Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell, then you might also like these books and television shows suggested by our discussion group members:

• Anything by Bill Bryson, David Sedaris, and Tina Fey for similar writing style.
• Young adult novels Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt and Johnny Tremaine by Esther Forbes.
• Narrative nonfiction history titles The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered by Laura Auricchio, 1776 by David McCullough, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention by Catherine Drinker Bowen, Letters from an American Farmer by  J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust, and The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War by David Laskin.
• AMC drama TURN: Washington's Spies and HBO miniseries John Adams.

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan wins Pulitzer Prize

Last month's book, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan, one of our favorite books so far this year, has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. If you haven't read it yet, now would be the perfect time! You can join the discussion on the blog.

Learn more about this year's winners.

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell is not just a factual account of the Marquis de Lafayette's years as a General in George Washington's army during the Revolutionary War; it is also a reflection on the concept of America as a collection of united states.

Vowell, bestselling author of unconventional books that combine history and social commentary, and former contributing editor to the public radio program This American Life, uses American history as a lens through which to view American contemporary culture and society. In this book, she tells the story of the wealthy young French aristocrat who, at the age of sixteen, decided to join the Patriots in their fight for independence from the British monarchy. She covers as well his return visit to the newly united states, as an elderly man, to high acclaim from large crowds, in 1824. She says of Lafayette,

The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject--that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States--kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we the people have never agreed on much of anything. Other than a bipartisan consensus on barbecue and Meryl Streep, plus that time in 1942 when everyone from Bing Crosby to Oregonian schoolchildren heeded FDR's call to scrounge up rubber for the war effort, disunity is the through line in the national plot--not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washington's army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizen's pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbors, getting on each other's nerves is our right.

This passage is pure Vowell, blending accurate historical facts, pop cultural factoids, and pithy commentary with a cheeky, constructively critical tone. An interviewer for Slate, Jaime Green, noted, "Sometimes people think that veneration of the Founding Fathers and the American past is what patriotism is. As if to be patriotic is to celebrate and to worship." Vowell replied, "But our founders were really crabby people who were angry a lot of the time. I find it weirdly reassuring to think about these founders not as this wise generation that went extinct. They had their moments, and they certainly could do a lot worse, but they weren't perfect. . . . I think it's good to think about these overachievers' failures--their failures and their failings as men. That's when I identify with them." What do you think? Do you enjoy Vowell's approach to American history? Would you even call her work historical writing, or is it some other genre? Where would you shelve it at the bookstore or library? Do you like her writing style? If you are a fan of her spoken This American Life pieces, how do you think her longer written works compare?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Reminder: Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, to speak tomorrow at the Sottile

One of the most troubling and yet inspiring books we read last year was Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He will be speaking tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. at the Sottile Theatre as part of the Race and Social Justice Series hosted by the College of Charleston and the Avery Research Center. The event is free and open to the public. Click here for information.

We hope to see you there!

Readalikes: If you enjoyed March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Flannagan, then you might also like these other books recommended by our discussion group members: The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey, My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and Moby Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville.

March Not Fiction Book Discussions

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan is more than a memoir of a hobby or even an obsession; it is the story of one man's search for the meaning, purpose, and value of his very existence. Surfing is the vehicle for his existential quest.

Finnegan, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributor to other periodicals, has reported primarily on international conflicts and inequalities. In Barbarian Days, he examines with honesty and insight his passion for surfing. He has ridden some of the world's biggest waves--in California, Hawaii, the South Pacific islands, Australia, Indonesia, Asia, and Africa. Surfing is the constant as Finnegan moves down the line of his life, informing his development as a writer, a political thinker, a friend, a husband, and a father. After some of his initial, formative surfing experiences, he compares himself to Pip in Moby Dick, the cabin boy who jumps overboard and is rescued but has seen "God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad." This allusion evokes the themes of this great American novel, themes Finnegan also explores by examining his own life: duty and defiance, relationship and isolation, justice and inequality. Surfing, he says,

always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly interlaced with everything else. Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy. The surf was your refuge, your happy hiding place, but it was also a hostile wilderness--a dynamic, indifferent world. At thirteen, I had mostly stopped believing in God, but that was a new development, and it had left a hole in my world, a feeling that I'd been abandoned. The ocean was like an uncaring God, endlessly dangerous, power beyond measure. And yet you were expected, even as a kid, to take its measure every day. You were required--this was essential, a matter of survival--to know your limits, both physical and emotional. But how could you know your limits unless you tested them? And if you failed the test?

The young Finnegan sees in the best surfers on their best rides "long moments of grace under pressure that felt etched deep in my being: what I wanted, somehow, more than anything else."

What do you think? Do you have a long and complicated relationship with a dangerous activity? Why do you do it? What has it taught you about life? How did surfing open Finnegan's eyes to the world around him, especially its inequalities? Is there a correspondence between Finnegan's work as a war correspondent and his surfing? How does his relationship with surfing change over the years--physically, intellectually, ethically, spiritually? In the final pages of the book, Finnegan describes one of his last, manic days surfing Tavarua as an adult in what is perhaps another allusion to Moby Dick, to Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg. Inia, one of the boatmen who ferry Finnegan out to the waves, takes Finnegan under his care after a wave leaves him stunned and coughing blood. Inia is both a practical master of local wave knowledge and a lay preacher. He invites Finnegan to rely on his judgement, and he asks him directly about his trust in God's love. What does Finnegan learn from this encounter? How does Finnegan resolve his relationship with the fear line of his life? Does he find what he's been looking for?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann, then you might also like to read a couple of authors who Mann says influenced her photography and her writing, Marcel Proust and William Faulkner. You might also enjoy several books recommended by our discussion group members: On Photography by Susan Sontag, described by Sontag as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs"; Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan about American Indian portrait photographer Edward Curtis; and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, a novel set among the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. And if you want to learn more about Mann and her art, check out the two award-nominated documentaries about her work, Blood Ties and What Remains.