Category: Reading and Writing

It’s hard for me to pass a used book store without buying something. Used books are tantalizingly affordable. “I remember so-and-so telling me about this,” I’d think to myself as I picked up Don DeLillo’s Underworld. “Oh, I really should read her,” I’d say to myself, picking up Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits. In my heart of hearts, I know I’m not going to read many of the books I buy, but that’s not really the point. I love books and I enjoy giving them a home. It’s aspirational.

That being said, for 2019, I’ve decided that I will read one book a month that I own but haven’t read.

“You have enough unread books to do that for an entire year?” asks Wes.

Yes. At the rate of one book per month, I could go for years.

The first book from my unread bookshelf was Yellow, a book of loosely linked stories by Korean-American writer Don Lee. The stories are set in a fictional Northern California town that feels very close to Half Moon Bay or maybe Santa Cruz. All the main characters are Asian American.

Yellow was published in 2001. I tried to remember what “Asian American” literature felt like back then. Before Yellow, all the major literary moments for Asian American lit (as far as I can recall), dealt directly with racial identity in one way or another. The highlights:

Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (1976)

No No Boy by John Okata (1978)

Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (1995)

And then, here comes Yellow, short stories about Asian American people living in the Bay Area, with problems that intersect–but aren’t solely about–their ethnic or racial identities.

There are so many different kinds of books by Asian American writers today. I experienced Yellow as an interesting book, with some stories stronger than others. Had I read it twenty years ago when it first came out, though, I think I would have been blown away.

The above photo is of a print by artist Jane Mount, a thoughtful and generous gift from friends.

I started reading Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner for the very pedestrian reason that it was available for Kindle download from the library, but within the first few pages, I was utterly absorbed. Stegner wrote his first novel in 1937. Fifty years later, he published Crossing to Safety when he was in his late seventies. I loved this book so much — I doubt anything else I read this summer (maybe this year) will surpass it.

Crossing to Safety is the story of two couples and their friendship over decades, with meditations on marriage, friendship, art, and ambition. You will enjoy this book as much as I did if you appreciate

• Complex, nuanced, compelling characters
• Beautiful writing about nature
• Canny observations about aging and how relationships evolve over time

Here’s the New York Times review of Crossing to Safety from September 20, 1987.

Reading Crossing to Safety got me started on a Stegner jag. I read his book on writing and teaching fiction and am currently making my way through the autobiographical work, Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier, which is wonderful in its own way, especially if you’re interested in a rather protracted history of the hardscrabble life on the plains of Saskatchewan.

Stegner’s most famous book is probably Angle of Repose, which I also highly recommend. I’m going to take his semi-autobiographical work, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, with me on our family trip to San Diego, along with Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West, a used book I picked up eons ago.

If I get through those books, I will have read a fraction of Stegner’s works. He wrote more than thirty novels, story collections, and nonfiction books.