Kidzdoc Takes a New Approach in 2025, Part 1

Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you well in your reading plans in 2025. As for me, after several years of unsatisfactory efforts, whether due to reading a much smaller number of books than I had planned or not reading the books I genuinely wanted to, I decided late last year to try something different. I chose 25 books that sat in my personal library for years but have been left unread for assorted reasons, and I will read them preferentially this year. In addition, my idea of reading books from the Levant region was voted as one of the quarterly themes for the Reading Globally group, which will take place in the second quarter of 2025, and I have a large number of books in my library that qualify, not all of which I'll get to this year. I won't set a numerical goal for the year, as I value quality much more than quantity.

First, here are the books I've chosen to read preferentially this year, save for the books that fit the Levant region theme:

James Baldwin: Collected Essays by James Baldwin
Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time by Teju Cole
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Genomics and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver, & Traci Burch
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer
Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture by Ed Morales
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
My Struggle, Book 5 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté*
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith
Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science by Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD
Self-Care for Black Men: 100 Ways to Heal and Liberate by Jor-El Caraballo
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu*
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Tremor by Teju Cole*
W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis

*This book isn't in my personal library, so I'll borrow it from my local library.

Selected books from the Levant region from my library (I certainly won't get to all of them this year):

Egyptian Literature
     Alaa al Aswany: The Yacoubian Building
     Nawal El Saadawi: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor
     Bahaa Taher: Love in Exile

Israeli Literature
     David Grossman: More Than I Love My Life; To the End of the Land
     Amos Oz: Elsewhere, Perhaps; In the Land of Israel
     A.B. Yehoshua: The Extra; The Tunnel

Lebanese Literature:
     Elias Khoury: Children of the Ghetto Trilogy (My Name is Adam; Star of the Sea; ?)

Palestinian Literature:
     Liana Badr: Eye of the Mirror: A Modern Arabic Novel from Palestine
     Mahmoud Darwish: Journal of an Ordinary Grief
     Edward Said: Out of Place

Syrian Literature:
     Riad Sattouf: The Arab of the Future series*

Turkish Literature:
     Yasar Kemal: They Burn the Thistles
     Orhan Pamuk: My Name Is Red; Other Colors: Essays and a Story; Snow
     Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar: A Mind at Peace

*I'll borrow the books in this series from my local library.

As usual, and in keeping with my career as a pediatrician, I love to prominently display photos of children reading in the beginning of my threads.

Currently reading:

  

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray

January:

This thread is open for business!

Just setting down my cushion Darryl.

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race is definitely on my list to be acquired and read next year. Will look at your other reading goals tomorrow Darryl.

I will be interested to hear what you think of Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time .
There are three other books by Teju Cole in your catalogue. Have you read those?

I was impressed by Tremor and look forward to read your opinion.

>5 Caroline_McElwee: Welcome, Caroline! I'll probably read The Code Breaker in the first quarter of the year, as the topic is of great interest to me.

>6 edwinbcn: Hi, Edwin! Apparently I've only read Open City, to my surprise. I'm glad that you liked Tremor; it won the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, which is how I heard about it.

Interested to read your thoughts on Dinaw Mengetsu. I've heard great things about his use of language - will probably explore his work later in the year as well - as your list of books from the Levant. I've always loved Darwish's poetry and Said's Orientalism, but I have a lot to learn from the literature in this part of the world.

Happy new thread and new year, Darryl. I've dropped a star here.

I have read 4 from your list in >1 kidzdoc: and really want to read the 2 you mentioned by Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk. Over the last year or so, I have done some online webinars with both of them and am interested in reading their work.

I will set up my new thread on January 1st unless I can get my act together and do it sooner.

Your plan to read more intentionally from what you already own is what I set out to do last year but failed, for a number of reasons. It will also be my number one goal this year and I hope to do better.