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.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

I probably would not have read this book had it not been for the line in Vida's bio blurb stating that she is the coeditor of The Believer magazine. The last book I read took my to Norway, and this one to Lapland. Clarissa, the protagonist of this novel, goes in search of her real father's identity, which leads her to the Sami people, the indigenous Laplanders. This quick read reminded me there are colder places than Cleveland, Ohio in February.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

This novel was a Norwegian best seller. The story is told from the perspective of the main character, Trond, who has moved to a backwoods cabin in Eastern Norway to spend the last years of his life. There he reflects on the turbulent events of his youth and begins to understand his past. Petterson's prose is sparse and his landscape is alive.

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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