What's On

People (including me) usually answer the question "What's on your book table" with a lament about the messy pile and the impossible task of keeping those books in some sort of order. However, I have cleaned my room. It has taken time, I'm really proud of this. In keeping with this, I am going to give a neat list of what my neat stack looks like starting with the largest book and ending with the top one, the smallest.

Last Witness by Svetlana Alexievich. Compelling accounts and memories of children who were very young when World War II started.

The Mosquito by Timothy C. Winegard. Fascinating! The uses of the mosquito, besides essential food source of birds? To cull humanity.

Coyote Warrior by Paul VanDevelder. The New Indian Wars and a young Mandan/Hidatsa lawyer who continued his father's fight in Washington.

A Primer for Forgetting by Lewis Hyde. The complex solace of what is means to forget -- and the inevitability of same.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Searing account of a nightmarish and predatory "school" that swallows a promising child.

Facism by Madeleine Albright. If she is writing a book about facism then we should all read it right now.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. A sly, seductive, funny murder mystery in which an "invisible" older woman takes on a personal investigation of killings that seem to be the doing of forest animals rising up to exact justice upon those who desecrate their domain. This is one of my favorite novels of the summer, or the fall (I read an early copy) and I think it will be on many a messier book table than my own very soon.

Yours for books!