What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

I waited a long time for my turn to take What the Dead Know out of the library (I'm trying to curb my book spending and read library books this summer) so I assumed it would be a good read. I was not disappointed. I do not read many mysteries, so I probably missed the clues that would have prepared me for the ending, but I was turning pages quickly to find out what happened. The book opens with a car accident involving a woman claiming to be Heather Bethany, one of the famous Bethany sisters who disappeared some 30 years ago from a shopping mall. The book alternates between the present and the case history. I enjoyed every minute of it.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's Atonement is on our summer reading list for AP English students this year, so naturally when I found out he had a new novel, I had to read it. This one won't be discussed with the students. On Chesil Beach takes place on the wedding night of Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, both virgins. They flashback to earlier scenes of their lives throughout this slim novel, but most of the novel is just build-up to the consumation of their love. To say more would be anti-climactic. McEwan's prose is lovely.

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Our book club met at the cottage on the lovely shores of Lake Erie to discuss Sherman Alexie's Flight. The book begins with a very appropriate epigraph from Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Alexie's hero is a teenage orphan named Zits who time-travels to key moments in history after becoming involved in a fatal bank shooting. I was initially turned off by Alexie's obviousness, but our book discussion left me thinking this would be a great book to read with high school students - especially because it is a very quick read.

Our Summer Trip

David and I have just returned from a fun and educational trip through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. Check out the new travel blog - Blues and Literature

And My Shoes Kept Walking Back to You by Kathi Kamen Goldmark

This was the perfect book to take on a trip to the music capitals of Memphis and Nashville. After walking Beale Street and listening to rockabilly I went back to the motel and read this gem by Kathi Kamen Goldmark. The author is a singer/songwriter from San Francisco who described this as her love song to honky tonk roots music. The book tells the story of Sara Jean Pixlie as she navigates the path to stardom in Nashville. Goldmark is a founding member of the mostly-author band "The Rock Bottom Remainders". This is her first novel.

Later, at the Bar by Rebecca Barry

This interrelated series of short stories were described by a reviewer as a Rust Belt Cheers. Lucy's Bar is the nightly meeting place of a motley cast of characters. The writing is spare and the characters are genuine.

Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

The main character in this novel is a Jewish man who earns a living defacing gravestones of people with questionable reputations in the towns so that their names can be saved. He takes his son along on a midnight mission that leads to disaster. The novel is both sad and witty.

A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I loved this book as much as The Kite Runner for entirely different reasons. It is predominantly a woman's story. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man who is forced to bring her into his home when Mariam's mother dies. Instead of being absorbed into his family, she is married off to a much older shoemaker and forced into a life that she stuggles many years to make her own. Hosseini has proven his talent with this second compelling novel of life in Afghanistan.

Evening by Susan Minot

I read this book after looking at the huge displays in the bookstores and reading about the upcoming movie which is being called the summer's "must see". The novel tells the story of Ann Lord who is on her deathbed. Surrounded by her children, drifting in and out of the present, she recalls the one true love of her past - a secret from those who love her now. The book reminded me of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Ann Porter - a stream-of-consciousness memory piece that reinforces that theme that we never fully know one another.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Eggs by Jerry Spinelli

Black and White by Dani Shapiro

loosely based on the life and photographs of sally mann

www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/index.html

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Grace Eventually by Anne Lamott

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

www.theinventionofhugocabret.com

Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley

Alligator by Lisa Moore

This is another library selection that I made on the basis of the cover. This novel is written by a Canadian author and is set in Newfoundland. It features an unusual cast of characters. For example, the first character readers meet is 17 year old, ecoterrorist Colleen, who is downloading video clips of beheadings after watching a man who places his head inside the jaws of an alligator. The book is told from multiple points of view, and I was mildly fascinated by whole lot of folks Moore creates in this quirky little novel.

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

This book was a Christmas book from my husband, David, who said he bought it for me because of the girl in the red kayak on the cover. I have a red kayak and he said it look just like me - right? I love Carl Hiaasen for a fun read and this one was perfect for two consecutive snow days we had this week. Honey Santana is the sort of character that makes you want to say "You go girl"

Invisible Children

Although this is a documentary and not a book, it is certainly worth mentioning since it has relevance to this book blog. Our high school showed Invisible Children to a packed auditorium of students largely through a connection I have maintained with my former student Halle Butvin. Halle checks this blog for book ideas from time to time and noticed my comments about Beasts of No Nation back in the fall. She posted a comment on this blog, which led me to discover her blog, Locus Amoenus about her travels to Uganda and her work with Global Youth Partnerships for Africa. She came to my classes this week with a moving slide show of her recent visit to Uganda. She was joined by a member of the Invisible Children road crew and the persuasiveness of their presentations in the classroom packed the house for the screening that evening. I am proud of Halle's work and pleased that the students here in the suburbs may be opening their eyes, and hearts, to a cause larger than their own neighborhood.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

After all of the heavy reading I have been doing lately, this satire was a laugh-out-loud pick-me-up. Misha Vainberg is the irreverently funny hero of this novel which takes place in St. Petersburg and later in the tiny post-Soviet country of Absurdistan. Nothing is sacred in this expose of society and politics. I would recommend the chapter which outlines his "modest proposal" for a new style of Holocaust Museum.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

I have admired the work of Dave Eggers for a while, and do moreso now for the worth of this novel. Eggers interviewed Sudanese Lost Boy Valentino Achak Deng about his journey out of Sudan, his life in the refugee camps, and finally his difficult transition to life in the U. S. Eggers fictionalized his story into a novel that is so sad and so moving. I am amazed at the resilience of Deng and overcome by number of displaced persons from Africa that his story represents.

Perfume by Peter Suskind

After reading about the movie made from this novel, I was curious enough to read Perfume, the international best selling novel by German author Peter Suskind. This horrifying tale of an 18th century Parisian orphan, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, begins on the day of his birth in a stinking marketplace. The wet nurse assigned to care for him by the monk who assumes his responsibility returns the baby because he has no odor - none of the warm caramel smells of newborn infants. Grenouille remains scentless throughout his life, but his sense of smell is highly developed which makes him a valued employee to perfumers. Because the novel is subtitled The Story of a Murderer, I expected more description of the murders, but I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that the novel was not like Silence of the Lambs. Rather it reminded me more of the sensory descriptions in a novel like Chocolat. I thoroughly enjoyed this vivid book.

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

This is a library book that I am going to have to own. After hearing Margaret Atwood speak at the Cleveland Public Library this month, I decided to read this book of autobiographic stories. I love Atwood's fiction and this collection reminds me of all that I enjoy about Atwood. My favorite chapter is titled "My Last Duchess" and is a reflection on reading Browning's poem in an English class. Having taught the poem many times, I loved this chapter.

Truth and Beauth by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto is a novel I really enjoyed a few summers back, so when I read about her tender memoir of her friendship with fellow writer Lucy Grealy, I assumed it would be a very good book. Patchett and Grealy were friends at Iowa Writer's Workshop, and much of Truth and Beauty is about the writing life. Grealey, who wrote her own memoir about the agonies of living with a face disfigured by childhood illness (Autobiography of a Face), suffered through thirty-some surgical procedures, always confiding her pain in letters and phone calls to Patchett. Grealy's life and eventual death are the centerpiece of this examination of all-consuming love between friends. I am planning to read Grealy's book next.