Our Suggestions for Good Summer Reading

These suggestions are listed in no particular order, but all are books that I have read and really liked or that have been suggested by you all or by other trustworthy sources. Pick up a few from a used bookstore or the library and read them. Remember, the best way to get to be a better reader is to do lots of reading! Once you’ve read them, e-mail me (ksalathiel@nmc.edu) and let me know what you think. Or, if you have additional suggestions over the summer for good books, let me know, and I’ll add them to next semester’s list! Enjoy!

Fiction
· The Giver by Lois Lowry. This book tells the story of Jacob who goes on to become Leader in Messenger. I know we’re all interested to see how this whole series started (and Nichole really wants the movie versions!).
· The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. Nichole says,”It’s about these four girls who all are completely different sizes and have different figures. They go to a thrift store and find a pair of pants that fits them all perfectly. They all go away for the summer to different places and send them to each other so they have something to keep close all summer long.”
· Marley and Me by John Grogan. Nichole also enjoyed this book which she says “is about a dog that drives the owners crazy but they can't imagine life without him.”
· Forever by Pete Hamill. Tiffany says that this is “about a young boy living in Ireland back in the 1800's - 1900's. It takes you on his journey with him to America, and through out Ireland. I believe this is all happening when the war over there began between the Protestants and Catholics.”
· Snow in August by Pete Hamill. I haven’t read Forever (though I will), but I did read this one by Pete Hamill and loved it. It’s about an Irish-American boy in New York City who forges an interesting friendship with a Jewish refugee of war who is also a rabbi. They team up to use ancient power to defeat some neighborhood evil. I really enjoyed Hamill’s writing and it was a great story.
· Deliverance by James Dickey. This novel is about a canoeing trip that four suburban men take through the mountains of northern Georgia. Along the way they encounter some very scary natural challenges and some very scary local people who do not appreciate their being there. This book will give you the creeps and make you unreasonably afraid of the rural south. My high school students used to love this book for outside reading, and there’s a movie version with a famous banjo music scene.
· A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I love everything I’ve read by John Irving, but this is my favorite. It’s the story of a really weird but very interesting kid who speaks ALL IN CAPITALS and believes he is God’s instrument. He’s friends with a pretty normal kid named John and the ending that involves them both is just amazing. You will definitely see more Christ imagery/connections here, Jeff (though it’s not a religious book at all). My high school students used to love this one, too!
· The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards. In the winter of 1964 after his wife gives birth to twins at home, a doctor takes one of the twins (who he realizes has Down syndrome) and without telling the wife, gives it away. This is the story of the two families and what happens when families have big secrets.
· The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. This incredibly gripping story of a big secret that is tied into some art work stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris is full of twist and turns. The very popular movie version of this novel came out a few years ago.
· Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (and the three sequels). Apparently every teenaged girl and woman in America is reading these books right now. Everyone I have talked to from first year college students to fellow English teachers are raving about these books about a girl in love with a vampire. I didn’t love the first two books, as you know, but I’m definitely the exception. Give them a try and let us all know what you think on my blog!

Non-fiction
· How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book was published in 1936 and deals with just what the title suggests. It made a huge mark on the world and one can still take a Dale Carnegie training course. Logan recommends this book, saying, “It was literature written to inspire. This book has stood the test of time, and the content remains relevant.”
· The Last Dive by John Chatterhorn. Jeff says that this book is “about a father and son team of wreck divers who discover a German U-boat off the coast of the Carolinas. I feel though that one would need a little background in diving to understand what he is talking about, but the author does do a good job of explaining things.”
· The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. Imagine being caught at sea in a HUGE storm (think 90-foot waves!). That is what happened to this fishing boat out in the North Atlantic. Just reading it made me totally seasick, but it’s a very exciting true story! This, too, was a very successful movie.
· Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The author sets out to figure out what would cause a college-educated suburban rich kid to give up everything and move to Alaska to live in an abandoned bus with basically nothing but his own resourcefulness to rely on.
· Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In this book, the author tells of the disaster that happens on an expedition to climb Mt. Everest, an expedition he was a part of. Several small incidents and some unexpected bad weather cause two climbing teams to get separated, resulting in the deaths of several climbers. This book is enough to keep me at sea level forever!
· It’s Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong. Armstrong has won the Tour de France bike race a record-setting seven times all after battling near-fatal cancer. This inspiring story talks about how he survived that cancer and how it changed his life.
· Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. While she was hiding from the Nazis in a small attic along with her family and several other people during the Holocaust, the teenaged Anne Frank kept a diary. This is it; it was found after her death, and it’s very powerful story of what it was like to live—mostly in hiding and in terror—in Germany during World War II.
· I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou is one of the coolest people ever (you should hear her voice!), and this is the story of her difficult but inspiring early life growing up female and African-American in the 1930s and 1940s in Stamps, Arkansas.
· Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard by Mawi Asgedom. Asgedom moved to the United States with his family when he was seven years old after fleeing Ethiopia and spending three years in a refugee camp in Sudan. He ended up graduating from Harvard University with honors in 1999. This is his very inspiring story.

Do you have other suggestions? Feel free to add them as you think of them by commenting below. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on any of these that you might read! :-)

--Kristen

The Twilight Phenomenon

Although I have spent this whole blog writing about how much I love reading and mentioned several books I have loved, I'm actually going to end by talking about two books that I didn't love: the first two Twilight books. As you have surely heard, the Twilight books are sweeping the nation. (They are especially popular, it appears, with teenage girls and their mothers.) They are, in short, about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. All of my friends and neighbors had read these books and most LOVED them. They were all in love with Edward (the vampire) and told stories about how they couldn't put the books down. One read the first 500+ page book in two days, another stayed up most of the night to finish it, and a third (a former English teacher and very bookish, well-educated woman) said she actually followed her two-year-old on a walk through the woods while reading Twilight! She couldn't put it down.

As an English teacher, I sort of feel like I should be hip to what "everybody" is reading, so I decided that over spring break I would read the series. We were going to be spending 18 hours in the car driving to the coast of Alabama so I figured the timing would be perfect--the hours I wasn't driving would melt away if I had a good book to keep me occupied.

Indeed, the first book was totally compelling--I did read it compulsively and finished it in two days. When I was done, though, I had sort of a bad taste in my mouth. I found parts of the book REALLY annoying--namely the main character's ridiculous obsession with a cold, pale, angsty vampire. Ugh.... how is he attractive? Plus, she was COMPLETELY head over heels obsessed with this guy. She would do anything for him. She was willing to give herself up completely to him. Also, she was constantly being carried by him, picked up by him, moved physically around by him. It was all very self-surrendering. She essentially gave herself mentally and physically up to his control.

Now admittedly, I'm not a real romantic type, but I couldn't help but roll my eyes pretty regularly at this girl-vampire relationship. Beyond just finding it annoying, though, I also found it a little troubling. I do not advocate banning books and think that pretty much any reading is good reading, but I sure don't want my daughter reading this book any time soon. I don't like the suggestion that this is what a relationship is for a woman or girl--giving up oneself entirely to a man.

Having committed to reading the series over break, I continued on to the second book even though I found the first one so annoying. Well, book number two was even more annoying. Bella continues to be PATHETIC in her obsession with the cold, pale vampire and she even blows off a much more normal relationship with a normal guy (okay, he's a werewolf, but relatively speaking he's pretty normal!). First, I was annoyed Bella seemed to be choosing the cold, angsty guy over the happy-go-lucky, decent guy. Second, she was still pathetically obsessed and self-denying. Third, I was annoyed with the werewolf plot twist--it just seemed too similar to the vampire thing. Werewolves? vampires? really?! Come on. . . I was just not buying it!

So, even though I said I would read all four books in the series, I just couldn't do it. They were too annoying, and especially since they ARE the kind of books that totally sucked me in and kept me reading compulsively (even though I was irritated), I decided I just didn't want to give them any more of my vacation time. So I quit. I might read the last two once school gets out, again mostly because I feel like I should know what the people are reading, but I really doubt I'll like them any more than I liked the first two.

I'll let you know if I change my mind! I'd love to hear if you have read these books and what you thought. If you haven't read them and you want to, don't let my crabby opinion keep you from it. I definitely seem to be in the minority with my opinion--most people love the books and love Edward the vampire. So give the books a try and let me know what you think! :-)


Kristen

So What Do You Like Reading?

I'm so excited that we've added another book to our class here for the final weeks. I feel like all of us have fallen victim to what happens to me so often. I get so caught up in what I'm reading that I really can't stop. I just have to keep reading because I have to see what happens or because I care about the characters or because I'm just so deep in that world that I don't want to come out. When that happens it's especially awesome when there's a sequel like with Messenger. The book ends, but you can keep following those characters or that world. This was the beauty of the Harry Potter books. With seven huge books, one can be immersed in that world for a really long time! I'd finish one book and then just pick up the next.

For some people, mysteries are the books that grab them in. The suspense, the uncertainly, the mystery of it all keep them up all night reading. This is the case with my friend Erin. She just devours mysteries (or at least she did before she had two kids in two years!!). I'm not a huge mystery fan myself. I think they're too plot-driven and too confusing for me. What really grabs me are the characters in books. I get very drawn into their lives and worlds, and I feel like I'm living with them. One book I read called Map of the World by Jane Hamilton was particularly depressing. It was about a woman whose niece drowns while the sister is supposed to be watching her. The novel is the story of how the family and especially the aunt deal with the death. The whole time I was reading it, I was totally depressed. The mood of the book was so pervasive and intense, that it really affected my mood. I finally just had to finish the last 200 pages or so all in one sitting (this was obviously before kids!) just so I could shake off my awful mood!

So what grabs you about a book? What draws you in in the first place? What keeps you reading? What would make you pick up a sequel?

Also, what books have you really enjoyed? What books would you recommend for the rest of us to read? In the final week of the semester, I'm going to put together a list of books that I or you all have read and liked so that we all have some good suggestions for over the summer. I always think one of the best ways to learn about good new books is to get suggestions from others. Otherwise, there are so many books out there that it can be overwhelming to choose one.

So let's hear it. What books have you read that you have liked? Give us a quick (one to two sentences) summary, and I'll put together a list of your and my suggestions.

Thanks!