Whistling Season by Ivan Doig

This book reads slow and is worth savoring. It is a simple story about homesteaders and one-room schoolhouse education. It reminded me of Peace Like a River. I had picked the book up many times at the bookstore because of the cover and the reference to Montana. I'm glad I finally settled down with Doig's sturdy characters.

Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan

After reading Last Night at the Lobster, I visited O'Nan's website and discovered a trailer for a movie which comes out next month. The movie version of Snow Angels looked intriguing, so I got the book from the library. It was a quick and very sad read. After two novels, I have a feel for O'Nan's down-hearted characters. I think I will skip the movie.

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta

I enjoyed Little Children enough that I was anxious to read Perrott's newest. I was surprised to find the book is more about the religious zealots in the town than it is about the offending "abstinence teacher." I enjoyed the glimpse of a "promise keepers" type of religions rally.

Pyres by Derek Nikitas

I don't know how I heard about this book, but the Joyce Carol Oates blurb on the back intrigued me enough to give it a try. What a horrible roller-coaster of a crime novel. The main character, Luc, is a high school aged daughter of a college professor, whose murder she witnesses in the first chapter. The bloodbath that follows the opening disaster is not typical of my reading preferences, but this book kept me up at night until I finished it. It was well worth it. Derek Nikitas is a talented new voice.

Trespass by Valerie Martin

Valerie Martin is a great writer. I read this Christmas gift from my husband in two days. It is a compelling story about family struggles, as well as a parallel narrative of a Bosnian woman's horrors of life during wartime. I was dissatisfied with the ending, though.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Dark, dark, dark. This post-apocalyptic novel is a quick read. I kept hoping the father and young boy would find something hopeful along the road, but it is not that sort of book. Very repetitive.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stuart O'Nan

This was such a fun, quick book to read right before Christmas. The story takes place right before Christmas, actually, during a snow storm that makes for slow business on the last night of the Red Lobster is open for business. The main character, the restaurant manager, is forced to move to the Olive Garden to keep his job. O'Nan is said to have done is research at a Red Lobster here in Astabula, Ohio. I loved this book.

Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

This was a fun book club read. Lots of interesting characters all telling their stories of love to the author, Charles Baxter. It reminded me of the Raymond Carver story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and also the movie Love Actually.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Alexie won the National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for this book last week. Based on his own childhood "on the rez", this "true" story rang in my ears in Alexie's own voice since we just heard him speak at KSU last week and went again to hear him at the Cleveland Public Library on Sunday. I read the book in one day. It is worthy of the award.

Channeling Mark Twain by Carol Muske-Dukes

This book is based on the real experiences of the author who taught poetry at a woman's prison. The plot is sprinkled with literary references and the original poetry of the fictional personalities, one of whom claims to be the illegitimate great-granddaughter of Mark Twain. I am gearing up to teach Huckleberry Finn so this was an appropriate read.

Send Me by Patrick Ryan

I was led to this book by Ann Patchett's high praise for it. Ryan is a graduate of the Bowling Green State University Creative Writing program and this is his first novel. I loved this quirky look at life in a dysfunctional functional family living in the shadow of the NASA launches in Florida in the 60s and 70s. He brings the saga up to present decades in several chapters, each of which almost functions as an independent short story or vignette. This book was a fun read.

Sherman Alexie at Kent State University - 11/06/07

After having read Flight this summer, I was excited to go hear Sherman Alexie at Kent State University, where my son is currently a student. Alexie, whose experience in stand-up comedy was evident, spoke to the college audience about politics, religion, sexuality and veganism. I'm pretty sure he offended everyone in the audience by the end of the evening. His talk, titled WITHOUT RESERVATIONS: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic & Highly Irreverent Look at the World, was largely his autobiography. I wish he had talked more about his new young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which has been nominated for a National Book Award.

Run by Ann Patchett

I am a pretty big Ann Patchett fan, but this book seemed flawed to me. The story involves large issues like race, adoption, politics and redemption. The problem is that all of the pieces do not fall together without the narrative powers of a ghost who visits one of the main characters as she lays in her hospital bed following surgery. It ruined the otherwise splendid part of the novel for me.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

This book was recommended by a former student who had to read it as an incoming freshman at Bowling Green University this year. She said she could not put it down, and that, combined with the wall of this book on display in Borders, convinced me to read it. This memoir brings the reader face to face with the cruelties of life as a member of the Walls family. They are nomads, they are homeless, they suffer, and yet they survive with few scratches and huge characters. Jeanette Walls is currently a reporter for MSNBC. My student who recommended the book wrote to me that Walls not only came to speak at BG, but was a guest speaker in her Journalism class. She has convinced me that Walls deserves whatever medal we reserve in this society for people who not only endure, but can write about their experience with the eloquence that makes their very singular story read as a universal one.

Among Other Things I Have Taken Up Smoking by

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I Read Banned Books -Banned Books Week 2007

Visit the American Library Association website for information about Banned Books Week 2007.

Away by Amy Bloom

This lovely novel was also a birthday gift from my husband. Amy Bloom is an author whose work I have admired for years - especially her short story collection A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. This new novel is a sweeping saga that almost reminded me of an Amy Tan or Isabel Allende novel. Lillian Leyb finds herself in the tenements of the New York theater district in 1924 after escaping from Russian marauders who murdered her family. Her new life in the new world is turned upside down when she receives word that her daughter may still be alive in Russia. Lillian then begins a cross continent trek to Seattle, then Alaska, then, hopefully, home. The novel is episodic. In each locale, she is befriended by a genuine cast of characters. I savored the last pages of this beautiful novel in a way that I haven't any novel recently. Coincidentally, I read Amy Bloom's marriage announcement in last Sunday's New York Times.

Currently Reading - Dancing with Rose - Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's by Lauren Kessler

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An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

My husband surprised my with a book I had not heard about for my birthday. What a hoot. The Arsonist's Guide is a fake memoir of a man, ironically named Sam Pulsifer, who served time for accidentally setting fire to the Emily Dickinson Houst in Amherst, Massachussetts. Having visited the Dickinson house last spring break makes the book even funnier for me. Sam goes on to be implicated for fires set to other writers' homes. There is a funny website for the book which includes an online memoir maker. Clarke teaches Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.

Driving with Dead People by Monica Holloway

It has been a while since I read a memoir, and I had to wait a long time to get this from the library, so I figured it must be good. The author is a graduate of Kenyon College in Ohio. She grew up with the daughters of the town undertaker - thus the title. But the story, which begins small-town quaint, takes an ugly turn as family secrets are revealed much later in life. I was drawn into the story, much like with an Augustan Burroughs book.

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

The much awaited sequel to Stargirl picks up a year after the conclusion of the first book. Stargirl has moved from Arizona, resumed her homeschooling, and made friends with a bizarre assortment of people - six year old Dootsie, agoraphobic Betty Lou, fiesty Alvina, and grave-side vigilant, Charlie. Although I am a HUGE fan of the first book, I have to agree with the many critics who say the sequel falls short, partially because it is written in the form of letters to long-lost Leo, Stargirl's first love. I'll be honest- it isn't the original, but I am glad to have Stargirl back.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Monica Lewycka

The loony protagonist of this novel is an eighty-four year old, recently widowed man who falls for bosomy thirty-six year old Valentina. She is looking for wealth and a way to maintain her visa before it expires. His daughters Vera and Nadezhda, who have had their differences, are reunited by their concern for their father's future. The author was born to Ukrainain parents in a refugee camp in Germany. This novel is a funny and touching look at family relationships.

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The Worthy by Will Clarke

Talk about a crazy look at the college frat world, The Worthy, by Will Clarke is narrated by the ghost of a frat boy who died in a hell-week hazing practice gone wrong. His spirit now haunts the library in the frat house donated in his memory by his father and uncle, both frat alums. I read about Will Clarke's irreverent work, but it was the trailer for the book that I found on the Amazon website that sent me to the library for this end of the summer fun read.
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Halfway House by Katharine Noel

This is one of those books I picked up at the bookstore based on cover appeal and blurbs on the back of the book. I thought it might be a book that high school students might like, and I wasn't wrong. The main character of his novel is Angie Voorster, a high school all-star swimmer, who seems to have everything going for her at the beginning of the book. But when she dives to the bottom of the pool during a swim meet and stays there, it is a signal of deep (no pun intended) disturbances within her psyche. This is a study of mental illness and its devastating effects on family members.

The Rope Walk by Carrie Brown

This may be the great discovery of the summer. The Rope Walk is a coming-of-age story reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, and almost as good. Carrie Brown evokes the spirit of endless summer days in the Vermont village where 10 year old Alice lives with her college professor father and five older brothers. But her tenth summer is special because of two new faces in town - Theo, a biracial New York City kid visiting his grandparents for the summer and an eccentric neighbor woman's artistic brother who is dying of AIDS. Brown's language is beautiful, but her story is riveting. I recommend this novel with high praise.