Books!!!

The summer of 2009 is drawing to a fiery, smokey end & Finn and I are getting geared up to head back to school : ( It’s not over yet (we’re still going to La Jolla next weekend, yay!!), but it’s always good to reflect back on the vacation before school starts up again. I know that the minute that first class starts (and each one is twice as big this year, woohoo!!), the summer is going to seem like a million miles away!!!

One way that I always remember the summers is by the books read. Some summers have better ones than others, but happily there were some pretty great ones this year! I almost got to the end of the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian again (two more to go). This is an amazing series about the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, although it’s really more about two unforgettable characters, and is actually kind of like Jane Austin on the sea. You get history, science, philosophy, great adventure, and romance!! There are also more nautical terms than some people might want, but you get used to it. If this seems even remotely interesting to you, you should give them a shot – they are so good!!! I remember that Kelly Coy said that she reads them all again every year or so, and while this seems a little excessive (there are 20 total!), I can see re-reading these every so often for a long time! Out of the 20, I think there are only about 1&1/2 that are not outstanding, and so many of them are awesome!!

It’s hard to do all of the O’Brians in a row though, so there were some good ones in between. I have been wanting to read more Murakami ever since Em turned me on to Dance, Dance, Dance a few years ago, and Norwegian Wood is his most popular book, so it seemed like an obvious choice. I really enjoyed it!! It was so interesting to read a book about the 60’s, but set in Japan. It was fascinating to see how things were similar and different than the American experience, and (like most books I like), there were some really well-drawn characters who seemed familiar, but also kind of different and mysterious. It was actually a pretty sad book, but totally worth reading!!

Another one that I'm still going through is The Magic Mountain. I did a whole post about Thomas Mann pretty recently, so I won’t belabor it again, but it really is a great book, if a little heavy for summer reading! Hopefully I’ll finish it again before next year!

On the other side of the Magic Mountain, I read a good quick one up in Oregon (Em & I always find good interesting books at Dad & Molly’s and often have to steal them for a while!) This one was called Outliers, and is by Malcolm Gladwell who also wrote The Tipping Point. His thing is to do really detailed analysis on interesting topics and come up with information that no one has really thought about before. There were tons of interesting ideas in this book presented in a really readable way, but one the most fascinating parts to me was about education. He argues that in the great debate about schools, people are missing a huge point – that the schools are not the problem! He measured student achievement just over the school year (as opposed to the whole year), and found out that American students do just fine in comparison to other countries – regardless of socioeconomic level, or whether they are in public or private school. This is totally counter to most arguments that point to a decline in education. It turns out that the big problem is over the vacations, which the United States has far more of than other countries. The kids from poorer economic backgrounds tend to not do the summer education/reading/enrichment that the wealthier kids do – and all of our kids have about 40 more vacation days than Japanese students for example. It is a terrible irony for me that we really should have much less vacation time – BOOOOO!! Oh well. Anyway, this book was super-interesting & not just about boring teacher stuff! Did you know that a lot of success in sports depends on what day someone was born? Very fascinating!!

Finally, the controversial book of the summer came at the beginning. I think that I already wrote a little about The Shack (checking past blog entries…yep there it is, although it was mostly in the comments). This is one that I was pretty skeptical about, but I had read a lot of positive reviews, so I gave it a shot. I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it! It is such an audacious concept – the main character meets God (and Jesus and the Holy Ghost!!) in a shack after a terrible tragedy. It’s kind of like an updated book of Job, but with some different answers and more humor. I know that some people were turned off by the (really) dark beginning, and others were dissuaded by the overt religiousness of the book…well, that was just about everybody; this one was a tough sell! But it affected me much more than I expected, and I’ll probably go through it again pretty soon – lots to ponder!! The Shack was one of the quickest reads of the summer, but it definitely stayed with me!

Disappointing book of the summer: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler... by Italo Calvino. It sounded perfect, but you never know – didn’t finish it.

I hope that everyone else had a good literary summer (I think that Finn read about 30 books in the Magic Tree House series!) When school gets going I always gravitate back to old favorites for support, but it was great to find some new favorites over vacation!