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Books to Read During the Pandemic

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“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” – Joyce Carol Oates

The prolific Jersey author might be onto something here. As Jersey City joins the viral effort of other municipalities across the country to defeat-by-retreat the coronavirus, more and more people will find themselves alone (or, in the current vernacular, “socially distanced”). But that doesn’t have to mean cutting oneself off from humanity. Books, as Oates eloquently notes, offer an opportunity for connection, for slipping into another skin or even another world — or for helping make better sense of one’s own.

The following titles, fiction and non-fiction, for adults and young readers might just help you thrive in the brave new world that’s currently causing all of us so much anxiety.

“A Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin. Want to escape into a rich, all-encompassing fantasy world? There’s no better place to lose oneself in than the dark magical world of George R.R. Martin (who hails from Bayonne, NJ). Although most people know of this work through the highly acclaimed HBO series, the book offers satisfactions (and complications) that the filmed shows for all their intrigue and brutality simply can’t match. There’s a reason this book won a bunch of literary awards and converted millions of readers (many of whom didn’t consider themselves fans of fantasy until they entered Martin’s world). And the good news is if the current restrictions on widespread social movement continue indefinitely, there are lots of follow-up volumes to this original work.

“Wherever You Go, There You Are” by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This is one of those rare self-help books that actually can really help you. Having sold almost a million copies since it was first published in 1994, this is the perfect book for these troubling times. Kabat-Zinn, a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, offers his plan for improving “mindfulness” through meditation. But as he’s quick to point out, meditation is not some weird cryptic activity (his words) but a scientifically established practice that can help reduce stress, improve cognitive function, and lead to greater awareness. The exercises he offers in the book can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time. You could do worse than to turn from the news of the world to the world inside of you and discover something new and something calming.

 

“Pale Rider” by Laura Spinney. It might seem counter-intuitive to try to take your mind off the current global virus by reading about a previous global virus, but science journalist Spinney details like a novelist the grim and gripping story of the 1918 flu pandemic (known colloquially as the Spanish Flu) that killed 50 million people worldwide. Her account of the lives touched and taken by the H1N1 virus (the same strain of flu that circulated a decade ago in a world much better prepared to deal with it) is sobering but riveting. For those feeling helpless in the current situation, reading Spinney will remind you of just how much more adept global society has become in diagnosing and dealing with pandemics no matter how dire things seem when you turn on CNN.

“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If the coronavirus has reminded us of anything, it’s that we’re all connected globally. Americanah, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, tells the story of two Nigerians, young and in love, whose hopes and desires lead them to take divergent paths to the United States and the U.K. They reunite years later in newly democratic Nigeria where they reckon with their respective pasts and reignite their earlier passion. There are epic, timeless elements to the tale as well as contemporary scourges like post-9/11 xenophobia and the indignity of being an “undocumented” person. It’s a book about what we give up to gain what we thought we always wanted; in our current cloistered climate of confinement, it asks us to re-examine what it means to be free.

“Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. Think you know the story? Read it again. Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole is the perfect tale for these uncertain times. Is it a metaphor for what happens when we lose control of our landscape? Is it a cautionary tale about how treacherous life is when previously established social controls are loosened? Is it a call to put anxieties aside and embrace the strangeness of the human experience? Is it a celebration of the diversity of our planet, a diversity we take for granted until we’re forced to see it through the eyes of our fellow inhabitants? It is in equal measure silly and surreal, terrifying and teasing, humorous and harrowing. And its mesmerizing cast of characters is as memorable as any to be found in Western fiction. Plus, your kids will love it.

Jersey City Books: A Buying Guide for the Holidays

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Books have always made great gifts – they’re easy to personalize, relatively inexpensive, and can even flatter the recipient. But did you know how many critically acclaimed books have been written about Jersey City, featuring Jersey City, or by those who call Jersey City home?

Below is such a list — with genres ranging from history to generation-spanning novels; from cookbooks to chapbooks; and from memoir to mystery.  Each one should reward any reader on your gift-giving checklist (though there’s no reason not to pick up a copy for yourself as well).

The Life and Times of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague (2011) by Leonard Vernon. Long regarded as one of the most powerful – and corrupt – U.S. mayors of the early twentieth century, Hague remains a mythic if divisive figure, a sort-of benevolent dictator who helped make Jersey City a modern and important metropolis. His progressive social reforms and his celebrated imperiousness (“I am the law,” he once quipped) get their due in this biography, which offers a balanced, even occasionally laudatory view of the iconic political boss. Vernon, a chiropractor from Laurel, N.J., has written a useful and highly readable overview of the man and the myth.

 

Lost in Jersey City (1993) by Paula Sharp. This novel, written by a former criminal investigator in the Jersey City Public Defender’s Office, chronicles the hard-luck adventures of a twice-married (and twice-disappointed) woman who moves herself and her two impish children from Louisiana to Jersey City with all the culture shock one might expect in such a jarring relocation. The novel, named a New York Times Book Review notable book in 1993, is by turns droll, tragic, and thoughtful, and protagonist Ida Terhune “in her mint-green pantsuit … and lopsided bouffant” is one of the more memorable fictional characters ever to traipse through Jersey City.

 

Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History (2001) by Helene Stapinski. This highly regarded memoir captures the gritty charm of Jersey City, which not coincidentally is the author’s hometown and the place where her writing career began (The Jersey Journal). Stapinski, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, and People, weaves a personal narrative filled with family members right out of central casting, living their lives in a city that emerges as perhaps the most distinguished, disreputable character of all. And you gotta love this for an opening line: “The night my grandfather tried to kill us, I was five years old ….”

 

Counting By Sevens (2019) by Ann E. Wallace. Some experiences seem to lend themselves more readily to articulation through poetry rather than prose. These are often intimate experiences, transactions among the mind, body, and soul. Wallace, a professor at New Jersey City University and a longtime Jersey City resident, has eavesdropped thoughtfully on the conversations we have with each other and with our inner selves, and the result is an astonishingly moving collection, poems that address the things that threaten the integrity of our bodies — politic and private. Her work addresses suffering and loss in their many incarnations, but this is no pity party in print. Wallace’s voice is one of defiance and ultimately triumph where years of pain and anger “gather into beads/of sweat wiped clear/with the brush of a sweaty/hand across my forehead.” The book is available at Word in Jersey City and online at the author’s website: www.AnnWallacePhD.com

Inspiralized: Turn Vegetables into Healthy, Creative, Satisfying Meals (2015) by Ali Maffucci. One of the hottest food trends in the last few years has been to “spiralize” – that is, turn fruits and vegetables like zucchini, potatoes, and pears into noodles. And the Jersey City-based Maffucci has emerged as one of the most popular proponents of this latest culinary twist. Her book (as well as her newsletters and website) has helped an increasingly devoted readership venture beyond traditional pasta to create a tasty and healthful low-carb alternative. As she notes in her first chapter, “Inspiralized is what your meal and you become — a healthy and inspired version of the original!”

Mary After All (2005) by Bill Gordon. This novel is one of the most “Jersey City” pieces of fiction you’re likely to ever come across, a book set against the city during the 1970s and chock full of hyper-local landmarks: “I’d run into him at Al’s Diner on Communipaw Avenue”; “She went to night school — Jersey City State College”; “We met at Snyder High”; “I drove down to the administration building on Montgomery … a nine-story green monstrosity.”  Gordon, who grew up in Jersey City, knows the terrain and knows it breeds survivors. That certainly describes the titular Mary, a survivor who frees herself from her past life thanks to some charmingly ethically challenged characters.

 

Jersey City: A Monumental History (2007) by Randall Gabrielan. “Cities need room to grow, and Jersey City did grow.” That modest observation from this stunningly comprehensive book of annotated photographs is brought to life by almost 150 pages of beautiful and artistic shots of Jersey City’s architecture. Spending time with this collection will engender a deep appreciation for the city’s eclectic and energetic physical presence. The photographs are organized by neighborhoods (Waterfront, Downtown, Bergen, the Heights, et al.) for easy access to the houses, parks, churches, office buildings, and statues that populate the landscape. Jersey City native Gabrielan has compiled a masterful inventory of the granite and gilded glory of his hometown.

Clockers (1992) by Richard Price.  One of the most powerful explorations of life on the margins in an urban environment (in the opinion of this critic), Price’s brilliant novel focuses on a cat-and-mouse game between a street-level drug dealer named Strike and a cynical, burned-out detective named Rocco. The novel became one of the inspirations for the widely acclaimed HBO series “The Wire” and was also made into a feature film by Spike Lee. Price spent a good deal of time in Jersey City researching the book, and it shows. While the action takes place in a town called “Dempsey,” characters cruise up and down “Kennedy Blvd.,” visit warehouses on “Rt. 440,” and run from the cops during spot raids on public housing projects. The book is dark and tough, and its beauty is perhaps surprising given the grimness of the world under scrutiny.

The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice (2006) by Chad Millman.  Numbed perhaps by the frequency and devastation of terrorist attacks regularly making the nightly news, few know of one of the most significant attacks on American soil that occurred during World War I; and fewer still know it happened in Jersey City. On July 30, 1916, an explosion caused by German saboteurs destroyed a munitions depot on an artificial island in New York Harbor known as Black Tom, that had been annexed by Jersey City and filled in with land and eventually made into Liberty State Park. The explosion destroyed millions of dollars worth of supplies and damaged the Statue of Liberty. Millman’s investigation traces the origins and aftermath of the attack, noting that “History is full of small sparks that become huge fires … whatever horrors had seemed impossible in 1916 were all too plausible in 1939.”

Young & Wicked: The Death of a Wayward Girl (2011) by Maureen Wlodarczyk. Anyone tempted to romanticize the past might want to spend a little time with Mary “Polly” Sexton, the tragic central figure in this compelling, fact-filled narrative. Wlodarczyk, an author, columnist, and genealogist with a deep knowledge of New Jersey’s past, traces the true story of one of her distant relatives who fell in love with Sexton and began a brief, tumultuous life with her that took the pair from Jersey City to Manhattan, where the 19-year-old Irish-American woman was found murdered in a Bowery flophouse in 1893. Wlodarczyk’s portrait of Jersey City in the nineteenth century is a vivid and bracing reminder that the immigrants who built the city were made of sterner stuff than we often recall in our gauzy, romanticized imaginings of life “back in the day.”