The Book Shelf

Currently Reading:
Stolen Lives (Malika Oufkir - 1999)

Recently Read & Recommended:
A Painted House (John Grisham - 2001)

Inspired by Grisham's own childhood, this touching and page-turning novel tells the story of the Chandler family and the cotton harvest of 1952 on their rural Arkansas farm. Told from the point of view of seven year old Luke Chandler, we are introduced to his grandparents, who's farm he and his parents live together on, as well as a dozen Mexican migrant workers, a family of questionable "hill people" who come to work the fields every harvest, as well as a cast of colorful townspeople.
If Grisham is following the adage of "writing what you know" he has done a masterful job. The story is captivating from start to finish, even when the family is doing nothing more than front-porch-sittin' while listening to the Cardinals game on the radio and worrying about the potential for rain is going on.  There is also something engaging about any story told through the mind's-eye of a child; here a trip to town can be like winning the lottery and a sharp look from a stranger can cut like a switch-blade...literally.


The Help (Kathryn Stockett - 2009)

I generally prefer to read a book before I see the movie, if there is one. I am really glad I eventually read this as I hadn't planned on it after it became wildly popular and I saw the movie on an airplane several years ago.
The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, as the nation is crescendo-ing toward the apex of the Civil Rights Movement. Told from the rotating points of view of three women - two black maids and one white disillusioned aspiring writer - the novel tells the story of writing a book to expose the realities of the black housekeeper and the white families they work for. I loved the depth of the characters in the book, even the clear antagonists.  Being white and not coming from the South, I can't speak personally to how wounds that cut as deep as the ones portrayed here still bleed, however, I feel that this book is as timely now as it was in the time it meant to take place.


Saints at the River (Ron Rash - 2004)

I picked this book up looking for another of Rash's novels, but am glad I did. This was a fast but fulfilling read about a photojournalist from rural South Carolina, Maggie, who is sent back to her tiny hometown of Tamasee in the mountains to cover the story of a girl who drowned in the river. The reason this is newsworthy is that the girl is still in the river, caught in a natural hydraulic, and getting her out requires potential damage to the area, which is strictly protected under a government act.
On top of the aforementioned drama unfolding, Maggie must also revisit some of her own former ghosts, many of which motivated her to leave her hometown in the first place. Between her dying father, the reminders of her deceased mother and moved-away brother, an ex-boyfriend fighting to save the river, and a rich cast of other town-folk, the story Rash creates has enough to make each and every scene play out with more meaning than what is on the surface.


Ford County (John Grisham - 2009)

I am not generally a fan of mysteries or thrillers so I don't often pick up Grisham. I will be reading anything he has to offer, however, outside those aforementioned genres from now on!  This collection of fictional short stories, inspired by the real-life county in northern Mississippi where several of Grisham's other novels are based, reads like literary crack - addicting and a trip from start to finish.
I honestly enjoyed every one of the seven stories, however, moments from "Micheal's Room," about a attorney who gets kidnapped by a former court-victim who lost, stayed with me long after I finished the story. Also, "Fetching Raymond," about a mother and her two adult sons' drive to the execution of a third brother was a strangely beautiful piece of writing, not only for the interesting characters and rich imagery Grisham concocts, but for his ability to develop a deep history with those involved in such few pages.


On Such a Full Sea (Chang-Rae Lee - 2014)

With the trend of dystopian novels dominating books and movies lately, it is nice to read a story that falls into that general theme, but without children fighting each other for some sort of honor or other. The future here is sectioned off and there are clearly defined levels of society, however, categories are a bit more realistically fluid.
The main character, Fan, works in a factory-like enclave called B-Mor, what used to be Baltimore. Most inhabitants here work in "grow-houses" tending to farming fish or crops, presumably for the rest of the population in large gated cities elsewhere. Fan is an expert diver, working the tanks, until the day her lover mysteriously disappears and she decides to simply leave the compound for whatever risk and wild lay beyond its walls.
Told from the point of view of a nameless voice, as if Fan were now an important historical figure, we follow Fans journey out of B-Mor to the countryside and beyond, all the while hypothesizing about her motivations for leaving and projecting emotions on what she may have been feeling during different encounters. Presumably the people who meet Fan along the way become integral in piecing her now well-known narrative together, though they are as colorful as this future society is bleak.


The Memory of Running (Ron McLarty - 2004)

Part Forrest Gump, part Confederacy of Dunces, this story follows middle-aged, obese, lazy, and depressed Smithy Ide on an impromptu and haphazard cross-country bicycle ride from Rhode Island to Los Angeles to claim the remains of his long missing and derelict sister after the sudden death of his parents. (Yes, that's the premise.)
While the story-telling is enjoyable at times, it could use some finessing in others. Fortunately, the pace is swift as Smithy's bike and he is generally a likable-enough character that you are willing to stick with him. What the author may lack in polished prose, he makes up for in layering Smithy's backstory, something that is shared with the reader bit by bit along the long ride out of Smithy's comfort zone and toward various destinies.


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean-Dominique Bauby - 1997)

A collection of essays on life, this memoir-like book was written by French journalist Bauby after suffering a stroke that left him with "locked in syndrome," a paralyzing condition with which he could only communicate by blinking one eye. Written with the help of a nurse at the hospital where he spent his final year of life, Bauby blinked his way through a frequency-use alphabet to slowly form each word in this entire work.
Though simple and meditative at times, the essays tell of a world many of us refuse to acknowledge - to sit still in a room and be forced to only observe. Sometimes nostalgic, painful, or humorous, but always powerful and poetic, I found myself having to set the book down between chapters if only to reflect for a moment before moving on.


The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay - 1989)

I've seen this on many friends' "best" lists and have been waiting for a long chunk of time to invest in reading it. This epic story of South Africa was definitely worth the wait!  In addition to a phenomenally gripping story with fascinating characters, I now want to visit the country!
Following a poor and semi-neglected English boy who self-identifies as Peekay, and is struggling to find a place in life amidst 1930's discrimination against the black population and Dutch societal prejudices against the British, Peekay meets his destiny on a train as a young boy and sets his sights on becoming a champion boxer. Never wavering in his aspirations, Peekay is a literary character you have to root for, as far-fetched as his life-goal might be.


The Tortilla Curtain (T.C. Boyle - 1995)

Two stories taking place in the same space in time and geography, yet worlds apart, the novel explores issues of immigration, social class, xenophobia, the American Dream, and political identity.  América and Cándido are illegal immigrants barely living by picking up jobs when they can while they camp in the bushes of canyon off the highway.  Delaney and Kyra consider themselves liberal professionals living in a gated community near this very same canyon. Their lives cross paths in unique ways, both physically and thematically, however, the challenges the humanity of their situations is what this book is about.
I liked the dual story-lines and how Boyle allows the philosophies of the characters materialize and develop slowly, ultimately changing in ways one didn't see coming.  This is a timely novel, even nearly twenty years later, and one that brings up topics not necessarily comfortable for conversation.


The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien - 1990)

I am not one with an interest for "war stories" so I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book.  Essentially a collection of short stories, all involving the same group of soldiers, including someone with the author's name, the book paints a picture of the Vietnam War, both disturbing and beautiful.  What I enjoyed most was O'Brien's prose; he writes with such a comfortable voice, you can almost hear the soldiers themselves speaking to you.  Several of the chapters could be made into incredible monologues, delivered powerfully from beneath a spotlight on an otherwise darkend stage.
My favorite story, "On the Rainy River," tells the story of the author's character getting drafted right out of college, getting cold feet, and making a break for the Canadian border.  The honesty that O'Brien captures in this story, and all the others, is what really makes this a modern classic, with or without the "war" categorization.


Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi - 2000)

A autobiographical graphic novel originally published in French, this is actually two books in one.  Beginning in 1980 when the author is about ten years old, the book paints a picture of what life was like in modern Iran, as well as giving some perspective on the country and region's many wars throughout history.
I think this is an important book because it addresses many misconceptions that westerners have about the Middle East and how different the customs and cultures of the region actually are.  Iran is Iran; not Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.  It doesn't hurt either that the illustrations are strikingly beautiful in their simplicity.



The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho - 2006)

I am a huge fan of this Brazilian author.  The Achemist and Veronika Decides to Die are written with such insightful prose, it's difficult to put them down.  I fel the same about this book, until about half-way through when I just lost interest and struggled the rest of the way through.  It's not for lack of creativity - I loved the idea of the story an how it was told - I just stopped caring about any of the characters after a certain point.
The basic premise is that the title character, a woman named Athena, is dead and the narrator, a journalist of sorts, is collecting interviews from various people who knew her, attempting to reconstruct what happened and who she really was.  Like I said, great idea and intriguing structure, just after awhile the idea of tracing the life of this drifter "witch" across Europe and northern Africa became more of chore than a pleasure.

The Lowland (Jhumpa Lahiri - 2013)

Lahiri is one of my all-time favorite writers and storytellers.  This is her second novel (she has a couple volumes of short stories that are insanely addictive) and, as with much of her past prose, takes place in both India and the Eastern US.
The story follows several characters, namely Subhash; his brother, Udayan; Udayan's wife, Guari; and, eventually, Subhash's daughter Bela.  Starting during the 1960's in a politically charged Calcutta, the story deals with one family's "complicated" dynamic. Short-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, this is a story about love, loss, loyalty, guilt, passion, and exile.  Written with Lahiri's usual juxtapositioning of beautiful attention to detail with quick pacing, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Now I wait patiently for her next...


Dear Life (Alice Munro - 2012)
I'm usually a big fan of short story collections, but this one was just "okay" for me.  I know that Munro is a celebrated author - one of Canada's most well-known contemporary authors - but I had a hard time feeling engaged with a lot of the stories in this book.  Some were great, but many left me anxious for the end and shrugging when it finally came.  Perhaps it's my inability to identify with the lives of Canadians in their mid-life crisis years residing in rural Canada, as many of the protagonists are.  Either way, of the more engaging stories were the inspired and mysterious "Leaving Maverley," the tragic and surprising "Gravel," the intriguing "Pride," and the touching titular vignette, "Dear Life."  It's not that the others were uninteresting, but rather Munro's choice of style or voice impeded the story itself.


David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Malcolm Gladwell - 2013)

From the author of Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink, comes a look at how we continually underestimate certain people or movements, why we actually shouldn't, and we are continually surprised when they triumph.

Combining sociology, psychology, economics, history, and good ole common sense, Gladwell dispels several perceived truths including what is the optimal class size, how more jail time does not actually deter criminals from committing crimes, and how having dyslexia or losing a parent to death as a child has created some of the most powerful and successful men in our society.

Agree with him or not, this is great catalyst for discussion!

Save the Humans (Rob Stewart - 2012)

Not necessarily polished writing by any means, Stewart is nevertheless an impressive environmentalist.  Having grown up with means in Canada, he developed a love of all creatures growing up, especially sharks and the marine world.  The majority of this book is about his upbringing that lead to the production of an award-winning documentary on illegal shark fishing, called Sharkwater.

I related on a lot of levels to his childhood expeditions through his neighborhood for any and everything to wriggled, squirmed, or slithered.  I had a lot of flashbacks to my poor mother and the insects and toads that got brought home in discarded peanut butter jars.  If I were going to be an environmental groupie, it might be for Stewart.


She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb - 1992)

I've mentioned this before, however, I have a lot of respect for authors who create protagonists that are not necessarily likable beings.  Not saying anything against fictional characters who may be slightly less than martyrs, but to create a main character with so many flaws and who either makes continual poor decisions or is self-destructive, takes talent.
That is the case with Dolores, the "she" of the title.  We first meet her as a child with her slowly breaking home, and follow her through a rough pre-teen age.  By this time life has not been kind.  From here to adulthood she spirals, down then up, and around and around.  Part of me wanted to give up on her altogether, but Lamb keeps just enough reader empathy in reserve so that just when she nears rock-bottom, something happens to make you root for her a little bit.  She will disappoint in the end each time, but the narration and mind trips she drags you on are somehow addictive and like watching a train wreck in slow motion - you can't not watch.


How Did You Get This Number (Sloane Crosley - 2010)

I laugh out loud numerous times - LOLed, if you will - while reading Crosley's first collection of humorous tales, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, and was equally optimistic about this one.  Though a bit more mature and self-reflective, it still delivers.  Much like Sedaris, Crosley's humor is self-depricating and she is mostly unapologetic about the situations she finds herself.  Her lens through which she views people and events is worth a peek.
While many of the stories in her first book focused on life in New York City, many of these take place much farther away geographically and even further away comfort-wise - Portugal, Alaska, and Paris to be more specific.  Anyone who has traveled, much less lived abroad will appreciate and relate to her missteps and reflections intimately.


Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls (David Sedaris - 2013)

Combining his standard memoiresque humorist prose with several pieces that fall squarely into the "creative writing" category, Sedaris delivers what his readers expect of him.  If you've never read him before, start with Me Talk Pretty One Day or Dress Your Family In Coruroy and Demin.  Sedaris explains in the introduction that he recently learned many of his essays were being used in high school and college forensics competitions; he wrote many of the works included here with that fact in mind.
If you've ever lived abroad for any extended period of time and have have appreciated Sedaris' take on the ex-pat experience, there is more of that here for you as well, including that horrid cross-all-ten-fingers-and-toes-hoping-it-will-never-happen-to-you experience of loosing a passport containing a visa.


The "52 in 52" Experiment:

My "book girl" inspired me and I really wanted to do this but I knew I needed the accountability of the Internet to do it...one book a week for one year.  52 weeks, 52 books.
Here we go, beginning June 24th, 2012 and counting...

WEEK 52: The Disappearing Spoon (Sam Kean - 2010)

I have to admit that I nerded even myself out on this one!  Yes, it is about science, but worse than that: it's about chemistry.  The subject I damned many times over and came home from high school with the newly coined motto, along with my report card, that touted "'C' is for Chemistry."  (My parents didn't share my humor on this one.)  I had a great high school chemistry teacher (and several descent ones in university, as well) but if the course had be structured like this book, I'd like to think I would have fared better, grade-wise.
Kean centers his book on the periodic table of elements, the keystone of chemistry itself.  His overarching point is the demonstrate and prove its organizational genius; how its more than just a nifty numbering system based on atomic numbers that match with the number of each element's unique set of electrons.  I remember general groupings, such as the Noble Gases and the lower-set metals, for instance, but not as being exquisitely placed neighbors of other elements that do or behave in similar ways, beyond appearance and physical state.  For example, there is a section of the table cloyingly referred to as "poisoner's corridor" but these elements are not in a nice, neat row or column, though they are located relatively together - elements #48, 81, 83, 90, and 95.  Kean peppers his book with interesting anecdotes, histories, and origins of the elements.  He also includes bits about the myriad scientists who discovered them.  If you thought the "Real Housewives" were bitter and catty, it's a good thing there was never a "Real Chemists" reality show; those California women would have looked like Mother Goose in comparison.
This is not what I imagined I'd be reading for my last book in this 52 (the last one!!!) but, I'm glad it was.  This experience was about challenging myself and taking a risk; reading something - about chemistry, no less - outside of my immediate interest falls into the spirit of the "52 in 52."  I liked the last year of reading more than I thought I would, just as I liked this book more than I intended to!

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "If Mendeleev and others discovered the Rubik's Cube of the elements, Moseley solved it, and after Moseley there was no more need to fudge explanations."
• "...as soon as [chemists] discovered that atoms could be split...collecting new elements for display seemed like an amateur's hobby, like the fusty, shoot-and-stuff biology of the 1800's compared with molecular biology today."
• "However, though good science itself, Mendeleev's work encouraged a lot of bad science, since it convinced people to look for something they were predisposed to find."
• "Curiously, electrons fill orbitals like patrons find seats on a bus: each electron sits by itself in an orbital until another electron is absolutely forced to double up."

WEEK 51: Half Broke Horses (Jeannette Walls - 2009)

I read Walls' inspiring and eye-opening childhood memoir, The Glass Castle, a story essentially about perceptions as well as perseverance, a little over a year ago.  In that book she speaks of surviving childhood at the hands of irresponsible and child-like parents.  She also talks about the saving grace of and connection to her maternal grandmother, Lily.  Sort of a prequel, this book is Lily's story.
Though Walls acknowledges it is a novel by shear lack of information from the primary subject; it is still her grandmother's remarkable story.  Growing up in the American southwest at the turn of the 20th century was not easy and the Hollywood movies starring John Wayne and the like had nothing on real "cowboy life."  Lily Casey Smith grew up dirt-floor poor, working her family's ranch even as a young child and "breaking horses," a term used to describe the training of untamed equines to be fit to be ridden of to lead a carriage.  Through everything, Lily's modus operandi was optimistic, opportunistic, and persistent.  Saying she was an agreeable person would have been incorrect, but you had to give her the fact that she had ambition and was going to go down with a fight, even if she lost, which she didn't do very often.
What I liked most about this book was that Walls told her grandmother's story in the first person.  Thus, as a semi-memoir and a quasi-historic document, this was a fascinating read and wonderful tribute from a granddaughter to her personal hero.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time."
• "If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, Mom always said, just watch the sunrise.  And if you want to be reminded of the wrath of the Lord, Dad said, watch a tornado."
• "...if people want to steal from you, they  get you to trust them first. And what they take from you is not only your money but also your trust."
• "...we scrimped and saved, pinching every penny until Abe Lincoln yelped."

WEEK 50: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Wells Tower - 2009)

Since May is allegedly National Short Story Month, and I haven't read a collection of short stories since, well, April - clearly, I have a "thing" - I figured I'd close the month with one.  Tower's collection is not for a the feint of heart.  Stories mostly centered around men dealing with some sort of grief or tragedy, these stories are graphic in their delivery, if not also sometimes in their content.
The titular story, for example, is about a group of nordic pillagers and their desire for normalcy, to give up the sacking and murdering ways of their lives.  This violence is all told in the same non-chalant way an accountant might casually mention the punching of numbers on a calculator as part of daily office life.  My favorite story, called "Retreat," is about a pair of adult brothers, the younger visiting the older at his new rural cabin in Maine.  The brothers have a complicated relationship. Competitive in a vindictive and jealous way, a lesser writer would have told the story from the more victimized of the sibling's point of view, but Tower instead writes from the mind of the older, arguably evil and unstable one, where we see how unapologetically delusional and green-eyed he truly is.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Stephen spent his inheritance on music school, where he studied composition. What I have heard of his music was gloomy, the soundtrack you might crave in an idling car with a hose running from the tailpipe, but nothing you could hum."
• "For quite a while, we'd been nothing but an argument looking for different ways to happen."
• "A collapsed, stunned look came over Maya, as though a piece of crucial rigging had been snipped behind her face.  Her mouth hung open wide enough to take a tangerine."
• "...he has a face like a paper bag smoothed flat by a dirty palm."

WEEK 49: A Hologram for the King (Dave Eggers - 2012)

Dave Eggers is one of my most favorite authors.  He writes simply, yet intelligently, creating characters with depth who feel real and accessible.  (Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity blew my mind when I read it in my mid-twenties.)
This, his most recent, is both brilliantly addictive and depressing.  The story centers around a slightly jaded, slightly passed-his-prime, slightly tired salesman for Reliant, who is supposed to be meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia to pitch their services for a contract to power his new royal creation: a city built out of the sand, in the middle of nowhere an hour or so away from Jeddah.  Not terribly a lot happens, as Alan, the salesman, and his team of young, eager colleagues essentially sit in a large events tent erected in the sand waiting for the  king to possibly show up.  This gives Alan time to evaluate his current emotional, financial, physical, and mental state of being.  Eggers has a knack for emoting, making this go beyond a typical mid-life crisis, however, combining this with the purposeful lack of action gave me moments of being a bit "bummed out" while waiting for the king myself.
If you enjoy Egger's prose, I recommend this.  If you are not familiar with his work, read something else - Zeitoun or What is the What? - first.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "The meaning of his life was an elusive seam of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long."
• "The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard. It shifts and our cities fall; it sighs and the coasts are overtaken."
• "Did children want sports cars for parents?  No.  They wanted Hondas.  They wanted to know that the car would start in all seasons."

WEEK 48: The Art of Racing in the Rain (Garth Stein - 2009)

After getting over my initial disappointment that this was not, in fact, a story about running, as I erroneously had thought, I actually enjoyed the story of a relationship between a man and his dog.  The other thing that made this story surprising, other than that of the titular "racing" being of the car variety, was that the novel was told through the eyes of the pooch himself.  Seated somewhere between third-person narration and the first-person account of the main character, Enzo the dog guides us through the tense times that surround his owner, Denny Swift, an aspiring race car driver.
The book is laden with sports clichés and race car analogies about life, and though predictable at times, they were not as groan-induing as I thought they would be; I surprised myself by not hating them.  Though the canine perspective is humorous at times, this is actually a fairly serious and tragic story, albeit one told with compassion and respect.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Because memory is time folding back on itself.  To remember is to disengage from the present."
• "People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street."
• "A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object."
• "...the subjective nature of loneliness, which is something that exists only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host."
• "To be a champion, you must have no ego at all.  You must exist as a separate entity.  You must give yourself over to the race...Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism."

WEEK 47: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925)

About nine books ago I supposed that the classic A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was to be the oldest book to appear on this list, published in 1943.  Looks like I was wrong!
I decided to read Fitzgerald's classic tale of wealth and arrogance for a couple reasons, the main one being the upcoming Baz Luhrman film.  I also could not for the life of me remember if I read it back in high school, as it seems to be the novel-du-jour when studying American history/literature. A little ways in I realized that I had never been enlightened previously to the ways of Jay Gatsby and his practically faceless entourage, surprising especially since Fitzgerald is a native son of Minnesota. (I do remember reading some of his other works, so perhaps my teachers felt "Gatsby" was too cliché?)
I enjoyed the book and found it most interesting how the characters - some social provocations aside - could easily exist in contemporary society.  Granted, they would probably exist within the realm of reality television in 2013, but the themes of classism, (white) privilege, thinly veiled racism, excesses, and acts of irresponsibility for fun, ring true today as ever.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights.  In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
• "It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people.  You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care."
• "'I'm thirty,' I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.'"
• "They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

WEEK 46: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (Kristopher Jansma - 2013)

Take whatever book you're reading and put it down.  Now get ahold of this one and don't let go.  If you've read Life of Pi and Cloud Atlas and loved them for their whimsy, twisted truths, winking wit, appropriate amounts of pretentiousness, and reinterpretations of reality, then you will love this novel.
In the very beginning of the story the narrator, a struggling author, takes solace in an Emily Dickinson quote which says to "tell all the truth but tell it slant."  There is also the cryptic "disclaimer" before the story begins asking that should any reader believe they wrote this story, to please contact the publishers, as well as the foreword which tells the story of the narrator's first book and his childhood growing up in an airport terminal which includes the claim that, "I've lost every book I've ever written."  This turns out to be one of the only truths in the story...possibly.
This is a story that could be real, except it isn't, but can be if you want parts of it so.  It would be easy for Jansma to create a story of writing and writers, truths and interpretations, and make it too erstwhile, gratuitously complicated, and banal.  But he has created a witty, accessible, and intelligent work that will be hard to top.  Not too shabby for a debut novel.  I haven't given much of a summary here for a reason; don't be intimidated by this novel, just enjoy it.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...the only mind a writer can't see into is the mid of a better writer."
• "So, when being a teacher finally lost its charm, I decided that taking up professional plagiarism could grant me decent pay, freedom to travel, and unlimited opportunity to lob my own thought-grenades into the halls of academia."
• "Maybe an idea, like love, cannot ever be stolen away, just as it cannot ever have belonged to me and only me."

WEEK 45: Wonder (R.J. Palacio - 2012)

This was a truly enjoyable and unique read.  Starting middle school for the first time after only having been home-schooled sounds traumatic for anyone, let alone August.  This story of a fifth grade boy with a genetic condition which has caused his face to be very deformed, is told with heart, humor, introspection, and honesty.
The thing I liked most about this story, aside from its accessibility, is how it progresses through the eyes and histories of different characters.  August himself starts the novel and carries it the first quarter of the way through, but then the reader is surprised by it being taken up by his older sister.  After awhile the narrator changes again.  I was tempted at one point to glance at the table of contents to see who else would get the story-telling reins, but decided against it; part of the joy of this book is being surprised by who lends their voice to the mix next.  With a whole heart, I recommend this book to everyone.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "I stopped letting anyone take pictures of me awhile ago.  I guess you could call it a phobia.  No, actually, it's not a phobia.  It's an 'aversion,' which is a word I just learned in Mr. Browne's class.  I have an aversion to having my picture taken.  There, I used it in a sentence."
• "I wish every day could be Halloween.  We could all wear masks all the time.  Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks."
• "I actually like the way doctors talk.  I like the sound of science.  I like how the words you don't understand explain things you can't understand."
• "Surprise is one of those emotions that can hard to fake...whether you're trying to look surprised when you're not or trying to not look surprised when you are."

WEEK 44: The Shell Collector (Anthony Doerr - 2003)

When reading this engaging collection of eight short stories, it is clear that there is a common thread, though it's this clarity that almost makes it harder to define, as if you sense its presence but can't actually sum it up in a tangible way.  Most of the stories deal with communing with the natural world, but not all.  Most take place in the upper north-western part of the US or adjoining southwestern part of Canada, but not all.  Some deal with the concept of home and travel, but not all.  Most deal with the sea and/or fly fishing, but then again, there was that one hold-out to the rule!
It wasn't until the last story, about a fossil hunter from Ohio and the Tanzanian daughter of a tea plantation owner and their wrestling relationship with duality, that a line jumped out at me.  In speaking of a fossil of a feathered reptile, the narrator states that it is "part one thing, part another, trapped forever between more perfect states."  I think this is the perfect description for the main characters in all the eight stories in the book.  They are somehow "trapped" in a scenario - sometimes of their own volition, other times not - longing or wondering about another.
Regardless of the tragedy of many of the characters, Doerr does a fantastic job of knowing just how long to pull a story out of a situation and when to end it, though many of the conclusions are purposefully, and satisfyingly, less that final.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "But he was afraid to speak.  He could se that speaking would be like dashing some very fragile bond to pieces, like kicking a dandelion gone to seed; the wispy, tenuous sphere of its body would scatter in the wind."
• "Everything runs into the river... Not just the leaves, but the beetle corpses and heron bones and expired worms.  Everything that starts on the hills eventually slides into the river.  And the river spills it into the sea.  Only the fish do it backward..."

WEEK 43: The World Without Us (Alan Weisman - 2007)

I was in desperate need of a non-fiction piece to break up the novel-saturated streak I've been on.  Weisman's environmentally-focused look at the other side of human-influenced climate and topographical change fit the bill.  The premise acknowledges the global-warming debate, but circumvents it, instead asking the question: if humans were to vanish from the planet, what would happen to the Earth systems as we know them?  Looking at everything from nature reclaiming mega-cities like New York to the fate of over-farmed pastureland, nuclear reactor sites to that thing called "plastic," and the fates of domesticated animals to the long-term effects of introduced species, Weisman asks some mind-turning questions.  Filled with knowledgeable contributions from paleo-ecologists, chemists, oceanographers, geologists, among others, this was a fascinating read. While I wasn't on board with all of it, there were definitely some sections I may end up using in a future ecology unit somewhere down the road.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Once, we built structures entirely from the most durable substances we knew... The results are still around today to admire, but we don't emulate them, because quarrying, cutting, transporting, and fitting stone require a patience we no longer possess."
• "Plants from the Americas changed not only ecosystems in European countries but also their very identities: think Ireland before potatoes, or Italy before tomatoes."
• "Adaptability is the key to who is fittest, one species' extinction being another's evolution."
• "Long after we're gone, songbirds must deal with the progeny of these opportunists [domestic cats] that trained us to feed and harbor them, disdaining our hapless appeals to come when we call, bestowing just enough attention so we feed them again."
• "Nobility is expensive, non-productive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society's energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings."

WEEK 42: Home (Toni Morrison - 2012)

I've said it before and I'll say it some more: I love Toni Morrison.  She is a living literary legend and this is her most recent novel.  Obviously all authors, in telling a story, know things that the reader does not yet know and how the story unfolds is part of the magic of letting that knowledge be constructed.  Morrison has an ease in all her stories where she gives the knowledge to the characters and slowly teases bits and pieces of their pasts out as the story progresses in such a way that builds anticipation, but a patient kind.  As a reader you want to allow the trauma of their lives to be revealed at their own pace, as if you're having a cup of coffee with a long lost friend and have all afternoon for them to update you on their lives.
This is the story of Frank and his sister Cee, who left their backwoods Georgia town of Lotus with the intention of never coming back.  Frank went off to fight in Korea and Cee moved to the "big city" of Atlanta and found work assisting a doctor.  Both encountered horrible things that bring sleepless nights, some of their own doing, some not.  Out of an unforeseen need they both end up back in Lotus, finding what they needed, where they didn't think it would be.  Morrison doesn't always write the most likable characters, but she always writes real and true ones.  This novel is no exception.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous."
• "You don't know what heat is until you cross the border from Texas to Louisiana in the summer. You can't come up with words to catch it. Trees give up.  Turtles cook in their shells."
• "A mean grandmother is one the worst things a girl could have.  Mamas are supposed to spank and rule you so you grow up knowing right from wrong.  Grandmothers, even when they've been hard on their own children, are forgiving and generous to the grandchildren.  Ain't that so?"
• That's the other side...of having a smart, tough brother close at hand to take care of and protect you - you are slow to develop your own brain muscle."
• "...his eyes had such a quiet, faraway look - like people who make their living staring at ocean waves..."
• "Some evil...was incorrigible, so its demise was best left to the Lord.  Other kids could be mitigated. The point was to know the difference."

WEEK 41: Calico Joe (John Grisham - 2012)

This is a story of baseball, atonement, and arrogance.  But it is definitely "beach fare" - or stadium fare, if it were possible to enjoy a book in the grandstands when a ballgame was happening.  I could see this engaging story, of two fictional professional baseball players from the 1973 Mets and Cubs, made into a Hallmark movie.  Not that it is overtly mushy or laden with life-lesson, but that it is straight forward in delivery with just enough surprises to keep things interesting without turning the reader's world upside down.
Grisham clearly has a thing for America's greatest pass-time; every description of the game is filled with awe, respect, and love.  Ironically, these are some of the things lacking in the three main characters.  Told through the lens of Paul Tracy, the son of the now-loathed Mets' pitcher, Warren Tracy, who, in his waning professional career, threw an intentional bean-ball at up-and-coming Cubs' rookie Joe Castle, effectively ending his promising major-league debut and then some.  Paul was there as a boy when the tragedy happened, forcing him to dislike his alcoholic, womanizing, abusive father even more.  Now as an adult he finds Warren is dying and wonders if he can get to the bottom of the most important injury to occur in baseball history.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "New York sports fans are rabid and well-informed, and they do not suffer from a lack of opinions."
• "When you get backhanded by your father, the pain lasts longer than the bruises."
• "In baseball, you always get a second chance, right?"
• "The beanball ended two careers, and I'm not sure what it did to me. It broke the hearts of millions of people, so I wasn't the only one wounded.  But I was the only one...who knew Joe was about to get drilled in the head."

WEEK 40: The Financial Lives of the Poets (Jess Walter - 2009)

I highly recommend this novel as it was at once humorous, refreshingly honest, and surprising.  For those same reasons I'm reluctant to offer even a bit of a synopsis for fear of throwing out any accidental spoilers.  The main plot line follows Matt, an out-of-work (because of the dying industry and economic recession) journalist, whose failed dot com venture - an online newsletter dedicated to giving financial news in the form of prose - has lead him into the start of a downward spiral.  Also, his wife is indulging a possible Facebook-affair, his divorced/widowed father is suffering from dementia after running off with a stripper named Charity who then stole everything from him, and Matt himself has started smoking up with some loitering stoners outside the local 7/11.  And then there's the actual plot...you have no idea.  Walter's style is infectious, and his inventiveness in the supporting characters' personas is like following a trail of candy leading toward the gingerbread house; sweet little treats along the way to the satisfying ending.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "No one shops at a convenience store for convenience.  They shop there out of desperation."
• "The last time I saw him...we were at the same sushi joint; he killed more fish in two hours than a trawler could in a week."
• "Boys, pay attention to your mother; mothers have a million things to teach you.  But fathers?  We only have two lessons, but these two things are everything you need to know: (1) What to do and (2) What not to do."

WEEK 39: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (John Boyne - 2006)

I did not like this book, but I am glad I read it.  I didn't like it not for the content or the events that take place - the ending is especially well-done for its unexpected nature - but for the way the author portrayed the main character, Bruno.  As the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer (though the word "Nazi" is never used) during the early 1940's, Bruno and his family move from Berlin to Auschwitz in Poland, where his father is stationed.  Bruno is nine years old when the story begins and, though from a sheltered and wealthy family, the author has made him one of the dumbest and naïve nine-year-olds ever put into print.  Bruno makes secret friends with another boy his same age, named Schmuel, on the other side of the fence, which half-way astute readers know to be the infamous concentration camp.  Some of his initial misunderstandings are forgivable, however, after a year of living in this place and near-daily conversations with Schmuel, the fact that Bruno still lives in an idealized world makes me question his cognitive abilities.  Making Bruno at least three-years younger would have helped significantly to his ignorances.  Worse still, however, is how the author, acknowledging the fact that the characters speak German, has Bruno thinking the name of their new home is "Out-With," an acceptable misinterpretation if the Holocaust had occurred in an English-speaking country.  The overall framework of the story is intriguing, however I found the execution of it to be disappointing.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "'How interesting,' said Gretel sarcastically because she had recently had a birthday and turned thirteen and thought that sarcasm was the very height of sophistication."
• "...Schmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body any more, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away."
• "A silence followed this remark, but it wasn't like a normal silence where it just happens that no one is talking.  It was like a silence that was very noisy."

WEEK 38: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (Betty Smith - 1943)

This is easily the oldest book likely to land on this list.  I realized, in seeing it for sale in an airport bookstore, that many probably read this in high school.  Evidently, the curricular goals of my midwestern education leaned more toward works from the likes of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder and turn-of the century frontier heartiness than turn of the century urban struggles.  Nevertheless, I felt a literary need to expose myself to this notable story.  A story in which, I must say, it is easy to claim "nothing happens."  If I were to summarize what the story was about, I could say it is about the Nolan family, and list events with a wide range of thematic qualities including, education, poverty, crime, penny stores, sobriety (or lack there of), tradition, immigration, reputation, and religion to name a few.  I should, however, go no further than to say that is gives a snapshot of life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn - back when it was not counted as truly part of Gotham - during the first couple decades of the 20th century, and leave it at that.  I am glad this book is on my list and I think I definitely appreciated it more now than I would have in high school.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "The neighborhood stories are an important part of a city child's life.  They are his contact with the supplies that keep life going; they hold the beauty that his soul longs for; they hold the unattainable that he an only dream and wish for."
• "There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."
• "A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward.  A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened."
• "The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself.  ...the last time time how clearly you see everything; as though through a magnifying light had been turned on it.  And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day."

WEEK 37: All That I Am (Anna Funder - 2011)

In an era where human-rights travesties are happening all around the globe - think Dafur, Kosovo, and East Timor to name a few - almost un-noticed by the general populace, it is hard imagine how much more challenging it would have been before this age of instant news and communication technologies.
Based on the true story of four Jewish friends who escape Germany and flee to London just as Hitler is gaining control, the novel shows the lengths many refugees went to, risking their lives from abroad, to warn the rest of the world to the Nazi agenda.  Focusing on the German playwright Ernst Toller, his lover Dora, her cousin Ruth, and Ruth's journalist husband, Hans, the story of ego and betrayal unfolds with deliberate care.  Told in alternating chapters by Toller and Ruth - he from New York City in the late spring of 1939, her from Australia in the current decade - the use of flashbacks from different points of view and time allow for Funder to slowly unravel the complexities of the times, politics, and emotions of the events

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "To be able to summon up righteous anger at will is, I think, a psychological skill more cathartic than meditation, or breathing into a paper bag.  It is also quite entertaining to watch."
• "Paper is a trick of physics, words heavy as gold."
• "When you are in love with someone you cannot see around them, you cannot get their human measure. You cannot see how someone so huge to you, so miraculous and unfathomable, can fit, complete, into that small skin."
• "The problem with life is that you can only live it blindly, in one direction.  Memory has its own ideas; it snatches elements of story from whenever, tries to put them together.  It comes back at you in angles, with all that you later knew, and it gives you the news."

WEEK 36: Attachments (Rainbow Rowell - 2011)

Don't judge.  I am fully aware that this is far from a literary masterpiece.  However.  It was a mostly entertaining and creative, albeit "fluffy," love story.  And in all fairness, I have no straight-up love stories on this list yet.
Told in two mediums - casual email exchanges between two women working for a newspaper and third person narrative of the introverted and lovelorn IT guy who's job is to monitor the dreaded "acceptable use policy" - the seemingly superficial and vapid lives of the central characters is slowly pealed away to reveal more and more about each of them.  Communication technology is an amazing thing, but it provides a lot of anonymity, giving people both an element of mystery as well as occasional confidence they may not have exhibited otherwise.  Rowell plays to this and allows us to fall for the characters and feel their excitement and emotions as they are experiencing them, despite the fact that we, as readers, are the only ones who know both sides of the story as it unfolds.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...of course [their wedding song is] "What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - I said that choosing that song is the sonic equivalent of buying picture frames and never replacing the photos of the models."
• "His mother had a special disdain for margarine.  Finding out a family kept margarine in the butter dish was like finding out their pets weren't house-trained."

WEEK 35: Birds Without Wings (Louis de Bernières - 2005)

After completing this epic, which essentially tells the story of what is now Turkey, I feel I need to attempt to tackle Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude again.  Fourth time is the charm?  (Seriously, I've been working on this one simultaneously with the others for a good six or seven weeks.  At over 550 pages of tightly-printed text, this was a doozy!)
De Bernières has created a story, part straight fiction, part historical fiction, part semi-non-fiction narrative with more characters than is generally recommended and language that is at times dangerously more poetic and captivating than the events they describe.
Like Garcia Marquez's tome, this one spans many years and involves an enumerable cast - most of the village of Eskibahçe makes an appearance at one point or another.  A part of the world wedged between the Muslim middle east and Christian Europe, this is a fascinating story of cultures, coexistence, tolerance and intolerance, peace, conflict, love, and forgiveness.  The trials of a town, trapped in time in many ways, and how the events of the outside world slowly tear away at the foundations of neighbors, town leaders, churches, and children.  In the end, at the very least, it has given me reason to want to visit Turkey.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...it is a child's privilege to enact the dreams that are denied to the sane."
• "'The first thing is that being beautiful is the having a job....If you're beautiful it's better than working, even if you have to work at it...It's like having money, except more fun, because having a job is work, and being beautiful is a game.'"
• "'I have an opinion about holy war...if a war can be holy, then God cannot.  At best, a war can only be necessary."
• "...doubt, when it is spilt, spreads like water."
• "It had a been a struggle to maintain his dignity and self-respect in the face of her clear but unspoken belief that she might have married a better man, but he knew that after all this time they had grown to suit each other, just as a boot and a foot change shape to accommodate the pressure of each other's forms."

WEEK 34: Manhood For Amateurs (Michael Chabon - 2009)

Two things happened almost simultaneously several years ago.  First, I was introduced to Michael Chabon's work via the masterpiece of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and second, I ran across a farewell article of sorts, in an issue of Details magazine in some long-forgotten waiting room or lounge.  With the latter incidence, I had no idea Chabon wrote short essays for magazines.  With the former, I wanted to read more of his addicting prose; Chabon is a master of the effortless "ten-dollar" vocabulary without being pompous.
This book is essentially a collection of 39 of his essays which have appeared, aside from the aforementioned Details rag, in Vogue, Swing, the New York Times, and Allure.  All the ruminations within these essays and vignettes center around what amount to Chabon's experiences with modern masculinity and being a father, husband, brother, and son.  Touching, thought-provoking, and insidiously funny, I had a perma-smile on my face throughout this entire book.  Two of my personal favorites dealt with being an older brother ("The Story of Our Story") and wrestling with using a man-purse ("I Feel Good About My Murse"), musings I could personally relate to.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Every day is like a kids drawing, offered to you with a strange mixture of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, your for the keeping.  Some days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page.  Some you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so are often hard to fathom.  But most of them you just ball up and throw away."
• "Childhood is a branch of cartography."
• "By fiat and consensus, fathers are always right, so that when facts or events inevitably conspire to prove them wrong, they are their sons alike totter on the brink of an abyss."
• "...only people who don't give a damn have style."
• "Saggy-bottomed and strained from sitting around in puddles of beer, the knapsack is - along with its sober older brother the briefcase - one of a limited number of stealth purse strategies by which men routinely attempt to circumvent, elude, or transcend the cruel code of the pocket."
• "...the confirmed stick-in-the-mud will always fall victim to the interventions of other people acting on impulse, because if habit is his religion, then his Satan is change, and in the end, we are all prey to temptation."

WEEK 33: Half the Sky (Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn - 2009)

Using a Chinese Proverb that says "Women hold up half the sky" as inspiration behind the title, married couple and separate winners of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, Kristof and WuDunn take on the enormous issue of world-wide womens' rights and how it affects everything else.  There is no way to do honorably summarize the effectiveness of this piece of work other than to encourage you to read it.  Read it and pass it on.  While facts and statistics are given, the most powerful - and meaningful - points are made and strengthened by exploring examples of real women around the impoverished world and their experiences with inequities and oppression.  Balancing stories of tragedy and success, I was blown away by the realistic and overall objectivity the authors employed in explaining this complex issue.  Covering a diverse mosaic of global gender issues - educating girls, sexual slavery, bride-prices, Islam and women, China's history of forced abortions, "machismo" in Latin America, and beyond - this is an eye-opening look at how the solutions one region's problems can potentially be tied to its untapped yet un-empowered resources.  Read this book.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "No matter how much gold may sell for, a hymen is infinitely more valuable.  It is frequently worth more than a human life."
• "United Nations agencies tend to be inefficient and bureaucratic...and probably do more for the photocopier industry than for the world's neediest - but they're still irreplaceable."
• "To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent, but - even worse - to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men.  One cannot rear young people in such wise that half of them think themselves superior by biology, without dulling ambition and devaluing accomplishment."

WEEK 32: gods in Alabama (Joshilyn Jackson - 2005)

The old adage "who says you can't go home" has debatable meanings in this novel, set simultaneously in the past and present.  On the surface it seems like a fairly cut-and-dry plot: Arlene, a teenage girl, out for revenge, kills the high school star quarterback and then makes a deal with God to, among other things, leave Alabama and never return.  However, what lies below the surface is deeper and murkier than the opening chapter can assume.  This is the story of semi-orphaned white girl from rural Alabama, currently living in Chicago, who is forced by certain events to return to the "scene of the crime" after a ten year absence.  To make things worse, she is returning with her black boyfriend and a head full of secrets even she is having trouble keeping bottled up.

What could easily have been light and even trashy fare, Jackson turns into a story deeply emotional and layered, effortlessly transitioning from the past to the present as if we were existing in both at the same time.  Jackson's style and tone are unique, almost to the point of aggressive, which work to the benefit of Arlene's first-person narrative as well as several other powerful characters, including Arlene's own aunt, Florence.  This book and prose were different than anything else on the list thus-far and the story was anything but predictable; I enjoyed it and may have to check out some of Jackson's other novels in the future.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "I don't really recommend moving from rural Alabama to a major Yankee city in one great bounding leap.  It's like picking up a prairie dog and dropping him into the Pacific."
• "I felt my silence change then, as my whole body went so still that a single beat of my heart shook me like an earthquake.  In the pause after that heartbeat, the world was without sound."
• "I was floating in a black sea that smelled like the sad sunbaked worms you always find right after a summer rain."

WEEK 31: My Year With Eleanor (Noelle Hancock - 2011)

Recommended by my friend Annie, who has been on a roll the whole of our friendship to have never recommended a bad book, due to a new job role I've been given dealing with challenging students to step out of their comfort zones. Based on the oft-stated Eleanor Roosevelt quote about doing something every day that scares you, this was an enlightening read.  The author, a recently laid-off celebrity gossip blogger, has been forced to step back at the age of 29 and reflect on her slightly vapid existence.  Taking the quote as mantra along with her unemployed status, she embarks on a year-long challenge to take more risks and step outside of herself, doing things she always found herself backing out of or dismissing.  While some of Hancock's more interesting and ambitious challenges were entertaining - swimming with sharks, skydiving, doing stand-up comedy, working at a funeral home - I found myself more interested in the smaller and spontaneous everyday things she did that "scared" her, such as having the nerve to send a poorly prepared plate back at a restaurant and giving encouraging words to a bullied teenager on a subway train, when most New Yorkers mind their own business.  Many humorous authors, in attempting to write self-depricatingly, come across as trying too hard; Hancock accomplishes this with ease and true wit.  It is sad to think that this skill - she is a Yale graduate - had previously been used on such topics as where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' newborn, Suri, would have her play-dates and with whom.  I really enjoyed this book and found the timing of reading it, in January when many are in their "resolution" phase, appropriate.  There is also a substantial amount of Roosevelt biography interspersed within the risk-taking tales which added even more merit to the writing.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Back then we had teachers and parents making sure we challenged ourselves. Then I became an adult.  The luxury of being an adult is you no longer have to do things that make you uncomfortable."
• "Matt's friends were four years older and in a completely different phase of life.  they owned houses and garlic presses."
• "Romantic comedies, I'd noticed, occasionally ended with a wedding, but they were almost never about marriage.  Movies about marriage were dramas.  Things ended badly for married couples in movies."
• "Now I understood how commanders got their soldiers to charge into battle.  The human instinct to please could be more powerful than our survival instinct."
• "I didn't wear make-up for two weeks.  If this doesn't sound scary, you're not from Texas."
• "Procrastination is the lazy cousin of fear."
• "Mountain climbing is a love affair on fast-forward.  The things you once found charming about your partners quickly become the things you loathe."
• "A meaningful experience is a glass of wine.  It needs time to breathe and open up; it can only be fully appreciated when you return to it later."

WEEK 30: Extraordinary, Ordinary People (Condoleezza Rice - 2011)

I was a fan of Dr. Rice before I read this book, having been impressed with her work as Secretary of State during the President George W. Bush's administration from 2005 - 2009.  Clearly an accomplished woman, it was fascinating to follow Dr. Rice through her formative years, through her eyes.

What this memoir does differently is that it focuses not only on the events, but the people behind them; in this case, Dr. Rice's parents.  Growing up in Alabama post official and later enforced segregation, followed by teenage years in Denver definitely helped young Condoleezza become the success she is today, however, he devoted and caring parents were just as much to credit, and Dr. Rice not only acknowledges this but focuses on it.  Essentially a long-form public thank you letter, Dr. Rice elegantly and simply finds a loving way to give credit where credit is clearly due.  Without debate, Dr. Rice is an accomplished and intelligent individual, but her parents' wisdom, love, and direction are just as admirable.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Because my father never made reason and faith enemies of each other, my religious conviction was strengthened."
• "When you own a grand piano it's like having a pet.  You have to have the right place for it, and this was always a major consideration in house hunting."
• "I loved my little place, even though I could stand in the living room and see the entire condo.  For several months I had to put my toothpaste purchases on my credit card..."

WEEK 29: Netherland (Joseph O'Neill - 2008)

I had (possibly too) high hopes for this book: the New York Times loved it; it was award winning (Pen/Faulkner); and it had a glowing jacket review from one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer.  Alas, it was a love not to be.

The story of Hans, an Dutch-borne Englishman living and working in New York City around 9/11, and his relationships, the prose is captivating, but somewhat uneventful.  Perhaps it was a bit too high-brow and introspective for me; that, or I don't have the appreciation for cricket that Hans and his new friend Chuck, from Trinidad did.

Though O'Neill writes effortlessly beautiful prose and has a knack for non-linear story-telling that does not, for once, confuse the reader, the lack of relatable action was ultimately what bored me about this novel.  The current New York City/immigrant experience however, is intriguing and definitely worth telling though, and O'Neill excels at writing believably as Hans, with nuances and details to the extent that at times I felt I was reading an actual memoir and not a work of fiction.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "The visiting team suddenly appeared, hanging around in the ominous aura that always surrounds opponents before a match."
• "Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day."
• "Like an old door, every man past a certain age comes with historical warps and creaks of one kind or another, and a woman who wishes to put him to serious further use must expect to do a certain amount of sanding and planing."
• "He was fat with great folds of excess skin wilted from his stomach and back and limbs.  He looked unstuffed, an abandoned work of taxidermy."
• "I strained the summer through a strainer that allowed only the collection of cricket."

WEEK 28: Quite Ugly One Morning (Christopher Brookmyre - 1996)

In the mood for a Scottish mystery, aye?  If so, this was an entertaining read from an author who was at once both humorous and cutting.  Too bad I still can't will myself to get into this genre.  It doesn't stop me from trying again every once and a while, but its still a no-go.

This mystery centered around a brutally murdered doctor - police enter a mess of a room replete with everything from the requisite blood to vomit, severed fingers, urine, and a "giant turd" on the mantle - and the nosey journalist who was, coincidentally, temporarily hiding out in the flat above the crime scene.

At the end of the day, or "ugly morning," in this case, it just wasn't my cup of tea...or pint of whiskey (or whatever they drink over there).  

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "The feeling was far worse than anticlimax; it was one of abortion.  Someone had ripped the pages from the back, taped over the last half-hour."
• "The anaesthetist saw his/her role instead as keeping the patient (a) alive and (b) comfortable while the surgeon did his/her best to ensure otherwise."
• "You knew nothing until you had proved it to yourself.  And unless you could prove it to someone else, knowledge was torture."

WEEK 27: When We Were The Kennedys (Monica Wood - 2012)

This is the story of a white middle-class Catholic family in a rural, blue-collar Maine town in the 1960's who suddenly lose their father on an unremarkable weekday morning and how they cope with the next year of their lives.

I did not dislike this book, however, I had a hard time getting really in to it.  I blame this partly on two other amazing memoirs I have had the pleasure of reading this year, also told through the eyes of the children who lived them - Waiting For Snow In Havanna and The House At Sugar Beach, weeks #2 and #18, respectively.  Despite coming from very wealthy families, the narrators in the other memoirs had something weightier to contribute, both historically and emotionally.  I don't want to cheapen Wood's fourth-grade memories of loosing her beloved father, however, as the worse thing to come of it seemed to be the stoppage of an endless, free supply of paper from the mill where he had worked for nearly forty years, it was hard to harness much sympathy beyond the normal human condolences for loosing a parent so young.  (I also thought she overused the word "myriad," but that's just me.)

What Wood does do well is paint a portrait of a moment in America immediately before and after the assassination of JFK and how her nine-year-old brain connected her family's situation to the First Family's loss and how it helped them to cope.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Cathy...stands her ground in the kitchen, where the morning will take on the shellac of permanence and become the museum piece we will all come back to again and again, seeing something new each time in the preserved, precious thing."
• "The Vaillancourts are catless but otherwise without flaw..."
• "She never got mad at us.  She suffered our corrections as if we were a song on the radio she didn't exactly enjoy but deemed not quite bothersome enough to turn off."
• "My idle moments swell like a beige balloon, featureless and burstable."
• "Outside the door the aunties' laughter sounds like expensive glass breaking."
• "I get the hang of the 'jitterbug'...right off, the way I'll get the hang of good posture, and thank you notes, and subject-verb agreement."

- HALFWAY DONE! -

WEEK 26: This is How You Lose Her (Junot Díaz - 2012)

When I lived in Colombia I was told "so?!" numerous times by my students when I informed them their latest matching-making attempt wouldn't work because so-and-so was married/had a boyfriend.  Others I met even extolled the adage that you "don't bring sand to the beach," referring to taking your girlfriend/wife out to a club with you.  This book is like that, but somehow accomplishes it with heart.

An award-winning author, Díaz as created a collection of short interwoven stories loosely centered around Yunior, a Domincan-born, US-raised Don Juan who can't seem to keep his romantic life together.  It's an interesting read in its honesty for the stereotype of the male Latino lover.   Díaz never forces you to feel bad for Yunior - or any other New Jersey Romeos within, including his father and older brother - but he finds a unlikely balance in his stories that allows you a modicum of empathy for them.  As a reader you can not forgive their exploits, yet you end up appreciating their fervor.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "[The resort] has got beaches the way the rest of the island has got problems.  These, though, have no merengue, no little kids, nobody trying to sell you chicharrones, and there's a massive melanin deficit in evidence.
• "...I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas."
• "She's dark and heavy-browed and has a mouth like unswept glass - when you least expect it she cuts you."

WEEK 25: Holidays On Ice (David Sedaris - 1997)

I have been a fan of Sedaris' humor ever since reading Me Talk Pretty One Day.  A short story about an unfortunate airplane seat-mate in his most recent  When You Are Engulfed In Flames had me choking with laughter.  I have read every one of his other memoirs, filled with addicting little tales of his ridiculous upbringing, family antics, and views of the world.  I figured I would wait on this one for an appropriate season.

I won't say I was disappointed, but I was surprised.  Roughly half of this collection are not Sedaris' standard fare of personal narratives, but instead various creative writing pieces centered around supposed themes of the season - charity, commercialism, Santa, faith.  (Some even focus on other holidays such as Halloween, Easter, and Bastille Day.) While I prefer his biographical material, Sedaris still brings his unique brand of exaggeration to his fictional pieces.  Who else could successfully write a series of highly critical theatre reviews about school-productions of various Christmas classics and have the line "I might have overlooked the shoddy production values and dry leaden pacing, but these are sixth graders we're talking about and they should have known better" come off so genuinely hilarious?!?

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints."
• "Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation."
• "While [the English] language flows from our mouths, the Vietnamese language sounds as though it is being forced from the speaker by a series of heavy and merciless blows to the stomach."
• "...the first through third grade actors graced the stage with an enthusiasm most children reserve for a smallpox vaccination."
• "Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy."

WEEK 24: The Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers - 2012)

I came across this novel after it appeared on a The Daily Beast best-of list for the year and literally finished it in a day; I couldn't put it down.  A timely novel on the effects of the current Iraq war, Powers has created a sad and realistic story of two soldiers, friends because of their circumstances, written with such beautiful and emotive descriptions it's easy to momentarily forget that he's talking about death and other desperate emotions.  Murph and Bartle meet before being deployed to Al Tafar in Nineveh.  Ten months later Murph is dead, leaving Bartle to deal with the complex issues of his death and the war at large.  Power's ability to capture the war is noteworthy, especially as relevant topical history, but his prose in bringing the reader to appreciate the post-war day to day life a soldier-returned-home is what really gives this novel life and breath, at the same time, taking those very things from the story's central characters.  This book deserves its place on any best of list, and could easily become required History class reading in the same way that A Farewell To Arms or All Quiet On The Western Front were for World War I and II, respectively.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "We only pay attention to rare things, and death is not rare.  Rare was the bullet with your name on it., the IED buried just for you.  Those were the things we watched for."
• "I realized...that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told, and what was true.  And I didn't think I would ever figure out which was which."
• "But [the old church] was a sad kind of beauty, like all things created to cover the ugly reason they existed."
• "A few city lights and the fires on the hillsides burned like a tattered quilt of fallen stars."
• "It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability.  Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up."
• "We spoke in whispers, great huffs of breath gone monosyllabic and strangled of volume."
• "To say what happened, the mere facts, the disposition of events in time, would come to seem like a kind of treachery.  The dominoes of moments, lined up symmetrically, then tumbling backward against the hazy and unsure push of cause, showed only that a fall is every object's destiny.  It is not enough to say what happened.  Everything happened.  Everything fell."

WEEK 23:  The Lost City of Z (David Grann - 2005)

I can only imagine the difficulty in writing a biography of a man who disappeared; despite much evidence to fill in the beginning of his life, Colonel P.H. Fawcett's life ended mysteriously somewhere in the depths of the Amazon jungle in 1925.  I imagine writing such a piece is almost as difficult as going off in search of an ancient civilization, that may or may not have existed to begin with, based on little hard evidence at all.

Somehow, Grann is able to craft a fascinating and bizarre tale a talented and obsessive explorer whose intensity proved, likely, to be his demise.  Many explorers have ventured into what has been christened a "counterfeit paradise," only to vanish or emerge with barely their wits.  Fawcett bravely mapped much of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso on numerous expeditions, only to vanish in search of a site he called 'Z', a place to rival the seemingly fictitious El Dorado.  Despite needing to be a bit supposing, Grann paints a probable picture not only of what may have happened to Fawcett, but also a realistic portrait of life in these hard - and disappearing - regions of the South America.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Fawcett had earned his place in the annals of exploration not for what he revealed about the world, but for what he concealed."
• "Lynch had always believed that there was no adventure until, as he put it, 'shit happens.'"
• "...these accounts made me aware of how much of the discovery of the world was based on failure rather than on success - on tactical errors and pipe dreams."
• "Because the Amazon frontier was so isolated, it was governed by its own laws and, as one observer put it, made the American West seem by comparison 'as proper as a prayer meeting.'"
• "I had often heard about biographers who became consumed by their subjects, who, after years of investigating their lives...were driven into fits of rage and despair, because, at some level, the people were unknowable."

WEEK 22: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Ayana Mathis - 2012)

Oprah recently add Mathis' debut novel to her Book Club list, and with good reason.  Mathis presents to the reader a family with a history so mundanely tragic and yet complex beyond layers.  Beginning in 1925 and ending fifty-five years later, the story centers essentially on Hattie Sheperd, with each chapter of the novel focused on one (or two) of her eleven children (and one grandchild), though not necessarily following birth chronology.

Mathis has a talent for style and voice.  More accurately, I should say she has a talent for employing "styles and voices" as each chapter, through different means and viewpoints, peals back another complex layer that is the Sheperd family.  the characters may not be the most likable people you've come across on the page, but they cannot get any more real.  Hattie, her husband August, and their children are far from perfect, yet in Mathis' unforgiving hands, they are human.  She never makes apologies or excuses for them, they simply are.  This story and characters in this novel are the definition of a beautiful disaster, the prose is simply just beautiful.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Hattie resisted the urge to cover her ears to block the rushing city sounds.  She smelled the absence of trees before she saw it."
• "The orange dress she was wearing was bright enough to give a body sunburn."
• "The old woman's house was cool and dim and smelled of piecrust and soil."
• "It requires a kind of tenderness, I think, laying out a little person's clothes.  Mother was never tender.  She still isn't.  She put those clothes on the bed for me as though they were the ingredients for a roast chicken, as though I were to be trussed."
• "I focus on the ministers voice. I tune my ear to his pace so the words are whole."
• "...Sala wondered what she was thinking.  She didn't dare ask.  Hattie was like a lake of smooth, silvered ice, under which nothing could be seen or known.  When she was angry, the ice creaked and groaned; it threatened to crack and pull them all under..."

WEEK 21: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson - 2009)

This book is almost as ridiculous as its title.  The story centers around the titular centenarian, Allan Karlsson, who is evidently Sweden's answer to Forest Gump.  Unlike Gump, who seemed to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time and casually influence pop culture here and there, the fictitious Karlsson actually had a conscious hand in many international foreign relations decisions throughout history.  An expert in explosives, both the US and Soviet Union can thank him for their nuclear weapons programs.  The same can be said for a slew of other political decisions from Spain to China, Tehran to North Korea.  Allan Karlsson got around.  But the aforementioned in only half the story.  The other half involves an escape from a nursing home and the subsequent comedic string of events that ensues.

I enjoyed the book, for the most part, but found some of the historical events a bit tedious, but that has more to do with my own history ignorance and less to do with Jonasson's ability to craft a humorous tale so unbelievable it doesn't matter in the least!

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Allan's father had always wondered how the rails could be so straight considering the extent of the workers' consumption of spirits..."
• "Until then, he hadn't wanted to ask...curiosity was not a desirable quality in private chauffeurs."
• "Never try to outdrink a Swede, unless you happen to be a Finn or at least a Russian."
• "If you had nothing to say, you could always interview somebody who didn't realize that he too had nothing to say."
• "...whatever you say about French food, it soon disappears from you plate without your actually having eaten much."

WEEK 20: The Ghost Map (Steve Johnson - 2006)

NERD ALERT: I thought this book was awesome.  You may not.

Here's the deal: back in the mid-1800's in London, people lived in over-crowded neighborhoods, they dumped their human waste into cesspools under their homes, drank from shady neighborhood water pumps, everyone thought they were a physician, actual physicians made diagnoses based on superstitions and hunches, and the idea that you could get sick and die from a foul smell was generally accepted by all levels of society and education.

Enter the story of the cholera outbreak that would change history, medicine, and science forever.  This is the well-researched and accessible story of two men - a notable physician and a respected clergyman - and their simultaneous search for the cause of the disease amidst all the chaos of an epidemic.

This thing I loved most about this book was that calculated and ingenious way that Johnson combines all the ingredients of the situation - history, biology, politics, sociology - into one for a more holistic understanding.  This is a fascinating snapshot of a small but important moment in humanity.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "If some rogue virus wiped out every single mammal on the planet, life on earth would proceed, largely unaffected by the loss.  But if the bacteria disappeared overnight, all life on the planet would be extinguished within a matter of years.
• "...to live in a such a world [urban poverty] was live with the shadow of death hovering over your shoulder at every moment.  To live was to be not dead yet."
• "As you zoom in past the scale of the bacterium and the virus, you travel from the regime of biology to the regime of chemistry: from organisms with a pattern of growth and development, life and death, to mere molecules."

WEEK 19: White Noise (Don DeLillo - 1985)

One of the most quotable novels I've read, this was also, at times, one of the more challenging.  With a societal lens like a comedian specializing in observational humor, DeLillo has a knack for setting a scene not from actual physical descriptions, but by focusing on the emotional, cultural, and sociological idiosyncrasies in every day life.  Not a whole lot happens in this story, centered around the family of a college professor of Hitler Studies in a fictionally stereotypical town in middle America, which is why it was good thing I was trapped on a bus for a large portion of its reading.  Basically the family is a psychological mess and a toxic accident on the outskirts of town which causes a noxious and potentially cancerous black cloud is a catalyst for some heavy discussion on death, life, consumerism, reality, technology, and pretty much every other topic of modern life.  What struck me the most, however, is how ahead of its time I imagine this book to be.  While I myself was just prepping for Kindergarten, I wonder how the rest of the world, mid 1980's felt about some of the topics DeLillio addresses, especially in a era pre-internet and pocket cell phones.  Surprisingly, I doubt he would have to change much of the dialog in the novel where he to write it today.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...I found some family photo albums...Children wincing in the sun, women in hats, men shading their eyes from the glare as if the past possessed some quality of light we no longer experience..."
• "The landlord was a large florid man of such robust and bursting health that he seemed to be having a heart attack even as we looked on."
• "Bee was small-featured except for her eyes, which seemed to contain two forms of life, the subject matter and its hidden implications."
• "In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are.  No one's knowledge is less secure than your own."
• "Self-pity is something that children are very good at, which must mean it is natural and important.  Imagining yourself dead is the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying form of childish self-pity."
• "The great work of containing the blaze went on, a labor that seemed as old and lost as cathedral-building, the men driven by a spirit of lofty communal craft."

WEEK 18: The House at Sugar Beach (Helene Cooper - 2008)

I love to learn about little-known pieces of history, especially from the perspective of someone not necessarily famous.  This perspective is even better, at times, when told through the developing eyes of a child.  For these reasons, The House at Sugar Beach was a captivating read that I highly recommend.

Back in the early 1820's, the powers that be in America believed that it wasn't necessarily healthy for society to have free blacks walking around while with black slaves.  They came up with the idea of basically sending them back to Africa, purchasing land for them there, and letting them form their own separate, independent lives; out of sight, out of mind.  And thus, Liberia was born.  The problem was that Liberia - from the word "liberty" - was essentially torn from land occupied by several tribal groups.  Fast-forward one hundred years to a society divided.  The Congo people, as a American blacks were known, were the privileged and lived in high society, owned vast properties, and had "help" of their own.  The "help" were known as native Liberians, or bush people, despite being from different ethnic groups and unwilling participants in this new democracy - which they had no say in as second class citizens.  That was until the revolutions began in the early 1980's.

Helene Cooper, a promenant journalist for the Wall Street Journal and later the New York Times, grew up Congo, the great-great-great-etc. granddaughter of two of the founding families of Liberia.  She enjoyed all the perks of a privileged lifestyle: a house on the beach, the best school in Monrovia, vacation home in Spain, trips to the US for holidays.  Cooper is honest and unapologetic in her memoir, which begins pre-revolution, follows her family's desertion first of their homestead on the titular Sugar Beach and later the country altogether, to her relocation as a refugee in US struggling with her new identity, to her eventual return to Liberia as a journalist.  What could easily have become an entitled pity-party, is a child's heartfelt recollection of a life gone and an adult's hope for a peaceful future.  In a country that used to have affluence, electricity, and infrastructure, to one of the most dangerous and corrupt, this is an educational and emotional read.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "[The West African] air is so heavy that it weighs on your tongue, as if you can open your mouth and take a sip."
• "[Following the riots], Liberia was like a pot of water that had been put on the stove at a slow boil an forgotten about."
• "...I sign up for Journalism as one of my electives.  My other elective was Typing (because journalists had to know how to type)...Science was nowhere on my schedule.  I certainly did not need to understand physics in order to bring down the government."
• "A Liberian funeral is something like an Indian wedding, an Irish wake, and British coronation all rolled into one."

WEEK 17: Amsterdam (Ian McEwan - 1998)

As an author and creator of personas, Ian McEwan has an incredible knack for isolating and drawing out despicable flaws in the characters of his novels.  Flaws that the reader has no choice to admit to recognizing from time to time in themselves.

Amsterdam is the story of two old friends, now successful adults in their fields - Clive a renowned composer and Vernon a leader newspaper editor - who confront their own jealousies and insecurities about their respective lives after attending the funeral of shared lover, Molly, they both had many years before in their youths. Molly had had other lovers too, including Julian, a prominent politician rumored to be a candidate for British Prime Minister, and her widower, George, a wealthy man in his own rights.  Together, McEwan combines their individual histories and personalities with that the "green-eyed monster" with dramatic results.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "The thought recurred to Vernon... [that] he was simply the sum of all the people who had listen to him, and when he was alone, he was nothing at all."
• "The air felt close and damp, as though it had been breathed many times."
• "...a baton of light across the bracken redeemed the reputation of the color brown with fiery reds and yellows."
• "...in some respects journalism resembled science: the best ideas were the ones that survived and were strengthened by intelligent opposition."
• "He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy.  Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future."

WEEK 16: The Thing Around Your Neck (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 2009)

A collection of short stories centered around the lives of Nigerians across time and geography, this is an author to take notice of!  Simple, interesting, and powerful, the twelve varied stories and format in this book reminded me a lot of Jhumpa Lahiri, an equally enchanting storyteller who focuses on Indian themes where Ngozi Adichie captures the experiences of her countrymen in Nigeria, there and abroad. 

One powerful story tells of a better-off Nigerian woman who takes shelter in a shuttered store-front during a violent riot in the city of Kano with a poor Muslim woman.  Another humorous story deals with the cultural differences for an immigrant woman coming to the US to live with her new husband, a Nigerian physician, by way of an arranged marriage.  One of my favorite stories, mostly because I enjoy hearing writers talk about the art and act of writing, takes place at an African Writers' Workshop Week outside of Cape Town, South Africa.  However, all the stories are unique and powerful in their own rights and a needed reflective pause before continuing on to the next.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "She cannot remember when her idea of God has not been cloudy, like the reflection from a steamy bathroom mirror, and she cannot remember ever trying to clean the mirror."
• "I was relieved he did not ask how...and that he did not look inordinately shocked, as if war deaths are ever really accidents."
• "She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry...made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure."
• "...she could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs."
• "[The Zimbabwean] seemed hyper, overactive, and Ujunwa thought she might like her, but only in the way she liked alcohol - in small amounts."

WEEK 15: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky - 1999)

If Facebook had been around when this book originally debuted, it would probably make up half the pop-culture and daily affirmation-esque quotes on the walls of the teen set.  Written through a series of letters to some unknown (and possibly fictional) character, the book follows Freshman Charlie as he navigates and survives his first year of high school, after losing one of his best friends the year prior.

The book gets its title from an observation made by one of Charlie's first friends, a Senior and fellow social outcast.  Defining a wallflower, he says, "You see things. You keep quiet about them.  And you understand."

While not the most prolific thing I've ever read,what I enjoyed about this novel was how it was a snapshot of a teenage era not long ago, but still long gone.  The modern era of dial-up internet and no cell phones and text messages.  While it takes place in the early 90's, a little bit before I was myself in high school, some the social dynamics and norms remained the same, so as much as this story is humorous and tragic, it is a also a bit nostalgic for those of us who grew up circa the flannel shirts, combat boots, and making mixed-tapes from the radio generation.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...a lot of kids at school hate their parents.  Some of them got hit.  And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives.  Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars.  And some of them just wanted to drink in peace."
• "Patrick actually used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music."
• "My sister rolls her eyes better than anyone."
• "I walk around the school hallways and look at people.  I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here.  If they like their jobs.  Or us.  And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen."
• "There's nothing like the deep breaths after laughing that hard.  Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons."
• I don't remember what the valedictorian said except that she quoted Henry David Thoreau instead of a pop song."

WEEK 14: The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison - 1970)

In honor of National Banned Books Week (last week in September) I decided to read another Toni Morrison novel.  This poor author appears far too many times on this list.  Several years ago I read Morrison's Song of Solomon - prompted also by NBBW - and was blown away at her style, characters, and effortless and beautiful phrasings.  The Bluest Eye did not disappoint.

While I felt people may be slightly over-sensitive with banning Song of Solomon, this book does have a bit more reason for being challenged.  But other than some fairly frank and graphic descriptions of sex and one scene involving incest, there wasn't anything else that should stop this story about a couple of black families in Loraine, Ohio, living in varying degrees of poverty, from being a potent and important piece of well-read American fiction.  What Morrison does best is portray the sense of self-realization of one's supposed role in society through the eyes of a child.  I loved reading this book and want to make it a goal to include another of Morrison's works in these 52 books.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Their conversation is a like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires."
• "Saturdays were lonesome, fussy, soapy days.  Second in misery only to those tight, starchy, cough-drop Sundays, so full of 'don'ts' and 'set'cha self downs.'"
• "Marie threw back her head.  From deep inside, her laughter came like the sound of many rivers, freely, deeply, muddily, heading for the room of an open sea."
• "With a graceful movement of the wrist, a gesture so quick and small we never really saw it, only remembered it afterward, she tossed the bottle over the rail at us."

WEEK 13: Four Souls (Louise Erdich - 2004)

Set in Minnesota in the first part of the 20th Century, the novel centers an Ojibwa indian woman named Four Souls who sets out to find the man responsible for cutting down the trees of her family and ancestors and dispose of him in a similar manner.  When she finds him, in his large mansion in St. Paul, he is ill and she is surprisingly given a job as a maid.  She decides she must nurse him back to health so that he again values life before she takes it from him.  Things get complicated from here on out.

Erdrich, a Minnesota native, has an amazing voice throughout the story, told from the perspective of different peripheral characters, and never from Four Souls' point of view.  At one point one narrator uses a lengthy but beautiful analogy equating a story to an owl pellet.  In a sense, that is what this is, a deceivingly complex tale wrapped in a seemingly simple package.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "I see the negative of her as she stooped to her dark bundle, the image of a question mark set on a page, alone.  Or like a keyhole...sunk into a door locked and painted shut, the deep black figure layered in shawls was more an absence, a slot for a coin, an invitation for the curious, than a woman..."
• Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish.  It's hard to swim against the current."
• We are time's containers.  Time pours into us and then pours out again.  In between the two pourings we live our destiny."
• "Names are throwaway treasures.  Names hold the sweetness of youth, bring back faces and unsettling resemblances.  Names acquire their own life and drag the person on their own path for their own reasons, which we can't know."
• "...she never needed any medicine to snag her men.  They fell her way like notched trees.  She treated them that way, too, and burned them with her heat or used them for her purpose."
• "...to love at all, is like trying to remember the tune and words to a song that the spirits have given you in your sleep.  Some days, I knew exactly how the song went and some days I couldn't even hum the first line.  Then there were times we both knew the song and love was effortless."

WEEK 12: The Scorpio Races (Maggie Stiefvater - 2011)

Bare with me as I explain the premise: There is a cold and rainy island, called Thisby, far away from "the mainland," inhabited by fishermen, butchers, and other hardy laboring types.  There are also giant carnivorous horses that live in the ocean and occasionally come on land and attack people.  (Yeah, I made that same face too.)  The people of Thisby have an annual race where competitors ride these giant killer sea horses.

The story is centered around two protagonists, each recounting there stories in first person in (mostly) alternating chapters.  Puck is an orphaned teenage girl who live with her two brothers on a ruined and dilapidated farm after their parents were killed by these horses while on their fishing boat.  Sean is stable-hand for one of the richest men on Thisby, and the winner of four previous races; his father was a racers who was killed when Sean was a small child.  Both Puck and Sean have much to gain from their appearance and success in this year's race - their unlikely alliance included.

Coincidentally, as I was finishing this book, The Daily Beast ran this interview with the author.  Apparently she is quite popular with the tween set, though this book is far from what I would consider "young adult" literature.  It was a great story, with vivid characters, and one of the most terrifying scenes I've read in a book, on par with the suspense of a dinosaur attack in Jurassic Park.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "He controls his horse like a fishing boat controls the sea."
• "There are moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you'll think you'll remember for the rest of your life, and it's not often they turn out to be the same moments."
• "It is neither rainy nor sunny, but somewhere in between, as it often is on Thisby.  My hands are wet with the sky's sweat."
• "My cheeks redden, which infuriates me.  Curse this ginger hair and everything that comes with it. My father said once that if I didn't have my mother's ginger hair, I wouldn't blush or curse as easily."

WEEK 11: The Second Time We Met (Leila Cobo - 2012)

While far from a literary masterpiece, I really enjoyed this novel, which uses time as a toy and not a hurdle in the telling of a story that spans more than twenty years and thousands of miles.  Beginning and ending in Colombia, Leila Cobo follows the lives of two people, Rita Ortiz and Asher Stone, who are essentially strangers though they are mother and son.  Asher was adopted and subsequently raised in California after Rita - estranged from her own strict family after falling in love with and getting pregnant by a young guerilla fighter occupying her small town outside Bogotá - is forced to give him up for adoption.  Rita never saw her baby again, nor the baby's father, who Asher now closely resembles.  Rita has forced herself to move on successfully, until Asher comes looking for her and his past.

This is a story of timing, identity, and second chances.  The things that bothered me about the story or the story-telling - the number of English-speakers Asher meets in Colombia was remarkable, for starters - were masked by the resolve of the characters and the unfolding of the story itself.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...love and lust are transformative [and] they peel back the layers of your self...Before you know it, fragments of you are exposed for all to see, little pieces you didn't know you carried within you until they found their reason to exist."
• "Her fellow students were clearly of the same ilk, day laborers, like her, forced to work ahead of their time...[T]hey wore uniforms that branded them to the world, that proclaimed that their duty in life was to clean up after someone else...[L]ike her they were so close to comfort and wealth that they could touch it but couldn't aspire to own it."
• "She was loath to admit, even to herself, that the city still terrified her, that in this teeming, interminable maze of concrete and heartbeats she was afraid of getting lost or - worse still - being found."
• "She never calls him simply 'love' or 'baby'...it's always 'my love,' 'my baby,' the possessive seemingly an insurance that her endearment won't evaporate or somehow get transferred to the wrong recipient."

WEEK 10: These Foolish Things (Deborah Moggach - 2004)

I originally put this book on my list partly out of my fascination with India and partly after seeing the trailer for the movie based on this novel, alternatively titled "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel".  (After a second viewing of the trailer post-reading, I'd say the film was [very] loosely-based on the book. For shame Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, and Bill Nighy. For shame.)

Contrary to the essence of the plot, this is a story about living.  The book centers around a group of British retirees who, for various reasons, decide to spend the winter of their years in a home in Bangalore, India.  While not spectacularly written, Moggach is successful in creating a cast of characters - foreign and domestic - that grow on you throughout the book.  Most of the residents at the Marigold are widows or widowers and therefore have a lot of time to consider their own mortality.  Moggach allows them to consider their lives as well, and brings new appreciation to what "living" means to different people.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Increasing years...render us invisible as if in preparation for our eventual disappearance."
• "It was as if she were performing in a play and realized, quite suddenly, that the cast had been replaced by actors she had never seen before."
• "All the most intoxicating experiences had happened abroad, in places that smelled of dung and cheap perfume.  If was the smell of adventure."
• "It all stemmed from denial.  Denial was the British default setting - denial of sexuality, denial of one's feelings...Denial, of course, produced fear."

WEEK 9: Swim: Why We Love the Water (Lynn Sherr - 2012)

Basically a long-form love letter to the sport and art of swimming, I highly recommend this to any swimmer, no matter the longevity of your aquatic career. Covering all the bases under the historical context of humans and our relationship with water, Sherr dives in - yep, I just did that - to everything from the evolution of the various swimming strokes to the ever-changing story of the swim suit, swimming's relationship with literature and the movies to some basic lessons in biomechanics.  Along the way any notable person, real or fictitious, gets their mention.  What would a book on swimming be without the likes of early greats like Annette Kellerman, Gertrude Ederle, Ester Williams, Johnny Weissmuller, and Adolf Kiefer; all the way to contemporary ground breakers like Dick Cavill, Rowdy Gaines, Dara Torres, Lynne Cox, Cullen Jones and Michael Phelps; or legendary coaches like Terry Laughlin or Dory from Finding Nemo?  This is an incredibly well-composed argument - albeit biased and probably entirely "preaching to the choir" - advocating that swimming is the best sport in the world.  I'm probably Sherr's target audience; no argument here!

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "Watch a swimmer pass a building with a pool: the whiff of chlorine produces a wistful smile."
• "Swimming is the ultimate on-your-own activity.  Everyone else gets stuff to make it easier: skis, skates, bats, wheels, sticks, gloves, racquets, slick shoes...An equipment malfunction in swimming means some part of your body has broken down."
• "The British writer Charles Sprawson...defines the historical swimmer as 'someone rather remote and divorced from everyday life, devoted to a mode of exercise where most of the body remains submerged and self-absorbed. [Swimming] appealed to the introverted and the eccentric, individualists involved in a mental world of their own.'"

WEEK 8: The Book Thief (Markus Zusak - 2005)

After much prodding from a good friend - who hasn't yet recommended a bad book - I bumped this novel, set in Nazi Germany, to the top of my list.  While I didn't love some of the things the author did, and it has now put me behind in my book-a-week pacing, I still felt it was worth the read.  Despite feeling at times that Zusak was attempting to employ too many writerly elements to one story - and not always evenly, especially during the first half - I did really like the characters and the deadly serious yet almost whimsical way the book progresses.  I also thought it a fascinating touch to have the entire book narrated by Death; turns out he has got a sense of humor!

I'm surprised, too, that this has not been turned into a film as there are many vividly composed dialogues and scenes that can be easily envisioned on the big screen.  One such moment is when the titular character, Liesel, and her foster father are in the basement of their house having reading lessons.  Though living in poverty, he is a house painter and has plenty of those supplies so, with a lack of paper, they take to writing the words on the walls of the basement, painting over them with new, more difficult words.  I can see a director like Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, or Pedro Almodóvar do amazing things with the poetic idea of coats upon coats of painted words.  This is tearfully beautiful book, literally.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• "...one opportunity leads to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death."
• "Whispering adults hardly inspire confidence."
• "...humans like to watch a little destruction.  Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin.  Their great skill is their capacity to escalate."
• "...it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.  Imagine smiling after a slap in the face.  Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.  That was the business of hiding a Jew."
• "[The grocer] was a barrel of a man, with two small bullet holes to look out of.  His teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in.":
• "For some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to.  Perhaps it's so they can die being right."
• "...her scream [traveled] the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum."

WEEK 7: I Was Told There'd Be Cake (Sloane Crosley - 2008)

After the last three books, I needed something lighter.  This collection of short personal narratives would give David Sedaris a run for his money.  In this memoir, Crosley focuses mainly on her years "trying to make it" in New York City and the daily misadventures and ironies along the way.  From a chapter on her short volunteer experience at the butterfly house in a museum to her experience in moving apartments a mere three blocks distant, Crosley is both self-depricatingly real and a little bit schizophrenic, in a way we wish we all could admit we are.  Too say I laughed out loud would be cliché in a way Crosley would disapprove; I guffawed audibly at least once in every chapter.  Perhaps it's because I can relate, but I probably did it the most during an essay in which she explores the origins, motivations for, and pitfalls of her uncommon name.  While light reading, this is by no means fluffy or "chick lit."  It's probable another of Crosley's books will end up on this list later on.  Like a rationed piece dark chocolate, I'll wait until I need it.

FAVORITE QUOTES (this book was ripe; my apologies in advance):

• "I had certain ideas about private school people.  I thought they were good in everything they did. I thought they ate right and woke up before their alarm clocks went off and played the viola.  I was legitimately confused to find out they were delinquents-in-training like the rest of us.  Perhaps they had always planned to drink and smoke up and blare gangsta rap from their Jettas."
• "The search for one's first professional job is not unlike a magical love potion: when one wants to fall in love with the next thing one sees, one generally does."
• "I had a cast-iron upper-middle-class work ethic that was akin to a superpower.  Or at least an electric fence - one that simply wouldn't let me deny my basic skills as a glorified secretary.  Nothing was beneath me but the sidewalk."
• "[Oregon Trail] also had a distinct masturbatory quality.  Here was something millions of preteens did, only you wouldn't find out until much later in life...Apparently many children learned how to play it at school, which strikes me as just plain illegal."
• "I assume, when I hear the sound of my name, that it is referring to me.  It's like watching commercials on the Spanish channel and comprehending nothing except the word 'Coca-Cola.'"
• "...this guy was going through my trash!... I now pulp my receipts, double knot my trash bags, and leave the occasional crumpled VD pamphlet in there for good measure."
• "My allowance disappeared on my twelfth birthday, along with my lunch being made for me, my bed being made for me, and hugs."
• "[Best friends are] like cars when you're a teenager; most suburban families have at least two in case one breaks down."
• "If a woman has one eye out for a potential husband, chances are she's got the other out for potential bridesmaids.  And yes, this does turn her into a cross-eyed freak."

WEEK 6: How Soccer Explains The World (Franklin Foer - 2004)

This was not the book I expected it to be but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Based solely on the title, I imagined it being a sociological commentary on how the annals of soccer reflect or are shaped by the worlds and cultures they are in.  

Not the case.  This wonderfully researched book finds unique and specific examples of how certain groups of people, the world over throughout history, have used "the beautiful game" for their own political, criminal, prejudicial, and/or commercial advantage.  Going from England and Ireland to Brazil, Iran, Hungary, and the United States, Foer looks objectively at both sides of the coin, doing his best to unravel often complicated dynamics.  

The sections of the book I found the most interesting dealt with sociological connections such as how different clubs view their own racisms or prejudices.  Another analysis focusing on the "why" of soccer's polarizing popularity in the United States was intriguingly obvious, and yet fascinating.  I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in world history and politics, as well as sport fans, regardless of their feelings toward the original fútbol.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

• "Matches between cross-town rivals always make for the most combustible dates on the schedule...Nobody, it seems, hates like a neighbor."
• "...grousing about refereeing is a bedrock right of sports fans.  Why blame the team that you love when culpability for defeats can be easily transported elsewhere?"
• ...it's the most familial-based societies, where the sense of obligation is strongest, that breed the worst nepotism and cronyism.  In other words, Pelé, and Brazil, weren't just ill-suited for reform.  They were ill-suited for capitalism."
• "Ukrainian feelings are too primitive to even warrant the suffix "ism."  They feel something closer to a naïf's dislike of the unfamiliar, like an eight-year-old refusing to try dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant."
• "Another similar widely spread thesis holds that the root cause of violence can be found in the pace of the game itself.  Because goals come so irregularly, fans spread far too much time sublimating their emotions, anticipating but not ever releasing.  When those emotions swell and become uncontainable, the fans erupt into dark, Dionysian fits of ecstatic violence."

WEEK 5: The Year We Left Home (Jean Thompson - 2011)

I think one of my favorite types of fiction to read revolve around a more or less everyday collection of characters; they are familiar because they are your neighbors, co-workers, or even your own family and yet strangers at the same time.  The trick is for the author to have to skills to not only bring these fictitious personas to life, but make you forget that they never did exist in the first place.

Thompson succeeds on both accounts here in her decades-spanning story of one family centered in its patriarchal origins in small town Iowa.  As the family grows, moves, and expands, as families do, each chapter focuses on a single character.  Many characters appear or are discussed in chapters throughout, however, most characters are given their own moment(s) in the spotlight.  No matter your point in life - raising a teenager, coping with being an empty-nester, one half of a newly-wed couple, watching your children have children, on the cusp of leaving your parents at 18, or just longing for that moment - this is story that can be appreciated by a range of audiences.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

• "On the floor of the backseat was the loaf of pumpkin bread she'd made for Aunt Martha.  It was from a box mix and wouldn't impress Martha or anybody else, but she couldn't show up empty-handed. It was what you were supposed to do to people in any difficult circumstance.  Clobber them with food."
• "Ryan, perched on the edge of the desk, leaning forward to indicate intensity, posed this [question] to the fifteen undergraduates in his discussion section.  They were serious young people, all of them intelligent, or at least they tested well."
•  "Marriage was love gone public.  He had married Ellen because he loved her.  He loved her because he had married her."
• "[The guy] had red hair and blotchy brown freckles.  The kind of kid who makes a cute six-year-old, and it's all downhill after that."

WEEK 4: Say You're One Of Them (Uwem Akpan - 2009)

I had high hopes for this book.  It had lots of critical praise, seemed to be on many year-end "best" lists, and even Oprah loved it.  I did not.  It's not bad, I just wasn't that into it, and had I known that, I would have followed my old quit-the-book-if-you-don't-like-it rule.

Centered in Africa in five different countries, the book is actually five short stories - including one that is very short - all told form the view-point of the child characters in them.  I do have to say that Akpan did a fantastic job of changing his voice for each of the book's sections, though I didn't always enjoy every voice, myself.  And the stories were interesting enough, but somehow exhausting in a way that didn't push me into each new one after the previous story concluded.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

• "The fisherman at sea spangled the water with their lanterns, like stars.  Yet there was no sea,  no sky, no land, only points of light dangling in a black chasm."
• ...his cowherd feet were crammed into undersized canvas shoes - their laces missing, their tongues jutting out like those of goats being roasted."

WEEK 3: I Love You, Beth Cooper (Larry Doyle - 2007)

The highly subjective movie snob in me has a soft-spot for generation-defining "high school" movies.  "The Breakfast Club," "Heathers," "Dazed and Confused," "10 Things I Hate About You," "Varsity Blues," "Clueless," and "Mean Girls," are all not-so-secret favorites.  I Love You, Beth Cooper is the literary equivalent of a great teen coming-of-age film; this is not teen-lit, however.  Written by Simpsons writer, Larry Doyle, it is the story of class valedictorian, Denis Cooverman, who admits his unrequited love for titular cheerleader Beth Cooper during his graduation speech about leaving high school with no regrets.  The rest of the novel progresses at an appropriately fast clip, escalating from simple sweaty embarrassment to full-on bruised, battered, and bloody - ego and body, both.  Looking back through the lens of an adult long passed high school days, the writing is both nostalgic and cynical, bringing together all the idiosyncrasies of this shared life stage for most of us, a rite-of-passage you can read, laugh out loud to, yet walk away completely unharmed and somehow less jaded.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

• "But of the myriad things Denis feared - which included briefly, a fear of misusing the word myriad - the thing he feared most often and most enthusiastically was the future."
• "Denis thrust his hands back into the closet, praying they would reappear holding anything resembling a weapon.  A loaded revolver would be ideal, though unlikely (his mother felt hunters should be tried for war crimes and his father drove a Prius); a stick with a nail in it would be acceptable."
• "Henry was the local purveyor of aftermarket pharmaceuticals, not quite a drug dealer though he played the part, replete with an embroidered urban dialect spoken only in the suburbs."
• "The house was neo-Georgian, meaning it had red brick on the front. It was otherwise a 6,000-square-foot conglomeration of awful architectural ideas throughout history executed in twenty-first-century Vulgarian; chief among the offenses was a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bay window that cantilevered out like a body-builder who spent way too much time on his abs."

WEEK 2: Waiting For Snow in Havana (Carlos Eire - 2003)

This is a beautiful book.  The memoir of a Cuban boy from a well-off family before and during the change of governmental power in the late 1950's and early 1960's, is told with such pride and love for a country he knows is long gone from his childhood memories.  What I loved about the framing of this book is how Eire doesn't tell the stories of his childhood chronologically.  Yes, the book has a more or less sequential structure to it, however, each chapter is like a vignette of sorts, centering on a singular meandering theme - one of my favorites was the subject of childrens' birthday parties for Cuba's elite - which bounces around a bit within his memories.  As the book progresses, and by the close, the reader has a more complete and fulfilled sense of who Eire is and a deeper understanding and respect for where he, his family, and his memories are rooted.  A bit heavy at times, this equally humorous, tragic, and philosophical personal history retold through a child's eyes was definitely worth the time.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

• "Favors.  The most gorgeous boomerangs in the world."
• "Fiesta! One of the very few Spanish words every American knows.  Along with its narcoleptic cousin, siesta. Parties and naps, the only two things spics are good at."
• "I couldn't decide what I hated more, a hot church or a fabric store.  Both required patience and self-sacrifice."
• "Dante was so wrong.  At the lowest point, at the nadir of the ninth circle of hell, Satan will be sharing eternally cold space with the treasonous brown-nosers who abandon their principles and do what is wrong for the sake of a good grade, or applause."
• "...most of the world doesn't know or care how fiercely [Fidel Castro] was opposed.  He's been there for so long now, he seems as permanent and inevitable as Mount Everest or the earth's two poles." 

WEEK 1: Veronika Decides To Die (Paulo Coelho - 1998)

Even though I'm not there yet, what better way to start off my summer before moving to Brazil than with a book written by arguably one of the country's most famous authors!  The story centers on Veronkia, a girl in her mid-twenties living in Slovenia, who decides to commit suicide only to wake up in a mental hospital alive and learn that she has only days to live.
I read Coelho's famous The Alchemist several years ago and loved his playful literary style.  However, where The Alchemist is more of an adult fairy tale, Veronika Decides To Die is a bit more grounded in reality.  Whimsy plays a roll, but in a way that enhances the author's message, not fancifying it.  While not the most amazing thing I've ever read, it does ask some powerful questions about how society defines labels such as "crazy," "normal," and "insane," which definitely made it a worthwhile read.

FAVORITE QUOTES:  

• "Instead of crushing [the pills] and mixing them with water, she decided to take them one by one, because there is always a gap between intention and action, and she wanted to feel free to turn back halfway."
• "The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off..."
• "What's dignity? It's wanting everyone to think you're good, well-behaved, full of love for your fellow man...watch a few films about animals, and see how they fight for their own space."
• "...diplomacy is the art of postponing decisions until the problems resolve themselves."