What I'm Reading

Rutger Bregman, Susan Cooper and Eleanor Catton

This is What I’m Reading on Letter from Berlin, where I share thoughts on books that I’ve read and loved recently, along with other things I’m reading. The book links are affiliate. Thank you for your support.

I have some catching up to do, book friends. Thanks for being patient with me while I took a break from newsletter-writing. I have been reading the whole time. (Quite a few forgettable books in the first part of the year, to be honest, but never mind that, things have really picked up lately.) So as not to overwhelm you with an overstuffed list, I’m keeping it to three stand-outs today.

The first book, which I read in the cozy, hazy days between the old year and the new, was Rutger Bregman’s Humankind. One of my best friends, an eternal optimist, sent it to me as a gift a few summers ago. Being on the more misanthropic end of things myself, I put it on the shelf for a few years where it slumbered patiently until I was ready to read it. And, boy, was I ready. Humankind is a valiant doorstopper that tries to prove human goodness. While most of us believe that humans are, when left to their own devices, selfish and mean and destructive, we’re actually largely wrong. It’s hard to believe, especially these days, but Bregman packs the book full of interesting stories and convincing arguments and makes Humankind a pretty good and, yes, comforting read for these awful, awful times we live in. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about the real life “Lord of the Flies” story, which completely reframes the ideas we hold about adolescent boys.

In January and February, I wanted nothing more than to be wrapped up in an enormous blanket and cradled gently by a benevolent spirit until the worst had passed. Book-wise, what this meant was that I pulled out my childhood copies of Susan Cooper’s delectably eerie The Dark is Rising series and curled up with them night after night. They are even better than I remembered. Cooper is a master of building dread and of weaving timeless fantasy into picturesque English country life. If you like Arthurian myths and descriptions of Cornwall and plucky English children and the feeling of teetering on the edge of terror without any actual violence, you should read these books. (Or your kid should!) (Yes, Silver on the Tree is missing, I’m still trying to find a copy of the Collier Books edition!)

But the very best book I’ve read so far this year was Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, which I devoured in Rome in late March. Somewhere, probably when it first came out, I had heard it billed as an “ecological thriller,” which is very much not my cup of tea, but I bought a signed copy at a bookstore in Scotland last year, thinking I could give it to my father, who loved Catton’s previous books. When I was choosing books for this spring’s trip, I landed on this one, who knows why, as it’s a hardcover and a little bulky for a trip we did entirely with carry-on luggage. But I’m so glad I did; I tore through it like a house on fire.

In the book, Birnam Wood is the name of a guerrilla gardening cooperative run by a bunch of idealistic hippies in New Zealand. When a nefarious American billionaire comes to town for murky purposes, their paths cross and what unfolds is a brilliantly plotted, masterfully crafted disaster. It is absolutely correct to call the book an ecological thriller, but it is so much more than that, too, and I deeply appreciate Catton’s righteous and cutting rage at tech culture, billionaire culture, even idealistic hippie gardening culture, to name just a few of her targets. I am always in awe of writers who manage to do the impossible: create unputdownable books about unsympathetic characters, even the book’s unlikely hero. Anyway, I don’t want to say anything else: just buy it and read it and let me know what you think!

Currently reading: Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love (not affiliate)

My bookclub’s next pick: Lisa Wingate’s The Book of Lost Friends

In my shopping bag: Madeleine Gray’s Green Dot