THE WASHINGTON POST • BOOK WORLD • SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010


12


Listening for her family’s untold stories


THE GRACE OF SILENCE A Memoir


By Michele Norris Pantheon. 185 pp. $24.95


Michele Norris, co-host of


NPR’s “All Things Considered,” grew up being told to “rise above” racial discrimination and keep her “eye on the prize.” She didn’t realize then that her Afri- can American parents were try- ing to do the same. In her mem- oir, “The Grace of Silence,” Nor- ris chases after a family secret revealed too late — that her fa- ther had been shot by a police of- ficer in Birmingham shortly af- ter being discharged from the Navy after World War II. Learn- ing of the incident years after her father’s death and long after other family members’ memo- ries of the event had faded, Nor- ris can only guess at how it must have haunted him for the rest of his life. She blends the story of her childhood — and her quest to fill in its gaps — with a wider view of Southern race relations imme- diately following World War II, a period often overshadowed by history’s focus on the Martin Lu- ther King era of the 1960s. “What’s been more corrosive to the dialogue on race in America over the last half century or so,” Norris asks, “things said or un- said?”Her struggle to answer that question becomes a power- ful plea to readers to doggedly pursue their families’ story lines. She reminds us that speaking candidly about race in America starts not at the president’s tele- prompter but at our own dinner tables.


— Lisa Bonos bonosl@washpost.com


Number of hours per week Internet users spend online


10 YEARS OF BOOKS Side notes 64%


A look at how reading has changed since the fi rst National Book Festival 2001


Number of people who attended the Book Festival


2010 30,000 130,000 estimate


Number of books sold by U.S. publishers


2.4 3.1 million million estimate


Number of e-book readers sold


e-what? 10.3


million estimate


Number of hours spent reading books per person, yearly


109 108 7


estimate 13 9-9-2001 STEPHEN VOSS


Michele Norris will discuss her memoir in the Contemporary Life pavilion at 5 p.m.


Bestselling hardcover novel in Washington


“Valhalla Rising”


by Clive Cussler,


described as “a schem- ing psychopath’s eff orts to corral the world’s oil market”


9-19-2010


“Getting to Happy”


by Terry McMillan, in which “the lively cast of ‘Waiting to Exhale’ returns 15 years later”


of print book buyers are women


of Democrats say book reviews make them want to buy books


30 million Number of trees


required per year to make books sold in the


United States 48% of e-book buyers are women 58% 41%


of Republicans say book reviews make


them want to buy books 24,000


Number of trees in Central Park


100 Number of


million


e-books expected to be sold by the end of 2010


of the books that e-reader users


48%


have downloaded were free


10.7%


decrease in reading speed of an Ernest Hemingway story on the Kindle vs. the print version


51%


of e-reader users read on their device daily


14-23%


of American computer users who may experience “computer vision syndrome” (eyestrain, headache, dry eyes and blurry vision)


of people have judged a book by its cover


52% Compiled by NORA KRUG, Designed by KRISTIN LENZ


SOURCES: Line 1: Library of Congress; LOC; Bowker; Wall Street Journal; Zogby; Zogby. Line 2: Book Industry Study Group; BISG; Green Press Initiative; Central Park Conservancy. Line 3: Washington Post; Forrester Research; Forrester; WSJ. Line 4: Veronis Suhler Stevenson; VSS; Jakob Nielsen; WSJ. Line 5: Harris Poll; Harris; Slate. Line 6: Post; Post; Zogby.


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