Although I grew up in California, my assigned studying at school didn’t supply a lot of a Golden State-specific schooling.
The solely books I keep in mind that have been related to California have been the youngsters’s novel “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” primarily based on the lifetime of a Native American lady who turned stranded on one of many Channel Islands, and two of John Steinbeck’s classics, “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”
My true California schooling has come from working as a reporter right here, and from making my very own approach via fiction and nonfiction about our huge and complicated state. (I simply completed “The Library Book,” by Susan Orlean, which provides a compelling historical past of the Los Angeles Public Library and libraries typically.)
Today I’m introducing what I’m calling the California Reading List, a mission of this article that’s supposed for everybody who’s on the lookout for their subsequent nice guide about California.
Readers have despatched in a whole lot of fantastic suggestions for the record, and I’ve been sorting via them (and requesting them from the library).
We’re beginning the record with the ten works steered most frequently by readers. Among them are:
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Wallace Stegner’s novel “Angle of Repose,” which received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972.
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“The Octopus,” by Frank Norris (1901), the story of a battle between California wheat growers and a railway firm.
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“The Dreamt Land,” from 2019, a deeply reported account by the journalist Mark Arax of California’s difficult relationship with its most treasured useful resource: water.
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“Tales of the City,” by Armistead Maupin, a 1978 novel (the primary in a collection of 9 books) that The New York Times has referred to as a “love letter to San Francisco.”
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“The Grapes of Wrath,” which was revealed in 1939 and, as many excessive schoolers know, follows a Depression-era household of Oklahoma farmers hoping to discover a higher life in California.
In the approaching months, I’ll hold including to the record, so be at liberty to electronic mail me at CAtoday@nytimes.com along with your selections and why you suppose they need to be included.
Here are the opposite 5 books that made the primary minimize, together with a few of what you shared about them, flippantly edited:
“Miracle Country,” by Kendra Atleework (2020)
“This memoir is impossible to pigeonhole. It is part coming-of-age story with heartbreaking family tragedies; it presents the troubling history of the Eastern Sierra, from the exploitation of Native Americans to the theft of precious water rights by an engineer whose work was crucial to the growth of Los Angeles. Kendra brings this beautiful part of California to life with expressive prose and spot on descriptive passages. I read her book after camping for two weeks along Route 395, and she showed me what I missed and primed me to return.” — Gary Moffat, Auburn
“Assembling California,” by John McPhee (1993)
“It’s a must to understand why California is the way it is — geographically, historically, culturally and socially. Perhaps especially for an Easterner, this book is an eye-opener, both to the past and to the future of this great state.” — Julia Sadtler, Philadelphia
“Mecca,” by Susan Straight (2022)
“I learned so much about the experience of immigrants and Mexican Americans in Southern California from this excellent book. It really exposed the hardships they face in everyday life trying to assimilate and survive.” — Joy Every, Oakland
“Season of the Witch,” by David Talbot (2012)
“I am a third-generation San Franciscan, and this is my forever book suggestion for friends from the city or new to it. It captures the soul of San Francisco and California while informing the reader of the intense history of the area from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. It shines light on politics, social issues and the impact our state had on pop culture.” — Katie Vestal, San Francisco
“Two Years Before The Mast,” by Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1840)
“An extraordinary telling of a young Bostonian’s journey as a sailor on a ship bound for California in the late 1830s. The ship was carrying food, goods to barter and finished shoes made from cowhides harvested from California ranchos.
“His descriptions of the early California coastline, with stops at San Diego Bay; Los Angeles (at the time, 30 miles inland, where the sailors picked up cowhides heaved over the cliffs by the locals); Monterey Bay; and San Francisco Bay, among other places, gives a glimpse into the rustic paradise our Golden State once was. In an afterword, Dana returns to a vividly and incredibly changed San Francisco. It’s a heck of a tale and a very worthy read.” — Ann Segerstrom, Sonora
Source: www.nytimes.com