader with a sense of accomplishment at having absorbed so many interesting tidbits of information on the five senses, and at having, in a sense (pun entirely intended), recharged: For after completing A Natural History of the Senses, I was made aware of the wonder of my functioning body for perhaps the first time. Since I'm not as aware of trends in recent nonfiction as I'd like to be, I can't be sure, but from what I've read in the Tribune and heard from friends, it would seem that Ackerman's book ranks with some of the best of those pop-science books (a la "Bonk," "Freakonomics," etc.) that have graced the bestseller lists in the last few decades. I'd definitely recommend A Natural History of the Senses to anyone looking to beef up on interesting party facts. (Why do you think I read it? Girls always chase after those witty intellectuals.)

• Orphaned calves are wrapped in the skins of stillborns so that the mother of the stillborn will nurse the orphan--if she can't smell that the calf is her own, she won't nurse it.
• Those with smell disorders also find their sex drives lowered and have problems with their long-term memory.
• Touch is ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact.
• In medieval times, a knight wore a lock of his lady's pubic hair into battle.
• Women often have colder hands and feet than men because when temperatures lower, the body automatically sends blood to protect her reproductive organs from freezing.
• Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs in the late 1800s.
• Those who crave carbohydrates are attempting to raise their levels of serotonin, as do those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder; ingredients in most carbohydrates have been tested and results show them to increase personal contentment.
• Humans can talk for exactly the same reason they can choke so easily: their larynx lies lower in their throat than the larynx of any other mammal.
• One's perception of color can be effected by emotions and memories associated with the color.

These were just a few of the surprisingly interesting things Ackerman dug up to include in her book; if you find any of them as intriguing as I do, I'd suggest checking it out.

Didion, Woolf, and Baldwin: Exempted excerpts

"I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards--their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble--the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.' " -Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?" (245)

I realized that I've been meaning to read three collections of essays, Joan Didion's The White Album, Virginia Woolf's The Second Common Reader, and James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son just in order to read, respectively, "The White Album," "How Should One Read a Book?", and the title essay of Baldwin's collection. I know that someday I would like to read these books in their entirety, but because of the ambition of my reading list, I'd like to bench these three collections, having read the essays I was most excited for. It's probably a mortal sin to not finish these magnificent, heralded books (The New York Times called Woolf "as nearly perfect as Heaven grants it to a critic to be" upon the 1932 publication of The Second Common Reader), but I'm confident I will come back to them soon. For now, consider them enjoyed, appreciated, and checked off the List. (Postscript: After reading and loving Native Son, I may have to get my own copy of Notes of a Native Son; I feel like I could connect to Baldwin's essays deeply right now.)

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be 'interesting' to know which. ...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." -Joan Didion, "The White Album" (11)