The following is a list of the books I read this summer and what I think of them. I post the list in its entirety simply to add credibility to my recommendations, that I didn't read one or two books and am recommending them, but rather I read a lot and would only recommend those I truly loved. No effort has been made to be clever or insightful, just a quick overview and if I think its worth you reading it. Let me know if you read and enjoy. They are organized in the order I read them.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
I guess this was appropriately named novel to start the summer. This is a beautiful book that is tight and well written. It stands as almost a modern fable with beautiful complex characters dealing with very difficult moral decisions. Read it.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Brown is back with page turning thriller with the same boring characters. Brown is a master of manipulative suspense, with two-page chapters and cliffhanger ends to each one, he won’t let you stop reading till you’re done. It gets tiresome. This time at our nation’s capital, he points out very interesting things you’ll want to go see for yourself. Formulaic and cliché-ridden, it’s a classic popcorn book. Skip it.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Saffron Foer
I read this knowing very little about it. It’s a 9/11 book sorry to spoil. This book is a little too cute and sentimental for my taste but its solid fiction that is sure to please many. Skip it.
Columbine by Dave Cullen
This well-researched book describes the events leading up to, involving, and following the school shooting in which the world seemed to stand still. My most frequent recommendation to everyone this year. It describes the events and the media coverage that would often get the facts right and draw all the wrong conclusions. Read it.
The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer
What a surprise! I’ve heard about Norman Mailer before and was afraid to tackle any book by him because they are notoriously long so I picked the shortest one I could find. This tells the story of the Gospel as if Christ himself wrote it. This is surprisingly sensitive and beautiful. It describes doubts Christ himself may have had of his divinity and the trust people put in him, while at the same time paints him in a sacred and holy light. Sure to offend those who like to be offended at any portrayal of Christ, I found this book surprisingly sensitive and lovely. Read it.
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer likes to write about interesting people as we saw in Into the Wild, and this time he takes Mormon fundamentalists, the Lafferty brothers, and through personal interviews and other research, tells us the story of their brutal, religious-based murder. Dark and extremely fascinating, this book’s greatest flaw seems to be that Krakauer unfairly places too much blame of fundamentalist’s beliefs and practices on the original Mormon church. Read it.
The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis
One of only two authors I read two books by this summer, The Informers is not Easton Ellis’ greatest work. He tells several different stories of life in 1980s LA that don’t seem do intertwine but have everything to do with each other. I like this style he attempts, but in comparison with his other work, it falls short. Skip it.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
This is as close to a memoir as Sylvia Plath left us. It describes her descent into madness and her escape from it. Anyone interested in mental disorders would enjoy this. I enjoyed it from a feminism perspective as well. Read it.
Eleanor, Eleanor, not your real name by Kathryn Cowles
Kathryn Cowles is a professor at my university in poetry and was my Gender Studies and contemporary issues teacher. A few years ago she published this book of poetry that won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize in 2008 and most appropriately so. Her poetry is passionate, beautiful, touching, gritty, sometimes classical and sometimes avant-garde. Fantastic. Read it.
Cry, The Beloved Country By Alan Paton
A landmark in South African literature, Cry, the Beloved Country is often found on high school reading lists and deservedly so. This paints the picture of the South African apartheid while telling an epic and beautiful story of a man trying to reconcile with his child, and set right what has been set wrong. Essential. Read it.
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
This novel won Bock the 2009 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. It must have been a slow year for first novels because this book has little redeeming qualities for its simplistic and shallow plot, boring and uninspired characters, and cliché tricks employed to try to keep the reader reading. Skip it.
Terrorist by John Updike
Fiction by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike, he tells the story of a young and faithful Muslim boy in contemporary America. This is an excellent critique of Muslim, Christian, and present-day American culture. Read it.
Rumi: The Book of Love translated by Coleman Barks
Rumi was a Sufi mystic poet in the 1200s and his poetry will go down in history as some of the most beautiful and lyric poetry to have ever been written. He deals with topics of love, religion, and probably both as the same thing. Read it.
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
“The woman possessed with 16 different personalities.” Caught my attention. This book is very interesting, yet I wish I didn’t know why she had so many personalities. It is disturbing to say the least. Probably the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read (moreso than the Easton Ellis novels I’ve read this summer). Read it.
Push by Sapphire
This is the novel that the movie “Precious” was based on. It’s the story of an illiterate teen in urban New York struggling to make something of her life despite her extremely dysfunctional home life. This often feels like its trying too hard to disturb us though the value of a story of a girl with dreams and aspirations despite problems, and her small yet important achievements along the way has much value. Skip it.
No Man Knows My History by Fawn M. Brodie
For more than 50 years this has been the most definitive and scholarly biography available on the life of Joseph Smith. The book is well researched and well documented though some of her conclusions are quite unfair. Though it might anger or frustrate some people of the LDS faith, her research is unquestionable and factual and the book is nearly free of any anti-Mormon agenda. Read it.
The Secret Life of Houdini by Kalush and Sloman
This biography of Houdini is fascinating. Surely Houdini’s life is interesting in and of itself but this biography is well researched and told in a fascinating way that reads like novel. Read it.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Many of us have read this in high school and it is worth another read. This is Vonnegut’s masterpiece. Brimming in political commentary and satire, Vonnegut has never been more clear and clever with a surprising amount of heart. Read it.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
This is the true story of the events surrounding the 1893 World’s Fair. Larson pairs the story of the fair with the story of serial killer H. H. Holmes. This book is incredibly entertaining and informative- it’s hard to decide which of the two stories is more interesting. Bravo. Read it.
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
An important work in the civil rights movement, Griffins book is not very relevant today. Griffin, a Caucasian man, goes “under-cover” as a black man in the deep south. His intentions are good but other than its theoretical value, his experiment seems to accomplish very little and sometimes seems to just expand the figurative and assumed chasm between white and black cultures. Skip it.
In Plain Sight by Tom Smart and Lee Benson
Fascinating reading if you followed the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case as closesly as most of the country. Tom Smart describes little known details and isn’t afraid to criticize the law enforcement or his own family in retrospect. Read it.
The Classical Style by Charles Rosen
This book was part of the text for a class I took last semester, this book is very important in the study of Classical music and the development of Western music in genera. Though Rosen can be a bit long-winded and his passive-voice writing style can be tiring, the book is full of incredibly useful information to the understanding of music and the genius of the Classical composers Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. One of the most important books I've ever read; it has basically changed my life. Read it.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
This is a follow up to his immensely popular The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Suns is about the lives of a few Muslim women in Afghanistan. Unlike his previous novel, this lacks any interesting character at all. I’m a feminist and this book is clearly pandering to my crowd yet it fails. All the female characters are blameless, helpless oppressed individuals or oppressive indoctrinated villains. On top of that the men in the book are either squirrely cowards or evil bullies. The most beautiful part of The Kite Runner was the deep and complex main character; this book lacks all complexity in characters. However it paints an interesting and likely realistic picture of life under the Taliban. A failed opportunity to explore the complexity of tradition and oppression. Skip it.
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that tells the story of a family immigrating from Turkey to the USA in the 1920s and then jumps to the present day where the narrator we come to find out is a hermaphrodite dealing with issues of identity. Beautiful parallels are drawn between the two stories and Eugenides language dealing with daring subjects is classy and sensitive. Read it.
Less than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis
Ellis describes the life of college-age young adults living in LA during the 1980’s. Written when he was only 19, Ellis has created a landmark in American literature conveying like no other author the mood of the empty, shallow lives of young adults trying to reconnect through sex, drugs, and violence. Early in his career Ellis explores with concepts of existentialism and dark satire. This is an important book but it deserves an “R” rating, be warned. Read it.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
This is a typical murder mystery story. If you think that character development and depth gets in the way of a good murder mystery story this is a good book for you. Originally written in Swedish, the dialogue feels clunky and expositional. However the story is full of unpretentious twists that keep the reader engaged despite the shallow characters. Skip it.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle is full of science fiction, preaching, and political commentary but lacking the cleverness and wit of some of his other books, but with all the obvious commentary typical of Vonnegut’s work. Skip it.
The Shame of the Nation by Jonathon Kozol
Kozol explores the issue of segregation in America’s public schools. Kozol is entirely self-aware and explores the opposition to all of his points. He logically and civilly describes his view point thoroughly and convinces the reader of this complete “shame” in our country. Read it.
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