The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Room by Emma Donahue

I can't say enough about how heartbreaking and lovely this book is.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Much anticipated and worth the wait.

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart is the new American satirist. I plan to use sections of this crazy, funny, cautionary novel opposite Brave New World in AP English this winter. It is a super entertaining and pretty spot-on depiction of modern relationships, politics, economic disaster and obsession with technology.

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

A wedding night tragedy opens this novel which follows the lives of the family members of the bride and groom through the next four summers. For some reason, none of the characters really won my sincere support. Waldman is the wife of novelist Michael Chabon.

Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes

Wow! This one may win the prize for the book that kept me up the latest on a summer night turning pages to find out how Vanderbes' Thanksgiving day tragedy would finally end. The Olson family has plenty of issues - unmarried daughter Ginny's recently adopted, mute Indian child, son Douglas's strained relationship with his wife Denise, and the unspoken wounds in the marriage of the parents, Eleanor (the perfectionist) and Gavin (the Vietnam war-scarred quiet man). Mix in a malfunctioning oven, two angry teenager burglars, and a heavy serving of mayhem with dessert and you have a shockingly violent novel that somehow also had me snickering.

The New England Vacation Blog

Our Vacation Blog
Just back from 2 weeks and 2,700 miles of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, including visits to several Robert Frost sites and a search through Cornish, New Hampshire for evidence of the late great J.D. Salinger.

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

I wanted this novel to have more connection to cookbooks and less concern with dot-com-computer-tech-post-9/11. Half of the storyline is about one of two sisters - Emily who is the CEO of a start up silicon valley company and Jess who works for an eccentric used book collector. Goodman tries to do too much and I would much rather have had the book focus on Jess's storyline - especially with the lovely cover which is what initially caught my eye.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

Our August book club selection was this fictionalization of the biography of Jeanette Walls' maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. I am a big fan of Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, and for readers who wondered, as I did, how her parents could have ever become such risk-takers, this novel, at least, fills in the details on her mother's side. Rose Mary, Jeanette's mother, was raised by a renegade horse-breaker, school teacher, no-nonsense ranch wife. We listened to this book on audio tape driving home from Vermont and Jeanette Wall's own reading made it even more enjoyable. I'm looking forward to talking about the book with my daughter who is about to finish The Glass Castle as part of her summer reading for Honor English 11.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

After swearing off buying any new books this summer, the cover of this novel sold me, but the interrelated chapters detailing the lives of musicians and spanning several decades made it a difficult novel to follow. The biggest surprise of the novel was the Powerpoint presentation style of one of the last chapters. The novel is clever, the portrayal of aging rock stars is entertaining and the satiric wit is sharp.

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

I enjoyed Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know so much that I was thrilled to score a copy of this novel to review. Although I felt pretty creeped-out by the story of a middle-aged woman who is contacted from prison by the man who she sent there decades before, I turned the pages of this novel pretty quickly to see how the story would unfold. Protagonist Eliza Benedict is busy mothering her own young children when she receives a disturbing message from Walter Bowman, a man who is facing execution for molesting and murdering young women, as well as holding young Eliza hostage back in her teens. Flashbacks propel this psychological thriller.

The Lovers by Vendela Vida

This was one of my favorite books of the summer, perhaps because of the lovely descriptions of the coastline in Turkey where the main character, Yvonne, goes to try to recapture some of her honeymoon memories following the death of her husband. Although is begins as a story about travel, it quickly becomes a psychological character study and then abruptly turns into an examination of redemption after an accidental death helps Yvonne to reckon with her relationship with her own child. Vida is married to Dave Eggers, and as a literary couple, they are the ones to watch in the next decades.

One Day by David Nicholls

This novel follows the relationship of Dexter and Emma, beginning on the day they graduate from college in 1988 through 20 years of bad jobs, missed opportunities and love loss. Each chapter is set on July 15th of the next year, and their on and off again courtship made for an easy, entertaining summer read.

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

If you are looking for a book to read on the beach or plane tomorrow, pick up this literary mystery. Fictitious author Octavia Frost is on her way to drop off a manuscript at her publisher's office when she sees the television news story about her rock-star son being taken in as a suspect in his girlfriend's murder. The novel is enhanced by samples of Frost's own fiction - endings and alternate endings of her novels between the chapters that advance the storyline of the murder investigation. Apparently, Octavia has a hard time selecting the right ending for her books - no so for Parkhurst.

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

A high school music teacher is caught having an affair with a student. I wish I thought that was a novel idea. What made this book interesting to me was the character of the saxaphone teacher who functions as a manipulative force in the coming together of several student's lives. I was reminded of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Eleanor Catton's prose makes this read worth your time.

The Tower, The Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

I have finally found a way to score some advanced reader copies of books and this was the first to steal my attention this summer. What a wonderful little story. I had no idea that the Tower of London was used as a menagerie on several occasions throughout history. The novel focuses on the strain created in his marriage when one of the Beefeaters is approached to manage the tower zoo. My favorite part of the novel was the alternate story line concerning the Beefeater's disgruntled wife and her odd co-worker at the London Underground's Lost Properties Unit. Funny, warm and satisfying, this book will be available August 10 from Doubleday.

Old School by Tobias Wolfe

Our book club selection for June proved to be a quick read perfectly tailored for English teachers. Set at a male boarding school in the sixties, the book examines what it means to be a teacher and a writer. Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway are each visiting authors slated to come visit the school. Prior to these visits, the boys write a contest piece that determines which of them will be selected to have a private interview with the visiting author. I will recommend this book to teacher friends - there should be a lot of book club discussion fodder here.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson

We went to see the Swedish subtitled movie of The GIrl with the Dragon Tattoo on Friday night, so I was anxious to finish this last installment in the trilogy. Wow!!!! Up really late turning pages at the end of Lisbeth's trial last night. I love these books!

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

My official first day of summer break following a week of grading AP English Literature and Composition essays in Louisville was spent reading Aimee Bender's new novel. I am a huge fan of Bender's quirky characters and this book did not disappoint. The main character in this work of magical realism is a little girl named Rose who can taste emotions in her food - from the sadness of her mother's lemon cake to the sterility of school cafeteria food. I devoured the book in one sunny day on the deck - no pun intended.

Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

Tinkers by Paul Harding

AP Senior Tribute

Everything Matters by Ron Currie Jr.

I scrambled to order this book from the library when no bookstore around had a copy, then ran out of patience and ordered one from Amazon, which came the same day as the library copy. Was it worth it? For sure. Junior Thibodeau learns in utero that the world will end on June 15, 2010 at 3:44 pm. I had to read it quickly. Junior's family is a mess, his knowledge is pretty weighty and he squanders his youth, perhaps because he knows he will die at age 36. The novel alternates chapters titled with the names Junior's friends and family members with chapters that count backwards to his presumed last minute on earth narrated by the voice (is it God? - probably not) in his head. I got a little tired of the book in the middle section, but when I got the the final section, it kept me rapidly turning pages. If the book is a gimmick book, it was a gimmick that held me - and I think will have enough danger, drugs and derelict behavior to hold student readers as well.