December 2009 *2

A Trial By Jury

D. Graham Burnett

When Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett answered his jury duty summons, he expected to spend a few days catching up on his reading in the court waiting room. Instead, he finds himself thrust into a high-pressure role as the jury foreman in a Manhattan trial. There he comes face to face with a stunning act of violence, a maze of conflicting evidence, and a parade of bizarre witnesses. But it is later, behind the closed door of the jury room, that he encounters the essence of the jury experience--he and eleven citizens from radically different backgrounds must hammer consensus out of confusion and strong disagreement. By the time he hands over the jury's verdict, Burnett had undergone real transformation, not just in his attitude toward the legal system, but in his understanding of himself and his peers. Offering a compelling courtroom drama and an intimate and sometimes humorous portrait of a fractious jury, A Trial by Jury is also a finely nuances examination of law and justice, personal responsibility and civic duty, and the dynamics of power and authority between twelve equal people.

December 2009 *1

Beautiful Boy

David Sheff

The author, David Sheff, exposes his personal life and his families' life in order to tell his story.

The book chronicled the author's son, Nic, from childhood through adolescence into adulthood. It is an emotional book that is filled with all of the guilt and doubt that a loved one feels when trying to deal with the trauma of watching your child slowly killing themselves through a myriad of drugs. In this case-primarily methamphetamine. This book goes into great detail and uncovers the lies, chaos, and criminal behavior of addiction.

The author examines his role and the impacts on his family. The book is emotional and heartfelt. In the end, it is about accepting that you can't control others including those you love.

November 2009

The Weight of Silence

Heather Gudenkauf

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.
Seven year old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler.

Calli's mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confined of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter's voice.
Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find her child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor.
Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

October 2009

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

Esther Greenwood, seems to have the perfect life. She has received numerous awards for her poetry and writing and is on scholarship at a prestigious women's college. She wind a month long job assignment in New York City for a women's magazine. To the outside world it would seem that she is living a dream life:

dining on sumptuous meals, hobnobbing with celebrities, and being showered with gifts, all courtesy of the magazine. Inside, however, she is wrenched with confusion. She struggles within herself to reconcile her desires to become a writer in a world where women are expected to be perfect housewives and mothers as well as her desires for sexual equality in a world where women are expected to be pure and virginal, but men are free to experiment with sexuality without fear of pregnancies or ruined reputations.

As she returns home for the remainder of the summer, her thoughts turn increasingly melancholy. Her application for a much-coveted summer school writing course is rejected. To ass insult to injury, she learns that her boyfriend is having feelings for another woman and is not a virgin as he has led her to believe. She begins a rapid decent into a deep depression unable to eat, read, or sleep.

Eventually Esther attempts a near-fatal suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. She ends up in an asylum convinced that her case is without hope. From this point forward, we get a fascinating glimpse into just how far the treatment of depression has come in recent decades. Esther's treatment involves insulin injections, psychotherapy (her mother feels guilty that she may have make mistakes during toilet training), and eventually electroshock therapy.

After several months, she is released to return to school. As she recovers, she uses the apt analogy of the distorted view of the world seen from within a bell jar to describe her former condition. Esther states near the end of the book:

How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with it's stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

This quote becomes all the more poignant when one discovers that only a month after "The Bell Jar", her first novel, was published, Sylvia Plath took her own life. One wonders if things would have been different had she lived today.

July & August 2009

Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

by Don and Susie Van Ryn, Newell, Colleen and Whitney Cerak, and Mark Tabb

The Stunning true story of two families trading places from graveside to bedside.

Five lives were lost in a tragic accident involving a Taylor University van, and one young woman, severely injured and comatose, was rushed to the hospital. Families, faculty, students and communities grieved their losses and joined in prayer and hope as the one young woman, Laura Van Ryn, fought for her life in a hospital bed. The national news spread the story, and people everywhere shared the grief and the hope.

Five weeks passed for the Cerak family. Believing they had buried their daughter, the Ceraks clung to their faith and worshipped God through their tears, learning to look forward with hope to an eternal reunion with their lovely daughter Whitney. They spent weeks in mourning and grief, slowly moving toward healing.

Five weeks passed for the Van Ryns. Keeping a constant vigil over their precious daughter Laura, they sat and prayed and hoped. They rejoiced at each tiny advance toward recovery. They celebrated each sign of Laura's healing.

And then shock! "Okay, Laura, I would like you to write your name for me," the occupational therapist said. W-H-I-T-N-E-Y.

An event that could be seen as pure tragedy becomes a celebration of life's unfathomable gifts and mysteries.

June 2009

American Pastoral

Philip Roth

(From the book jacket) As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Sewde's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Sewde's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager, a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

May 2009

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was originally the United States of America after nuclear, biological, and chemical pollution rendered a large portion of the population sterile and a staged terrorist attack killed the President and Congress. After the attack, a revolution occurred which deposed of the United States government and abolished the US Constitution. New theoratic governments, including the Republic of Gilead, were formed under the rule of a military dictatorship.

The story is told from the point of view of a woman called Offred, who is kept by the ruling class as a concubine handmaid for reproductive purposes shortly after the beginning of what is called the epilogue the Gilead period. The story's narrative is disjointed and out of order and ends abruptly, which is revealed at the end to be caused by its supposedly having been narrated onto a series of unnumbered audio tapes.

April 2009

The Zookeeper's Wife

Diane Ackerman

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw, and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, sookeepers Jan and Antonia Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinski's villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the enephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonia kept her usual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants; otters, badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonia refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

March 2009

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer

This is one of the first novels to deal with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book is an example of an emerging school of contemporary postmodernism which challenges technical limitations of the novel to create a more immersive work.

Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, and pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New york. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens fromCentral Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's coffin.

February 2008

Sundays at Tiffany's

James Patterson & Gabrielle Charbonnet

Jane Margaux is a lonely little girl. Her mother, a powerful Broadway producer, makes time for her only once a week, for their Sunday trip to admire jewelry at Tiffany's. Jane has only one friend: a handsome, comforting, funny man named Michael. He's perfect. But only she can see him. Michael can't stay forever, though. On Jane's ninth birthday he leaves, promising her that she'll soon forget him.

Years later, in her thirties, Jane is just as alone as she was as a child. And despite her own success as a playwright, she is even more trapped by her overbearing mother. Then she meets someone-a handsome, comforting, funny man. He's perfect. His name is Michael...

This is a heartrending story that surpasses all expectations of why these people have been brought together. With the breathtaking momentum and gripping emotional twists that have make James Patterson a bestselling author all over the world, Sundays at Tiffany's takes an altogether fresh look at the timeless and transforming power of love.

January 2009

Icy Sparks

Gwyn Hyman Rubio

Icy Sparks is a young girl living in midwestern America with her grandparents in the 1950s/1960s. She doesn't get along well with her peers and suddenly starts having tics and croaks. Icy goes down into the root cellar to hide there urges from her grandparents and finally tells her friend, Miss Emily Tanner, a local store owner who is also an outcast from society at 300 pounds. Her teacher tries putting her in a solitary classroom but even that doesn't work and her grandparents have Icy admitted to a mental institution for observation. Even in the institution, Icy is an outcast. She sees herself as not as mentally ill as her peers there and is being tormented by one of the hospital workers. She befriends a second worker but really just wants to go home. She is allowed to go home after a while but stays mainly in the house or on the surrounding property, but not in public. After her return home, the atmosphere is tense even there and after her grandfather dies, Icy and her grandmother turn to religion for solace.

December 2008

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Kim Edwards

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he make a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

November 2008

The Road

Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. The sun is obscured by deep, dark clouds, and the climate has been altered radically. Plants do not grow. Humanity consists largely of bands of cannibals, their food-source captives, and refugee-travelers who scavenge for food. Ash covers everything; it is in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks.

October 2008

Fractured

Karin Slaughter

Best-selling novelist Slaughter is most well known for her Grant County series, but here she follows up on the characters introduced in Triptych (2006). Will Trent, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, needs a GPS system to find his way to the crime scene in Ansley Park, one of Atlanta's oldest and wealthiest suburbs. Once on the scene, however, he is the only one to intuit the true specifics of the case, much to the irritation of the Atlanta PD. Suburban mom Emily Campano, returning home early, finds the severly beaten body of her teenage daughter, Emma, and instinctively attacks the seeming perpetrator, stragling him. Will soon discovers, however, that the dead teen is not Emma but her best friend. He is charged with heading up the investigation into Emma's kidnapping and saddled with a partner from the Atlanta PD, an officer who has her own reasons for hating him. Possible motives and suspects abound as they home in on the girl's posh private high school, a veritable cauldron that mixes cruel social climbing with sexual manipulation, among both the faculty and their pupils. As Will makes headway on the case, he must also struggle to compensate for his severe dyslexia, smooth the tensions with his new partner, and hide the emotional scars of a childhood spent in an orphanage.

September 2008

Those Who Save Us

Jenna Blum

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Anna's daughter Trudy was only four when she and Anna were liberated from Nazi Weimar by an American soldier and went with him to Minnesota, so Trudy can't remember much...but she has one piece of evidence from the past; a family portrait showing Trudy, Anna, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

Combining a story of passionate but doomed love, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and poignant mother-daughter drama, New York Times bestseller Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

August 2008

Love Walked In

Marisa de los Santos Plume

Cornelia is a single thirtysomething who lives her life like a series of movie moments. She's a manager of a cafe because she hasn't figured out anything better to do. Her ideal man is Cary Grant. And just when she thinks he'll never show up, he does, in the form of Martin Grace. What she doesn't know is that Martin, with his cool charm and debonair demeanor, has a daughter, Clare. And she never would have known that except that Martin, in a state of panic, shows up with the girl at the cafe after her mother had a breakdown and left Clare to fend for herself. Estranged from his daughter for years, Martin doesn't know what to do with her. Both women's stories are told in alternating chapters, Cornelia's in the first person, Clare's in third. This is a first novel with some wonderful and heartbreaking moments scattered throughout, along with some moments that are purely contrived for the forward movement of the plot. Overall, it is a sweet story about knowing what you love and why.

July 2008

Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult

In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school Student Peter Houghton had endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents.

Even those who were not inside the school that mornign find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex - whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded - must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can't remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter's rampage. Or can she? And Peter's parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes. Nineteen Minutes also features the return of Jodi Picoult's characters - defense attorney Jordan McAfee from The Pact and Salem Falls, and Patrick DuCharme, the intrepid detective introduced in Perfect Match.

Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone?

June 2008

Hope's Boy: A Memoir

Andrew Bridge

From the moment he was born, Andrew Bridge and his mother Hope shared a love so deep that it felt like nothing else mattered. Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother's arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down around him. He was only seven years old.

Hope was institutionalized, and Andrew was placed in what would be his devastating reality for the next eleven years - foster care. After surviving one of our country's most notorious children's facilities, Andrew was thrust into a savagely loveless foster family that refused to accept him as one of their own. Deprived of the nurturing he needed, Andrew clung to academics and the kindness of teachers. All the while, he refused to surrender the love he held for his mother in his heart.

Ultimately, Andrew earned a scholarship to Wesleyan, went on to Harvard Law School, and became a Fulbright Scholar. Andrew has dedicated his life's work to helping children living in poverty and in the foster care system. He defied the staggering odds set against him, and here in this heartwrenching, brutally honest, and inspirational memior, he reveals who Hope's boy really is.

May 2008

The Lost Continent, Travels in Small Town America

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America is a book by travel writer Bill Bryson, chronicling his 13,978 mile trip around the United States in the autumn of 1987 and spring 1988. This is the first of Bryson's travel books.

He begins his journey, made almost entirely by car, in his childhood hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, heading from there towards the Mississippi River, often reminiscing about his childhood in Iowa. The journey was made after his father's death, and so is in part a collection of memories of his father in Des Moines while he was growing up.

The book is split into two sections: 'East' and 'West', the former part being considerably longer than the latter. These sections correspond to two separate journeys made in the autumn of 1987 and spring of 1988. The first section covers the Midwest, the Deep South, the East Coast and New England, before returning to Des Moines.

The second section focuses on the Great Plains, the South West, California and the Rocky Mountains.
Bryson's goal in this trip was generally to avoid tourist destinations, instead choosing to experience the real every-day America, stopping at small towns and forgotten points of interest. This book is an overview of the United States from Bryson's point of view. There is less focus on factual insight into the history, geography and culture of the destinations in this book than is found in some of Bryson's later books, but it is still widely regarded as being an exceptionally funny book, and has achieved much critical acclaim.