Summer Reading List

Books I've Read This Summer

1. Alice in Wonderland
A classic story of a girl and plenty of metaphors

2. Zeitoun- Dave Eggers
A great post-Hurrican Katrina story told autobiographically through Eggers writing. An Arab family gets displaced and faces racism in America post-9/11

3. Talking to Girls about Duran Duran- Rob Sheffield
Adolescent love explained through a love of 80s music

4. I Saw You (Missed Connections in a Graphic Novel)
excellent and entertaining. If you don't browse the missed connections section of craigslist.com you should

5. Townie- Andre Dubus III
excellent memoir of a man who grew up fighting in order to survive, until he discovered that "the pen is mightier than the sword" literally

6. Kitchen Confidential- Bourdain
a great look into the kitchen of restaurants. makes you think before ordering

7. Life of Pi
great, quick read in the same vein as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, at least I think so.

8. The Hunger Games
9. Catching Fire
10. Mockingjay
I've lumped this trilogy together, because that's exactly what it was. the first book was excellent and the entire theme(s) throughout the series were well crafted, but the second book was kind of dry and predictable. the third book and the ending was kind of a disappointment. but I definitely appreciation Suzanne Collins for what she created here.
11. Once Again to Zelda
A book about the stories behind the dedications to some great classic literature. certainly made me appreciate the books I should have read in high school and makes me want to tackle them now, with a deeper understanding of the process

12. The Reader
a quick, depressing page-turner about a boy and his elder-mistress post-Holocaust. no spoilers here, you just have to read it.

13. Palo Alto (short stories)- James Franco
okay, so James Franco can act, host the Oscars, direct, and write films, but who knew he was actually a serious fiction writer. well, I did. this was a Master's Program project that he ended up publishing. excellent look at teenage angst and ennui

14. The Zombie Survival Guide- Max Brooks
self-explanatory. just plain ole good fun

15. House of Sand and Fog- Andre Dubus III
after reading his memoir I had to read his fiction. quite an emotional noir novel

All right, so I did 3/4 of my desired expectations of reading 20 books this summer. But hey, I think that's pretty damn good, for someone who was searching, applying and interviewing for a teaching job. It was a great distraction from the reality that was quickly sinking in towards the end of the summer, that a job next year was looking rather grim.
But hey, in the end I pulled it off. Getting a job that is.

Now, I don't foresee myself reading for pleasure very much in the coming school year, but who knows.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Great Films, and more to Pass the Time

Image
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rocky Duer, Ashley Gerasimovich, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Alex Manette, James Chen written and directed by: Lynne Ramsay Remember when The Who sang "The Kids are Alright"? Yea, this film proves that is not the case as it attempts to define nature versus nurture versus just plain evil (and are you simply born that way). This is a modern American (almost strictly American, by the way) horror story. One all too real in the wake of Columbine and all subsequent mass killings (at schools, specifically) since that awful day. We always struggle to understand why things like that happen and how they got this way, what drives someone to murder. This is the story of a boy-turned-teenager through the eyes of his mother, and her struggle with raising him and then answering for his crime. Swinton, as Eva, is flat-out amazing. Since much of the film unfolds in flashback wit...
Read more

Pineapple Express + 1

This has probably been one of the most relaxing school vacations in awhile. It helps that the weather has changed and its actually decent now. Looking back, Maine had a very long, depressing, all-I-want-to-do-is-stay-inside-until-the-snow-disappear kind of winters. It was blistering cold. It snowed a significant amount. It was dark more than it was light. It was depressing. Seasonal Affected Disorder, perhaps. I mean, I went out as much as I wanted to, but the cold tended to keep me in. Christmas vacation- nothing much happened, except I got this brilliant idea for my blog and started the project of watching 365 films in one year. February break came next. Again, nothing much. It was still cold and I'm not a skier or a snowboarder. I did play in a pond hockey tournament. That was fun. But, now we've come to April and it's finally spring in Maine. This week's weather makes braving all those cold days and nights during the winter worth it. I think the winters that we ha...
Read more

Films 64 & 65 (Fish Tank)

First off, I have to say, I think the band Taking Back Sunday has been completely ruined for me. And I know what a lot of people are thinking...really, aren't you like 8-9 years behind everyone else? It's true the original bands album "Tell All Your Friends" was seminal in putting the genre now known as EMO on the map. It was approximately 30 minutes of pure, unadulterated "heart-on-my-sleeve" and "I'm pissed at how you treated me so I wrote song about it" songs. Adam Lazzara is well known for writing songs is a form of back-stabbing or talking behind someone's back who has slighted him. I used to really love them. I would crank their music to Eleven! I never thought of it as EMO music, I just thought they were writing songs that I could connect my experiences to. It was like they were writing relatable songs. They knew my heartache and pain. And they wrote it for me! I still remember seeing the video for "Cute Without the E" on M...
Read more