BARBARIAN DAYS; THE SYMPATHIZER; CITIZEN; A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN

Neglected blog. Summary post for my records.

Books read last summer:

• The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis
• A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
• The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdez Quade 
• a couple of other titles, but I can't remember what

There wasn't a dud in the bunch, but standouts included Citizen; A Manual for Cleaning Women; The Sympathizer and Barbarian Days. 

I read Citizen twice... Rankine's prose-poems form a polemic on being Black in white America... poignant content in a compelling, unusual form.

Barbarian Days, New Yorker writer Finnegan's surf memoir was a quintessential summer read for me, as someone who loves the ocean, traveling and stellar writing.

And The Sympathizer was my favorite book of the year, about a Vietnamese double-agent at the end of the Vietnam War, who has to flee to the States--part spy thriller, part history, part great American immigrant novel, all beautifully written and constructed, and a page turner, to boot.