What I'm Reading
Spring/Summer 2016
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante
The Art of Coaching, Elena Aguilar
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
The Best-Kept Teaching Secret: How Written Conversations Engage Kids, Harvey Daniels
The Door, Magda Szabo
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
Dumplin', Julie Murphy
The Turner House, Angela Flournoy
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, Gabriella Coleman
On Such a Full Sea, Chang-rae Lee
The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
Winter 2015-16
Everything Everything, Nicola Yoon
The Girl with All the Gifts, Mike Carey
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
Euphoria, Lily King
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
Prince of Shadows, Rachel Caine
Between Shades of Grey, Ruta Sepetys
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
Fall 2015
The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller
Sick in the Head, Judd Apatow
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
The End of Violence, Tom Drury
The Beet Queen, Louise Erdrich
The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Martian, Andy Weir
The Bassoon King, Rainn Wilson
An Ember in the Ashes, SabaaTahir
Feed, M.T. Anderson
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, Steven Sheinkin
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Part One, M. T. Anderson
Lair of Dreams: A Diviners Novel, Libba Bray
Americanah, Chimamanda Adichie
Rereading The City and the City, China Mieville
Summer 2014/2015
Here's what's on my reading list for the upcoming summer (so far...):
A Song of Ice and Fire Series, George R. R. Martin (I love Game of Thrones!)
Murder as a Fine Art, David Morrell
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
The Andalucian Friend, Alexander Soderberg
The Goldfinch, Donna Tarte
Hild, Nicola Griffith
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
In One Person, John Irving
Summer 2012
Here we go again! Here you'll find what I've read in past summers as well as what I'm reading this summer. This summer's list, as always, is ambitious. I've linked all of the book titles to amazon.com for more information.
As I finish a book, I sometimes include a summary of it here, especially if I think it's a book students would find intriguing or enjoyable.
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
Loved this one! A great mystery/pulp novel. A man's wife goes missing, and the rest of the novel is about his search for her. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill sappy Nicholas Sparks romance or predictable John Grisham-type thriller. Nope, this one is closer to Raymond Chandler noir than those popular authors. Think "Double Indemnity," "Chinatown," "The Maltese Falcon," or "The Big Sleep"--those great noir films set 1940s Hollywood where the women are tough broads, the men are hardened cynics, and the cops distrust everyone. You won't like a single character, though you'll momentarily find yourself liking each one of them--only to have them let you down again. This novel takes place in 2011 in Carthage, Missouri, and the references are all very modern--Facebook, YouTube, Nancy Grace and Katie Couric type anchors, and even a Johnny Cochran attorney-type thrown in for good measure...but the novel will still surprise you at every turn. Even when you think you've figured it out, the characters surprise you again.
The book is over 400 pages and it took me just a few hours to read it it's so involving....so now my list continues to grow because I think I'm going to have to read more novels by this author.
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
Unfortunately, this novel wasn't on my original list, which means I've simply added to the number of books I want to finish this summer! This book won the Man Booker Prize last year (Great Britain's equivalent to our National Book Award), and it's really amazing. The title reveals a lot about the themes of the novel--and even its plot. Another short novel--under 200 pages--this one is split into two sections. The first is a quick history of the narrator's school and university days, especially his relationship with school friends and a girlfriend. This section wraps rather oddly in a five page or so summary of the narrator's life after school, through marriage, fatherhood, divorce, work, retirement, and then it seems over. But that's when the second, longer section begins. The narrator receives a small amount of money from a will of the university girlfriend's mother, leading to a mystery of sorts. The real mystery is whether or not the narrator actually remembered the events of his childhood correctly, which, in turn, leads me to wonder if I've remembered the events of my own childhood correctly...and whether or not these events are ever actually over or not.
This is a philosophical novel, thin on plot, and even thinner on character development. It's not for everyone, but a good novel nonetheless.
Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward
Just finished this one over the weekend (June 1), and it's now Tuesday and I can't let go of these characters. I'm thinking about them and wondering how they're doing and wishing that I could meet them for the first time again. This novel won the National Book Award this year, a surprise winner over the favorite, The Tiger's Wife (a book I read last summer and just loved). Salvage the Bones is about the Batiste family and narrated by the only female member of the family, a 15-year-old girl who has just found out she's pregnant. Each chapter is a successive day counting down to a real-life event, Hurricane Katrina. Though the family lives in extreme poverty, the reader doesn't pity or even admire them--the individual characters are so well conceived and so thoroughly fleshed out that each of the brothers, the father, the narrator, and even the various characters who move in and out of their lives could be someone we know.
Esch, the narrator, is reading a summer reading assignment, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and she opens the door for herself and the reader to make comparisons between her family and the characters of mythology. She is stuck on the story of Medea, and this gives us a hint as to what the novel is about--love, betrayal, children, and parents. I would recommend reviewing the story of Medea before, during, or after reading Salvage the Bones, and I think you'll see Medea in Hurricane Katrina, China (Esch's older brother's pit bull), and perhaps to some extent in Esch herself.
Winter Garden, Kristin Hannah
I slogged through this one for the last few weeks. I'd heard really good things about it, but I had a really difficult time staying with it. I'd put this in the genre of "chick lit"--the intended audience is probably adult women, especially mothers, who have a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time to themselves. In the case of this novel, the protagonist is a woman in her mid-40s whose father has just died, whose sister has a romantic and adventurous career as a photographer for a National Geographic-type magazine, and whose mother has never been affectionate or particularly maternal but is clearly hiding a deeper secret. So the protagonist and her sister drag out a "fairy tale" of sorts from their mother to find out more about her.
Ultimately, I found the story a bit boring and there waaaaaaay too much description of the boring details of the protagonist's mundane life. I finally just skipped through about the last third of the book to find out the point of the fairy tale and called it good.
Under the Feet of Jesus, Helena Maria Viramontes
I picked up this book because an excerpt from the book appeared on this year's AP exam. At just over a hundred pages, this is one of the most challenging books that I've read recently. It's almost more like a poem than a novel. The speakers shift with little indication, the setting (particularly the time) shifts with little indication, and the plot moves in fits and starts. I highly recommend it!
The story is essentially a love story between two migrant farm workers in California. The protagonist, Estrella, is a legal immigrant though her mother is not, and her papers are kept in a cabin under a picture of Jesus--as her mother says, "under the feet of Jesus."
After you read this, you will never look at grapes or raisins or grapefruit or peaches or watermelon or lettuce or just about any other produce the same way again. Unlike The Grapes of Wrath, say, I don't believe the novel is intended to stir people to action. Instead, I see it as bringing a human face to the migrant workers who bring food to our tables.
A bonus for me is that much of the novel takes place in the community where I used to teach: Buttonwillow is a small town near Bakersfield, California, and many of my students were from that area. Some were the sons and daughters of the ranchers who owned the land and some were the workers.
The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, Jane Austen and Patricia Meyer Spacks
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
In One Person, John Irving
Ava's Man, Rick Bragg
IQ84, Haruki Murakami
The Interrogative Mood, Padgett Powell
The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Beowulf
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Summer 2011
What follows is a list of what is on my Kindle and a short list of what I plan to read this summer. As I complete a book, I'll sometimes throw a quick summary and criticism up here.
I'm now home for a few weeks! Had a great time in Louisville and Atlanta, but ready for a couple of weeks of relaxation before the next trip. That relaxation to me means the time to read! Whoo-hoo!
ONGOING: New Yorker, The New York Review of Books...
Interesting articles I've read recently include a report on the efficacy of anti-depressants (not really effective, as it turns out), and a series of essays by Jennifer Egan, Tea Obrecht, Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edward P. Jones, and Nabokov that appear in the June 6 issue of the New Yorker (those are all famous authors--google them).
currently reading: People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks; Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shtyngardt; Swamplandia!, Karen Russell; A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan; and In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Erik Larson
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling. (beginning of July)
So this is somewhat embarrassing. I read this immediately upon its release, but I think I was so anxious to find out if Harry survives that I sort of skipped over some rather major events. Among the events I didn't remember reading: Snape's memories, what the deathly hallows actually are, and the Dumbledore/Harry interlude near the very end. Seriously, what was I even doing if I missed these rather important events??!! I wanted to reread the book before watching the movie(s) and I wanted to wait and watch Part I of The Deathly Hallows until right before watching Part II. So, I've reread the book, watched Part I, and will finally watch the end of the movie series later this week. I must admit that I'm heartbroken it's over.
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett. (end of June)
While reading Heart of Darkness, one of my fellow readers recommended that I read this new book by Ann Patchett. It's sort of a modern take on Heart of Darkness. In this version, a pharmacologist ventures into the Amazon rain forest to find out what happened to a coworker who died suddenly while visiting a remote drug research facility in the Amazon and to check up on another researcher who's in charge of this facility. The researcher has discovered a tribe where women have children well into their 70s. Thinking that this could be the next big thing in drug research--a fertility drug for women of all ages--the company is very impatient to discover the progress on the research and how far they are from human trials.
I enjoyed this immensely, perhaps because I had just finished rereading Heart of Darkness. Instead of a comment on colonialism, this novel is a comment on the ethics of medical technology. Both are comments on human nature and the limits of knowledge. Just because we CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean that we SHOULD. In Heart of Darkness, the commodity was simply ivory; in State of Wonder, the commodity is the dream of immortality. There is a twist, something I won't give a hint about here.
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (middle of June)
I spent about ten days in Louisville, Kentucky, reading Question 3 of the AP Lit. exams. This meant reading about 1100 student essays about the role justice plays in a novel or play. Most of the essays were about the following books: Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and The Heart of Darkness. I've never taught Heart of Darkness (HOD), so I haven't read it since college more than 20 years ago. I decided it was probably time to reread it.
This is another example of a book that I didn't appreciate when I was younger and, truthfully, I loved it but I don't think it's a book that can be appreciated until we're older. It's just so beautifully written and so philosophical. All that it's about is a sailor who ventures into the Congo to retrieve a man who works for the same company. But it's really about the nature of humans--specifically, our darkest natures. It's a tough read. Sentence after serpentine sentence can lose a less patient reader, but sticking with those sentences reveals some of the most gorgeous writing I ever remember reading. Thankfully, I downloaded this to my Kindle. It's a short book, but I'm pretty sure I highlighted and noted at least half of it. The Kindle makes it much easier to organize and highlight those notes.
Check the review on amazon for more information if you're intrigued, but I'll leave this review at this: I have a new appreciation for why this book is considered one of the best novels ever written in the English language.
The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obrecht (completed June 6)
This is a novel I'd recommend to those who like "magical realism"--part fable, part family history, part history; this is a novel that is very difficult to explain. Essentially, there are three stories at its core. The main character, Natalyia, is a young doctor who has driven to an orphanage to help out. While she is there, she discovers that her grandfather, also a doctor and someone that she was very close to, has passed away from cancer. She then reminisces on some of the stories that her grandfather told her about his life. One of these stories is about a girl who lived in his village when he was small, the "tiger's wife." The other story is about a man her grandfather encountered at different times in his life, the "deathless man." The three stories--Natalyia's own encounters at the orphanage, the tiger's wife, and the deathless man--come together, but not necessarily in a way you'd expect. And it's no necessarily a neatly tied-up ending, either.
I like fiction, and I tend to like fiction like this. There are many deeply symbolic moments and philosophical questions contained here, but it's also just a really good story. When I finished reading the story, I retold the main (non-gory) parts of it to my 10-year-old nephew and 7-year-old niece, and they were rapt. That's a good story.
Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen (completed May 31)
Finally finished this one right after school was out. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I hear it sticks pretty close to the book. Truthfully, I really really really struggle with reading books that contain any level of animal cruelty or what I like to call the "dead dog" genre. Others tell me how much they liked this book, but I did have to force myself to finish it. Short summary with no spoilers: takes place in Great Depression; main character, Jacob, finds himself on the road with a circus when he's just finished vet school. He meets a girl who's married to a very mean man (and he's quite cruel to the animals in the circus, particularly to a very smart elephant). Jacob also hangs out with an endearing old drunk and a little person named Walter. It's kind of a take on the story of Jacob and Esau from the Bible. I'd probably recommend it most as a love story/adventure story. But be warned if you, like me, don't like the "dead dog" story.
To The Lighthouse, Virgina Woolf
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans, Rosalyn Story
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin
The Complaints, Ian Rankin
The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Summer 2010
The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck. Another classic I haven't read in quite some time, and I'm finally picking it up again because it's the novel for Academic Decathlon this year. You know how sometimes when you read a book it's like everything in your life is somehow related to it and now it seems like this great coincidence that you're reading it? Well, that's how I'd describe my experience of reading Grapes of Wrath. First of all, my dad and my sister are both reading a book, The Worst Hard Time, which is a non-fiction account and explanation of the Dust Bowl. This was a National Book Award winner in 2008, and both my dad and my sister can't stop talking about it. So I've got the Dust Bowl on my mind. Secondly, the connections between our current economic crisis and the economic crisis of the Great Depression are already vividly explained in the media frequently, but Steinbeck captures the essence in easy, stark prose: The monster (the banks) needs to be fed. Third, I'm on a kick right now to compare what I'm reading to the true classics: the Odyssey, the Inferno, etc. and Grapes of Wrath is essentially an anti-hero's journey into the depths of hell. Literary speaking, that stuff's cool. And finally (perhaps most significantly), I can find comparisons between GofW and basically everything else I've read this summer--like such awesome connections as character names (how many of you have read two books this summer that have characters named Rose of Sharon? I have!), settings, themes, and symbolism. Even The Lonely Polygamist had a tortoise in it.
To sum up, I think this novel is like To Kill a Mockingbird in that it gets better with age. By age, I mean the reader's age. A little more life experience, a lot more reading experience, and greater reading maturity adds so much to my enjoyment of this novel. I admittedly dreaded picking this one up because I remember quite vividly that I didn't like it all that much when I read it in college. I probably won't be recommending it strongly to students, but I will be asking my friends to pick it up again. It's really quite an amazing novel.
(On a side note: it's the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird--you might want to pick that one up again. You'll be surprised how much you missed when you read it as 8th graders).
Stardust. Neil Gaiman. I was simply in the mood for something different. I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore (though I was a huge Piers Anthony fan in high school and a fan of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien before that--my roots for my love of reading fall squarely under the fantasy umbrella). As you'll read below, I've struggled through a terrible novel that received rave reviews earlier this summer, then worked to finish a pretty long and intense non-fiction work after that. I needed something light but still thought-provoking. The best source for such ideas? The booksellers at Borders! (a bit tongue-in-cheek--I'm a former bookseller from Borders and like to think I was pretty good at offering ideas). This is such a good book and one that I'll forever recommend to students from now on. If you like The Giver or C.S. Lewis or Ender's Game, you must add this to your repertoire. Click on the link for more information; I'm afraid of spoiling anything by summarizing it.
The Devil in the White City. Erik Larson. I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but my sister had this one on her shelf so I picked it up. What a relief after slogging through that stupid Lonely Polygamist for so long! This restores my confidence in my ability to read again. Anyway, boring as it sounds, this book is about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893--all of the organizational details that went into its planning, architecture, landscaping, and then also the world's opinion of the fair. Oh, and there's a Jack-the-Ripper type serial killer on the loose, too. It's heavy on detail and probably not for everyone, but as someone who's a die-hard fiction fan, I still loved it. The reviews on Amazon are pretty strong, too.
The New Yorker Magazine. Okay, this isn't a book, but the best money I've spent is on a subscription to this magazine. Great fiction, beautiful poetry, and in-depth reporting on current and running issues. Plus my future husband Malcolm Gladwell regularly writes for it. If you are a reader, there are two magazines you should subscribe to (and both are cheaper than Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, or Entertainment Weekly): The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.
Brave New World. Aldous Huxley.
A classic that I hadn't read since high school...and I clearly did not read it well then because it's nothing like what I remembered. Probably what's changed more than anything is that I've read most of Shakespeare since I last read this novel--and this is one case where having read Shakespeare changes one's understanding of the novel at hand. So here are my initial thoughts: preachy (in more ways than one), sanctimonious, complicated, and thought-provoking. For those who haven't yet read it, it's one of those novels that is considered part of the "canon" and worth reading if only because aspects of it are referenced so often in our society. Essentially, it's about a socially engineered society that has little pockets of "savages" and others who don't quite fit in with society's goal of achieving stability. People think they're happy, but they don't know or understand true emotion. On a trip to see some savages, one of the disaffected "alphas" picks up a savage and brings him to the so-called "civilized" society, turning the novel into a fish out of water story. Usually, we're supposed to root for for the fish in these kind of stories, but, in this case, the fish--John Savage--is pretty unlikeable, too. I don't like a single character in this book, except maybe Helmholtz a little, but he's arrogant and I think I only like him because I want to root for at least one character. The themes of the novel concern consumerism, commodification of souls, and the control of the state over society. I know I'm supposed to compare Brave New World to 1984, but because I'm reading The Lonely Polygamist and just finished Part-Time Indian, I see deeper thematic connections between those books (and it's made me appreciate The Lonely Polygamist a little more, too!).
The Lonely Polygamist. Brady Udell.
I'm about halfway through this one. I'll update when I finish it. I picked it up because a reviewer in Entertainment Weekly strongly recommended it, declaring it an early contender for this year's National Book Award. It must have hit a nerve with that reviewer because, although I'm enjoying it, it's not like I'd give that rave of a review. The title explains the book. The story has a shifting point of view, though it's told mostly from the father's (the lonely polygamist), his fourth wife's, and one of their son's points of view. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, mostly good and entertaining.
(Note added 6/30: I've finally given up on this. I'm on page 475 of the 599 pages in the book, and I simply couldn't finish it. I've been slogging through it for the last two weeks, which has interfered with all the other books I actually want to read. I skimmed through the rest, found out a character dies, another gets married, and I read the last chapter. Consider it done. No longer good and entertaining. It was just more of the same. Maybe a man who is married would appreciate this more than I did, though there was a kind of funny running joke about some gum caught in a rather indelicate area. Really, I've spent more time playing Endless Ocean: Blue World on Wii and catching up on Arrested Development through Netflix in order to avoid finishing this book. It's time for me to move on!)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Sherman Alexie.
This is Alexie's first book for adolescents, and yet it's quite similar in story and characters and setting to most of his other novels. Told from Junior's point of view, it's about his experiences with his family and friends on the reservation, then about his experiences when he decides to transfer to the white school. I really liked this book--it's a quick read and there are pictures (Junior's drawings). But what I really like is the emotion Alexie's writing provokes. He just slams you with events in a way that captures what it must have been like for Junior.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Lisa See.
The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy.
I'm reading both of these books, along with Purple Hibiscus (see below) as possible titles to buy for a new class that I'm teaching, Freshmen Humanities. I'd like to purchase some titles that truly reflect world literature and modern society.
Purple Hibiscus. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beautiful novel set in Nigeria about a sister and brother who are sent from their father's strict household to an aunt's house during a millitary coup. Their aunt is a university professor and her house is filled with love and freedom. The story stands on its own as a wonderful reflection of life in Nigeria, but it's also a symbolic representation of how life could be different for so many people in Nigeria and other African countries. I highly recommend this for people who like a good story about family relationships. There is no crazy violence or unthinkable atrocity--it's just a story about a family.
The White Tiger. Aravind Adiga. I'm a sucker for the Man Booker Prize winning books. This won in 2008, and it's about a servant (an "Untouchable") in India in current times. He's hired by a corrupt family to be a driver for their less corrupt son. Told in the format of a letter to the Premier of China, I think it's essentially a satire of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Corruption, poverty, and the Hindu culture all combine to show how India will never catch up with Western culture in terms of wealth and knowledge. Warning: this has been criticized heavily within India and its popularity with Western cultures is seen as yet another example of cultural imperialism.
1984. George Orwell. I picked this up off a shelf in the bookroom because it was new and the last time I read it was when I was a sophomore in, yep, here it comes...1984. So it's been over 25 years since I read this, and I was 16 when I read it, and, well, I must say I don't remember it all that well. It's been quite a revelation to re-read this one. Among the themes Orwell explores: the power of the community over the individual, the nature and purpose of human emotions, the purpose of governmental institutions. I had to teach Anthem earlier this year and 1984 is SOO much better.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Haruki Murakami. I've just started this one, so I don't have much to report yet. The reason I picked it up is because I finished reading Kafka on the Shore (see below) and decided that I had to read every single Murakami book after that.
Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami. So here's my plot summary: Kafka is a young man (16), who believes he is going to kill his father, so he runs away, meets a transvestite librarian, falls in love with a woman who is 52 and might possibly be his mother, and has a complete blackout of about 10 hours where he wakes up soaked in blood after. Meanwhile, an older gentleman who can talk to cats because of some odd accident that happened in 1944 meets a terrible, evil man who tortures cats. This man eventually makes his way to the library where Kafka is staying, though they never meet, and he opens a gate, which is essentially a stone which shifts its nature. Does this make any sense to you? Probably not, and yet it took me about three days to read this novel of over 500 pages because it is such a compelling, involving story.
The Translator: A Memoir. Daoud Hari. Though not exactly well-written, it's such a richly honest account of a man who grew up in Sudan and worked as a translator throughout the crisis in Darfur. He describes some of what happened to him and to his family and there is a helpful appendix which quite expertly explains some of the historical events leading up to the events in Darfur. If you're curious about the area and why this is happening, this is great book to read for background.
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante
The Art of Coaching, Elena Aguilar
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
The Best-Kept Teaching Secret: How Written Conversations Engage Kids, Harvey Daniels
The Door, Magda Szabo
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
Dumplin', Julie Murphy
The Turner House, Angela Flournoy
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, Gabriella Coleman
On Such a Full Sea, Chang-rae Lee
The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
Winter 2015-16
Everything Everything, Nicola Yoon
The Girl with All the Gifts, Mike Carey
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
Euphoria, Lily King
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
Prince of Shadows, Rachel Caine
Between Shades of Grey, Ruta Sepetys
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
Fall 2015
The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller
Sick in the Head, Judd Apatow
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
The End of Violence, Tom Drury
The Beet Queen, Louise Erdrich
The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Martian, Andy Weir
The Bassoon King, Rainn Wilson
An Ember in the Ashes, SabaaTahir
Feed, M.T. Anderson
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, Steven Sheinkin
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Part One, M. T. Anderson
Lair of Dreams: A Diviners Novel, Libba Bray
Americanah, Chimamanda Adichie
Rereading The City and the City, China Mieville
Summer 2014/2015
Here's what's on my reading list for the upcoming summer (so far...):
A Song of Ice and Fire Series, George R. R. Martin (I love Game of Thrones!)
Murder as a Fine Art, David Morrell
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
The Andalucian Friend, Alexander Soderberg
The Goldfinch, Donna Tarte
Hild, Nicola Griffith
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
In One Person, John Irving
Summer 2012
Here we go again! Here you'll find what I've read in past summers as well as what I'm reading this summer. This summer's list, as always, is ambitious. I've linked all of the book titles to amazon.com for more information.
As I finish a book, I sometimes include a summary of it here, especially if I think it's a book students would find intriguing or enjoyable.
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
Loved this one! A great mystery/pulp novel. A man's wife goes missing, and the rest of the novel is about his search for her. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill sappy Nicholas Sparks romance or predictable John Grisham-type thriller. Nope, this one is closer to Raymond Chandler noir than those popular authors. Think "Double Indemnity," "Chinatown," "The Maltese Falcon," or "The Big Sleep"--those great noir films set 1940s Hollywood where the women are tough broads, the men are hardened cynics, and the cops distrust everyone. You won't like a single character, though you'll momentarily find yourself liking each one of them--only to have them let you down again. This novel takes place in 2011 in Carthage, Missouri, and the references are all very modern--Facebook, YouTube, Nancy Grace and Katie Couric type anchors, and even a Johnny Cochran attorney-type thrown in for good measure...but the novel will still surprise you at every turn. Even when you think you've figured it out, the characters surprise you again.
The book is over 400 pages and it took me just a few hours to read it it's so involving....so now my list continues to grow because I think I'm going to have to read more novels by this author.
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
Unfortunately, this novel wasn't on my original list, which means I've simply added to the number of books I want to finish this summer! This book won the Man Booker Prize last year (Great Britain's equivalent to our National Book Award), and it's really amazing. The title reveals a lot about the themes of the novel--and even its plot. Another short novel--under 200 pages--this one is split into two sections. The first is a quick history of the narrator's school and university days, especially his relationship with school friends and a girlfriend. This section wraps rather oddly in a five page or so summary of the narrator's life after school, through marriage, fatherhood, divorce, work, retirement, and then it seems over. But that's when the second, longer section begins. The narrator receives a small amount of money from a will of the university girlfriend's mother, leading to a mystery of sorts. The real mystery is whether or not the narrator actually remembered the events of his childhood correctly, which, in turn, leads me to wonder if I've remembered the events of my own childhood correctly...and whether or not these events are ever actually over or not.
This is a philosophical novel, thin on plot, and even thinner on character development. It's not for everyone, but a good novel nonetheless.
Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward
Just finished this one over the weekend (June 1), and it's now Tuesday and I can't let go of these characters. I'm thinking about them and wondering how they're doing and wishing that I could meet them for the first time again. This novel won the National Book Award this year, a surprise winner over the favorite, The Tiger's Wife (a book I read last summer and just loved). Salvage the Bones is about the Batiste family and narrated by the only female member of the family, a 15-year-old girl who has just found out she's pregnant. Each chapter is a successive day counting down to a real-life event, Hurricane Katrina. Though the family lives in extreme poverty, the reader doesn't pity or even admire them--the individual characters are so well conceived and so thoroughly fleshed out that each of the brothers, the father, the narrator, and even the various characters who move in and out of their lives could be someone we know.
Esch, the narrator, is reading a summer reading assignment, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and she opens the door for herself and the reader to make comparisons between her family and the characters of mythology. She is stuck on the story of Medea, and this gives us a hint as to what the novel is about--love, betrayal, children, and parents. I would recommend reviewing the story of Medea before, during, or after reading Salvage the Bones, and I think you'll see Medea in Hurricane Katrina, China (Esch's older brother's pit bull), and perhaps to some extent in Esch herself.
Winter Garden, Kristin Hannah
I slogged through this one for the last few weeks. I'd heard really good things about it, but I had a really difficult time staying with it. I'd put this in the genre of "chick lit"--the intended audience is probably adult women, especially mothers, who have a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time to themselves. In the case of this novel, the protagonist is a woman in her mid-40s whose father has just died, whose sister has a romantic and adventurous career as a photographer for a National Geographic-type magazine, and whose mother has never been affectionate or particularly maternal but is clearly hiding a deeper secret. So the protagonist and her sister drag out a "fairy tale" of sorts from their mother to find out more about her.
Ultimately, I found the story a bit boring and there waaaaaaay too much description of the boring details of the protagonist's mundane life. I finally just skipped through about the last third of the book to find out the point of the fairy tale and called it good.
Under the Feet of Jesus, Helena Maria Viramontes
I picked up this book because an excerpt from the book appeared on this year's AP exam. At just over a hundred pages, this is one of the most challenging books that I've read recently. It's almost more like a poem than a novel. The speakers shift with little indication, the setting (particularly the time) shifts with little indication, and the plot moves in fits and starts. I highly recommend it!
The story is essentially a love story between two migrant farm workers in California. The protagonist, Estrella, is a legal immigrant though her mother is not, and her papers are kept in a cabin under a picture of Jesus--as her mother says, "under the feet of Jesus."
After you read this, you will never look at grapes or raisins or grapefruit or peaches or watermelon or lettuce or just about any other produce the same way again. Unlike The Grapes of Wrath, say, I don't believe the novel is intended to stir people to action. Instead, I see it as bringing a human face to the migrant workers who bring food to our tables.
A bonus for me is that much of the novel takes place in the community where I used to teach: Buttonwillow is a small town near Bakersfield, California, and many of my students were from that area. Some were the sons and daughters of the ranchers who owned the land and some were the workers.
The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, Jane Austen and Patricia Meyer Spacks
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
In One Person, John Irving
Ava's Man, Rick Bragg
IQ84, Haruki Murakami
The Interrogative Mood, Padgett Powell
The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Beowulf
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Summer 2011
What follows is a list of what is on my Kindle and a short list of what I plan to read this summer. As I complete a book, I'll sometimes throw a quick summary and criticism up here.
I'm now home for a few weeks! Had a great time in Louisville and Atlanta, but ready for a couple of weeks of relaxation before the next trip. That relaxation to me means the time to read! Whoo-hoo!
ONGOING: New Yorker, The New York Review of Books...
Interesting articles I've read recently include a report on the efficacy of anti-depressants (not really effective, as it turns out), and a series of essays by Jennifer Egan, Tea Obrecht, Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edward P. Jones, and Nabokov that appear in the June 6 issue of the New Yorker (those are all famous authors--google them).
currently reading: People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks; Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shtyngardt; Swamplandia!, Karen Russell; A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan; and In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Erik Larson
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling. (beginning of July)
So this is somewhat embarrassing. I read this immediately upon its release, but I think I was so anxious to find out if Harry survives that I sort of skipped over some rather major events. Among the events I didn't remember reading: Snape's memories, what the deathly hallows actually are, and the Dumbledore/Harry interlude near the very end. Seriously, what was I even doing if I missed these rather important events??!! I wanted to reread the book before watching the movie(s) and I wanted to wait and watch Part I of The Deathly Hallows until right before watching Part II. So, I've reread the book, watched Part I, and will finally watch the end of the movie series later this week. I must admit that I'm heartbroken it's over.
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett. (end of June)
While reading Heart of Darkness, one of my fellow readers recommended that I read this new book by Ann Patchett. It's sort of a modern take on Heart of Darkness. In this version, a pharmacologist ventures into the Amazon rain forest to find out what happened to a coworker who died suddenly while visiting a remote drug research facility in the Amazon and to check up on another researcher who's in charge of this facility. The researcher has discovered a tribe where women have children well into their 70s. Thinking that this could be the next big thing in drug research--a fertility drug for women of all ages--the company is very impatient to discover the progress on the research and how far they are from human trials.
I enjoyed this immensely, perhaps because I had just finished rereading Heart of Darkness. Instead of a comment on colonialism, this novel is a comment on the ethics of medical technology. Both are comments on human nature and the limits of knowledge. Just because we CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean that we SHOULD. In Heart of Darkness, the commodity was simply ivory; in State of Wonder, the commodity is the dream of immortality. There is a twist, something I won't give a hint about here.
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (middle of June)
I spent about ten days in Louisville, Kentucky, reading Question 3 of the AP Lit. exams. This meant reading about 1100 student essays about the role justice plays in a novel or play. Most of the essays were about the following books: Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and The Heart of Darkness. I've never taught Heart of Darkness (HOD), so I haven't read it since college more than 20 years ago. I decided it was probably time to reread it.
This is another example of a book that I didn't appreciate when I was younger and, truthfully, I loved it but I don't think it's a book that can be appreciated until we're older. It's just so beautifully written and so philosophical. All that it's about is a sailor who ventures into the Congo to retrieve a man who works for the same company. But it's really about the nature of humans--specifically, our darkest natures. It's a tough read. Sentence after serpentine sentence can lose a less patient reader, but sticking with those sentences reveals some of the most gorgeous writing I ever remember reading. Thankfully, I downloaded this to my Kindle. It's a short book, but I'm pretty sure I highlighted and noted at least half of it. The Kindle makes it much easier to organize and highlight those notes.
Check the review on amazon for more information if you're intrigued, but I'll leave this review at this: I have a new appreciation for why this book is considered one of the best novels ever written in the English language.
The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obrecht (completed June 6)
This is a novel I'd recommend to those who like "magical realism"--part fable, part family history, part history; this is a novel that is very difficult to explain. Essentially, there are three stories at its core. The main character, Natalyia, is a young doctor who has driven to an orphanage to help out. While she is there, she discovers that her grandfather, also a doctor and someone that she was very close to, has passed away from cancer. She then reminisces on some of the stories that her grandfather told her about his life. One of these stories is about a girl who lived in his village when he was small, the "tiger's wife." The other story is about a man her grandfather encountered at different times in his life, the "deathless man." The three stories--Natalyia's own encounters at the orphanage, the tiger's wife, and the deathless man--come together, but not necessarily in a way you'd expect. And it's no necessarily a neatly tied-up ending, either.
I like fiction, and I tend to like fiction like this. There are many deeply symbolic moments and philosophical questions contained here, but it's also just a really good story. When I finished reading the story, I retold the main (non-gory) parts of it to my 10-year-old nephew and 7-year-old niece, and they were rapt. That's a good story.
Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen (completed May 31)
Finally finished this one right after school was out. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I hear it sticks pretty close to the book. Truthfully, I really really really struggle with reading books that contain any level of animal cruelty or what I like to call the "dead dog" genre. Others tell me how much they liked this book, but I did have to force myself to finish it. Short summary with no spoilers: takes place in Great Depression; main character, Jacob, finds himself on the road with a circus when he's just finished vet school. He meets a girl who's married to a very mean man (and he's quite cruel to the animals in the circus, particularly to a very smart elephant). Jacob also hangs out with an endearing old drunk and a little person named Walter. It's kind of a take on the story of Jacob and Esau from the Bible. I'd probably recommend it most as a love story/adventure story. But be warned if you, like me, don't like the "dead dog" story.
To The Lighthouse, Virgina Woolf
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans, Rosalyn Story
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin
The Complaints, Ian Rankin
The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Summer 2010
The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck. Another classic I haven't read in quite some time, and I'm finally picking it up again because it's the novel for Academic Decathlon this year. You know how sometimes when you read a book it's like everything in your life is somehow related to it and now it seems like this great coincidence that you're reading it? Well, that's how I'd describe my experience of reading Grapes of Wrath. First of all, my dad and my sister are both reading a book, The Worst Hard Time, which is a non-fiction account and explanation of the Dust Bowl. This was a National Book Award winner in 2008, and both my dad and my sister can't stop talking about it. So I've got the Dust Bowl on my mind. Secondly, the connections between our current economic crisis and the economic crisis of the Great Depression are already vividly explained in the media frequently, but Steinbeck captures the essence in easy, stark prose: The monster (the banks) needs to be fed. Third, I'm on a kick right now to compare what I'm reading to the true classics: the Odyssey, the Inferno, etc. and Grapes of Wrath is essentially an anti-hero's journey into the depths of hell. Literary speaking, that stuff's cool. And finally (perhaps most significantly), I can find comparisons between GofW and basically everything else I've read this summer--like such awesome connections as character names (how many of you have read two books this summer that have characters named Rose of Sharon? I have!), settings, themes, and symbolism. Even The Lonely Polygamist had a tortoise in it.
To sum up, I think this novel is like To Kill a Mockingbird in that it gets better with age. By age, I mean the reader's age. A little more life experience, a lot more reading experience, and greater reading maturity adds so much to my enjoyment of this novel. I admittedly dreaded picking this one up because I remember quite vividly that I didn't like it all that much when I read it in college. I probably won't be recommending it strongly to students, but I will be asking my friends to pick it up again. It's really quite an amazing novel.
(On a side note: it's the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird--you might want to pick that one up again. You'll be surprised how much you missed when you read it as 8th graders).
Stardust. Neil Gaiman. I was simply in the mood for something different. I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore (though I was a huge Piers Anthony fan in high school and a fan of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien before that--my roots for my love of reading fall squarely under the fantasy umbrella). As you'll read below, I've struggled through a terrible novel that received rave reviews earlier this summer, then worked to finish a pretty long and intense non-fiction work after that. I needed something light but still thought-provoking. The best source for such ideas? The booksellers at Borders! (a bit tongue-in-cheek--I'm a former bookseller from Borders and like to think I was pretty good at offering ideas). This is such a good book and one that I'll forever recommend to students from now on. If you like The Giver or C.S. Lewis or Ender's Game, you must add this to your repertoire. Click on the link for more information; I'm afraid of spoiling anything by summarizing it.
The Devil in the White City. Erik Larson. I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but my sister had this one on her shelf so I picked it up. What a relief after slogging through that stupid Lonely Polygamist for so long! This restores my confidence in my ability to read again. Anyway, boring as it sounds, this book is about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893--all of the organizational details that went into its planning, architecture, landscaping, and then also the world's opinion of the fair. Oh, and there's a Jack-the-Ripper type serial killer on the loose, too. It's heavy on detail and probably not for everyone, but as someone who's a die-hard fiction fan, I still loved it. The reviews on Amazon are pretty strong, too.
The New Yorker Magazine. Okay, this isn't a book, but the best money I've spent is on a subscription to this magazine. Great fiction, beautiful poetry, and in-depth reporting on current and running issues. Plus my future husband Malcolm Gladwell regularly writes for it. If you are a reader, there are two magazines you should subscribe to (and both are cheaper than Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, or Entertainment Weekly): The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.
Brave New World. Aldous Huxley.
A classic that I hadn't read since high school...and I clearly did not read it well then because it's nothing like what I remembered. Probably what's changed more than anything is that I've read most of Shakespeare since I last read this novel--and this is one case where having read Shakespeare changes one's understanding of the novel at hand. So here are my initial thoughts: preachy (in more ways than one), sanctimonious, complicated, and thought-provoking. For those who haven't yet read it, it's one of those novels that is considered part of the "canon" and worth reading if only because aspects of it are referenced so often in our society. Essentially, it's about a socially engineered society that has little pockets of "savages" and others who don't quite fit in with society's goal of achieving stability. People think they're happy, but they don't know or understand true emotion. On a trip to see some savages, one of the disaffected "alphas" picks up a savage and brings him to the so-called "civilized" society, turning the novel into a fish out of water story. Usually, we're supposed to root for for the fish in these kind of stories, but, in this case, the fish--John Savage--is pretty unlikeable, too. I don't like a single character in this book, except maybe Helmholtz a little, but he's arrogant and I think I only like him because I want to root for at least one character. The themes of the novel concern consumerism, commodification of souls, and the control of the state over society. I know I'm supposed to compare Brave New World to 1984, but because I'm reading The Lonely Polygamist and just finished Part-Time Indian, I see deeper thematic connections between those books (and it's made me appreciate The Lonely Polygamist a little more, too!).
The Lonely Polygamist. Brady Udell.
I'm about halfway through this one. I'll update when I finish it. I picked it up because a reviewer in Entertainment Weekly strongly recommended it, declaring it an early contender for this year's National Book Award. It must have hit a nerve with that reviewer because, although I'm enjoying it, it's not like I'd give that rave of a review. The title explains the book. The story has a shifting point of view, though it's told mostly from the father's (the lonely polygamist), his fourth wife's, and one of their son's points of view. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, mostly good and entertaining.
(Note added 6/30: I've finally given up on this. I'm on page 475 of the 599 pages in the book, and I simply couldn't finish it. I've been slogging through it for the last two weeks, which has interfered with all the other books I actually want to read. I skimmed through the rest, found out a character dies, another gets married, and I read the last chapter. Consider it done. No longer good and entertaining. It was just more of the same. Maybe a man who is married would appreciate this more than I did, though there was a kind of funny running joke about some gum caught in a rather indelicate area. Really, I've spent more time playing Endless Ocean: Blue World on Wii and catching up on Arrested Development through Netflix in order to avoid finishing this book. It's time for me to move on!)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Sherman Alexie.
This is Alexie's first book for adolescents, and yet it's quite similar in story and characters and setting to most of his other novels. Told from Junior's point of view, it's about his experiences with his family and friends on the reservation, then about his experiences when he decides to transfer to the white school. I really liked this book--it's a quick read and there are pictures (Junior's drawings). But what I really like is the emotion Alexie's writing provokes. He just slams you with events in a way that captures what it must have been like for Junior.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Lisa See.
The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy.
I'm reading both of these books, along with Purple Hibiscus (see below) as possible titles to buy for a new class that I'm teaching, Freshmen Humanities. I'd like to purchase some titles that truly reflect world literature and modern society.
Purple Hibiscus. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beautiful novel set in Nigeria about a sister and brother who are sent from their father's strict household to an aunt's house during a millitary coup. Their aunt is a university professor and her house is filled with love and freedom. The story stands on its own as a wonderful reflection of life in Nigeria, but it's also a symbolic representation of how life could be different for so many people in Nigeria and other African countries. I highly recommend this for people who like a good story about family relationships. There is no crazy violence or unthinkable atrocity--it's just a story about a family.
The White Tiger. Aravind Adiga. I'm a sucker for the Man Booker Prize winning books. This won in 2008, and it's about a servant (an "Untouchable") in India in current times. He's hired by a corrupt family to be a driver for their less corrupt son. Told in the format of a letter to the Premier of China, I think it's essentially a satire of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Corruption, poverty, and the Hindu culture all combine to show how India will never catch up with Western culture in terms of wealth and knowledge. Warning: this has been criticized heavily within India and its popularity with Western cultures is seen as yet another example of cultural imperialism.
1984. George Orwell. I picked this up off a shelf in the bookroom because it was new and the last time I read it was when I was a sophomore in, yep, here it comes...1984. So it's been over 25 years since I read this, and I was 16 when I read it, and, well, I must say I don't remember it all that well. It's been quite a revelation to re-read this one. Among the themes Orwell explores: the power of the community over the individual, the nature and purpose of human emotions, the purpose of governmental institutions. I had to teach Anthem earlier this year and 1984 is SOO much better.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Haruki Murakami. I've just started this one, so I don't have much to report yet. The reason I picked it up is because I finished reading Kafka on the Shore (see below) and decided that I had to read every single Murakami book after that.
Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami. So here's my plot summary: Kafka is a young man (16), who believes he is going to kill his father, so he runs away, meets a transvestite librarian, falls in love with a woman who is 52 and might possibly be his mother, and has a complete blackout of about 10 hours where he wakes up soaked in blood after. Meanwhile, an older gentleman who can talk to cats because of some odd accident that happened in 1944 meets a terrible, evil man who tortures cats. This man eventually makes his way to the library where Kafka is staying, though they never meet, and he opens a gate, which is essentially a stone which shifts its nature. Does this make any sense to you? Probably not, and yet it took me about three days to read this novel of over 500 pages because it is such a compelling, involving story.
The Translator: A Memoir. Daoud Hari. Though not exactly well-written, it's such a richly honest account of a man who grew up in Sudan and worked as a translator throughout the crisis in Darfur. He describes some of what happened to him and to his family and there is a helpful appendix which quite expertly explains some of the historical events leading up to the events in Darfur. If you're curious about the area and why this is happening, this is great book to read for background.