Martha's Recommendation - Half the Sky by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

"Tell me about what you're reading, but don't tell me to read it." That's the way I've approached every conversation about books in the last ten years. I have some kind of strange insecurity that says a book recommended by someone else is a book I didn't discover myself, which means it can't possibly be good. Or rather if someone else is reading it then it must be totally mainstream, which makes it stupid by definition, so why would I read it? There are three things wrong with this. First, it's hypocritical. If you look at the books I've read, it's not like it's some list of obscure titles that no one reads but me. It's a lot of mainstream stuff that everyone on Earth has read like Moneyball and Life of Pi. Second, when a book does go mega-mainstream I get snooty and refuse to read it and so end up missing out, for example, on geniuses like Malcolm Gladwell because I'm trying to act like I'm too good for popular books. Third, if you don't read what your friends and loved ones recommend then you miss out on insights about who they are and what they think.

I feel like I don't even know half of you guys and that I don't know the other half of you half as well as I would like. Blame it on whatever you want. Time, the Atlantic Ocean, Amazon, age differences, family responsibilities, politics, religion, etc. All just bad excuses. Lately I've been trying to call more often, but phone conversations are surface level by definition. Family reunions and holidays are really the only face time I get with you, but in those situations there are usually so many kids running around that we can't have a conversation longer than five minutes. And whenever you get a large family group together there's always someone who's cranky about something or other (never me of course, haha) which makes sinking your teeth into a deep discussion pretty hard. A few weeks back it occurred to me: what if I took book recommendations from each member of the family? Would that teach me something about you I'd never otherwise learn? I decided to give it a whirl. First, as you know, I made a two ground rules:

• The recommendation should be the most influential book you've ever read
• One recommendation per person. If I've already read it, choose the next most influential

A few of you had your most influential book on the tip of your tongue. Others required some massaging of the request. A few made the very reasonable point that it's not possible to narrow down lots of influential books into the single most influential one. These folks shot back a list of three or four books, but I insisted that they pick one because I had to keep the list manageable purely from a feasibility standpoint. Others family members are just not really big readers or are too young to have been "influenced" so much as "entertained" by their reading. For these people I changed the request to "favorite" instead of "most influential." Eventually I got a recommendation from all but three people. The final list is:

1. Martha - Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
2. K.C. - Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien
3. Diane - The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
4. Natalie - Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Julia - Proteinaholic by Garth Davis and Howard Jacobson
6. Jason - The Racketeer by John Grisham
7. Joseph - Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck
8. Devin - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
   
9. Irene - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
10. Karen - Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
11. Sam C. - We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman
12. Ian - Wonder by Raquel J. Palacio
13. Sam G. - Divergent by Veronica Roth

I expect to learn a lot about the family by doing this project. But I didn't expect to learn so much just by collecting recommendations. I already knew that Dad loved Lord of the Rings, but in addition to the recommendation he sent over his favorite quotes which mostly touched on themes of honor, duty, hard work. One quote was "We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt" which if I remember correctly is actually in a frame hanging on the wall of Dad's man-cave. 

My wife, a feminist, recommended a book about the most oppressed women on the planet. Mom, sentimental to the last (that's a compliment, I am too) recommended a book about the power of the human spirit. Natalie, a torutured soul (also a compliment, I am too) who spent 1.5 years in St. Petersburg as a young person, sent me a book by a tortured Russian about a tortured Russian. Julia, a converted Vegan, recommended a book about the scourge of meat-eating. Devin, a biologist, sent a book about evolution by everyone's favorite evolutionary biologist (and famous atheist, more on that in a future post) Richard Dawkins. My doctor aunt chose a book about an empathetic doctor, and my army nurse aunt chose a book about a crew of army nurses who survived Japanese bombings in WWII. 

And most telling of all was Walden, a book about living simply and economically, recommended by my fascinatingly fastidious and minimalist grandmother. My reaction upon getting this last recommendation was "Walden, of course!" accompanied by a one of those knowing smiles with the slow nodding.

Each time I finish a book I'll create a new post with what I learned, some self-reflection, and hopefully some insights about the family member who recommended the book.