Best Books of 2023: Part 2

Best Books of 2023: Part 2

Continuing the best books of 2023 list, here are the best reads from the second half of the year. Number 1 on this list is also my most favorite read in 2023.

In December, I also started a bookstagram account, after debating it for a long time. It turns out that bookstagram is the best place on the internet! I can’t believe how friendly the community is and how thrilling it is to meet with other obsessive book lovers around the world. Follow my account at @obsessivelybookishjojo on IG!


 

1. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith​

How the Word is Passed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy at: Amazon | Bookshop

Poets just make the best writers! How the Word Is Passed is my most favorite read of 2023, written beautifully by Clint Smith. In this book, he recounts his pilgrimages to eight sites where the story of slavery took place and reflects upon the ways in which those historical sites reckon with their past in the stories they tell of themselves. There is something really special about the author’s exercise of bringing his physical body to these physical sites that makes the text feel embodied. The prose is poetic and it brings you to a meditative space as he takes us along in these visits.

One of the sites covered in the book is Galveston Island, TX, which is relatively local to me. Because of this incredible book, I’m making plans to see the Juneteenth celebration there this year.

Favorite quote from the book:

“But as I think of Blandford, I’m left wondering if we are all just patchworks of the stories we’ve been told. What would it take—what does it take—for you to confront a false history even if it means shattering the stories you have been told throughout your life? Even if it means having to fundamentally reexamine who you are and who your family has been? Just because something is difficult to accept doesn’t mean you should refuse to accept it. Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.”

As an addendum, also check out Clint Smith’s recent interview on the On Being podcast.

Poverty, by America is a stunning analysis on the level of poverty in America (too high). But whereas most books on poverty focus on the poor, this one focus on the rest of society, the rest of us. Desmond’s incisive thesis is that we have constructed a system of exploitation and profit that continues to extract from the poor, from which we benefit. 

The book description is apt:

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

His first book, Evicted, was one of my favorite reads in 2018

In Still Life With Bones, Alexa Hagerty recounts her work as an anthropologist with forensic teams to exhume bodies of the victims of violence and investigate crimes against humanity in Guatemala and Argentina. Her work reveals how bones bear witness to the life and suffering of the victims. More than that the story of the dead though, she also reflects on the impact of her work to the living–the family of these victims. In the exploration and investigation of death, this work brings some healing, closure, grief, and justice for the living. This book is a powerful reflection on how the living and the dead are entwined with each other.

From the book description:

Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence.

“Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration—of building something new with the ‘pile of broken mirrors’ that is memory, loss, and mourning.”

I love this book. I love that it centers the stories and narratives of a demographic, namely unmarried women, that is typically sidestepped as supporting characters, people in waiting for life to progress, doomed in a state of “not yet”. The book is very real on both the struggles and the joys of being unmarried women, and inadvertently, also real in deconstructing the common narratives about marriage. There is no single story about being a single woman, and that is worth celebrating!

Forgive is the last book that Timothy Keller, who passed away in May 2023, wrote at the end of his life. It carries a certain gravity as his final benediction and appeal to the world, one that sounds like, “My children, forgive one another.” The cultural sophistication that he always displayed as a speaker and writer shows up in this book as well. This book has echoes of the themes of his other works, e.g., God’s generous justice, how mercy and justice are fulfilled in the Person of Jesus Christ, his affirmation and critique on secular society (i.e., secular culture’s tendency to embrace aspects of teachings rooted in the Christian worldview, but leaving God behind), applied to the subject of forgiveness. It’s a worthwhile read, especially in a cultural moment in which many are skeptical about the power and need for forgiveness. 

My full-length review of this book appeared in the December issue of the Adventist Review. (Check the link to download the pdf file)

Favorite Books Lists

2023: Best Books of 2023 Part 1

2022: Best Books of 2022 Part 1, Best Books of 2022 Part 2.

2021: Best Books of 2021 Part 1, Best Books of 2021 Part 2.

2020: Best Books of 2020 Part 1, Best Books of 2020 Part 2.

2019: Best Books of 2019 Part 1, Best Books of 2019 Part 2.

2018: Best Books of 2018 Part 1, Best Books of 2018 Part 2.

2017Best Books of 2017 Part 1, Best Books of 2017 Part 2.

2016Best Books of 2016 Part 1Best Books of 2016 Part 2.

2015Best Books of 2015 Part 1Best Books of 2015 Part 2.

 

*Amazon Product and Bookshop links on this blog are affiliate links, which means that each time you purchase something through those links, I get a small commission without you paying any extra. Of course you don’t have to use them, but if you want to chip-in towards content creation for this blog, I’d really appreciate it!

 

My Favorite Books on the Sabbath

My Favorite Books on the Sabbath

The Sabbath, the day of rest, is the topic I write about the most in this blog. It is a topic and spiritual practice that I cherish deeply, and its meaning in my life has continued to evolve and deepen. Naturally, I’ve read and collected books on the topic over the years and I’ve found it enlightening to read about Sabbath experiences from different communities of faith.

Below, you’ll find my personal favorite books on the Sabbath. They tend to speak more to the experience of Sabbath, of living out rest, rather than its technicalities. Let me know if you’ve read any of them and share your thoughts!

 


 

1. The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Buy at: Amazon | Bookshop

When I first read The Sabbath about 15 years ago, I was floored and amazed by the language by which he described the Sabbath. This book is very poetic, its language soars, almost as if transporting you to eternity itself. I was surprised because as a person who grew up Seventh-day Adventist, someone who has kept and enjoyed the Sabbath all her life, I had never heard or read anybody talk about the Sabbath the way Heschel did. Heschel wrote about the Sabbath as a palace in time, as “the seed of eternity planted in the soul,” like a visiting queen, a bride, whose presence is longed for and whose departure is regretted. If you want to enlarge the meaning of Sabbath in your life, or to deepen your understanding on humanity’s need of rest, I highly recommend this book.

Quotes from the book:

“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord… The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.” 

 

“There is a word that is seldom said, a word for an emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of the Sabbath.”

Quite frankly, I don’t know too much about the author of this book. I found a copy of the book while browsing a used bookstore in Chicago. It talks about incorporating Sabbath in our daily lives, syncing into the rhythm of nature and time, as an antidote to busyness. It highlights the importance of a season of rest, of wintering, of retreat, because no other living being in nature goes on without stopping.

This book inspired an article I wrote a few years ago titled Sabbath: The Pause in the Rhythm of Creation.

A quote from the book:

“When we rest, we can relish the seasons of a moment, a day, a conversation… To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself.”

This is a short and powerful book, because it talks about Sabbath as a resistance to culture–the market culture, the commodity culture–that insists on putting numerical value on everything. It criticizes the constant societal anxiety from nonstop hustling. The book highlights the prophetic power of keeping the Sabbath that stands in defiant contrast to the endless pursuit of economic gain. Of resting, in contrast to the profit-chasing that tends to reduce human beings into commodities. With respect to my community of faith, this book made me think hard about how some of our practices lean more into the anxious kingdom of Pharaoh as oppose to the kingdom of rest. This book inspired this blog post: Restless Sabbath: When You Can’t Stop Hustling on the Day of Rest.

A quote from the book:

“They may have gone through the motions of Sabbath, but they did not stop the practices of anxiety, coercion, and exploitation that real work stoppage would entail. Their acquisitive enterprise had such momentum that it carried right into and through the Sabbath. The great festival of rest had become simply another venue for restlessness.”

This selection is probably a little unconventional in several ways. It is a small collection of essays (4 in total) that Oliver Sacks wrote toward the end of his life. If you’re not familiar, Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and a prolific writer. One of his well-known works is The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I’ve read a number of his books, and his writing strikes me as deeply human, holding humanity in high regard.

There’s something special about reading an octogenarian reflects about his own life. The last essay that Sacks wrote was titled, Sabbath, one of the essays in this book, which you can also read here. Personally, I consider this piece the perfect essay. It was said that he labored over every sentence in this piece. In Sabbath, Sacks reflected on his memory of the Sabbath from his childhood in the Jewish community, and how he became an outsider because of his sexuality. As his life was closing, he found himself thinking about the Sabbath more, reflecting on the final rest that he was heading towards. It is achingly beautiful.

I love thinking about this essay because it reveals Sabbath-keeping as a gift not just strictly for those who practice it–it can be a gift to others, the larger world. It makes me think of the Sabbath feasts in the Old Testament (Lev 23), as if the canopy of the palm and willow branches that they collected could extend to the “outsiders”, and they took could partake in the joy of the Sabbath.

Since beautiful language always inspires me, I wrote Consciousness of Time: Wisdom in the Sabbath as a result of this book.

Last by not least, this book is from the Seventh-day Adventist community. It is both resourceful in the academic sense, but also poetic and profound. It synthesizes wonderfully the many facets of the Sabbath, the various schools of theological thoughts on each facet, and the author’s commentary on the prevailing views. In our endlessly exhausting modern life, Sabbath carries an extra special significance in retaining and restoring our humanity. 

This book inspired Sabbath in the Time of Corona

Favorite Books Lists

2023: Best Books of 2023 Part 1

2022: Best Books of 2022 Part 1, Best Books of 2022 Part 2.

2021: Best Books of 2021 Part 1, Best Books of 2021 Part 2.

2020: Best Books of 2020 Part 1, Best Books of 2020 Part 2.

2019: Best Books of 2019 Part 1, Best Books of 2019 Part 2.

2018: Best Books of 2018 Part 1, Best Books of 2018 Part 2.

2017Best Books of 2017 Part 1, Best Books of 2017 Part 2.

2016Best Books of 2016 Part 1Best Books of 2016 Part 2.

2015Best Books of 2015 Part 1Best Books of 2015 Part 2.

 

*Amazon Product and Bookshop links on this blog are affiliate links, which means that each time you purchase something through those links, I get a small commission without you paying any extra. Of course you don’t have to use them, but if you want to chip-in towards content creation for this blog, I’d really appreciate it!

 

Best Books of 2023: Part 1

Best Books of 2023: Part 1

Time for mid-year updates on my favorite reads! I had a long reading slump in 2022, a mix of feeling down generally because life is hard and feeling like I couldn’t bear thinking about issues that typically make up my reading selections. But 2023 has seen a great recovery, clocking at 55 books by mid-point, propelled by a bunch of fun fiction reads (which also got me out of the slump).

Here are my favorites from the first half of the year.

By the way, I’m also on Threads, where there’s a bunch of fun book people. It’s giving me the good vibes from that other app ten years ago. If you’re there too, find me @josephineelia!

 


 

1. Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming by Ava Chin

Buy at: Amazon | Bookshop

Mott Street, a namesake of the famous street in New York’s Chinatown, is a gorgeous and extensively researched memoir of Ava Chin’s family. Seeking to understand her family’s history, she discovered the weighty impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that was in effect for six decades on the lives of her family members.

I love how the nation’s history is intertwined with her family history in this book, because I’m one who believes that they are the same. We can learn much about our country’s history by learning about our family history, because the subject of history–policies, wars, and laws–are lived out in the flesh and bodies of people–people who become our grandmothers and grandfathers. I also love the coverage of Asian American history here that is very rarely part of contemporary conversations. I would have never known about the Chinese Exclusion Act if not for books like these!

Ok, let’s be real. It’s hot. I’m writing this from hot Texas on the last day of July 2023, which is set to be the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, a record that I’m sure will be broken again soon. Did I mention that it’s hot?

I don’t love the politicized conversation on climate change in the US, and that’s an understatement. It’s a terrible starting point to learning what climate change actually is. This book, on the other hand, is a great primer to understanding, step-by-step, how we got to a time in history where human activities are greatly impacting the way nature behaves. With an eloquent teaching voice, Hope Jahren walks us through the changes in human lives and habits that have taken place in the last 200 years or so, from mobility, agriculture, to manufacturing, and more, that necessitates more and more energy usage that we mine from the Earth. It’s simply a story of what has happened. And if you drive a car, use a fridge, or use electricity, then you are a part of this story.

I must admit I’m part of the population that gets bogged down by the reality of climate change, but Jahren infuses her book with hope and cautious optimism, and we should listen to her because she’s so smart. By the way, she also wrote Lab Girl, one of my favorites from way back in 2016, which is still one of my favorite science memoirs.

It’s not hard for me to like this book, because Adam Grant advocates for a habit of rethinking–rethinking knowledge, beliefs, opinions, and assumptions that we may need to revise or let go. It’s an approach that is core in scientific endeavors (hence, my affinity to it). Grant contrasts this mindset to the preachers, prosecutors, and politicians mindsets.

“We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.”

 

“If you’re a scientist by trade, rethinking is fundamental to your profession. You’re paid to be constantly aware of the limits of your understanding. You’re expected to doubt what you know, be curious about what you don’t know, and update your views based on data… We move into scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge.”

I think Grant’s message in this book is very relevant for our current moment; there are many spaces that can benefit from a season of rethinking. In general, I’m inclined to agree that evaluating and revising our own ideas is a good (yearly?) habit.

As the title suggests, this book is a celebration of the Black Church in America and the many layers of meaning and impact it has had on Christianity, history, and culture. The Black Church is more than a place of worship; it is the center of everything that has been critical in the Black community through out history.

From the book’s descriptions:

“In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues.”

On a personal note, I warmly thought about the Black churches that had been safe spaces for me at various points in my life. They embraced me as an international student, the single Asian person in their congregation. They shared their experiences to this kid whose ideas about America were only shaped by movies and TV shows. They were a refuge in times of questioning when I was figuring out the things that were important to my faith. As the book points out, the Black Church’s impact is wide and deep, and I’m truly grateful for their witness.

An American Sunrise is a staggering collection of poems by Joy Harjo, who served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. Her words channel the feelings of exile, of loss of homeland, and of displacement that were the experience of her ancestors. Deeply moving.

Favorite Books Lists

2023: Best Books of 2023 Part 1

2022: Best Books of 2022 Part 1, Best Books of 2022 Part 2.

2021: Best Books of 2021 Part 1, Best Books of 2021 Part 2.

2020: Best Books of 2020 Part 1, Best Books of 2020 Part 2.

2019: Best Books of 2019 Part 1, Best Books of 2019 Part 2.

2018: Best Books of 2018 Part 1, Best Books of 2018 Part 2.

2017Best Books of 2017 Part 1, Best Books of 2017 Part 2.

2016Best Books of 2016 Part 1Best Books of 2016 Part 2.

2015Best Books of 2015 Part 1Best Books of 2015 Part 2.

 

*Amazon Product and Bookshop links on this blog are affiliate links, which means that each time you purchase something through those links, I get a small commission without you paying any extra. Of course you don’t have to use them, but if you want to chip-in towards content creation for this blog, I’d really appreciate it!