Way, Way Behind
115. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Everywhere I went while reading this book, I heard, “You’re reading Great Expectations? I love that book! It’s one of my favorites!” Which led me to have great expectations about it.
Of course, now, after finishing the book, I see where having great expectations can lead…how one could and should find happiness in one’s own backyard or enormous TBR stack…
I’ve given away the plot here, but this book is so much a part of American high school life that I can’t be giving away much. How did I get through high school without reading it? My hs English teachers chose the heartbreaker, David Copperfield, so it’s not my first Dickens. I can see that Dickens can tell a story. Who wouldn’t love this book? It’s the Harry Potter of its time.
116. The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
A hound dog worn down by life with a mean owner is befriended by a pregnant cat who has been discarded by her owner and everything changes for them both. This book has a mythical East Texas feel with a rattlesnake mother bent on revenge and an enormous alligator and a scarred man full of hate and the power of love….I liked it a lot. What do kids think?
117. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Trond Sander has removed himself to an isolated cabin to live out the remainder of his lonely life when he comes across a man in the dark and he suddenly remembers all the events of one memorable summer.
118. L is for Lollygag by Chronicle Books
A wonderfully fun book of wonderfully fun words the authors feel are not used enough. Oddly, I know and use them all.
119. Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City by Janet Schulman
GN: Animal characters we always love; great length. BN: Illustrations somewhat bland.
120. Help Me, Mr. Mutt by Janet Stevens
GN: Hilarious plot with clever subplot. BN: Much of humor may be over kids’ heads.
121. The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating by A.W. Flaherty
GN: Oatmeal is finally useful for something. BN: Dark illustrations make text hard to read.
122. Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look
GN: Great title; nice illustrations throughout; Alvin has troubles with all the things boys typically have troubles with. BN: Alvin is neurotic.
123. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall
GN: Wonderful plot, a happy family for once. BN: Why aren’t there any boys in the story?
124. The Hound of Rowan by Henry H. Neff
GN: Boy discovers he has secret powers and is carted off to a school to study how to use his powers to save the world. BN: Sound familiar?
125. The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman
GN: Fun puzzles. BN: Derivative plot.
126. Piper Reed, Navy Brat by Kimberly Willis Holt
GN: Great heroine; great family tale. BN: A bit girly.
127. Surprises According to Humphrey by Betty Birney
GN: Humphrey is every kid’s dream friend. BN: Humphrey can be a little too good to be believed.
128. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Help is on lots of 2009 must-read lists and it appeared over and over on lists bloggers provided for me of books to read this summer.
I couldn’t help myself…I had to go ahead and get it and read it.
The help is the stories of maids and housewives in the 1960’s in the South told in alternating chapters. It was an uncomfortable read, at times, as I could have been a little girl listening in on the conversations of the maids or the housewives during this time. Though we only had a maid for one day (she ironed too slowly, my mom said), I feel almost certain that I’ve heard these words here and there. The majority of the housewives seemed to be unaware that slavery had ended and, sadly, the maids seemed likewise uninformed.
This is the kind of book I’d recommend to someone who says, “What’s wrong with black America? Why can’t black America get with the program?”
129. Savvy by Ingrid Law
GN: Beautiful cover; clever blurb. BN: Story wasn’t quite as good as cover and blurb promised.
130. Maybelle in the Soup by Katie Speck
GN: Funny, short, and readable. BN: Can you love a roach as a main character?
131. We Are the Ship by Nelson Kadir
GN: A story that has needed to be told; baseball; riveting tale. BN: Difficult text.
132. Where I Live by Eileen Spinelli
GN: Readable; poetry format is fun and light. BN: Writing a tale in poems can be tiring to read.
133. Martina the Beautiful Cockroach by Carmen Deedy
GN: Clever plot; beautiful illustrations. BN: A cockroach and a mouse?
134. ¡Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué Rico! By Pat Mora
GN: Food as characters; brilliant illustrations. BN: Haiku is hard to follow.
135. Two-Minute Drill by Mike Lupica
GN: Football; boy characters, for a change. BN: Football; boy characters.
136. Someone Named Eva by Joan Wolf
GN: Another book about Nazis. BN: Another book about Nazis.
137. The Best American Poetry 2008 edited by Charles Wright
Is this my least favorite best American poetry collection? Yes, I think it is. I was pretty sure I’d not take to this collection when I saw the name of the editor; I’m not a big fan of Charles Wright.
The vast majority of the poems struck a Hemingway-esque note with me, a macho man trying to make it in this kinder, gentler world. But here and there, I found a common spirit. How can I read fifty poems and not find a few that light up my heart?! Impossible.
138. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
This is a sad story. You are prepared going in, but, still, it’s a tough read.
Alice is a Harvard professor who studies the brain. She begins to notice that she is forgetting things. The pattern continues and grows bolder, and Alice is forced to seek help. What she feared most is true: She has early-onset Altzheimer’s.
Reading the story from Alice’s point of view is difficult. She grows less and less aware of things and more and more estranged from her world.
Very sad story.
139. Do-Over! by Robin Hemley
Another book in the genre I call challenge books. Hemley takes on the personal challenge of going back to places in his life where he fumbled the ball and tries to do things over. Better.
Who wouldn’t like to try these things?
Loved the kindergarten do-over but I grew less and less intrigued with his subsequent trials. A good summer read.
140. Esta noche en el Titanic by Mary Pope Osborne
Whew! Happy day! I read the entire chapter book (okay, yes, it is a children’s book) in Spanish! I’ve been reading a collection of fairy tales in Spanish, now, but I think I’ll try another MTH in Spanish next during our trip to Utah.
141. Home by Marilynne Robinson
I had checked out Home when it first came out but turned it quickly back when, thinking it was too much like Gilead. The reviews for Home continued to pour in and all of them were good. So I went back to it. And loved it. Robinson knows the Prodigal Son.
142. Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
Shakespeare Wrote for Money is a collection of Hornsby’s last columns for the Believer magazine. I’m glad he’s given up on these. I must say I liked his earlier columns, but his river of reading has seemed to dry up and lose its charm, so to speak.
143. Arriving at Your Own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
144. Walking Meditation by Nguyen Ann-Huong
145. Breathe: Yoga for Teens by Mary Kaye Chryssicas
I’ve been playing around with yoga and Christian meditation in recent days. The three books I read all sent me off to try out some new poses, new thoughts. Worthwhile, I think.
146. The Tall Stranger by Louis L’Amour
Don’t ever say I don’t venture out from my comfort zone in my reading. I finished my first real Western (unless Lonesome Dove counts). And it’s a Louis L’Amour, the John Wayne of Western writers.
I knew where this book was going from page one. No doubt about it…it’s a guy book, through and through. Fellow (Mercy! His name is ROCK Banyon…please!) joins up with a wagon train headed west. The man who’s guiding the wagon train is Mort Harper. Harper has persuaded the train to take a southern route, a route that Rock Banyon knows will lead straight to the Salt Lake Desert. Harper and Banyon both fall for the same girl and they squabble back and forth until they reach a tranquil valley owned by a rancher Banyon knows won’t take kindly to having strangers move in. Banyon can’t quite figure out what Harper’s scheme is, but he lurks around on the fringes as the wagon train decides to appropriate some of the rancher’s land.
There’s some gun fights, some fist fights, a saloon, beautiful farm land, and a pretty girl. You feel pretty confident early on that the good guy’s gonna win out. And, apparently, that’s a Western.
147. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick
One book was required and one book was recommended for the eight week class I’m taking this summer on writing personal narratives. This was the recommended book. I read it and a Western on the plane ride from Houston to Salt Lake. A quick read.
Not sure I took much away from this book. Did I miss something? It seemed to be a series of short essays where the author analyzes what works in good personal narratives. But what did I retain from reading this book? Just an idea about going with one’s gut feeling about what works.
Maybe I need to read this again.
148. Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
I had Williams recommended to me by fellow bloggers when I posted about wanting to read a Utah voice while on my trip. My first stop in Salt Lake City was The King’s English Bookstore. I asked for recommendations at the bookstore and I was led to this author and this book. It was a good choice for this trip.
Williams tells two stories in the book: the story of her mother’s four year struggle with cancer and the simultaneous and parallel story of the struggles of birds finding refuge near a swelling Great Salt Lake.
149. The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel
A book of wacky games to play while traveling. Here’s one: “Leave your home on foot. Take the first road on the right, then the next on the left, then the next on the right, then the next on the left, and so on. Carry on until something…blocks your path and you can go no further.”
Each game is assessed according to difficulty and is followed by laboratory results.
The game I’d be most likely to try? Literary Journey. Here’s the info on it: “Choose a book from the bookshelf and commence reading. Continue reading until a foreign country is mentioned in the text. Then choose a second book that’s somehow related to that country and begin reading again. Repeat until you have either returned to your point of origin or have completed one circumnavigation of the globe.”
The game I’d be least likely to try? Horse Head Adventure. It basically involves putting on a strange prop or costume and venturing into society. The lab results involved the traveler walking around Tokyo wearing a horse head.
150. Poems for a Good and Happy Life by Myrna Grant
I bought this book at a bookstore (the bookstore) in Delta, Utah for two dollars. I got worried about the amount of remaining reading material after I finished two of the four books I brought with me on the plane.
Most of the poems were known to me. I especially like the one with the line, “Life ain’t been no crystal stair.” The book also included “The Red Wheelbarrow” and some Emily Dickinson and some Bible quotes.
I left it next to a computer at the Days Inn at which we were staying in Delta. I set the computer at the BookCrossing website. Hope someone finds it and logs it in.
1 | Comment (0)Moon & Sixpence; Housekeeper & the Professor; (George)
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112. (George) by E.L. Konigsburg
This is a book I put on my wishlist a long time ago after hearing a school volunteer rave about it.
I started out loving it and ended up liking it.
I loved the idea of a person inside a person and enjoyed that part of the book. Then the psychiatrist labeled it “multiple personalities.” That ruined it for me, made it something undesirable.
I do like Konigsburg. Her characters are always clever.
113. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
The main character of this book, Charles Strickland, was a thoroughly unlikeable fellow. His departure from home left his first wife in despair. He took up with a woman in Paris and destroyed her life. It was only when he went to Tahiti that he found a haven for his art and lifestyle.
That Strickland was based on the artist Gauguin adds to the story.
I didn’t like the character, but I did like the book.
114. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Lots of buzz around the blogosphere about this one. Not the usual hyped book, though. Very quiet story. Very Japanese.
Exactly the book I wanted to read this week after the read-a-thon last weekend.
1 | Comment (0)Read-a-Thon Reads: 17!
96. Good-bye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
It’s the gentle story of a man who taught in a British private boys’ school for many decades. I love the way Chips starts out as a very average sort of person and teacher. It’s the experiences of life—the death of his wonderful wife, the tragedies of the war, the days, years spent teaching children—that transform Chips into a thoughtful, clever, and exemplary human being.
97. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Whew! What a ride. What a terrible ride into the lives of three sad, miserable lives. Blanche comes to stay with her sister, Stella, after Blanche’s life deteriorates. Stella has married and is expecting a baby, but her life is anything but cozy and warm. Stella’s husband, Stanley, beats his wife and drinks heavily. Everything in this story echoes, No Way Out, and You are Doomed to Misery.
98. A Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Frankie provides our eyes and ears for A Member of the Wedding and what a view she gives us readers! Frankie is poised on the edge of childhood and adulthood, that awful spot we now call adolescence, but she is not sitting quietly on the edge; she is teetering back and forth between the worlds and it is not a happy place to be. She has lost her connections to her world. There are only two who try to call her back into the world: Berenice, the housekeeper, and her cousin, John Henry. As Frankie questions the world, Berenice is the voice of the grownup world, trying to ease Frankie into the new world. At the same time, John Henry is the voice of Frankie’s childhood, urging her to play, to experience the world, to forget the world of thinking. Frankie’s one hope becomes her desire to escape and join her brother and his new wife after their wedding. Of course, this does not happen and Frankie goes back to her world, but she is not the same person she once was.
What a rich, marvelous book! I could read it all over again and I think I would love it just as much. Frankie’s encounter with the soldier…the monkey and the monkey owner…the Freaks….the noises and the pictures the author draws of this world…a rich, rich story.
99. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Fourth hour, fourth book completed. (Mind you, all my books for the read-a-thon were jump started; I’m not really reading books…I’m finishing them.)
And not just another book completed…another GREAT book completed. I would recommend highly all the books I’ve read today.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’d seen the movie. I’ve read two other Capote books and was wowed by them. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is equally wonderful. The juxtaposition of our narrator and Holly Golightly makes the book. Holly would probably be called manic-depressive today when she was hospitalized but to the narrator and her other admirers she has that rare zest for life that is to wonderous to behold. Others, more thoughtful observers, would also see in Holly the devastation she left in her wake.
A powerful story.
100. Tales of Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
It’s not on anyone’s classics book…yet. But what a fantastic read! Fantastic is a key word, because every story feels like a fantasy, yet terribly real.
Yes, I, who grew up in suburbia when nobody knew it would take over America like a disease, I always thought of suburbia as a strange world but never ventured into the corners of suburbia that Tan takes us to in this book.
The pictures are perfect and the stories so thoughtful I would love to read them again and again.
Another excellent read. Did I ever pick some great reads for the read-a-thon?!
101. Boyology by Sarah Burningham
Boyology was my toughest read of the Read-a-Thon. I’m 52 and I’ve been married almost 31 years, so it was hard to read through page after page of how to flirt and how to kiss. 
I can see it would be very, very useful for a teen girl. And fun.
Another book ready to pass on to a read-a-thon-er….
102. Joey Fly: Private Eye in Creepy Crawly by Aaron Reynolds
Crime Written in a comic book format, this thin book is charactered with insects, arachnids, and worms. The dialogue is clever, filled with bug-populated similes. Will kids get the humor? A bit, I think. Kids will just like the silly detectives trying to solve the mystery of the missing pencil box.
103. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
I liked and disliked this book. Mann has his character, Aschenbach, preach a little more than I like, preaching his thoughts about beauty and writing and control. That’s what I disliked. For the first third of the book, I could barely force myself to keep reading.
Then Aschenbach falls in love and begins to tail the object of his affection all over Venice. The story takes a different turn and the writing moves from a rant about virtue to a real story. Venice is beautifully depicted and Aschenbach becomes a real, brilliant, tortured human being. That’s what I liked.
103. That Night by Alice McDermott
A masterpiece. I wish I’d read this book this morning when I was still able to write coherently instead of midnight when I’m in the last seven hours of a twenty-four hour read-a-thon.
I loved the way the author switches from first person singular narrator to first person plural narrator in the story. I also loved the way the author provides little glimpses of the future for the characters who pop into the narrative. These give the story a big vision both broad and yet full of disappointment.
104. Amelia’s Notebook by Marissa Moss
A little children’s book, written in the form of a notebook. The notebook format is perfect for such a close look inside the life of a child.
105. Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast
Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast is a book of short poems that were originally written on subways all across America. Some of my favorite poems were in this book including This is Just to Say.
106. The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss
The Upstairs Room is the fictionalized memoir of a Jewish girl who was kept hidden with her sister in an attic room for over two years during WWII in the Netherlands. Reiss originally wrote the story to explain what had happened to her two daughters. Very sad.
107. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea was possibly the worse choice I’ve ever made for a read-a-thon. The old man spends most of the book fighting the fish, weary, exhausted, tired. I’m not at all interested in fish but Hemingway is a writer I like, spare and lean.
108. The Great Fire by Jim Murphy
The Great Fire is a look at the Chicago Fire. It moved fast and, because of a series of errors, spread over much of the city. Jim Murphy knows how to write nonfiction.
109. Years of Dust by Albert Marrin
Years of Dust examines the Dust Bowl years, the causes, the problems, the way things resolved themselves. It could happen again.
110. The Black Pearl by Scott O’Dell
The Black Pearl is the story of a boy who seeks a big pearl and finds it. The boy’s father is lost at sea and the boy feels certain he must set things to rights with the pearl.
111. Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle
Afternoon of the Elves is the story of a friendship between Sara-Kate and Hillary. Sara-Kate unexpectedly shows Hillary an elf village in her backyard and Hillary becomes intrigued. The story is quite mysterious. Love the ending.
Eternal Smile; Absolutely Maybe; Hope Was Here; and More
85. The Noonday Friends by Mary Stolz
With a copyright date of 1965, this had to be one of the first almost-teenage-girl-with-family-troubles books. This is now an out-and-out genre; I can’t tell you how many of these I saw at the library conference last week. Franny’s problems seem small compared to those of girls nowadays: Franny is worried that her friend won’t like her best and that her dad can’t keep a job (not because he has deeper problems like anger issues or drinking on the job issues…he’s just a bit dreamy). Because of the copyright, I felt pretty confident going in that everything would work out in the end and, of course, everything did. It’s a good solid story, with good solid characters. I wonder what contemporary readers would think of this book.
86. Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee
I dived right into this book at the library conference last week and I couldn’t stop reading. Love Maybe and her mom and her friends. Must find a new teen reader to pass this on to.
Just a little plot info: Maybe is Maybeline, a girl her mother named after her favorite brand of makeup. Her mom is a serial marrier, set to pick up husband number seven. Maybe goes off with friends to California in search of the father she never knew and the one man her mom did not marry.
87. How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth) by Henry Alford
I almost gave up on this book ten times. It is not as advertised. Alford spends much of the book talking about his elderly mother who decides in her eighties to divorce Alford’s stepdad. Here and there, Alford stops to interview elderly people but he obtains very little wisdom. Please. If you say you are going to write a book about the wisdom we can obtain from old people, then you’ve got to seek out wise old people. Disappointing.
88. The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About The Good News? By Peter J. Gomes
Gomes’ message is simple: Why do we spend our time devoting ourselves to Jesus rather than doing what Jesus asked us to do? Gomes emphasizes the transforming nature of Jesus’ words and asks us to act.
89. Happy Birthday to You! By Dr. Seuss
A perfect happy birthday message in a fun Seuss book.
90. The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
Three good stories related in a graphic novel format. The graphic novel format seemed very suited to the telling of these quirky stories.
91. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Two sisters and their elderly father collide as they have always collided in the past but with tremendous force and great frequency when the elderly father falls for a young woman who wants to immigrate to England from Ukraine.
The dialogue is clever and fun and painful and the dad’s obsession with tractors is a nice sidebar to the story.
92. Meet Kirsten: An American Girl by Janet Shaw
I’ve always wanted to read an American Girl book. This is my first.
Kirsten is a young Swedish girl whose family is moving to the United States. Kirsten is lonely but soon is befriended by another young Swedish girl who is also moving out West.
The story takes a surprisingly painful twist. American Girl is more realistic than I’d expected. Kirsten is more than just a pretty face.
93. Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer
Hope was tiny when she was born and her mom couldn’t cope; Hope’s mom gave Hope to Hope’s aunt to raise. Hope’s aunt, Addie, is a fantastic cook but she and Hope are always moving.
The one thing Hope’s mom gave Hope of use to her was the secrets of waitressing. Hope and Addie suffer at the hands of a con artist and are on the move again, this time to the café of a man with cancer. The man with cancer turns out to be another Atticus Finch, but with political thoughts, and Hope becomes caught up in his campaign for mayor against a villainous long time mayor.
I liked this story more and more with every page I read. The aunt…the mom…the café owner…the cook at the café…Hope herself…all were scrumptious characters.
94. Tomorrow: Adventures in an Uncertain World by Bradley Trevor Greive
You’ve seen this book or at least this kind of book or maybe you’ve seen the Powerpoint of it in your inbox. It’s a collection of wacky photos of animals captioned with truisms about life. Uplifting and thoughtful…just don’t expect profound.
95. A Generous Or+hodoxy by Brian D. McLaren
Here’s the subtitle: Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished Christian.
And that’s the whole book.
And, I find, me, too.
1 | Comments (2)Dogsong; Dragonwings; Charlotte Doyle; PostSecret Books; Harold Pinter
77. Dragonwings by Laurence Yep
At last, Moon Shadow was allowed to go to the Land of the Demons (America) from the Middle Kingdom (China). He had to always be on guard in America as the demons created danger everywhere. His father’s dream was to fly an airplane, a dream that started when his father read about the Wright Brothers attempts to fly in the newspaper. Moon Shadow and his father decided to set out to achieve this dream.
The world of San Francisco in the early 20th century as seen from the eyes of Chinese Americans. And, you guessed it, there is a big sequence that takes place in 1906. In San Francisco.
78. Red Sails to Capri by Ann Weil
Michele sees the boat with the red sails and finds a way to lead the passengers to stay at his parents’ inn. The three men on this boat will forever change Capri.
There is a mystery. There is action. There is adventure. There is the exotic atmosphere of faraway Capri.
79. Dogsong by Gary Paulsen
Russel is a young man who sees his people are estranged from their Eskimo culture. He makes his way to Oogruk, an Eskimo shaman and wise man. Oogruk teaches Russel how to hunt and how to survive and sends him off on his own to test his abilities.
This is what our young men are seeking, I think, even in America today…a way to connect with their elders and learn to make it on their own…heroism…adventure…sacrifice.
80. The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
A book of eight plays. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read a play. And these are wonderful plays, plays that seem to capture the existential spirit of our modern world.
81. A Lifetime of Secrets compiled by Frank Warren
Another book in the PostSecret series. This book compiles secrets people have kept for many years, often those of childhood or early adulthood.
82. The Secret Lives of Men and Women compiled by Frank Warren
Yet another book in the PostSecret series. Secrets are compelling.
83. Passion on the Vine by Sergio Esposito
I decided to read this book so that I could pass it along when the Travelogue Bookbox arrives. Turns out, it was a hard book for me to get through. Why? It’s a fascinating story of one man’s adventures with wine in Italy. Lots of little stories about vineyards and those who make wine. But to make it through this book, you need to be very, very interested in wine.
84. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
Charlotte is a typical well-mannered girl of 1832 as she prepares to return home to her family in America after attending school in England. But the voyage she takes turns out to completely change her life and shake up her world in ways neither she nor her parents could have ever anticipated.
Avi once again completely brought me into a world I knew nothing about and captured my attention from the first page to the end.
1 | Comment (0)
Everyone is Beautiful; School of Essential Ingredients; Little Beauties; etc.
71. Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center
Not every book we read has to be a big literary novel, clever, thoughtful, dense. At times, we just want to read a book that reassures us about the troubles that hit us as humans and about the hidden strengths we have to overcome. And we might just want a laugh or two at the foibles of little boys. Everyone is Beautiful is such a book, a book when we are seeking a gentle, funny read.
I like this book. It’s not Tolstoy, but it’s a perfect read for spring break. It reminded me of the tiring days of young motherhood and the sweetness and pain of raising children. It’s funny here and there and always true.
72. The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
My second read of spring break. An excellent choice for spring break. The plot is simple: A woman runs a cooking school where people come to learn to cook, yes, but also to be healed. Little magical elements in the story, but it never felt forced or excessive.
73. PostSecret compiled by Frank Warren
Frank Warren began this book as a project. He handed out postcards to strangers and asked them to write down a secret and send the secret to him.
As I read the book, I began to feel like I was sitting in the confessional, listening to terse whispers of big misdeeds and little rebellions.
Irresistible.
74. Little Beauties: A Novel by Kim Addonizio
Our main characters in this novel are a young OCD-driven former child beauty contestant (got that?) and a teenage pregnant husband-less girl. They comes together and help each other, as we might hope all people could.
75. The Loner by Ester Wier
Now and then, I continue on my quest to read all the Newbery Honor books. The Loner is the story of an orphan who unexpectedly winds up on a sheep farm run by a big yet shy woman who has lost her son to a bear. Lots of action. Do kids even know about lives like this boy’s?
76. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The life of a horse told from a horse’s point of view. The horse seemed to accept that his life was to be controlled by humans (he never longed for days of roaming the wild prairie, for example) but he always wished that his masters be kind. Some were. Some were not. Sewell saw lots of cruelty toward horses and part of her reason for writing the book (as it says in the forward to this book) was to show the torment that many horses faced.
I especially liked this version of the book, filled with illustrations of horse terms and places in London and depictions of complicated events in the story.
1 | Comment (0)(un)FASHION; Stargazing; Shark’s Fin; Abe’s Honest Words
65. Abe’s Honest Words by Doreen Rappaport
With text that reads almost like a poem and big, energetic illustrations, and with each page spread featuring a powerful quote, this book approaches the beauty of a snowflake. Page by page, the author tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s tumultuous life in short bursts of prose and emphasizes each big moment with a strong quote and a magnificent illustration. A truly beautiful book, in pictures and words. A book for every Lincoln lover. A book for every library.
66. Our White House: Looking In Looking Out created by the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance
Did all my favorite authors and illustrators contribute to this book? A look through the table of contents seems to say yes. A big, big book (it will apparently be more than 242 pages) filled with fun stories all connected loosely to the setting of the White House. The stories I read in this sampler were gentle, scary, sad, and humorous.
The illustrations are clever and sweet, silly and patriotic. I only had a taste of the book here in this prepublication sampler but I will seek out the full version; thirty-five dollars is a hunk of change for a book, even a lovely one like this one appears to be.
67. What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America by Tony Schwartz
I spent all last Sunday afternoon reading this book. It’s an older book, with a copyright in the 90’s, so some of it comes across as a bit dated. I grimaced here and there, reading about some of the “wisdom” Schwartz sought, using the power of brain waves, for example, acts I’ve always tended to regard as hocus-pocus mumbo jumbo. I carried away a lot of positive scientific evidence for meditation; I will seek more information about that. I also learned that one study found 75% of people have some sort of back problems but experience no pain. Curious. I was especially interested in the chapters that touched on dealing with cancer. A study showed that almost all cancer patients had undergone an exceptionally tramatic event in their lives in the year before they were diagnosed with cancer.
Interesting, though a little out of date and a bit pseudo-scientific.
68. Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop
Fuchsia lived in China off and on for about ten years. She entered China as a journalist and left intrigued with its cuisine. And what a cuisine? Is there anything they don’t eat in China? I honestly cannot imagine getting all gooey-eyed over snapping off and crunching on rabbit heads. Ick. And bladders? Eek. Dunlop’s final confrontation is with a caterpillar crawling on a leaf in her garden at home in England. I hope I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that she plucked the caterpillar off the leaf and popped it in her mouth and regarded the entire affair as a triumph of her new eating sensibilities. Sorry, but I must comment with a final yuck.
69. Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper by Peter Hill
I was on a bookring for this book, but the originator of the ring brought the book home before Christmas so that he could read the book again and it seems the bookring shows no signs of starting back up. Thus, I was happy to discover this book at my local library. Who woulda thunk it?
Peter Hill is a young, restless art student in the early 70’s when he discovers an opportunity to work for the summer as a lighthouse keeper. Lighthouse keeping is a mythical profession and lighthouses are mythical places. A job that no longer exists and a place that is all but unnecessary with today’s satellites and GPS. Still, it was great fun to travel with Hill to lighthouses around Scotland and visit with keepers there. It brought me to mind my summer working in Yellowstone Park around the same time. I’ve always thought that summer would make a wonderful book….
70. (un)FASHION by Tibor + Maira Kalman
I read Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty three times and actually sought out a copy for my shelf. I had to take a look at (un)FASHION when I discovered it was part of Kalman’s oeuvre.
And look I did. It’s the kind of book you want to share with someone; on almost every page you want to shout, “Look at this! Can you believe this?”
Not sure you would say I read this book. But I’m quite sure I will re-read it (re-look it?) at least once more before I return it to the library.
1 | Comment (0)Middle Place; Whatever It Takes; Homecoming; Six-Word
60. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
I first heard about this book on a YouTube video. The author was reading a wonderful excerpt from her book on the video, all about the wonderful support women give each other during the tough times every woman will face. Somewhere I saw that the reader was Kelly Corrigan and I assumed the beautifully written words were from her book, The Middle Place.
After reading the entire book, I finally realized the piece must be from an article Corrigan wrote; The Middle Place is a story from an earlier part of Corrigan’s life. The Middle Place relates the tale of Corrigan’s love for her dad and the subsequent diagnosis of cancer in both Corrigan and her father. It’s a worthy story. I’d have never checked it out but for the lovely video on YouTube. Now I await her newest book.
61. Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak edited by Smith Magazine
This book would have been a favorite had I read it at nineteen instead of fifty-two; love and romance just doesn’t have the zing it once did for me. I can’t seem to get the pain of heartbreak any more. Is it my age? I found the first book, little six-word tales of a life, much more clever.
62. Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough
Geoffrey Canada is a teacher who came up against the most-difficult-to-educate group of kids a teacher can face: kids who grew up in poverty, with broken homes, surrounded by drugs and guns and alcohol. But Canada was not daunted by this group. As a child, he grew up in the same world and, somehow, he managed to transcend that world and make a good life for himself. Canada, unlike other reformers, found much to love in the Harlem in which he grew up. He found support and love among his fellow African American men, support and love he never really found in any other world. So Canada came to want to retain the strengths of the culture all the while bringing in the strengths of the broader American culture.
And did Canada ever have a dream?! Canada wanted to do more than bring in the superheroes to lift a few children here and there out of poverty. Instead, he decided to work in every area of a child’s life to improve the entire world. He started classes to teach parents from day one how to take care of their children. He created a baby school for the youngest of children to learn in an enriched environment. He began preschools and kindergartens and elementary schools and middle schools. He maintained the superhero programs for the oldest and most jaded and most difficult to reach children of poverty.
Did Canada accomplish his goals? His is still a work in progress. But the early results are startling. What could we do if we all worked together to have poor children experience the kind of lives those of us in the middle class take for granted?
Here are a few brutal facts from his book:
“…significant skill gaps exist—by race, class, and maternal education—and they open up very early. At age one there is not a great difference between the cognitive abilities of the child of a college graduate and the child of a high school dropout, but by age two there is a sizable gap, and at three it’s even wider.”
“…GED recipients earn no more than high school dropouts, on the average, even when their intelligence scores are higher. And why? Heckman says it is because they lack all of the noncognitive skills that a person must possess in order to make it through high school: patience, persistence, self-confidence, the ability to follow instructions, the ability to delay gratification for a future reward….”
“…both cognitive and noncognitive skills are teachable—but it matters a great deal when you try to teach them.”
“There was plenty of research around that showed that poor children not only benefited from being in prekindergarten, but they benefited more than other children.”
“And in reading, as it turns out, the metaphorical rich overlap with the literal rich. Even as early as the beginning of kindergarten, children’s level of ability with the printed word tends to correspond closely to the income level of their parents. As Susan B. Neuman, the education scholar, has reported, more than four out of five children at the highest socioeconomic level recognize the letters of the alphabet on the first day of kindergarten, compared to less than two of five children at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Half of all well-off kids can identify the beginning sounds of words when they start kindergarten, while just 10 percent of poor children can do the same.”
“…with very few exceptions, good early readers become great readers, and limited early readers almost always end up as poor readers. Late bloomers are, in fact, quite rare.” (The Matthew effect)
“And then after kindergarten, because of the Matthew effect, the disparities get even worse….Kids who are able to master “decoding,” to grasp the strange fact that black marks on a page connect to sounds…and that those sounds and marks go together to convey information…—those kids think reading is fun. They do more of it. And the more they do, the easier it gets, and the easier it gets, the more they do. For children who have a harder time cracking the code early on, the opposite occurs, a grim process that one researcher calls “the devastating downward spiral.”
“By middle school, the gap between avid readers and reluctant readers has grown into a chasm. If you rank fifth-grade students by how much time they spend reading on their own, outside of school, you find a huge range. A child at the ninetieth percentile—not the most book-crazy kid in class, but close to the top—will spend an average of twenty-one minutes a day reading…which means that she goes through more than 1.8 million words a year. A child at the tenth percentile—not the most reading-averse kid in class, but close—will spend an average of six seconds a day on independent reading, which works out to just eight thousand words a year.”
‘Joseph Torgesen, a researcher at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University…looked at a dozen or so experimental studies of intensive reading interventions done in different parts of the country and targeted at different ages. When he analyzed the interventions aimed at nine-to twelve-year-old struggling readers, he found results that were mixed at best. With enough time and work, it seemed, it was possible to push these middle school-aged kids forward on the reading basics, like decoding, accuracy, and word comprehension. But the news was much more discouraging when it came to “fluency”—the ability to read with ease. Torgesen’s conclusion: by the end of elementary school, “if children’s impairments in word-reading ability have reached moderate or severe levels,” catching kids up may be simply impossible. But when Torgesen looked at early interventions with delayed readers—in first and second grade—his mood brightened….The interventions were remarkably effective; each one brought at least half of the targeted students up to an average level of reading ability by the end of the grade, and in one study, 92 percent of them hit that level.’
63. The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury
I don’t like scary books (at all!) but I do love Ray Bradbury. It was that love for Bradbury that carried me through reading this very scary book. The plot is thin: a young boy’s family gather together on All Hallows Eve and the family, all except the boy, are ghouls. The boy is deeply saddened by being different, completely human, in a family where everyone has special, albeit creepy, abilities. The story is rich in sensory details, Bradbury-ish in every way. The appeal of the story for me was greatly increased by the format of the book, a small volume with just the right pictures and script. I could barely make it through this scary story, but even I, a big ole scaredy cat, I could not miss the beautiful writing and the rich characters.
64. Flower Children by Maxine Swann
I’m probably the last person on earth who still remembers the hippie era as a time of great hope and optimism. Flower Children, like my visit to San Francisco last summer, is yet another nail in the coffin for the hippie era. Much of the story is told is plural first person, an interesting way to approach a childhood in a family of four children. The children grow up with two hippie parents, both of which come from very affluent households. There is no terrible secret or destructive action, but the children’s parents steadily deteriorate and gradually decline. It is a story that begins in great hope and slowly develops into a life of deep underlying sadness.
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13 Clocks; Work Hard. Be Nice.; Hunger Games
1 | Comments (2)52. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
The 13 Clocks is a fun fairy tale. It reminds me of The Princess Bride (perhaps PB was modeled after 13 Clocks?) A prince arrives at the castle of a mean, mean Duke, incognito, to find a way to win the hand of the Princess. The Duke sees through his disguise (via his secret spies) and sends the prince off, as he has many other princes in the past, on an impossible mission. But the prince has a helper, the Golux, who is helpful, though he often makes things up.
A new addition to my favorite books of all time list!
53. Too Tall Alice by Barbara Worton
Alice is four inches taller than anyone else in her class and she
doesn’t like it. One night, she overheard her parents talking with her
friends about her height. Alice cried and cried until she finally fell
asleep. She began to dream. In her dream, she was among other tall
girls. The girls helped her imagine what it would be like when she was a
grownup. Everything looked wonderful. Alice had new happy feelings about
being tall.
The pictures in this book are very child friendly. The story reflects
the feelings many children have about being tall and could help readers
come to understand the benefits of height.
54. Our Abe Lincoln adapted by Jim Aylesworth
Jim Aylesworth hits the high points of Abe Lincoln’s life in his
adaption of a popular song of Lincoln’s Day, “Our Abe Lincoln,” sung to
the tune of “The Old Grey Mare.” The story is very simple but should
reinforce the most cogent parts of Lincoln’s life with young children.
The pictures are clever and appeal to kids.
55. Work Hard. Be Nice. By Jay Mathews
I always love to read about schools where kids do well. This is one such story.
It’s the story of the KIPP program that began in Houston in 1995, started by two committed Teach for America teachers.
Here’s a brutal fact: If poor children are going to learn at the same rate as affluent children, they need more school days. Ugh. That hits me where it hurts. This is a brutal fact teachers can’t bear. One of the perks of being a teacher is summers off. Summers kill poor children’s achievement. Eek.
So, give me another way we can improve student achievement without taking away our summers? Yep, KIPP has another answer: longer school days. Another brutal fact that we teachers can’t bear. Please, give me something else?
Well, KIPP teachers help kids with their homework…in the evenings! Eek. This is getting worse and worse.
KIPP offers answers to improving student achievement among poor children, but the answers are not easy.
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
When I first heard about this book, the plot sounded derivative, already used in books like Ender’s Game and Surviving Antarctica. I kept hearing so much good buzz about it that I went ahead and read it anyway.
The plot is derivative, but with the book’s great characters and a heavy dose of hearty action, The Hunger Games is a strong read. Like most dystopian novels, this one pushes the warning buttons on the reader’s brain and sends your brain synapses a jolt that keeps the reader thinking long past the close of the book.
I’m looking forward to book two.
(JMHO, but I can’t see this book in libraries with younger readers. Lots of violence.)
Catching Up
46. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
Chang spends three years in China, following the lives of several young women who have moved from rural China to find jobs and money and success and love in urban China. This is not the story I’d been expecting; city life turns out to be a big plus for most of the women in this book. Those for whom city life is not so well suited quickly return home, usually to try again on another day. For the most part, the women have a place to stay and are earning money. There are sad stories, too; companies close down and fail to pay their workers and women find they are working incredibly long hours for minimal pay. But the women generally begin to adjust to the six day work week and the long hours per day. Soon the women want to find ways to improve themselves and move up in the company hierarchy. This, too, is possible in the big city.
The only jarring note for me was Chang’s side story about her own family; why was this included in this book? No one in Chang’s family was a factory girl. Had I been Chang’s editor I’d have saved this story for another book.
47. The Amateur Gormet: How to Shop, Chop, and Table-Hop Like a Pro (Almost) by Adam D. Roberts
Roberts, like an increasingly large number of young authors today, keeps a blog about his experiences in learning to cook. The book is composed of pieces taken and expanded upon from the blog. It’s not a bad book, given that it is one man’s attempts at becoming an amateur gourmet. It’s not the end-all of books about learning to cook and shouldn’t be read with that expectation. It was a gentle little read, but nothing more.
48. Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat by Hank Cardello (with Doug Garr)
I wish Cardello hadn’t needed a writer to help him with this book. The book suffers a bit from the writer-helper’s attempts to polish up Cardello’s thoughts. But it obviously would have been much worse without the additional writer. And it is not a bad book. It’s not a beautifully written book either, but that’s okay. It gets its points across. The strength of the book is the expertise Cardello the insider offers the reader. And does Cardello ever have insider knowledge. The food industry comes across as morally indifferent to the tremendous increase in the size of the average American over the past thirty years. Should it be indifferent? Cardello nods his head, asserting that the food industry is only obligated to be concerned with increasing its profits. Where then can we turn? How can we slow or stop the growing obesity of our country? Cardello states that we must make it profitable for the food industry to be concerned with Americans’ health.
49. Epilogue: A Memoir by Anne Roiphe
Roiphe’s husband dies unexpectedly and she is terribly lonely. Her daughters try to help her by taking out a personal ad for her. She tries to help herself by going online and using a service. She gets calls and she goes on dates. It is all a tremendous disappointment.
Time passes and Roiphe gives up on the outside dating help. She gradually comes to find a peace in her solitariness. She decides to wait and see if love comes to her.
50. Testimony by Anita Shreve
Three young men at a private school ruin their lives when they get drunk and are videotaped in compromising situation with an underage girl. This book is the story of the young men and their families and their teachers and the young girl.
I found the strength of the book to be in the way it was told. I liked the way the author told the story in chapters using various points of view. It felt very real.
I thought the tale was a bit too Oprah-ish, the social problem of the week. None of the characters was terribly likable, except for Silas who seemed to have been caught up in the drinking amid family difficulties and was a victim of circumstances.
All in all, a ho-hum Shreve.
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