A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

What's a vacation without a good audio book for the road? This one is a bit heavy on the melodrama, but a modern twist on a classical love story just the same. Ralph Pruitt's mail-order search for a reliable wife brings Catherine Land to his remote Wisconsin homestead. The mystery of her sensuous past and the deep seated remorse he carries over his past sins makes this almost a bodice-ripper. Almost. I can see this becoming a movie - soon.

Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber

I rounded out my Spring Break reading with this quirky story about a young man, Sid, who believes he is receiving postcards from Zoe, his old girlfriend, sent from all over the world. Since he is a telemarketer for adventure travel packages, Sid departs on a journey of his own and finally the reader learns the reasons for Sid's confusion about life. Also a quick read, I enjoyed Sid's self- deprecating narration.

Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger

I picked this up on cover image appeal needing a Spring Break travel book. A kayaker's love story. The novel opens with a tragic death and then flashes back to when Cobb and Mary met at a campsite along Maine's Allagash River. Whoever described it as Henry David Thoreau meets Nicholas Sparks had it right. Have a tissue ready for the end.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

I have only seen the trailer for the movie made recently from this novel. The book was an edge of your chair, page turner. Short chapters, mesmerizing characters and a fast paced mystery plot. I read it in two days and was not disappointed.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I almost would have taken this long novel back to the library without reading it if it had not been for the full page advertisement in the New York Times Book Review last Sunday for its paperback release with glowing recommendations from John Irving. I read most of the 500 plus pages over this long Presidents Day weekend and wept this morning at the final scenes. Verghese is a medical doctor who also studied at Iowa Writers Workshop, and the novel is so full of accurately described medical procedures that I'm sure I missed a lot. However, it is the best book I have read in the last year. Set in Ethiopia and America, it is the story of love and loss between identical twin brothers and their famous, but estranged surgeon father. Get it in paperback and start reading today. It will be a long time before I stop talking about this book.

Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton

I found this gem of a book at one of our favorite Massachusetts bookstores, The Montague Book Mill, whose slogan is "Books you don't need in a place you can't find". I always find something browsing there and this time I brought home and immediately devoured Starting Out in the Evening. Heather Wolfe is a twenty-something graduate student who locates and pursues the somewhat reclusive seventy-something novelist Leonard Schiller. Her plan is to write a masters thesis on his work that will bring his older novels back into print. I cringed when it looked like it was going to be a smarmy love story, but the novel focuses in the end on Schiller's relationship with his adult daughter, Ariel and her struggles with love. It is a literary novel, with plenty of quotes, allusions and references to other writers and the craft of writing. When I found out a movie was made of this book, starring Frank Langella, and it had gotten good reviews, I couldn't wait to see it - and of course - was greatly disappointed. It did not include one of my favorite scenes in the book, when Frank returns to France to keep a promise to his deceased wife, and the comet scene in the end. Oh well. I should have known the book is ALWAYS better.

The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

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I have hit upon some great fiction for these cold winter Ohio nights. The Girl with Feet of Glass is a magical fairy tale on one level and complicated mystery on another. The fragile young heroine, Ida Maclaird, is a stranger in the icy bogland called St. Hauda's Land. She meets a local photographer, Midas Crooks, who struggles to help her when he learns that Ida is slowly turning to glass.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

A lovely read. Ford uses a split narrative to alternate between Henry Lee's childhood in 1942 when he meets Keiko Okabe and 1986, when the Panama Hotel's cache of treasures from interred Japanese families becomes public. Henry is forced by his father to wear an "I am Chinese" button and his growing affection for Japanese Kieko creates family tensions. The two young teens are separated by the war, Henry finds a Chinese bride, but the years do not dull his longings for what might have been. The book is more sweet than bitter.

Floodmarkers by Nic Brown

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When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Under the Feet of Jesus by Maria Helena Viramontes

Viramontes came to speak last summer at the AP Literature and Composition grading session in Louisville, so I got to meet her and hear her speak about her fiction. I snagged a free copy of Under the Feet of Jesus at NCTE in Philadelphia back in November and read it on one January snow day. Viramontes writes about immigrant migrant workers and has been compared to Steinbeck for her commitment to Californian labor culture. This book is lovely and I was pleasantly surprised when is did not turn toward the tragic ending I foresaw.

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Also a Christmas gift from David, these stories by Alice Munro offer a sharp contrast to Meloy's clipped plots. Munro weaves her stories - lots of detail, many characters, broad bands of time. I haven't really read much Munro, but I certainly understand why her fiction receives so much praise.

Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

This Christmas gift from my husband was a lovely read over break. Meloy's short stories are contemporary and moving. I began at the back of the book with "O Tannenbaum", for obvious reasons. The story involves a couple out to cut down the perfect Christmas tree when they encounter another couple, stranded on the side of the road. Coincidently named Bonnie and Clyde, the strangers add an element of danger to a peaceful outing.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

A lacuna is an underwater cave, or a missing section of text in a manuscript, or according to the definition of Lacunar Amnesia, amnesia about a specific event. So, although I am a huge Kingsolver fan, I took a long time getting into this book because I hadn't had the time to immerse myself in it and kept forgetting what I had read previously each time I picked it up. Christmas break gave me the necessary time to plunge into it, and it was well worth the time. Harrison William Shepherd keeps notebooks. These notebooks, published later by his secretary, Violet Brown, who had a hand keeping some of them from being burned, record Harrison's interactions with a cast of colorful historic characters - Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Lev Trotsky, to name just a few.

The Solemn Lantern Maker by Merlinda Bobis

I love serendipitous finds like this book. Browsing the Random House booth at NCTE where they were giving away three free books to teachers on opening day of the conference, I pick this up. It satisfied three criteria - (1) cover appeal, (2) a seasonal message and (3) a jacket blurb that piqued my curiosity - "It's six days until Christmas, and on the bustling streets of Manila a mute ten-year-old boys sells his version of the stars." Magical and riveting book.

Riley Park by Diane Tullson

I read this tiny YA novel in the airport coming home from NCTE. I was sent on the mission by colleagues at SHS to find a new book for 10th grade basic students; I think I have found it. Recommended in a session at NCTE about new books for teens, Riley Park details the after math of a party in the park that ends in violence.

NCTE Annual Convention

Philadelphia
NCTE Annual Convention

Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle

This book of short stories is amazing.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

When it comes time to choose the last book of the summer, I am always torn. So little time, so many books - as the saying goes. But when I read an article in Southern Living Magazine about the new Pat Conroy novel set in Charleston, South Carolina, I went out and bought the book the day it went on sale. I'm a sucker for Conroy's blowsy prose. This book is supposed to be Conroy's love song to Charleston, and it is. The plot drags on, the characters are caricatures (the Southern debutante, the first Black Police Chief, the buxom film star), but my friend Anne once said reading Conroy is like reading whipped cream. So put a cherry on the summer! It has been a great summer for reading.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

A fitting bookend to our summer civil rights pilgrimage seemed to be The Help, which is currently #2 on the NY Times book. The title refers to the African American house servants who made many lives so comfortable for Southern women in the early 1960s. Stockett is a graduate of The University of Alabama and this book is her way of making peace with the women who aided her childhood, and who she never really thought to interview about their own lives, as her main character does in this wonderful, realistic novel. This will be an addition to book lists for my students in the future.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

Having traveled to Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, and since Wise Blood was listed on the Free Response AP Literature and Composition book list, I decided to give it a try. I was a bit curious since, when I told the curator of the O'Connor property that the book was listed on this year's test, his response was -
"I can't imagine any state allowing the teaching of that book. Not here in the South!" Well all of O'Connor's typical freak show of characters are present in this amorally religious, Southern Gothic novel. I've have decided I'll definitely never teach it, but we did buy the John Huston film to watch someday. My favorite O'Connor quote - “WHENEVER I’M ASKED WHY SOUTHERN WRITERS PARTICULARLY HAVE A PENCHANT FOR WRITING ABOUT FREAKS, I SAY IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE STILL ABLE TO RECOGNIZE ONE.”

For other glimpses into our travels this summer -

www.lackeysroadtrip.tumblr.com

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

This book is so unique, I don't know where to begin. Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is a twelve year old cartographer. His drawings fill the margins of the story which takes him from his home in Montana to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C. Stephen King described the book as a cross between Mark Twain and Little Miss Sunshine, and I would have to agree. There an awesome
website for the book.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson

I was a big fan of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoolast year, so I anxiously awaited the sequel. Although crime fiction is not normally my thing, these books are entertaining, page turners and I loved this book as well. Of course they are the next Da Vinci Cods; of course I can see them being made into movies. But they make for a great summer read.