Admittedly, I let this month slip up on me and am rushing to get a post in today before December and 2024 are gone for good. So, here is a list of my favorite books from the past year. Who knows, this year-end review may become a tradition, not as a substitute for a monthly post but perhaps as an addition.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Based on an actual reform “school” for juvenile boys in Florida during the Jim Crow era, Whitehead’s prize-winning novel is a heartbreaking, maddening story told by one of the most talented young American writers. It is not just a story about racial discrimination and inequality, but both loom large in the plot. The backstory of the protagonist, Elwood Curtis, is touching and sets the stage for the tragic turn of events that leads to his incarceration. With emotional integrity that never even gets close to being sentimental, the author takes the reader on a horrifying tour of the school’s campus: dormitories, cafeteria, utility facilities, and the one building where unbearable acts of cruelty occur. I get the sense that Whitehead may have conflicting feelings about the passivity of early civil rights leaders, most especially Martin Luther King, Jr., who is heroic and inspirational to Elwood, especially as a young boy. I like this book much better than Whitehead’s other blockbuster hit, The Underground Railroad, which was a fine book but allegorical and thus not as engaging for me as this powerful story.

Dear Regina: Flannery O’Connor’s Letters from Iowa edited by Monica Carol Miller

I worked for almost two years as a consultant, hired by the literary estate of Flannery O’Connor, to create an inventory of the archive of her manuscripts, letters, photos, journals, and other personal effects. During the course of that project, I read each of the letters included in this collection, and it was a real treat to go back and read them again. The relationship between Flannery and her mother is complex, unusual, and in so many ways fascinating, especially considering the number of stories the author wrote where the main characters are a mother and a child.

Among the most interesting developments we find in these letters is how, in a matter of only two years, Flannery becomes much more independent and driven. In the beginning, the young graduate student seems to be nervous about being so far away from home and family for the first time in her life. As time goes by and Flannery is introduced to established writers and publishers who admire her work as a student at Iowa, she becomes more confident in her abilities, which results in a more bold attitude toward Regina. She is willing to rebuke her mother if she senses that Regina is overstepping her bounds or commenting inappropriately about matters she doesn’t understand.

On the darker side, readers can’t help seeing O’Connor’s deeply ingrained racism, her sense of moral superiority, her callous reaction to the suffering of others, and sometimes a general misanthropic nature. Some would argue that she simply resisted the social conventions of her time, especially expectations of young “ladies.” I think it’s more than that. I think she felt terribly awkward in most social situations and preferred to limit human interaction with only a few people. This personality trait may have helped her in the end as a writer and even on a more personal level when her lupus diagnosis forced her to live the last third of her life with her mother in the rural Deep South of middle Georgia.

Miller provides some commentary in her introduction to the book and at the beginning of the phases of Flannery’s tenure at Iowa. I think the book could have been stronger with a deeper analysis of the correspondence, but perhaps the literary estate placed restrictions on the editor. Given the executor’s reputation for such tight control on what has been published in the past, this is a valid speculation. Nevertheless, the estate did permit the letters to be published, which means they are now widely available to readers and scholars of O’Connor’s work. That’s a good thing.

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution by Cat Bohannon

What a valuable book that almost serves as an updated edition of Natalie Angier’s classic study titled Woman: An Intimate Geography. Bohannon comes out swinging from the first page, observing how medical science has committed egregious errors and arrived at faulty conclusions because it has considered the needs of males and females to be the same when it comes to developing pharmaceuticals and treatments. The differences between the sexes go far beyond their genitals and mammary glands. The author explains why the most common use of male subjects only (human or other animals) for medical research is terribly shortsighted, sometimes resulting in catastrophic and even deadly consequences. And that’s just the first chapter!

Building on the complexities of the female body (while also giving plenty of attention to the difference between sex and gender along the way), Bohannon traces millions of years of evolution to draw some startling and perhaps controversial conclusions about human origins, female anatomy, reproduction, childbirth and child rearing, language, sociological patterns, human achievement, and so much more. The chapter on breastfeeding alone is worth the price of the book — good heavens, I learned so much! 

She makes solid arguments for why some of the great discoveries and advances in early human development may be attributed to women as opposed to men, who have historically taken the credit. Her practice of demonstrating the similarities and intersections of female characteristics across species in the animal kingdom – from orcas to mice, from ducks to our primate cousins — helps to reinforce the evolutionary evidence she produces to explain why women are specifically equipped for all the roles they fill as an equal half of homo sapiens.

I highly recommend it to just about everyone. Women will benefit from knowing more about what makes them tick and how they became the marvelous wonders they are. Men NEED to read it to better appreciate all the women in their lives, beginning with the ones that brought them to life and gave them a fighting chance to survive.

Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach

What a delicious book! I have known about the importance of Sylvia Beach’s little American bookstore in Paris for a while but was not aware that she wrote such a wonderful memoir about her experiences as the owner and storekeeper of Shakespeare and Company. Her membership-supported enterprise was so much more than just a bookshop. It served as a refuge and haven for some of the most gifted expatriates and writers of the early 20th century, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and most especially James Joyce. I had no idea that she was the first publisher of Joyce’s monumental novel, Ulysses. She really was a remarkable human being, one who made great sacrifices to support an amazing and historical intellectual community. She even risked her own life during the Nazi occupation of Paris by refusing to compromise her standards or cater to the monstrous regime that swept across Europe before and during World War II.

Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery

For anyone who needs a story of inspiration, endurance, and good old fashion intestinal fortitude, look no further than Ben Montgomery’s well written account of Emma Gatewood’s adventures on the Appalachian Trail and her other treks across the country on foot. It is estimated that this grandmother and great-grandmother ended up walking more than 14,000 miles, the distance of half the globe, all after she turned 67 years old. Included in these pedestrian journeys were two thru-hikes on the Appalachian Trail and a third time in sections, back in the late 1950s when the trail was not so popular or populated by hikers. Oh, and she also walked the Oregon Trail, literally, from Independence, Missouri to Portland, Oregon. She was in her seventies when she completed that one. Anybody want to complain about being tired now? Ever again?

Grandma Gatewood overcame terrible conditions on the Appalachian Trail, from rattlesnake encounters to raging storms, from extreme temperatures to blown out shoes (she wore only sneakers!), from fallen trees to flooded creeks, and injuries to her feet, ankles, and knees that would have spelled defeat for most men half her age attempting what she succeeded in doing several times. Her amazing stamina was born out of tragic circumstances: years of mental, emotional, and physical abuse from a monster of a husband.

Walking in the forest in solitude gave Emma Gatewood great joy and satisfaction, although she struggled to remain alone in her quest many times as her story spread during the months she was on the trails. She became a celebrity, and her time walking was interrupted more and more by journalists, photographers, and curious onlookers. For the most part she remained humble and patient, although she did lose her temper a few times with the rudest of the bunch. And then she felt remorse and asked them to forgive her! What an example she set for just about everyone on how to pursue dreams, overcome adversity, and live your best life.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

This is a powerful novel for several reasons, not the least of which is how it captures the sense of despair among African Americans over injustice from the legal system specifically and from the society at large. The narrative is impressive to me considering it is written by someone who lived his later life as a gay man but elected to employ a first-person voice of a young woman. The family dynamics and conflicts that drive the story are made more intense by Baldwin’s skill with descriptive language and dialogue. It’s all so believable. Along the way, he inserts little nuggets of gold that transform this book from a good to a great novel. Here is one fine example.

“Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way that women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women.”

The remainder of that paragraph is just as profound as this passage. There is a lot going on in this novel, including the tension that exists among the sexes and how love is exhibited and expressed in such diverse ways. If Beale Street could indeed talk, it would testify to the struggles of black America, as would the streets of Harlem, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta, Detroit, and Tulsa, just to name a few. Baldwin was so familiar with such places, and he courageously explored every square foot of them.

Grace Saves All: The Necessity of Christian Universalism by David Artman

I have read other books on Christian Universalism, but this is the best so far. Artman is a minister who has struggled with the concept of hell and eternal damnation for most of his life, but in recent years he has found a spiritual path that changed his perspective on the Christian faith. He was able to do so with plenty of evidence from Biblical scripture and the guidance of some of the pioneers in the theological study of universal salvation or the idea that, in the end, God saves all humanity. No one is punished forever and ever in the lake of fire, gnashing their teeth, so forth and so on.

Artman explains early on in his book that Christian Universalism is nothing new and that many early Christians embraced this theological position and promoted it. Once he began to look at universalism closely, it just made sense in the context of a loving creator God. For Artman, “it is the only approach to Christian theology which can successfully defend the goodness of God; and therein lies its necessity.” In some ways, Artman and his readers come to universalism through the back door, as if it is the only option left. As he explains it: “Once someone fully grasps the concept that God knows the end from the beginning and is not controlled or regulated by any outside forces, the following realization strikes home – the outcome of all things will inevitably be what God intended from the beginning.”

Artman still believes in the free will of humanity. He just posits that ultimately God will win over even the strongest deniers, the faithless, the atheists, criminals, etc. Now, it may take a very long time to bring them back into the fold, but Artman’s God is more patient than Job, and will not stop pursuing the lost until they are found. The one issue I have with this concept is the admission by universalists that punishment is still very much a part of God’s plan, and God will use it if necessary to bring the wayward back to God, where they belong. The punishment is not forever and it isn’t revenge. It is just a tool God uses to achieve the goal. Artman believes “there is coming a time envisioned in which everyone will happily acknowledge the salvation of God which has come through Christ.” I’m not sure that punishment through torture is ever effective in producing true repentance, and certainly not a happy acknowledgement.

Artman remains close to his Christian faith with his belief that Jesus Christ is still the proper pathway to salvation. He doesn’t directly address how unfair it may be for people who live outside the boundaries of Christian tradition to find and board the Jesus bus headed to heaven. This is a book of Christian Universalism, and therefore, very Jesus centered, which may prove frustrating to those outside that faith tradition. To his credit, Artman recognizes there is scriptural evidence that contradicts some of his findings and conclusions. “Since all theologies end up facing passages of Scripture which are hard to deal with, the question is not if these passages will be dealt with, but how. All theological approaches must face this dilemma. No theology gets a free pass.” He reconciles scriptural contradictions wearing “Jesus-colored glasses,” taking comfort in the fact that Jesus ate with criminals and refused to throw stones at adulterers, so he cannot imagine that God doesn’t possess the same compassion and forgiveness.

In the end, Artman looks at the spirit of the Bible and the life of Jesus to reach a rational theory of how God operates, and universal salvation is the only outcome that makes sense. For those who would question his rationale, he replies: “Making an overall interpretation of the Bible is a difficult thing to do. There is no single biblical approach that doesn’t run into scriptural problems. And so, we must finally ask which biblical approach aligns most closely with the goodness of God, the character of Jesus, and the overall narrative arc of the Bible. On the whole I believe the Inclusive approach offers the best solution.” Good answer, Dr. Artman. Good answer.

Flannery at the Grammys by Irwin H. Streight

Professor Streight has written a very fine and thoroughly researched study of Flannery O’Connor’s impact and influence on songwriters in the pop music genre. I have long been interested in this topic, and I frequently made mention of those connections to visitors at Andalusia, O’Connor’s farm home in Milledgeville, Georgia, during my 13-year tenure as the director there. I still remember vividly sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch at Andalusia the day singer/songwriters Jim White and Mary Gauthier made their field recording of “Fruit of the Vine,” which Streight mentions in this book. They both exhibited such a sense of reverence during their visit.

O’Connor’s body of work is a Comstock Lode for songwriters, composers, playwrights, screenplay writers, and visual artists, which I consider a testament to her genius and durability as a writer. Streight focuses most of his attention on the more familiar and acclaimed rock and folk artists/groups who have paid homage to O’Connor in their work, such as Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., U2, Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier, and Kate Campbell. But he digs even deeper to discuss songwriters in the alternative genres of metal, punk, and a few other less definable types.

Streight pushes toward the exhaustive in his study as he devotes a chapter to how often O’Connor’s themes and language show up in song lyrics, even though there may be no direct correlation between the author and the lyricist. He admits to the stretch in these cases, but the observations are interesting, and the connections are certainly worth acknowledging. The “Bonus Track” chapter on stage names from O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, and her characters is fascinating although probably not a strong connection to the author in most cases. All in all, Streight’s book should be of great interest to anyone interested in how pop culture reflects and reacts to serious fiction. This is a valuable contribution to O’Connor scholarship.