Mining For Hidden Gems

This was a good year for reading. There was the pandemic of course and the heightened awareness that we don’t really know a whole lot about each other and about our country’s history, which prompted even more reading. Then about a month ago I tore my Achilles tendon which resulted in surgery and forced confinement on a couch. I’ve read 96 books so far (my goal is 100 before the year),  from a 622 page tome on the Great Migration to 32 page picture books. I’ve travelled back to Venezuela,  Iran and Texas -  places intimately connected to who I am. I read to understand and be understood. I also read to escape the news, even if for just a few hours. Here is a list of my top ten: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson - Over the past twenty years, I’ve read as many books as I could about the Black experience in America. As an immigrant, I realized a long time ago that I know very little about this part of America and even less about how it has impacted the rest of American history. If I were to recomm