• GHOST
• by Jason Reynolds
• [rated by PBS readers as #97]
• 180 pages

Forget what I said. I never even looked for the Baldwin book. Didn’t have to. On account of my opening the cover of Ghost (which I already had from my last pick) and reading the first two pages.

Two pages in, I was already in love. This guy’s phrasing, after a month of pouring over arcane Little Women, feels so refreshingly familiar and funny that it feels like you just bumped into your best friend and hunkered down for your best talk in years.

And remember, this is only after two pages, ya’ll.

But I was already thinking – this could be a thing!

6/11/19

Finished it! Already! And all the way through I was and am head over heels.

I had never heard of this book, Ghost, largely due to my ignorance of the young adult book market entirely. But that ended up giving me a special plus. I knew absolutely nothing of this genre, which enabled me to waltz past my fear that I would never have a sense of discovery while I was reading something on this list. Nothing would seem new. But not so with Ghost. New and new again. I felt it. I bathed in it!

In the way that so many masterpieces demonstrate, when an art form is done with greatness, it always feels new.

I loved the voice of the lead character, Ghost. At first, I thought I loved him due to sheer escape from the language of Little Women. But that would be an understatement and would sell him short. I loved Ghost throughout. I became used to him and still loved him!

He was original. He never commented on his life; he lived it. He was funny, he was heartbreaking and he was real. A young kid from a shattered childhood discovers the track team. But in author Reynolds’ hands, it is not what Ghost spends any time thinking about. He is living life, clinging to the small sense of community that he has. And if all of this sounds a bit melodramatic, it truly isn’t. This book made me feel light as a feather.

Ghost is an absolutely beautiful little gem of a tale. Not one extra word in the whole thing. All the elements are introduced as economically and straight forwardly as they can be, yet all the nuance is right there, if the reader only fills it in. I could see how completely easy to read this would be for a kid. It flows. It could teach you flow.

From the beginning of my bigger project, I have asked myself if I would go back later and follow up on any of these writers. Would I read the next Outlander? Maybe, but the 800 page length is a buzz kill for anyone not deeply in love with the whole thing. With other writers, I wouldn’t necessarily read them again just from having read this one book, unless the individual title held something for me.

But Jason Reynolds and Ghost and the series that follows, I may well go back to. I have never read a first person narrative where I enjoyed the character more.

Of course, there is a huge calling coming from this story to young, new readers. Ghost represents so many kids. So. Many. He has seen horror and he deals with it as straight on as he can.

I used to get on my soapbox and say that if I ruled the world, kids would read books that really spoke to them. If you had a kid in high school, for instance, that had a drinking problem, give him Bukowski! Better than hoping he’ll last through Beowulf!

And if I did rule that set world, Ghost would be on that reading list. As would Oscar Wao, to be fair.

This book will stay with me. I really, really loved it. The utter elegance and economy with which it was written so appealed to me.

Now I need to pick a new book – though I’m off to Italy for a week and have promised myself that I could read only fun, trashy things while I was gone.

Still. As I have now realized about myself, there is no choice in it for me. I must pick the next book of this project now, even to have it wait for me till I get back.

But, just before going, thank you again to Jason Reynolds. You are a rock star! You are my kind of writer.

6/28/19 – JUST BACK FROM ITALY

Well, I took my first reading break from this little project. As I mentioned earlier, I promised myself that on my trip to Italy, I could read anything I wanted.

And so I did. First, I read a Jack Reacher thriller. I could swear that every book of Lee Child’s Reacher series is the same book over and over but the pacing is so fast that I will always pick up another one and race through it.

I read Sheila Nevins’ (head of HBO and the most prodigious documentarian of our time) autobiographical series of short essays. Pretty darned forgettable, by the way. All about face lifts and who her son dated and their mother. Uh, kinda would have liked a bit more about what makes her special, like, notably, all her work at HBO and her documentaries? Huh? Maybe a little bit about that? Sheesh.

Then came Antoine Laurin’s Red Notebook, I love his romantic sweet Parisian fables. Loved the President’s Hat and this was sweet too.

Followed that up with one of my favorite mystery writers, Lawrence Block. Block can write absolutely anything but I particularly love his funny series about a burglar named Bernie Rhodenbarr. This one was called Burgler in the Closet and it made me laugh out loud more than once.

Now, I’m a reasonably funny person and when books have quotes on the sleeves saying they are hilarious, I am skeptical. And I’m usually right to feel skeptical. But this delivered the goods and was a fun romp.

Ended up with Death on the Riviera, an older mystery from the 50’s that was rediscovered and repackaged and that I bought a year or two ago in Santa Cruz on my annual writing week. Fun. Not unbelievable but a sweet little slice.

But I don’t want to disappoint you and make you think that I suddenly changed my ways and hadn’t picked the next book from the PBS list yet. Nah. I am a creature of habit. I had it picked out right away, that night.

Though it seemed like an amusing enough title that I picked, I elected to leave it behind. My War & Peace fears allayed with my next pick – for the time being! – this next title seemed like the perfect book to ease back into reading these higher browed books, so I was happy to think about coming home to it.

Besides, I reasoned, if I read it on the trip, then I would have to come home early just to pick the next title. And great honk, I was only gone for a week!