Some Ideas for Those 2016 Reading Resolutions

New Year's Eve is around the corner, so I'm coming up with reading resolutions for 2016. My list of want-to-read books is based on reviews, past experience with an author, or just personal interest. For nonfiction, I'm looking back to some great 2015 books that I meant to read but somehow missed. Leading the list is the award-winning Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, an intelligent autobiographical and historical meditation, as told to his son, about racism in America. And from New York Times book critic Janet Maslin's 2015 recommendations, I'm picking up two more biographical histories: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (on my book club's reading list, too) and The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy by Henry Hemmings about a British "mad scientist" working on World War II covert strategy, which has the unbeatable teaser: "Only now, following the release of previously classified documents by MI5, can this man's extraordinary story be told in full." When it comes to fiction, I'm looking forward, however, and my thanks to The Washington Post for recommending a bevy of new novels releasing in 2016. From a long list, I'm cherry-picking The Man Without a Shadow by best-selling Joyce Carol Oates, about a neuroscientist who falls in love with the famous amnesiac subject of her research, coming out in January. Because I loved Yann Martel's The Life of Pi, I'm looking forward to the February release of The High Mountains of Portugal, in which Martel weaves together three tales that are part quest, ghost story and contemporary fable of love and loss. I'm also a Jane Austen fan, so I'm curious to read Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, a playful modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, when it comes out in April. You can't beat Stephen King for popular thriller fare, so if you've followed the saga of retired police detective Bill Hodges and his unlikely sleuthing allies through Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, you'll want to snap up King's End of Watch, the "spectacular finale" of the trilogy in June. For advice on making reading resolutions that you can actually accomplish, I'll pass along tips from the Huffington Post article "How to Make Non-Intimidating Reading Resolutions for 2016" at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/non-intimidating-reading-resolutions_5682e8abe4b0b958f65a9b9c

Inspiring Histories of Collective Vision

I am currently cruising through the Panama Canal. To prepare for the journey, I waded through David McCullough's National Book Award-winning tome The Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama Canal between 1870 and 1914. It is a story of delusion and determination, political treachery and cooperation, engineering feats and medical breakthroughs, tragedy and triumph, and the collective effort of historic figures like President Theodore Roosevelt as well as many thousands of unknown toilers. I finished McCullough's book amid the testy GOP and Democrat debates, as popular rejection of the political establishment propelled unlikely outsiders to the top of polls amid looming challenges to energy, environment, infrastructure and health technology. I found myself naturally longing to visit times when American politics was capable of the grand and visionary progress of McCullough's history (minus the gunboat diplomacy). I turned to my copy of Tom Wolfe's space-program tale The Right Stuff about another national effort that pushed the envelope of technology and individual heroism. I searched out the Hoover Dam saga told in Colossus by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hitzik, and the well-reviewed Empire Express, David Bain's sprawling history of the building of the transcontinental railroad. And I was reassured. All histories reminded me that America's great national projects have been born amid, and survived in spite of, political conflict and even outright skulduggery. If history is a guide, our thirst for common purpose toward uncommon achievement will survive spates of political aridity. For inspiration from McCullough's Panama Canal tale, see http://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Between-Seas-1870-1914/dp/0671244094