Summer Reading: 2008

Kuhn’s book argues that the evolution of scientific theory does not emerge from the straightforward accumulation of facts, but rather from a set of changing intellectual circumstances and possibilities. What ideas were approved at a particular time? What intellectual options and strategies were available to people during a given period?

A collection of very funny and smart essays by a Minnesota storyteller who had a near fatal motorcycle accident in 2001.

Lawrence Kushner is a rabbi who has written extensively on theological topics. This is his first attempt at fiction and its delicious. While it articulating his particular theology, it is a lovely expression of the spirituality of Kabbalah. I lapped it up and gave it to several people as gifts. You don’t have to be Jewish or a scholar of Kabbalah to understand the theology or the love story. My favorite book of the year.

A great read. It tells the story of a particular Haggadah, the book used at Passover to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, as it makes its way from its creation to its discovery in contemporary times. The characters are well crafted and people you’d like to meet. The story is wonderful and imaginative.

11th century France. One of Judaism’s greatest scholar has three daughters and no sons. Maggie Anton has done extensive research into the times and the commentaries on the Talmud by Salomon Ben Isaac (Rashi). The reader is introduced to a highly accessible version of the Talmud and Talmudic study as Rashi teaches his daughters Talmud. Life in the time for Jews and non-Jews is given in fascinating detail down to superstitions, some of which are still deeply held.

If you want a quirky piece that sticks with you long after it’s over, this one is for you. The book opens with the main character talking to her pottery the way a person might talk to a pet. I don’t usually do quirky so I had to push my way through this and am I glad I did. All of the characters are slightly broken but through the book there is also healing. I still think about them.

If you liked Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, you will also like this sequel - it’s every bit as large and as juicy with intrigue as the first one. The main character is now a woman, how refreshing! Follett did meticulous research into the time. I put myself on a regimen so I would get it done (just hate library fines), and it was no trouble because it read beautifully.

I feel like I was one of the last people to read this book, but better late than never. I love novels that span the life of a character because if it is well done you recognize all the stages that you have been through in your own life and you really feel like you know that person in the book. Now everything I have said so far is true, but another source of enthusiasm for this book stems from the fact that I grew up near Evanston Illinois and I frequently went to Chicago so I recognized many of the places mentioned in the book. I felt like a bit of time traveler myself remembering old haunts that I had not thought about for many years.

I have always loved going to the movies and stories in history. So anytime I can find an entertaining, well researched book that weaves movies and history together with the proper hint of juicy gossip I am there front and center. Pictures at a Revolution is exactly that book. Mark Harris uses the five movies that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1968 as a launching point to examine how mainstream Hollywood, for a brief moment in time, was able to better reflect changing mores in society. I was not there at that time but I can tell it was an exciting time to be a movie buff. The only thing slightly depressing about the book is knowing that that artistic revolution would be short lived with the birth of what is considered the first blockbuster movie in 1975, Jaws.

"A remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship."

This highly acclaimed award-winning author just happens to be the mother of my assistant Eric Hegi, who is a student here at UST. The book is a major novel about Germany during the first half of the 20th century. It is a beautifully crafted and memorable book whose richly drawn characters stay with us long after we turn the last page." One hint: The main character is a librarian!

As a youngster I lived in Brooklyn and could relate to Francie's surroundings: lots of concrete, bricks, fire escapes and the beauty of one singular tree. I remember this "coming of age" story and just this week I purchased the newly revised edition for one of my 13 year-old granddaughters.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. (Winner of the National Book Award and the American Indian Youth Literature Award)

After spending most of his life in Minnesota foster homes hiding a bizarre physical abnormality, fifteen-year-old David is offered a chance at normalcy, but must decide if giving up what makes him special is the right thing to do. (Winner of the Minnesota Book Award—Young adult lit.)

A journey back to an era of Chinese history that delves into the mysterious relationships of female friendship. In 19th century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communications. They painted letters of fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. The story reveals a friendship of two young girls that lasts a lifetime, through famine and rebellion, their arranged marriages, loneliness, joys and tragedies of motherhood.

This is the story of two sisters, their heritage and their future and the very special apple tree that is the center of the tale. I really enjoyed reading this first novel and couldn’t put it down until I got to the perfect ending. When you read it you will wonder what Evanelle would give you if you lived in Bascom, North Carolina.

From the earliest residents to the newest immigrants, Annette Atkins tells the stories of Minnesota and Minnesotans through stories and details. Celebrate the sesquicentennial of our state by reading this fascinating book.

n Denis Donoghue’s Preface to The Informer, he describes Gypo Nolan's actions as being that of “the stupidity that goes with violence, force of instinct.” However, it is not Gypo’s intellect that brings him to resort to this action, but the virtually nonexistent alternatives he is offered in order to forge a better life outside of crime and/or the Organization (IRB, IRA). Liam O’Flaherty explicitly demonstrates this alternative to the breaking of social codes, not as a misguided deed, but one that is pitiable under Gypo’s circumstances. O’Flaherty describes the way the Organization’s judges felt towards Gypo’s pleas for mercy; "They forgot that he was a viper they must crush. They only knew at that moment, that he was a poor, weak human being like themselves, a human soul, weak and helpless in suffering, shivering in the toils of the eternal struggle of the human soul with pain." Gypo’s plight is one that is relatable to all of humanity, presenting us with the epitome of our struggle for the greener side of life.

This is a murder mystery, love story, historical novel full of political intrigue set in 1901 Buffalo as the city is preparing to host the Pan-American Exposition. Buffalo, New York, with its booming industry and newly electrified streets, is a model city for the century just beginning. Descriptions of Buffalo city, Niagara Falls with its massive power plant, the theme of electricity as novelty, the tragedies which occur on the job at the plant – all contribute to the story. The social and political climate of the times are handled brilliantly. The story is told through the eyes of Louisa Barrett, Headmistress of an elite girl’s school. An enjoyable book!

Feisty senior citizen Elner Shimfissle falls out of her fig tree and dies. Or does she? Elner “goes to heaven” and meets her sister Ida, runs into Ginger Rogers and Thomas Edison as well as other interesting folks. After she “returns”, she finds out how many people her life has touched, and has discovered a thing or two that she’d have no way of knowing. A warm, fun book for summer, with recipes at the end.

Jacob Jankowski is living out his days in a nursing home, and hates it. He recalls his life as a young man - his parents died unexpectedly on the eve of his exams for veterinary medicine at Cornell. He walks out of the exams and ends up working for a circus. We learn about life in a second-rate, Depression-era circus: the roustabouts, the midgets, the cooch tent, the underfed and mistreated animals that Jacob tries to help and protect. He falls in love with Marlena, wife of the brutal animal trainer, and tries to save Rosie the elephant from abuse and worse. The book has several twists and turns, and is a satisfying read.

Travel around the natural world with Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States, and one of the most informed and popular outdoor writers of his time. These fifteen readings offer the reader quick and easy adventure. Contains useful information for keeping wolves at bay.

This is a story about a family and how they try to survive for a whole year on food grown by themselves and in their neighborhood. The rich and witty writing has a special flare, and will have an impact on your eating habits. It makes growing your own organic food feel like a great adventure.

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The first in a series of Maisie Dobbs mysteries……“When Lady Rowan discovers her servant-girl, Maize, studying in the library, she arranges for tutoring. WWI intrudes, and education is put on hold when Maisie goes to the battlefields of France as a nurse. After the war, she becomes a private investigator. Her first case seems to be a straightforward case of infidelity but soon has her dealing with her own experiences in the war.”

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This is the manifesto on which Pollan expounds In this sequel to his best-selling and influential work, The omnivore’s dilemma: a natural history of four meals (UST and other CLIC libraries, GT 2850 .P65 2006). Pollan examines the complex interweavings of the food production and processing industries, agriculture, diet and nutrition, and the environment in American culture. While acknowledging that there are no easy solutions, he suggests choices that can be made at all levels that could begin to lead to a healthier population, economy, and planet. An important work, thought-provoking and potentially life-changing.

Housewright is a local author, and both this series and his award-winning Holland Taylor series (Penance; Practice to deceive; DearlyDdeparted) are set right here in St. Paul. The tough but good-hearted McKenzie is a former police officer, now unofficial private investigator, who investigates a variety of crimes in these slightly noir mysteries. He’s an engaging character and the plots are fine, but I’m having fun with the local color: in Madman on a Drum, the initial crime is committed in Merriam Park, just a few blocks from my house …

This novella focuses on a young couple’s devastating misunderstanding on their wedding night and its interminable consequences. As noted in Kirkus Reviews: “On Chesil Beach is a novel about many things: the British class system, changing mores, the slumber from which young people would awaken with the Beatles, the nature of love and the sexual expression of it. Yet it's primarily a novel of masterful sentences that express (sometimes through spaces and silences) what the characters themselves are incapable of expressing.” A good, very fast summer (or anytime) read.

A novel that focuses on the lives of a group of young literary-types in New York, before and leading to 9/11. In the New York Times Review of Books, Megahn O’Rourke, in a wonderfully written review, notes: “The Emperor’s Children” is full of satirical chiding, but it’s one of the more delightful — even delicious — forms of such chiding I’ve encountered. Messud’s prose is whorled and Jamesian, of a syntactical complexity that only a confident stylist could handle. Her plot is labyrinthine and deftly orchestrated; without wanting to reveal its twists and turns, I can say that what might seem harsh or overdetermined in the hands of another writer is dealt with unflinchingly but not viciously.” This is an intelligent, somewhat satirical novel that stays with you for a long time.

Excellent food and travel book about a guy who travels the world looking for food that is or was banned at one time. Norwegian Moonshine, Cuban Cigars, Absinthe, etc. Well written and funny.

This is an excellent book about the American Dust Bowl years. A little depressing, but even if it's 90 degrees out, it will make you feel cooler!

This will make you realize that you should have planned that trip to Paris after all.

Excellent history and analysis of the Enlightenment.

Interesting take on the history of the US and its so called founding "fathers".

Fantastic take on a variety of modern Japanese issues from this most readable of Post-modern fiction writers.

Very cool take on the "lives" of human cadavers after death. Macabre, but interesting.

Anything by Vonnegut is good so choose whatever you find on the shelf first.