Category: Book Review

Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t escape your father.
For most of your life, you were known as Little Him. Junior. Insert-your-father’s-name here’s kid. You’re a chip off the ol’ block, maybe named after your Pops, forever known as your Dad’s offspring. But, as John Edgar Wideman indicates in “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File,” that doesn’t mean that the supposed sins of a father should be laid at the feet of his child.

Imagine the first person who created a toothbrush.
Better yet – imagine life before a toothbrush. Think about it: getting your mouth minty-fresh wasn’t exactly easy with twigs or rags. Same things with clean hair, unspoiled leftovers, unsmelly bathrooms, or cool gamepieces, as you’ll see in “Brief Histories of Everyday Objects” by Andy Warner.
Scientists say you do your best thinking in the shower.

Being a responsible kid has its rewards.

First, there’s the feel-good; you did well, and you can be proud of yourself. That leads to the second benefit: adults see your responsibility, and you’ll have earned their trust. And in the new book “Little Shaq: Star of the Week” by Shaquille O’Neal, illustrated by Theodore Taylor III, there are other bonuses, too.

You had hope that things might be better.
We elected a Black man as President, and there was a minute where you could almost see a bit of racial optimism.

The clowns at your job dominate Ring Number One. Ring Number Two features The

Juggler (you) and your checkbook, schedule, chore list, and family obligations. And in

Ring Number Three, there’s a wild combination of the other two. Run away and join the

circus? Yeah, that’s already happened but in the new book “Truevine” by Beth Macy, it

was far from voluntary.

Today was an ordinary day.

It had its ups and downs; pleasant surprises came between the mundane and the irritating

and you’ll look back at it tomorrow with clarity, perhaps, but its details will be sketchy in

a decade. It was an ordinary day which, says Gary Younge, also means an average of

seven kids in the U.S. lost their lives to a bullet. In “Another Day in the Death of

America,” he explains.

Someone always has to be first.

That can be a good thing, or a bad one. Good, if it’s a cafeteria, supermarket queue,

electronics store, or conga line; better, if free samples are involved. Bad, in experiments,

taste-testing, first-on- last-off and, as in the new novel “Darktown” by Thomas Mullen,

first in a dangerous new job.

At the end of the day, you’re out of gas.

There’s nothing left in your reserves, not a drop. You’re done, wondering if this is as far

as you’ll ever go but somehow open to new suggestions. So read “The Full Tank Life”

by Ben Tankard. It might just rev your engine again.

There’s no magic wand to change the things that’ve been on your mind lately:

social issues, inequality, poverty, politics, apathy, violence. Those ills didn’t arrive quick

and they won’t leave quick but, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, they can be repaired.