MPL Staff Reading Picks
Pat suggests...
I, Witness: The Shocking Insider’s Story of Jehovah’s Witness by Daniel Clark is his story about being raised in the Jehovah Witness “cult”, as he calls it. He describes the belief system a little bit and the types of things which he encountered as a child and as an adult JW. He struck me as a searcher who, while locked into a system that he believed he could not leave, he chose to remain in this oppressive group. He spoke of how the JW group to which he belonged, did things that he was taught were wrong according to the tenets of his faith (ie. adultery, drinking until drunk, abuse of children and spouses and the socialization with those who were not of their faith.) He told of how the JWs believe that a higher education is of the world and evil, and therefore not to be pursued. The arts and music and anything theatrical were to be avoided as the devil’s work. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the name of Jesus should be spoken only as Jehovah and that that is the only name to which He will answer. Social gatherings consist of scripture readings and prayer and the exclusive socialization with other JWs because other faiths were evil and contact on a regular basis with other religions can cause one to be dis-fellowshipped. They do not celebrate birthdays, Christmas, Easter or other holidays with the belief that they are based on Pagan ideas and practices. A large part of this story revolves around the failed prophecies of Charles Taze Russell who founded the JWs and the “lies that were perpetrated upon the people of this religion so they lived their lives according to his wishes. I found the read to be a bit frustrating, not because of the subject matter, but because this person was so unsure of himself, not only as a JW, but as a person. He finally left the organization and pursued life with a woman who had “escaped” from another religious group and began a business and had children. They, together, counsel other people who have decided to abandon their “cult-ish” religions and explore life on the”outside”. An interesting read.
Dana suggests...
Grape Thief by Kristine Franklin. Twelve-year-old Slava Petrovich is growing up in a multiethnic community in Washington State in 1925. Slava is a top student about to enter the seventh grade, the farthest anyone in his family has ever gone to school. Times are hard and his family needs wages, so it looks like he’s destined for the coal mines. But with the mines laying off, and his brothers having fled the town under peculiar circumstances, Slava feels the pressure to leave school and find work. His friends, Perks and Skinny, share his plan of jumping the grape train out of town to find work elsewhere. This book proved to be great historical novel with plenty of excitement among a heartwarming tale of a family struggling to survive.
Overall I feel this was a good read and though it is in the young adult collection of our library, would recommend it to adults as well.
Bruce suggests...
I’m reading all the time, but these really stuck in my memory this summer.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Death travels the globe collecting souls, it’s WWII and he is very busy. He does find time to narrate this story about a young girl in a small German town who, in a moment of intense emotional crisis, steals a book. She can’t read it yet, but the story of how she learns to read, the Jewish man hiding in her basement who teaches her, and the stealing of other books is woven around and through her life with her foster family, friends, a boy she loves but doesn’t know it yet, WWII raging around them, and more book thievery. The best book I’ve read in years. Every time it crosses the desk, I flip it open and read random pages again. This is an astonishing book.
Airborn by Kennett Oppel. Imagine a place and time where long distance travel is done by giant airships, huge machines that travel the world delivering people and goods. Now imagine you work and live on one of these magnificent airships. Matt Cruse is a young man doing just that and this is the story of his adventures as he searches for the truth about what happened to his father. It’s the sense of adventure that each day can bring that I liked, to face each day’s challenges with enthusiasm and excitement. A good, young boy adventure story, with, pirates, romance and responsibility and adventure. This kid will be Captain of an airship one day.
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This story could happen tomorrow. A 15 year old girl, with her brothers and recently divorced mom, are living in rural Pennsylvania and must survive for a year in a world turned upside down when the moon is struck by an asteroid and is moved closer to the earth, causing floods, tsunamis, and volcanoes. The world is ravaged and everything is disrupted from electricity to the food supply that we take for granted will on the shelf at the grocery store tomorrow. Just how tough could you be when your neighbors are all dying, your family starving and winter lasts for a year? I understand Pfeffer has written a companion story from the point of view of a young man living in New York City, but I have not gotten to that one yet.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. A world gone mad because of genetic hanky-panky was good. The story moves along in two parallel tracks, one is the crazy present with mutant wild animals running amok (pigoons!), and the other is the past, revealing how the world got to be the way it is. I like the way Margaret Atwood can describe a scene, or inter-action between two people. This is the author of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This is by the author who wrote No Country for Old Men, this is a survival story set in a post apocalyptic world of a father and his son, as they try to survive. We never learn their names. I don’t think there is one wasted word in the whole book. There are parts of dialog that are so intense and sparse, that even punctuation is omitted. It’s as if there is just no strength for it in the characters. A very intense book, I could not put it down until I was finished. This made me look for other books by McCarthy.
Melanie suggests...
Shawn suggests...
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles (2008). This entire novel is in the form of a complaint letter written by American Airlines passenger, Bennie Ford, as he is stranded in the Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for a very late connecting flight to attend the wedding of his estranged daughter. As he digresses, he reveals a life of self-absorbed alcoholic decisions and the opportunity to redeem damaged relationships with his ex-wife and daughter. This book is dark and funny and very well written.
Saturday by Ian McEwan (2005). I've been a fan of McEwan for years. Excerpts from some of his novels--including this one--sometimes appear in The New Yorker magazine. The action in Saturday revolves around a London neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, who, on this particular Saturday has a confrontation with an aggressive street thug on his way home from his weekly tennis date. That interaction leads to a terrifying climax as his family gathers for dinner that evening. Some other excellent McEwan books include his latest, On Chesil Beach, and Atonement (recent summer blockbuster movie).
The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold . I read these two back-to-back. First, The Almost Moon, Sebold’s newest novel about a mother/daughter relationship. It opens with the main character, Helen, who has gone pay a visit to her elderly mother and ends up murdering her and transferring her body to the basement. In the following 24 hour’s action her complicated and dysfunctional (of course) relationship with her mother is revealed. That story was alright but not nearly so engaging as Sebold’s 2002 novel, The Lovely Bones, told in the voice of a murdered teenage girl as she watches from heaven while her family and friends put their lives back together. It is not such a long book, but it has an epic quality not only in its scope of many years, but it’s about grief and growth and love and how loss begets beauty.