First Quarter Reading List

Some people have been asking me what I've read so far this year 

Especially as we approach holiday book season!

Unfortunately, given that much of my reading has been through the library app and $1-$2 book deals on the Amazon Kindle app, I can't say that I have a lot of "new" books to recommend, but I will share some of the older books that I've gotten around to with a brief rating/recommendation--in reverse order, starting with the latest books I've read.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The story of Achilles and the Trojan War from Patroclus' point of view. I was definitely intrigued by the love story between the two--which created its own set of problems--and the way that "men" were shown with all their flaws, even as the gods who participated in the story were just as flawed. This book does not shy away from sex (nor is it particularly graphic), but I could see this being an issue for people who wanted to include this with a study of The Odyssey. However, for those who like Greek gods and heroes, this story is an interesting take on how the world might have looked to the Greeks (if, in fact, they did meet with Gods and Goddesses).

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
This was one of those books I got because both the e-book and audiobook were available at the same time (and the author of Wicked wrote a favorable blurb), so I could listen in the car (or while washing  the dishes) and then switch back to the e-book version to continue quietly.
Note: the audiobook was TERRIBLE! The reader sounded like she was a robot with an Eastern European accent, except when she read the parts of possessed people--and when I heard the animation in her voice, I kind of wanted everyone to be possessed from that point onward.
Anyway, I didn't realize this was a fantasy book at first, but much as I tend not to like fantasy fiction, I liked this story. It was kind of a coming of age tale/adventure, complete with all the heroic archetypes (mentor, elixir, slaying the beast, etc.). The best part of this was the nature of "the Wood," the everywhere and nowhere villain of the story.

We Should all be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This was more of an essay than a book, but it was powerful. It is also a TED talk! (This is the same MacArthur genius grant winner who has the famous "The Danger of a Single Story" TED talk...I shall be looking for more of her writing!)

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti
I read this as part of the Big Library Read program (and because of this, the ebook and audiobook were available at the same time). It is a part mystery, young adult book, but it still worked for me (maybe because I teach young adults). The audiobook was AMAZING! The reader really embodied Hawthorn, the female protagonist, and I appreciated the voice she gave to the supporting characters. I also appreciated the author's use of symbolism and voice, and the way she didn't shy away from real issues faced by teenagers. I also liked that I didn't always like the main character, who was realistically selfish and somewhat understandably critical of everyone--who were, after all, contributing to her miserable state as an outcast.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

This book has been around for a long time (and it's pretty short), but I learned some new information about Dr. Mengele from this, as well as how the Sonderkommando worked. What was most interesting to me was the foreword of the book, which kind of criticizes the men in these units for NOT rebelling against the Nazis sooner. While it kind of offended me, as I read the story itself, I could see how hard the Nazis worked to keep people from rebelling, and how insidious the persecution of the Jews was, slowly stripping them of their humanity and life force until, as the doctor said, many welcomed death. A fascinating survivor account.

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

The true story of the women who painted radium dials on watches during and after WWI. I was horrified to learn of the "lip point" technique they were encouraged to use, which basically had them eating radioactive paint--and then the systematic denial by the companies that they could be at fault for the health problems (to put it mildly) encountered by the women after the fact. I loved how the author committed to telling the story from the girls' points of view.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

This was the first of my ebook/audiobook experiments, as I found that I would want to keep reading as I shuttled the kids and myself to and from school. After reading (and loving) David and Goliath on audiobook and Outliers in paperback, I wanted something else by this author. This is an interesting look at how "trends" explode, and what makes something "tip" into--or out of--popularity.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

This audiobook explored what makes "the underdog" such an obvious winner. If you want to think about how weakness can become strength and vice versa, its an interesting read. I especially enjoyed the chapter on class size, though I would argue that in some classes with special needs, 20+ students is too many!

How many books can you read with a new baby?

A lot.

When you have a Kindle app that allows you to use a black screen and white text in low light, you can turn awful nights up with the baby into secret read-a-thons.

Thank goodness for my local library's participation in Overdrive, which allows me to download (free, borrowed) e-books. Here is a short list of books I e-read since Fiona's birth, up through the late part of summer (hey, I often skipped around). I'm happy to discuss ANY of them beyond my crude rating:

The Martian by Andy Weir
Super-funny and suspenseful sci-fi adventure. I bet the movie is awesome.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson
I never knew it could take so long for a damn boat to sink. Some facts were cool, but otherwise my nonfavorite nonfiction.

American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante
Nonfiction: The trial transcripts were the best part. Anne Hutchinson kicked butt. The author less so.

Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Totally true story. Called the female Oskar Schindler, but she was much more of a boss. She didn't have money, and she withstood torture to protect her children and families from the Nazis. Then the Nazis tried to blow up Warsaw. Very cool, well-researched story.

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Such a guilty pleasure novel. This is based on a real offer to make peace, during which a Native Chief offered to trade horses for 1000 white women (as wives) to help bring a new generation peacefully into the white man's world. What if some crazy women really did it? I bet it would go down like this. (Oh, and there's a sequel coming soon!!)

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Ganor
Loved how the narratives came together. I could see a movie version of this someday. And who doesn't like Titanic stories?

The Lunching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
I learned a lot about the Klan, and how hard it is to overcome racism in America.

The Bees by Laline Paull
This was sold to me as a dystopia...and it is, but it is LITERALLY about bees. I'd love a science teacher to weigh in on the science in the book (fictionalized, as the bees are sentient), but other than that, I was a little bugged out.

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
A holocaust novel with a unique twist, as a Turkish family deals with prejudice inside their family and country while trying to save Jews from Hitler's reach. (Rumors there is a movie...?)

Broken Angels by Gemma Liviero
A novel that weaves together the story of a Jewish woman, reluctant Nazi, and Polish child. Very cool.

Elsewhere by Richard Russo
The author's memoir focused on his mother, who you get the sense was both wonderful and not quite right....who'da thought a Pulitzer winner comes from such interesting people ;)

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Sci-fi time traveler meets Roots. How would a woman of the 1970s handle going back to slave-state Maryland to save her white slave-owning ancestor? This book offers no easy answers. Oh, and that mystery of how her arm gets stuck in the wall? SOOO cool, and it came with a critical essay at the end that made me want to reread the whole novel to appreciate it even more.

Freakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. You will never look at data the same way!

SuperFreakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. Where else will you find out how a street prostitute is like a mall Santa?

Think Like a Freak  by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
 Can you tell I loved the series so much that I gobbled all three of these?


Happy reading!

EDIT: I completely forgot to include the hard copy books I managed to read!

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
Not as good as Running with Scissors, but this is an interesting story of growing up with a (likely sociopathic) distant father. As a teacher, I squirmed when I read about how his mother took him out of school to hide from his father on several occasions, and I worry about how many stories that might require similar intervention are likewise hidden behind seemingly free-spirited parents.
I also wondered at the relationship between Burroughs' father and mother. Granted, much of their origin story is second-hand and skewed through the eyes of Augusten, but it made me wonder how someone could be so deceived as to the nature of another. If you like watching Criminal Minds, you might find this story psychologically intriguing.
 
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

I'm not a big "mystery" reader--in the sense of a genre-specific book--but I really liked this story of a college kid who procrastinates until he goes to a nursing home out of desperation to find an interview subject--and finds more than he bargained for. The characters and conflicts felt real, and even the protagonist's quest to find out the truth felt authentic (until about 3/4 of the way through the book, by which point I didn't care). Joe Talbert is a protagonist you can't help but root for, especially with his troubled family life, and Carl Iverson is a fascinating character of focus, accused of a horrible murder and claiming he wants to tell "the truth"--which isn't a simple case of innocent or guilty-- before the end of his life.
And, unlike many mysteries/thrillers, this story wasn't super predictable (until the very end, but again, I didn't care by then). This was a great beach read, but also an inspiring read in general.

Muy Caliente!

It's getting hot, so...

time for Inferno by Dan Brown. Yeah, that Davinci Code guy. I hadn't thought about him in a while, but then when watching a Youtube video, I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie.

And, since I hadn't read a good popcorn book in a while, I thought it only right to see if this was on the shelf of my local library.

This is another in the Robert Langdon series (Angels and Demons, The Davinci Code), and so I assumed that old Professor Langdon would be receiving phone call in Chapter 2 asking him to come to such and such place in Italy to solve a mystery about art and religion. (And really, don't all college professors receive random phone calls to take all-expense paid trips to foreign countries to run for their lives?)

However, I was pleasantly surprised when the book began with Robert Langdon awaking in a hospital, unsure of how he arrived there. While the amnesia conceit is a favorite of soap operas, in this case it provided a fun "double dose" of mystery, as Langdon was not only trying to solve the mystery of who he could trust and what this map in his possession was all about, but also the mystery of what happened to him (and how did he end up in Italy?). So, while the running for life/art mystery/conspiracy/beautiful woman sidekick/Italian setting stayed true to the pattern of these books, there were other aspects that, to my delight, broke the pattern.

At first, it seems like the Consortium is the big conspiracy bad guy here, but as you read, you inevitably question whether the WHO, American government, or some other unknown group is behind all the trouble. This is a slight, albeit important departure from his other books where the conspiracy is evident early on (although who is the real bad guy is always open to question). I also liked that while much of the book was about art, one of the main influences was Dante's Inferno, telling the tale of Dante's descent into hell (and subsequent ascent).

Actually, the book covers both the book and a painting of Dante's circles of hell, which I hadn't seen (and which, to my chagrin, the book doesn't show). Seeing this helps show how the different sinners suffer in the different circles, and moreover, I appreciate how each person is literally "stripped" of their trappings. Perhaps this is purposeful symbolism on Brown's part, since in this story Langdon is "stripped" of his memory, his possessions, and even his sense of who to trust, or maybe this is just coincidence. Either way, it's interesting.

Anyway, I won't spoil this mystery/thriller, but I can say that I was not expecting the ending or the rationale behind the evil that the "villain" planned to unleash. Given this ending, I'm very interested to see how the filmmakers will handle the plot (and how audiences will receive it).

Perhaps it was because I wasn't expecting much from this book that I liked it so much. Critics have some negative things to say about it, and while I can't disagree in retrospect, in the moment, it was a fun read. I'm terrible about mysteries (I can usually see what is coming), so I appreciated the twists in this story and the unique scientific aspect to it (as opposed to the religious bent of his first two novels). In fact, its made me curious enough that I might pick up The Lost Symbol, which I heard was a stinker, but I might give it a chance in case the critics have tried to make a good popcorn novel live up to more than it is.

If you like a good mystery, if you worry about how the world might end, or if you have a lot of time to spend sitting in a beach chair, then I recommend this book for you!

Happy reading!

The Holocaust fiction I bought and read the night before Elie Wiesel died...

Heavy summer reading...

So, when I saw a note for 80% off select Kindle books, I had to take advantage of it. I saw Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, and the "book jacket" description sounded like it appealed to my interest in historical fiction:

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

What I didn't realize was just how "real" this book would be. In the first few pages, the reader meets Anna and Trudy at Jack's funeral, and all that is clear is that theirs is a house filled with silence. Then, the book flashes back to Weimar in 1939, as Anna begins seeing Max, a Jewish doctor who helped her save her Nazi father's dog. We learn how Anna falls in love with Max and the lengths she goes to in order to try to save him...and her unborn child.

But when Max is taken to Buchenwald, Anna must balance her desire to save her love and the other innocent men in the prison camp from her need to protect her child. For a while, she makes a "noble" choice, giving up her home to live a life serving the resistance and raising her "tainted" child, but soon the horrors of Buchenwald spill out of the camp...

I'd read a bit about Buchenwald because this was the final stop for Elie Wiesel, whose memoir Night is the subject of study in one of my classes. In many ways, it was a "typical" concentration camp, with forced labor, arbitrary executions, and terrible conditions. However, the book shared these facts (and the fact that this was
one of the sites for Nazi medical experimentation) in a manner that showed just how "everyday" this was for the people who lived around the camp. It was an interesting historical fiction perspective. In the midst of Anna's story (revealed through flashbacks to the past interrupted by Trudy's story in the present), the reader sees not only those who try to help the men in the camps, but also those who perpetrate the atrocities...and those who lived around the camps. When Anna has to choose between death and the advances of the Obersturmfuhrer, the reader sympathizes with her choice.

However, the rest of the town knows little about Anna's choices outside of what they see in public, and Trudy knows nothing about that time except what she remembers in little flashbacks and nightmares about her childhood. When Trudy helps another professor with an interview project hearing from survivors of the war in Germany, we also see how complicated that time was for "everyday" citizens.

What struck me was that while this book was billed as a sort of tragic romance, I found it to be just plain tragic. The details are graphic, and while this is likely authentic, it makes parts of the book hard to stomach. When rape comes up, it is explicitly described, and while this shows how sadistic some people were and how helpless others were, it isn't easy to read. (So be warned--adult content is very much a part of this book!) In a non-spoiler, I appreciated how the author detailed what happened after the camp was liberated and the residents of Wiemar were made to go through the camp. This is a detail that is often left out of history books, and while it seemed just to make people face up to what they did (or didn't do), the author presented this in such a way as to create sympathy for bystanders like Anna.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but I will say that the author does a good job of dangling the promise of a happy ending in front of the reader, and the need to know if and how the realities of Anna's past would be revealed to Trudy kept me going through the tough stuff.

Not exactly light summer fare, but an interesting historical fiction.

Happy Reading!