Donna Leon’s “The Girl of His Dreams”—like most of the Commissario Brunetti detective mysteries—is an eye opener, asking questions that cannot always be answered.
Installment #24 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.
Second Story Books, now in its 52nd year of operation, is a national treasure. The name comes from the store’s original location, a small second-story shop in northwest Washington. At one point Second Story had brick-and-mortar locations stretching from Alexandria to Baltimore, but with the coming of the internet owner Allan Stypeck consolidated into two locations: the Dupont Circle store at 20th and P Streets NW and the Rockville store at 12160 Parklawn Drive in Rockville, Maryland.
I’ve always frequented the Dupont store, first finding this gem when I began work in 1997 just across the circle at 18th and Mass Avenue. It is always a dream to explore, as the titles change frequently and one has options in a range of genres from inexpensive paperbacks to rare first editions.
As noted on the website, Second Story Books has “frequently been cited as one of the best bookstores in America by national and regional magazines, newspapers and numerous consumer polls.” Second Story Books was also listed by USA Today as one of the ten best used and rare bookstores in the country. Entering their next half century, the shop is also known as a co-sponsor of PBS’s nationally acclaimed quiz show It’s Academic.
I visited Second Story again early in October on the hunt for a good murder mystery as part of my Hallowe’en celebration. I found a small paperback from a writer I enjoy that fit in a travel bag. In reading another Donna Leon novel, I was killing two birds with one stone: adding to my list of mysteries for the month while checking off another installment in my quest to visit all thirty of the DC region’s independent bookstore. A perfect solution!
The Girl of His Dreams (2017) by Donna Leon is her seventeenth novel featuring Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti. The story begins when a friend of Brunetti’s brother, a priest recently returned from years of missionary work in Africa, calls on the Commissario following a family funeral. It seems that he is concerned that an acquaintance is being taken advantage of by an American-style Protestant sect seeking only his money. Of course, there is always the chance that the priest may not appreciate the competition. Brunetti, although not religious himself, decides to attend a service with his wife Paola. They are joined by Inspector Vianello and his wife in this somewhat comedic (for Leon) undercover operation. The author’s commentary and the conversations she gives her characters places her firmly in the skeptic’s camp when it comes to the role of the church in Venetian life.
However, this investigation is put on hold with the discovery one cold and rainy morning of the body of a young girl found drowned in a canal. Brunetti and Inspector Vianello are pulled into life in a gypsy camp as they work to identify the girl’s parents and answer troubling questions about her brief life and how she came to end up in one of the city’s waterways. Leon has the reader considering the treatment of nomads and refugees as well as different applications of the law with various groups.
As is often the case with Leon’s books, truth and justice do not always align. Brunetti is pressured by his superior, the insufferable Vice-Questore Patta, to protect the middle and upper class citizens of the city, and he is once again helped in his navigation of Patta’s many moods by the Vice-Questore’s wily assistant, Senorina Elettra Zorzi. The name of the book comes from the role the young victim plays in Brunetti’s interior life. As the Commissario moves closer to the truth in both investigations he has to be satisfied in the end with some form of rough justice rather than depending upon the letter of the law. Paola, as always, helps him through these troubling episodes.
Leon is not everyone’s cup of tea. But I count myself among her fans who appreciate how her love of city, family, and humanity helps Brunetti—and eventually the reader—find a way in an unjust world. The Girl of His Dreams is both eye opening and thought provoking as we are faced with questions of who belongs and why.
The third installment in the Thursday Murder Club series was as charming and delightful as the first two. My goal to squeeze in as many murder mysteries as possible this October—in preparation for Hallowe’en—continues.
At a recent dinner party I attended, the participants were describing ways they were reinventing their lives as they grew older. Reinvention is also at the heart of the delightful Thursday Murder Club mystery series. I was introduced to these septuagenarian sleuths by my friend and Brilliant Reader Barbara during the pandemic, and I’m working to catch up.
The Bullet That Missed (2023) by Richard Osman is the third installment of the five book Thursday Murder Club series. It quickly becomes clear that Osman’s books are best read in order, as the reader is expected to have absorbed events from the most recent books to fully appreciate the fast unfolding action. Once again we return to Coopers Chase, a high-end peaceful British retirement village on the grounds of a former convent. The four residents turned septuagenarian sleuths meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes from old police files. They are now looking at a ten-year-old cold case which leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers.
Ex-spy Elizabeth Best; Joyce Meadowcroft, who retired after a career in nursing; the tattooed former union organizer Ron Ritchie; and Ibrahim Arif, an Egyptian-born semi-retired psychiatrist make up the Thursday Murder Club. The contractor Bogdan Jankowski—who likes to play chess with Elizabeth’s current husband Stephen—PC Donna De Freitas and DCI Chris Hudson are also important returning characters.
The case turns hot when Elizabeth and Stephen are kidnapped and she is given a mission—kill or be killed. We also have returning foes, including a local drug dealer who likes to play games with the police and is now in a prison cell complete with espresso machine. Because this is the Thursday Murder Club, an upmarket spa and a penthouse with a floating swimming pool set high above the streets of London also figure into the mix.
I turned once again to Osman as part of an October full of murder mysteries to prepare for Hallowe’en. And he did not disappoint. There are the expected twists and turns that are as surprising as the final outcome. As is true with the first two installments in Osman’s series, The Bullet That Missed compels the reader to turn page-after-page. Getting to the conclusion is always fun and pleasurable.
As the New York Times review noted, “The quartet of aging amateur sleuths . . . remain wonderful company.” I can’t wait to dive into the next adventure of the Thursday Murder Club in the coming months!
More to come . . .
DJB
NOTE: A movie version of this series is now streaming on Netflix with a fabulous cast, including Helen Mirren as Elizabeth.
I found The Bullet That Missed at People’s Book in Takoma Park. For my review of the bookshop, see Installment #2 of my 2026 DC-region independent bookstore visits series.
Photo of Englefield, the setting for the movie version of the Thursday Murder Club, via Wikimedia Commons.
A new book on the bridges of Washington, DC—a treasure found at Kensington Row Bookshop—brings to mind the way that both books and bridges reach across gaps and make unexpected connections.
Installment #23 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.
Books connect readers across time, space, and cultures in ways unexpected, enlightening, challenging, and often delightful. They bridge gaps in our experience and knowledge.
I was thinking of these similarities between books and physical bridges while reading a recently published work I discovered in one of DC’s independent bookshops.
Last April Candice and I spent a delightful morning in the bustling downtown of Kensington, Maryland, a close-in DC suburb that’s just minutes north of our home in Silver Spring. The excitement of spending time in three independent bookshops—all located within two blocks of the heart of town and each with staff passionate about books and the sharing of their treasures with the public—whetted my appetite for undertaking visits to all 30 independent bookstores in the DC region over the course of the year.
Kensington Row Bookshop was one of those morning stops in April and I’ve now returned for further exploration on two other occasions. Each visit found me perusing—and buying—from an intriguing mix of new and old books that connect readers across time and from around the globe. The small rooms that make up the shop create a cozy atmosphere that encourages lingering and sampling. Owner Elisenda Sola-Sole is warm, welcoming, and knowledgeable about her collection.
Elisenda provided me with helpful suggestions and was eager to put the right book into my hands. On a recent visit we spent time discussing the mix of local authors featured in a prominent display. One in particular piqued my interest. And yes, it was that book about bridges.
The Bridges of Washington, D.C.: A History & Guide (2026) by Bob Dover is a treat for lovers of the city, architecture and engineering aficionados, history buffs, and just about any resident who spends time on the streets, in the parks, and crossing the rivers and creeks that make up the capital city’s unique landscape. Dover is a geologist with decades of experience studying the role geology and topography play in influencing human settlement patterns, architecture, and historic events. This perspective is evident from the book’s earliest chapters, when Dover reminds the reader that Washington, which sits on the Fall Line, straddles the boundary between two distinct geological regions: “the crystalline bedrock of the Appalachian Piedmont and the soft, unconsolidated sediments of the Coastal Plain.” This location with two different physical settings for bridges, provides many opportunities where connections across rivers, streams, and marshland are needed.
Historic postcard of the William Howard Taft Bridge carrying Connecticut Avenue across Rock Creek Valley
In Washington we can find tall, imposing bridges such as the William Howard Taft Bridge carrying Connecticut Avenue across Rock Creek Valley; small, picturesque bridges such as the historic Boulder Bridge in Rock Creek Park; the sculptural Woodrow Wilson Bridge carrying beltway traffic across the Potomac near Alexandria; and the recently completed modernist Frederick Douglass Bridge that now graces the Anacostia River.
The oldest bridge in Washington is the small High Street Bridge in Georgetown. Built in 1831 and restored as part of the creation of the C&O Canal National Park, this stone bridge on what is now Wisconsin Avenue between the short section from M Street to the Potomac River is a delight for the eyes from both street and canal level.
Dover takes the reader through the historical framework of DC’s bridges, providing information on connections, infrastructure, and the impact of the McMillan Commission and the City Beautiful movement of the early 1900s. He then provides specific looks at bridges in areas such as the Potomac River, C&O Canal, Anacostia River, Rock Creek Park, Rock Creek and Potomac Parkways, and Rock Creek’s tributaries. He ends with a short chapter looking to the future projects on the boards.
While the book is a fascinating read as a whole, it is also useful as a guide for when one moves around the city. This is a good work to stick in a backpack or the glove compartment of the car for reference when passing over a connection—such as the beautiful William Howard Taft or Duke Ellington bridges—for either the first or the hundredth time. I guarantee you’ll learn more about the city and its wonders thanks to Bob Dover’s thoughtful work.
More to come . . .
DJB
Photos of High Street (now Wisconsin Avenue) Bridge in Georgetown by DJB. Built in 1831 to cross over the C&O Canal, it is the city’s oldest bridge. Other photos of the Duke Ellington Bridge, the William Howard Taft Bridge, and the modern Frederick Douglass Bridge are via Wikimedia.
Five books at a minimum. Every month. A variety of topics from different genres. Here is the list from September 2026.
Martyr! (2024) by Kaveh Akbar is an astonishing debut novel by a talented and daring Iranian-American poet, author, and teacher. The storyfollows recovering alcoholic Cyrus Shams as he “wrestles with difficult questions of how to be an artist, an Iranian man, and how to give your life (and death) meaning.” Cyrus came from Tehran to live in Indiana with his father after his mother, Roya, dies. He uses his wild dreams, art, addiction, and sex to try and forget about the ache in his heart and the feeling of death that both surrounds and calls to him. Friend and sometime lover Zee points Cyrus towards an Iranian artist named Orkideh who is dying of cancer and—in a final piece of performance art—is talking about death with anyone who will visit her at the Brooklyn Museum. Their conversations, along with her story and her secrets, bring Cyrus to fully face his art, life, and death. Akbar’s compelling language, the multiple voices, the weaving of contemporary and historical text, the very subject matter about the meaning of life and death all come together in a way that is fresh and funny and savvy and sad all at the same time.
The Fifth Year (1951; translation from the German in 2026) by Marlen Haushofer is a novella that follows a single year in the life of a five-year-old girl, Marili, living in the Austrian countryside with her grandparents. We encounter Marili, her melancholy grandmother, and her calm and warm-hearted grandfather in the heart of winter. She wakes to a snow-covered meadow, a thick cap of snow on the windowsill, and the sight of continued snowfall. “The child felt as if nothing had ever existed but snow and winter,” Haushofer writes, providing the reader with the first hint that the author truly understands the way life unfolds to a five-year-old. Marili’s parents were killed in the war and she must face the world guided only by her grandparents and her own curiosity. In scenes from each season of the year Haushofer shows us, in simple yet evocative prose, how young Marili faces both the day-to-day and eternity. One critic has described The Fifth Year as “a window into the singularity of consciousness,” an apt description of a work that is deceptively simple yet full of wisdom, wonder, sadness, danger, and joy. Just like life.
Lives of the Saints (1985; republished in 2026 by the New York Review of Books) by Nancy Lemann is unique in its voice; in its digressions; in its look at life in New Orleans, the deep South, and America. Louise Brown—the narrator who stands in for the author and an “exquisitely rendered basket case”—has just returned from four years in a New England college and finds herself immersed once again in “New Orleans society’s ‘wastrel-youth contingent.’” Her focus is on Claude Collier, a son of one of the city’s old families who is deep into his personal period of wasted youth. Claude and Louise are at the heart of this “tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another.” These two people are—as Mrs. Collier describes them—“always yearning after vague things. You cherish illusions.” Louise asserts that “Nuts made life worth living.” This lovely, nutty book (Walker Percy) is proof of that maxim.
Genesis: A Beginner’s Guide to the Beginning (2026) by Amy-Jill Levine is the tenth in her series of “Beginner’s Guides” that examine Biblical stories, liturgical seasons, miracles, and specific books of the Bible. With her typical deep theological insight, broad cultural knowledge, curiosity about the multiple meanings texts invite, and accessible writing, Levine (known as AJ to friends) leads readers on an exploration of stories we all think we know. She finds herself in conversation with God “from the affirmative ‘love the creation, with everything very good’ to the questions: Why put temptation in the garden? Why not accept Cain’s offering? Why flood the world?” Her conversations lead to more questions, both hers and ours. This short work is easy to digest but its good taste and satisfying feeling linger long after the meal is complete.
The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels (2018) by Jon Meacham was written to help us navigate the current divisiveness that speaks to our fears by looking back into American history at other times of conflict and political warfare. The book was conceived and created following the alt-right march in Charlottesville in August of 2017, an event that shook the nation and exposed the ugly stain of racism that has always hovered, in the best of times, just below the surface in America. A believer in the great truth found in William Faulkner’s observation in Requiem for a Nun that “The past is never dead; it’s not even past,” Meacham asks his readers to look at the ongoing American battles over power and race and history to put today’s events in context. This history, Meacham argues, provides guidance on ways to respond to the reactionary forces that would turn back the clock on the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005) by Tom Standage is a delightful and thoughtful way of seeing history through a different lens. In this case the author divides world history into beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola ages. While it may sound frivolous, Standage has important points to make about how our tastes for beverage evolved and why that drove major changes throughout the world. As humans moved from hunter-gatherers to agriculture our ancestors began to cultivate grain. That led to storage, which led to fermentation and beer. Add the creation of crockery and humans finally had an alternative to water, which six millennia ago was the only beverage available. Around 4000 BCE, human beings learned to stick straws into big, communally shared beer vessels. And as we discover throughout this work, once a new drink is created, our world changes. “When you next raise some beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, or Coca-Cola to your lips,” Standage writes, “think about how it contains more than mere alcohol or caffeine. There is history, too, amid its swirling depths.”
WHAT’S ON THE NIGHTSTAND FOR OCTOBER (Subject to change at the whims of the reader)
I will not read all of these books in October. And I do have at least three books (not shown here) from my independent bookstore crawl that I will need to read and review this month to stay on track for a year-end completion of that quest.
However . . . October is the month for spooks and goblins, so I hope to read at least five murder mysteries before the 31st to celebrate Halloween. I’ll chose from this list. Please let me know if you have favorites among these options:
“A wealthy bachelor drops dead at a ball and a young lady takes on the decidedly improper role of detective.” The first of my murder mysteries for the spooky month of October.
In anticipation of Hallowe’en I’m reading as many murder mysteries as I can squeeze in during October. By the time the actual day rolls around I should be suitably prepared for all the ghosts and goblins that show up at our door.
To launch this delightful spin through detectives—both amateur and professional—and the mayhem that seems to follow in their wake, I began with a recent parody of the classic English cozy mystery*—this one of the closed door variety.
A Most Agreeable Murder: A Novel (2023) by Julia Seales is the debut for a writer who seeks to be Jane Austen with a modern twist (of the knife). Swampshire, where this tale is set, is the easily identifiable small English township. However, here there is a strict code of conduct for true ladies. As the publisher notes, Beatrice Steele—our feisty and passionate heroine—“is terrible at needlework, has absolutely no musical ability, and her artwork is so bad it frightens people. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life.” But Beatrice harbors a secret: “She is obsessed with murder. Not the act of committing it, but the act of solving it.” She especially loves trying to solve mysteries published in the crime column in the London papers written by the famous detective Sir Huxley. “If anyone in her etiquette-obsessed community found out, she’d be deemed a morbid creep and banished from respectable society forever.”
The very eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend Swampshire’s annual autumnal ball. Beatrice’s mother, Mrs. Steele, hopes he will use the event to become engaged to our heroine’s younger sister Louisa and thus save the family home from the hands of their despicable cousin, Martin Grub. (Swampshire. Croaksworth. Grub. You are getting a sense of the level of the humor here.) Croaksworth arrives with Sir Huxley’s former assistant, the disgraced Inspector Drake, in the middle of one of Swampshire’s interminable hail storms, dances a bit, plays some cards, has a drink, and falls over dead from poisoning. Beatrice and Inspector Drake form a highly unlikely partnership to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the murderer from among the hosts and guests who have been locked in the old manor house to wait out the storm.
Jane Austen fans who look for the occasional spoof of the genre will probably enjoy this book more than the casual murder mystery aficionado. I fall into the latter category. It wasn’t until the book’s final third, when Seales stops trying so hard with the over-the-top humor and gets down to the real hunt for the murderer, that I became fully engaged.
As a light-hearted start to a month of reading murder mysteries, it was a nice, harmless way to set the stage.
More to come . . .
DJB
I found this book through a staff recommendation at Solid State Books. For my review of the bookshop, see Installment #21 of my 2026 DC-region independent bookstore visits series.
*I was unfamiliar with the term “cozy mystery” when I jumped into the murder mystery genre during the pandemic. Wikipedia has this definition:
“Cozy mysteries (or cosy mysteries) are a sub-genre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. Cozy mysteries thus stand in contrast to hardboiled fiction, in which more violence and explicit sexuality are central to the plot. The term ‘cozy’ was used to describe works in this genre by the 1960s, though it only gained widespread recognition in the late 20th century, when various writers produced work in an attempt to recreate the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.”
“An urgent book about the ways music can affirm an individual’s sense of humanity in dehumanizing circumstances . . . [It] writes the history of prisons into American music—a story as important as it is overlooked.”
Installment #22 in my series on the region’s independent bookshops.
Reston Town Center, while well beyond my regular haunts, was not an unknown entity when I began my visit to the DC region’s independent bookshops. It was during my time as a student in the 1970s and early 1980s—especially as I was obtaining a masters in Urban Planning—when I first learned about the New Town development begun in a Virginia cow pasture in 1964.
The center of Reston Town Village on a pleasant July day (photo by DJB)
But when I took the Metro toward the Reston stop in suburban Virginia, it had been a long time since I’d seen what Robert E. Simon—Reston’s founder—had created. My walk from the Metro station took me past tall, modern office buildings, across six-lane highways, over a pedestrian bridge crossing the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) Railroad Regional Park trail, and through a town square bustling with a noonday event.
Credit: Molly McMahon
I was traveling to visit Scrawl Books, which—although located in the heart of the Virginia suburbs—is not your average cookie-cutter bookstore. Owner Rachel Wood is a former children’s librarian and Reston resident with more than 30 years experience connecting books with people. It shows in the book selection. Scrawl has created “a welcoming space where people can browse, gather, and explore new ideas.”
The staff was friendly and welcoming, pointing me towards the local authors stack and other features on display. It was also heartening, in the midst of the sameness of suburbia, to find a shop that strives not only to reflect but also to contribute to the diversity of Reston and Herndon and the surrounding area. Which is how I came to find and purchase a new work that writes the history of prisons into American music, a book recommended to me just days before by my friend and Brilliant Reader Bob Stevenson.
The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music (2026) by Colin Asher examines how the police, courts and penitentiaries have shaped the nation’s musical culture through profiles of five artists: Lead Belly, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White and Tupac Shakur. Asher’s work is as unconventional as it is unexpected. In a thoughtful New York Times review, critic Dwight Garner writes that Asher’s “fog-piercing down-bound train of a book,” is “better than it had to be.” That last description comes from the depths Asher explores in each of the profiles. Had they been simply recitations of the facts of each artist’s involvement with the criminal justice system, it still would have been a useful book. But Garner explains the special appeal of this story.
“If these profiles had been straightforward, that might’ve been enough. But Asher is a calm and sophisticated storyteller who picks you up and sets you back down in places you didn’t anticipate. Like a good film director, he knows how to stagger his material. Minor characters rise, become major ones, then fall back.”
The author isn’t trying to write a definitive history of American prison music but instead focuses on five albums and the lives of the musicians who made them. Asher asserts that each has something distinct to say about the ways that policing and incarceration have shaped our musical culture. This book also tells the story of a criminal justice system “that has grown exponentially in size and cultural impact over the last century.” An uncharitable view could be that it is a criminal justice system run amok.
“But it’s also a revisionist history [writes Asher] that asks readers to reflect on the fact that genius exists within society, not in isolation—to recognize that their favorite folk song, or blues, may exist only because people sang it to one another on Southern prison farms decades ago; that the hands laying down a piano solo on a majestic bebop track were, likely, once bound by cuffs; that the singers strutting about on our grandest stages may only be enjoying success because someone in a uniform once gave them a pass; and that the forbidding prison walls rising beside our highways and within our cities are entrapping people who gather, when they can, to perform with as much talent, love, and passion as any group on the outside.”
We see the strength of Asher’s storytelling abilities right away with his in-depth study of the blues legend Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter‘s life and album “The Midnight Special” and Other Southern Prison Songs. Ledbetter’s arrests, incarcerations, and escapes over gun charges defined almost two decades of his life and the way his music has been viewed for almost a century.
Criminality became shorthand for Black authenticity in part because of the work of musicologist John Lomax, “who first recorded Ledbetter, shaped his ‘primitive’ image and made him perform in prison garb.” Lomax also reflected the widespread racism of his day and often treated Ledbetter shabbily. As Garner notes, the elder Lomax “employed the musician as his valet, took an outsize chunk of his earnings and confiscated his tips. He was controlling. He wouldn’t allow Ledbetter to sing the songs he longed to sing, ones that had no connection to prison.” It was only after Alan Lomax took over the work of his father that Ledbetter received some measure of respect and broader appreciation.
The life and career of bebop pioneer Elmo Hope (1923-67) was a revelation to me. It was also, as Garner writes, heartbreaking. No less a talent than Thelonious Monk called Hope “the greatest pianist on the planet.” Hope had spent his formative years woodshedding with Monk and Earl “Bud” Powell—two of jazz’s finest musicians.
Hope was a prodigy and had been training as a pianist since he was seven. Thanks to his mother his head was full of Bach and Chopin, but as a teenager his soul was lifted by new ideas about jazz. Over the course of a decade Elmo and Powell were part of jam sessions and performances that involved some of the greats of the jazz world—Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Monk—and that reshaped our understanding of the music.
But Hope was shot by police in Harlem, part of a long pattern of law enforcement violence against Blacks in the city, and although he was released after the police could not get their story straight his troubles with the criminal justice system were just beginning. Garner explains:
“Hope was put away on Rikers Island after a string of arrests stemming from his heroin habit. He was allowed to join the jail’s band, a virtual who’s who of New York jazz greats, and played alongside Sonny Rollins, who was sent to Rikers after a foiled robbery. This book lingers on how Hope and so many other musicians, including Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, were denied cabaret licenses because of their convictions, deforming their careers by rendering them unable to perform in New York City clubs that served alcohol.”
Asher ends this chapter with a review of Hope’s classic 1963 album Sounds From Rikers Island.
Johnny Cash is the third profile in Asher’s book and the only white man among the subjects. Cash was treated differently by the criminal justice system and was perceived more sympathetically by audiences than was the case with the four Black musicians. Although he had numerous run-ins with the law, he spent only one night in jail.
“The outlaw has a venerable place in country and folk music [notes Asher]. He—and it’s almost always he—is a free spirit. A moonshiner, a gambler, a bank robber, or maybe a jilted lover. He shoots people and hurts women, but he isn’t the sort of subhuman the press made Huddie Ledbetter out to be. The country outlaw is white, so his violent urges read as an expression of his prideful masculinity, not wickedness or debasement.”
Asher speaks of Cash’s work on prison reform, especially early in his career, and how he recognized the humanity of all incarcerated individuals. He considers what Black artists might have achieved if granted the level of compassion and forgiveness Cash received. “The obverse is worth considering, too—the great cultural loss the world would have suffered if Johnny had been treated the way his Black peers were.”
Some of Cash’s most successful records were recorded in prisons, including the iconic At San Quentin (1969).
Ike White (1945-2014) was another revelation for me. A soul and funk prodigy, White was sent to prison at 19 for the killing of a convenience store owner during a botched holdup. A warden at San Quinton encouraged White and other musicians to turn to their creative sides to help get through their periods of incarceration. As Garner notes in his Times review:
“White was discovered after he backed Eric Burdon, then with the band War, and the soul shouter Jimmy Witherspoon, during their appearance at San Quentin. White’s guitar work on the blues standard “Goin’ Down Slow” was so psychedelic and soulful that Burdon and Witherspoon, who recorded the show, included the live version on their 1971 album “Guilty!” (That album has been rereleased as “Black and White Blues.”)”
White recorded his own album in San Quentin, Changing Times. No less than Stevie Wonder wrote the album notes. But by the time White was able to release it, the psychedelic sound seemed dated and it received few reviews and fewer sales.
I knew the name and a bit of the music of rapper Tupac Shakur (1971-96), but Asher’s profile greatly expanded my horizons and appreciation for his journey. The story begins with his mother, Afeni Shakur, a political activist and Black Panther who spent two years in prison before her acquittal as part of the Panther 21. While locked up, she was pregnant with Tupac.
Afeni was a brilliant woman, someone who became a paralegal on the basis of her self-defense in the Panther 21 trial. She loved Tupac but feared that the state would come after him as they had her. Her attention to her child could be sporadic, but his education was unique. His musical tastes were idiosyncratic, ranging from folk records to Don McLean’s “Vincent” to the musical Les Misérables. When Tupac acted up, Afeni made him read that day’s New York Times aloud from the first word to the last.
Asher questions how much of Tupac’s “Thug life” persona was real. As Garner explains in his review:
“Asher links the themes in Shakur’s songs to those in Lead Belly’s and notes that, unlike Lead Belly’s characters, Shakur’s fought back.
Here, too, Asher cites the perceived connection between criminality and authentic Black expression. He suggests that Shakur, who served time for a sexual-assault conviction, wanted to escape his gangsta-rap image before Suge Knight, the head of Death Row Records, forced him back into it.”
A man who could transcribe Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” from memory and record the song Dear Mama doesn’t easily fit into stereotypes. While in a car with Knight following a prize fight in Las Vegas, Shakur was killed by gunfire from a passing automobile. He was twenty-five years old.
Tupac once said, “I was cultivated in prison, my embryo was in prison.” That statement of fact is an appropriate endpoint for this groundbreaking work.
Each weekday from October 5th-9th I’ll be posting a photo from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. In this final installment we’ll travel to Capitol Hill.
East City Book Shop located on Pennsylvania Avenue, SE in Capitol Hill was founded a decade ago to fill a gap left by the earlier closing of a beloved neighborhood bookstore. I walked down a few steps from the sidewalk and walked in to a light filled and airy space designed for people and books. Owner Laurie Gillman wanted to create a gathering space for book lovers of all ages in a neighborhood full of smart and curious people, and she has made that dream come true.
To highlight Banned Books Week 2026, East City—along with some other stores in the city—is hosting a “Banned Books Read-In.”
“East City Bookshop is thrilled to host a Banned Books Read-In in partnership with Libro.fm.
This Banned Books Week, we’re teaming up with @librofm and @SilentBookClub to host a Banned Books Read-In to protest book censorship. Join us onOctober 10thas we read and take action to fight book bans!
Stop by the shop, grab a book, and come read with us! Attendees will also receive a free audio copy of either Banned Together or How to Defend Books and Why.”
The shop posted covers of a number of banned books currently in the store, along with information on the Read-In.
While book bans take place across the country, the vast majority of recorded book bans this school year, according to PEN America, came from just two states: Texas and Florida. Both states have become blueprints for educational censorship, where special interest groups, state laws, and politicians have converged to pressure school districts to restrict and remove access to books. These states also have by far the most complete record of book bans, owing to public records requests from grassroots organizations, the Florida Freedom to Read Project and the Texas Freedom to Read Project.
East City Bookshop—doing its part this year in the fight against book banners—is one of the 30 bookshops I’ve visited as part of my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. To see the review that came out of the visit I made to the shop, check out Installment #14.
Each weekday from October 5th-9th I’ll be posting a photo from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Takoma Park.
My go-to local independent bookshop is People’s Book in Takoma Park. A quick one-stop ride on the metro and a short walk through Takoma’s Main Street district takes me to the welcoming confines of a store with helpful, friendly, book-loving staffers. You can easily find most major releases plus one can always order any book which isn’t in stock. More importantly, People’s reflects the progressive sensibilities of the Washington area’s only nuclear free zone, and that outlook on life is evident on the bookshelves.
For their 2026Banned Books Week promotion, People’s chose to use books that have been banned somewhere in the U.S. for their DC Books to Prisons promotion. I chose a copy of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys to buy and donate in my visit this week.
In thinking about Banned Books Week here in 2026, I can’t help but be reminded of the work the Nazi’s did in Germany before and during World War II to use books as weapons in the war on ideas. The U.S. Office of War Information commissioned a poster to fight back against the idea of banning books.
Title: Books are weapons in the war of ideas Artist: Broder, S. Sponsor: United States. Office of War Information Date: 1942 (Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash)
According to PEN America, the 2025-2026 school year includes many books and authors that have been repeatedly banned over the last five years.
“The most commonly banned book list for the 2025-2026 school year includes many notable repeat titles: Sold by Patricia McCormick; Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson; several titles by Ellen Hopkins like Crank and Identical; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; and Looking for Alaska by John Green.”
Each weekday from October 5th-9th I’ll be posting one or more photos from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Vienna, Virginia.
Jen Morrow founded Bards Alley in downtown Vienna in 2017 to “create a space where individuals young and old can gather to exchange ideas, receive personalized book recommendations, and discover new titles and local authors.” To highlight Banned Books Week 2026, Jen and the staff posted two photos on the store’s Instagram account. The first shows a display of banned books and invites readers to their in-store “Banned Books Read-In” which was held last Sunday. The second features Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred along with the staff admonition to “Read a Banned Book.”
The problem of book bans in schools is growing. PEN America notes that the 2025-26 school year saw the highest number of recorded bans in a single year since the organization began tracking book bans in 2021.
Bards Alley is doing their part to highlight the issue. The store is one of the 30 bookshops I’ve visited as part of my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. To see the review that came out of the visit my friend Merrill and I made to the shop, check out Installment #20.
Each weekday from October 5th-9th I’ll be posting a photo from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Old Town in Alexandria.
Old Town Books in Alexandria is a wonderful full-service bookshop in the heart of historic Old Town. I visited the store back in July with my friend and our associate rector at St. Alban’s Parish, The Rev. Sarah Taylor-Miller. My review of the store and the book I purchased there will probably come in November as part of my series on my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. But I wanted to use today to highlight a photo the store placed on their website to bring attention to Banned Books Week 2026.
Kim holding a stack of banned books from the Old Town Books banned books display (credit: Old Town Books)
To do their part in fighting book banning, each staff member at Old Town Books picked a banned or challenged book that they love for the store display all October long.
“A few highlights are Kim’s pick, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, which has been challenged due to its frank discussions of systemic racism. Fun Home, the graphic novel/memoir by Alison Bechdel that alternates between Bechdel’s upbringing and early adulthood as she navigates dysfunctional family, evolving gender roles, and her own sexuality. And Melissa’s YA choice, Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley that has been banned for its depiction of the historical injustices, including the trauma of Indigenous boarding schools.”
Read more about the work that Old Town Books is doing to support intellectual freedom at their website.
