Home by Marilyn Robinson

David bought me Home for my birthday since I am a big Marilyn Robinson fan. This new novel revisits Gilead and follows three characters, Glory, Jack and Rev. Boughton, as they putter around the house contemplating the true definitions of faith and family. I am reading slowly and enjoying her lovely sentences.

How Far is the Ocean From Here by Amy Shearn

I have been recommending this book to my students as the anti-Juno. Protagonist Susannah Prue has agreed to be the surrogate mother for a young couple, but as the due date approaches she flees to the Texas-New Mexico border and stays at the Thunder Lodge. There she meets the rest of the cast of oddball characters, two of whom she kidnaps and takes on the rest of her pilgrimage to the ocean. Madcap and dangerous - I liked it well enough to call it a great end of the summer read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This little epistolary novel tells the story of an author who travels to Guernsey to meet the member of the Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It was entertaining, but not quite as "delightful" as other readers suggested. I did enjoy the history lesson about the German occupation of Guernsey in the 1940s.

Currently Recommending - The End by Salvatore Scibona

The End by Salvatore Scibona is an introspective stroll through the “old neighborhood”. I predict this novel will quickly be featured by independent bookstores, added to university reading lists, discussed by book clubs, and eventually join the canon of great literature articulating the American Dream. It may well be the next Pulitzer Prize winner. Of course, I am totally biased, since Scibona is a former student of mine. He was a high school prodigy and a college wordsmith. Since his time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his energy has been channeled into crafting the characters – a 93 year old widow, Mrs. Marini, the baker Rocco LaGrassa and the other residents of Elephant Park. The End is a character driven examination of the growing tensions in Little Italy – the Cleveland neighborhood of Scibona’s grandparents’. In fact, the neighborhood itself is a character, bucking under the pressures of racial tensions and the unwelcome evolution of tradition taking place in immigrant communities all over America in the mid 1950s. Clevelanders will hear the strains of the paper-rags man hawking in the streets and smell the bakery sweets prepared for the annual Feast of the Assumption, the culminating event of the novel. Universally, readers will empathize with the haunting sense of loss propelling each character to his or her inevitable end. I celebrate Salvatore Scibona’s talent and recommend placing The End at the top of your summer reading list.


website for The End

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed

This clever little novel was full of literary references. The protagonist is an antiques dealer who believes she owns Elizabeth Barrett Browning's chamber pot and has that authenticity confirmed on Antiques Road Show.

Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts

It isn't the new Where the Heart Is but it is pretty close. The story follows teenage Lutie and her aptly named brother, Fate, who begin their journey in Las Vegas where they believe they will find the father who abandoned them. They end in Oklahoma, taken in by a circus family that welcomes them into their crazy family circle. The book reads a bit like Letts opened the police blotter in any given city and incorporated all of deviants she found there - thugs, drug dealers, rapists, pornographers, homeless shelter regulars, as well as those kind folks who always look out for the good will of the innocents. It was a mindless read for a hot August night.

Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You by Peter Cameron

A great read about a frustrated teen in a messed up adult world.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

http://www.edgarsawtelle.com/
Website for the Novel
Best read of the summer so far - This modern day Hamlet deserves its high standing on the New York Times Bestsellers List.

Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

This slender novel's beauty took me by surprised. It traces the 1953 love story of childhood sweethearts, Pearlie and Holland Cook, whose marriage is interrupted when Buzz Drummond emerges from Holland's past. Behind every consideration of the secrets of marriage, shines the light of the racial and political tensions of the 1950s.

Beginner's Greek by James Collins

I had reserved Beginner's Greek from the library earlier in the year and decided to leave it for summer reading. Good choice. It made for a quick and frivolous beach read. The best description I can give is to quote the blurb on the back of the novel written by I Love You, Beth Cooper author, Larry Doyle. He called the book an "incisive romantic comedy" and said, "James Collins is the new Jane Austen, only taller."

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Lahiri's The Namesake was brilliant, and I just watched the equally beautiful film adaptation last week. The connected stories in her new collection, Unaccustomed Earth, do not disappoint. An Indian character struggling in some way with American identity is central to each story. I especially loved the final three stories and was taken by surprise at the end of the trilogy.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

After reading several reviews linking Netherland with The Great Gatsby, I had to see for myself. The narrator is Dutchman Hans van den Broek, who travels to New York City for work and is befriended by mysterious and entrepreneurial, Chuck Ramkissoon, who envisions a Brooklyn cricket stadium as a post 9/11 cure for the city.

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic

This sad tale about a young Bosnian refugee named Aleksandar Krsmanovic taught me a lot about the ethnic wars in 1992.

The Film Club by David Gilmore

David Gilmore's Website

The Film Club is David Gilmore's memoir about his unorthodox plan for sustaining a relationship with his sixteen year old son. Jesse Gilmore was flunking out of school, when his father gave him permission to withdraw given Jesse would watch and discuss three films each week with his dad. Gilmore was, at the time, an out-of-work film critic and writer. Their shared time is revealed in snippets of conversation about film, life and love. I would recommend this book, and its excellent syllabus of film titles, to any parent struggling with an intelligent teenager.

River of Heaven by Lee Martin

I discovered Ohio author Lee Martin a few years back when I read his haunting novel The Bright Forever. His new novel, River of Heaven is an equally mysterious investigation into the chilling events buried in the memories of Sammy Bradey, an elderly gay may whose secrets are disclosed.

A Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

I have been an Erdrich fan for a long time, and her new novel did not disappoint. Loosely based on the history of a North Dakota farm family slaughter, this novel is both mystery and family saga. Central to the story is Eveline Harp, the daughter of an Indian mother and a white school teacher. Every event in her present day life is set against the fantastic stories told by her grandfather, Mooshum Milk, who was involved in the 1911 crime.

Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread by Don Robertson

Back in my teens, Don Robertson was a writer for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. His novel, Praise the Human Season, one I have re-read several times, remains one of my favorite books to this day. So when I saw an end cap display of The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread in the local Borders a few weeks before school let out, I had to buy a new paperback copy of my other Robertson favorite to take to class and hold up in front of my students. It seems Stephen King was equally impressed by Robertson's fiction in his early years, and is behind the push to reissue this old Cleveland classic about the adventures of nine year old Morris Bird III in 1944.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Juno Diaz

I bought this book the same week I heard that it had won the Pulizter Prize. I really enjoyed reading it, and might consider it in the future as a summer reading book for AP English. It reminded me of a cross between One Hundred Years of Solitude and Sherman Alexie's Flight. My only other Dominican reading has been Julia Alvarez, and In the Time of the Butterflies is good background for the political climate of the novel.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

I was interested in reading this book back when it first came out, but when I saw that it had been made into a movie, I had to read the book before seeing the movie. I'm glad I did. What a tragic story, beautifully told.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

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The perfect spring break novel. I haven't laughed this hard at a novel about work since Coupland's JPod. This book the fictional equivalent of a cross between television's The Office and the movie Office Space.

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

This novel taught me about Nicola Tesla's contributions to electricity through an intriguing time warped tale.

JCO - Finally

Last night, David and I braved a raging ice storm to get downtown to the Ohio Theater to finally hear and meet Joyce Carol Oates, the subject of my 1988 Masters Thesis. Clutching my old (typewritten) thesis under my coat, we raced across Euclid Avenue through pelting ice to hear her remarks titled "The Writer's (Secret) Life - Woundedness, Rejection and Inspiration". She covered the literary landscape from Emily Dickinson to Ernest Hemingway, from the Bronte sisters and Samuel Beckett to Thoreau. She even threw in a digression about Mike Tyson, through which her voice became especially animated. After highlighting stories about various authors' rejections and psychological health, she summed up by saying we must rely on our own judgment and sense of self-worth. Although she was chatty with the few from the audience who asked questions, she did not personalize the books she signed afterward. I took my thesis, which she signed with comment or interest. Although we wanted to take a picture with her, she was afraid of being blinded by the camera's flash. She is frail up close and looks a bit like Emily Dickinson. My number of idols to meet in person is diminished by one.

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

A few weeks ago, David and I were walking through the Joseph Beth Bookstore in Cleveland where Bohjalian was reading at the mike from this novel. I overheard someone ask a question about The Great Gatsby, which made me pick up a copy of the book from the piles about to be signed by the author and read the dust jacket blurb. The Double Bind weaves characters and events from Fitzgerald's novel with Bohjalian's story, which centers around a box of old black and white photographs taken by Bohjalian's character Bobby Crocker. Bobby winds up at a homeless shelter where one of the workers, Laurel Estabrook, herself a survivor of a brutal attack, takes an interest in the pictures. Since I am teaching Gatsby right not to my juniors, I bought the book and, thanks to the day off so voters could roam our school on Ohio primary day yesterday, I read most of it in one sitting. I was stunned by its intricacy and depth. I don't want to give anything away but I was totally taken by the "double bind" of the novel itself. I can't stop thinking about it, and just might try to find a way to use it with my students as a follow up to Fitzgerald.

The Crazy School by Cornelia Read

We were blessed with a couple of lazy snow days this week, so I spent one of them curled up with The Crazy School. This one attracted me by title alone. I did not realize that it was a sequel to the first Madeline Dare novel, A Field of Darkness, but I just may get that one from the library and read it too. Dare is a teacher at a school for psychologically disturbed teens. The plot turns in to a crime story and the psychological twists keep the pages turning pretty quickly. Not my usual genre, this book entertained me, right up to the chilling twist of events in the last chapters. Read Read.

The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller

I decided to give Sue Miller another try in this year of Senators and Presidential hopefuls. The story centers around Delia, whose unfaithful husband, is Senator Tom Naughton. The fact that he cheats on his wife with his daughter's friend who is their holiday houseguest is just one of the reasons he is an unlikeable character. But Delia seems genuine and so does her friendship with Meri, the young woman who, with her husband, moves into the other side of the Naughton's duplex. The last chapter of the novel made me simultaneously disgusted with all of the characters. Miller's ending is cheaper than a cheater.