Now that the presents have been opened I can announce The Big Reveal - the books I carefully researched and curated for purchase for my kids and their significant others.
It's a tradition appreciated by some (my daughters) more than others (my son). He'd prefer a box of ammo, but as we say in this house: "You git what you git, so don't have a fit."
For my political daughter I gave political commentator Candace Owens' book: "Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation."
She contends that the Democrat Party has a long history of racism and exposes the ideals that hinder the black community’s ability to rise above poverty, live independent and successful lives, and be an active part of the American Dream. Instead, Owens offers up a different ideology by issuing a challenge: It’s time for a major black exodus. From dependency, from victimhood, from miseducation—and the Democrat Party, which perpetuates all three.
To her boyfriend: Hampson Sides' "Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West."
At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
To my science teacher daughter, who is more of a fiction reader: Oyinkan Braithwaite's "My Sister the Serial Killer."
Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.
For her husband, whose read about 200 books toward his PhD this past year or so, I gave a break. I can't interrupt his studies for some lame book on Aaron Rodgers. So I gave him a t-shirt that says: "I like big books, I cannot lie."
To my son, who fancies himself a chess player and more fancifully enjoys beating his dad at it, I gave: Walter Tevis' "The Queen's Gambit." Now, more than likely, he's going to watch the Netflix miniseries based on the book instead and tell me he read it. But that's something he'll have to live with on his conscience and admit to during his next confession or polygraph.
Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.
For his fiance, I gave two books, because she's my favorite. While they were hunkered down with us for a couple months during the Wuhu shutdown, she knocked off about 20 of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series when she needed a non-thinking break from her epidemiology textbooks. So I gave her the 27th book in that series: Fortune and Glory. Hopefully it eases Kayla's pain in not knowing if Stephanie ends up with Ranger or Morelli.
When Stephanie’s beloved Grandma Mazur's new husband died on their wedding night, the only thing he left her was a beat-up old easy chair…and the keys to a life-changing fortune. But as Stephanie and Grandma Mazur search for Jimmy Rosolli’s treasure, they discover that they’re not the only ones on the hunt. Two dangerous enemies from the past stand in their way—along with a new adversary who’s even more formidable: Gabriela Rose, a dark-eyed beauty from Little Havana with a taste for designer clothes. She’s also a soldier of fortune, a gourmet cook, an expert in firearms and mixed martial arts—and someone who’s about to give Stephanie a real run for her money.
And I gave her a more topical one along her professional tastes: Kate Moore's "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women."
The incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers' rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives.
I hope they enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy giving them. And I don't demand a book report from them (like rumor has I did of my son as a youth), but a text saying "I read the book" is always appreciated it.
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