Chris Patton’s 3 Book Recommendations
“Life was meant to be lived, so live it!”
Check out Chris’ writings at Chris Patton — Medium.
A retired state trooper, trauma survivor, person in recovery, Medium author, and activist, Chris Patton has been there, done that. From his thrill-seeking, risk-taking, adrenaline-junky younger years to his slightly less active yet purpose-driven middle-ages, Chris believes in the adage, “Life was meant to be lived, so live it.”
I met Chris when he hired into our local probation department. We worked together for a couple of years before he decided sitting behind a desk was much too mundane and instead applied to be a state trooper. Repeated trauma and back injuries leading to chronic pain eventually resulted in an medical retirement. That’s about the time he and I reconnected. Now our friendship consists of a love of quality coffee, the desire to help those suffering trauma and addiction, writing, and sporadic and quirky banter-filled texts.
So, when contemplating who might be a good person to suggest 3 good reads, I thought of Chris. In typical Chris fashion, he didn’t understand what I was asking of him. Of course, he started with a smart-ass reply followed by blaming me for poorly describing it. We finally reached understanding, at which time he did not disappoint. Chris is a reader and has an interesting personality and worldview, so I knew his recommendations would be interesting.
But, enough with the introductions. Without further ado, Chris’ top 3 book recommendations:
Book Recommendation # 1
Born A Crime, by Trevor Noah. Chris introduced this book to me by saying it’s “racial / cultural awareness delivered with articulate and intelligent humor.”
Amazon described it this way, “The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom.
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother — his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.”
Book Recommendation # 2
Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves by Laurel Braitman. Chris described it as “a powerful read. Touching and educational and humorous.”
Amazon asserted, “Science historian Laurel Braitman draws on evidence from across the world to show, for the first time, how astonishingly similar humans and other animals are when it comes to their emotional wellbeing.” Additionally, “Charles Darwin developed his evolutionary theories by studying Galapagos finches and fancy pigeons; Alfred Russel Wallace investigated creatures in the Malay Archipelago. Laurel Braitman got her lessons closer to home — by watching her dog. Oliver snapped at flies that only he could see, suffered from debilitating separation anxiety, was prone to aggression, and may even have attempted suicide. Braitman’s experiences with Oliver made her acknowledge a startling connection: non-human animals can lose their minds. And when they do, it often looks a lot like human mental illness.
Thankfully, all of us can heal. Braitman spent three years travelling the world in search of emotionally disturbed animals and the people who care for them, finding numerous stories of recovery: parrots that learn how to stop plucking their feathers, dogs that cease licking their tails raw, polar bears that stop swimming in compulsive circles, and great apes that benefit from the help of human psychiatrists. How do these animals recover? The same way we do: with love, medicine, and above all, the knowledge that someone understands why we suffer and what can make us feel better.”
Book Recommendation # 3
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. When asked to describe it, Chris simply said, “Patriotic.”
Not surprisingly, Amazon’s description was a bit lengthier. “Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.
Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online―a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.”
Enjoy the reads! Until next time fellow readers and writers.
