My middle brother, Dave, sent me this list of “favorite reads from 2021.” He and his wife, Marie-Susanne, put together these recommendations from the books they enjoyed over the past year.

Without further ado:

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb 

So what happens when a therapist hits a personal rough spot? For example, being dumped by the boyfriend she thought she was going to marry? Gottlieb, the therapist in question, seeks out her own therapist. The presenting problem (the jerky boyfriend) turns out to a symptom of a larger malaise: mortality – time is running out for Gottlieb, 55,  to marry and achieve some sort of happily ever after.

Gottlieb’s conversations with the cardiganed therapist who helps her sort out the story behind the story are interwoven with Gottlieb’s client sessions (don’t worry, she got signed permission from her patients and some of them are amalgams); other people’s versions of this mortality theme emerge.

If you ever considered going to therapy, as both David and I do, separately and together (“It takes a village,” as my friend Monica says!), you will find this book reassuring. If you’ve ever felt alone in your neurosis and pain and irritation, this non-fiction book lets you know with gentle humor and sensitivity that you are in good company. – Marie-Susanne

Sr. Helen Prejean: Dead Man Walking

As a result of her anti-death-penalty work, a Louisiana nun became the spiritual advisor to two death-row inmates in the infamous Angola prison. These two men couldn’t have been more different as personalities – the one gentle, courteous, fully repentant, and the other as brash a scalawag as he was before landing behind bars – but Prejean saw them as equally precious human beings. By putting herself into immensely difficult situations – accompanying the men to their executions, meeting victims’ family members who wanted revenge rather than compassion – Prejean repeatedly showed the depth of her commitment. – David

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

After reading The Warmth of Other Suns, which helped me understand America’s Great Migration and made me feel like I had Black family in the south, I pledged to read anything Wilkerson writes. Caste applies a new and global historical lens analysis to America’s systemic racism, which helps us see a way forward: any artificial hierarchy has got to go. Maybe learning that Nazi Germany studied America’s Jim Crow laws and one-drop rule and found them too extreme will shake up those “critical race theory” opponents who claim that things were “not that bad.” Lots of human stories are part of this ultimately hopeful analysis. – Marie-Susanne

Bernard Malamud: The Complete Stories

In the company of Flannery O’Connor and John Cheever, Malamud was one of the great midcentury short-story writers of the United States. His strength is in relating the anguished struggles of Jewish people – shopkeepers, peddlers, students – in rundown New York City neighborhoods. The stories set in Italy and a couple of sixties experimental pieces fall somewhat flat, with the notable exception of a heartbreaking account of a man who loses the love of his life by denying his Jewishness. But when he writes about Jewish New York, the world he knew best, Malamud captures the poignancy of human existence as well as anyone ever has. – David

Earl Swift: Chesapeake Requiem

Hooray for Little Free Libraries! I never would have heard of this superb book if it hadn’t appeared in one of our neighborhood bibliocabinets. Combining history, sociology, and science with objectivity and empathy, Swift immerses us in a unique place threatened by both nature and society. The Chesapeake Bay shores of Tangier Island, Virginia, are eroding inexorably while modernity and mass culture eat away at its traditional bonds and way of life. Swift portrays a conservative, religious community that is suspicious of outsiders (sometimes to the point of near-paranoia, sometimes with good reason) yet ready to help neighbors in need at the drop of a hat. I also enjoyed learning about the art of crabbing, in fascinating detail. – David

Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship by Stan Tatkin 

Okay, this might not have been one of the best-written books I read this year, but it spawned a lot of productive conversations between me and DJV. According to our attachment styles formed in childhood, I am an island, David is a wave and we would do well to both try to be more like anchors for each other. Partnered folks, here are some questions to get you started:

• What’s our purpose as a couple?
• What principles of partnership do we both believe in?
• What do we do for each other that no one else could do?
  – Marie-Susanne

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales translated by Nevill Coghill

I’ll say it for the record – my favorite stories told by Chaucer’s traveling pilgrims are the ones featuring sexual and bathroom humor (especially the one about a restless young bride and a virile lodger who cuckold the elderly husband by telling him a ridiculous lie and getting him to play along). Other genres of Chaucer’s time make frequent appearances – mythological scenes, accounts of noble knights, cautionary moral tales. 

While his writing in all of these is skillful and inventive, surely as good as anything else being written at the time, they felt a bit stiff and dated alongside the earthy immediacy of the bawdy stories and the pilgrims’ banter. But Chaucer’s achievement was virtuosic, akin to a writer of our own day publishing a volume including historical fiction, humorous pieces, sci-fi/fantasy, and poetry (the entirety of Chaucer’s book is in poetic meter), all equally accomplished. And the vivid presence of the characters as people whose presence you can feel, despite the passing of many centuries, is the mark of both a great writer and a worthy translator.  – David

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