What I'm Reading

Not a regret, exactly, but if I had my life to do over I'd keep better track of what I read.

I recently read the post-apocalyptic Earth Abides (1949) by George Stewart. Halfway through I realized I'd read it, but so long ago I don't know when. Just idly, I'd like to know.

Lesson--keep better track now. Looking at my "what I'm reading" posts even just from the past few years I'm reminded of books I've forgotten.

I'm usually reading several books at once, but right now I'm only reading one--you can see it on my desk, below:
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson

 

I don't have a reading list or plan--what I read is partly dictated by what books get donated to the store, which means I rarely read anything new. This is the first copy of Warmth that's been donated in  three years, even though the book's been out for eleven.

From a blogger I got a copy of Caste, the current book by the same author, which I donated to the George Floyd Community Library. I'd read a good review, and that was enough--kinda seeing it lived out in front of me right now.

People living or socializing or doing business at the encampment across the street from the store are the bottom of the social heap.
(And still no porta-potties.)
Hearing how other people talk about them is sometimes shocking. "Those people have no conscience," a coworker said.

This coworker is usually sympathetic.
"You don't really mean that, do you?" I asked sincerely.

He sighed and said, "No. I agree with you--they're people having a hard time. But I'm so tired of them!"

Yup. People having a hard time (with addiction, poverty, sexual exploitation, mental illness, etc.) and being treated as if they're trash are not necessarily nice people.
But sometimes they are.
One guy came in asking for a chess set: "I played a lot of chess in prison."

I do the toys, so I went in the back and found one to give him, free. He was happy--set it up on a card table across the street.

Later that day, I was getting a ride home with a coworker, and she was having a hard time getting out of the parking lot because the street was blocked with cars doing business or whatever (people buying drugs and sex, right in the open).
The chess player walked into the road to act as traffic cop for us, waving us through.

I park my bike in the back, behind the store--it is not safe out there. A motorcycle rider high on something crashed their motorcycle full speed into a parked car last week. An ambulance came and took them away....

Anyway, Warmth interests me because a lot of my Black coworkers have roots in the South--their parents or grandparents came up from Mississippi and other southern states in the Great Migration.
Not to Minnesota first, usually, but to Detroit or Omaha or Chicago, and I don't know anything about how that went.
So far it's a good read too.