1. Bag of Bones by Stephen King: It’s not a new read, but it’s definitely my favorite King book (and it gets better every time I read it). It doesn’t improve with age in the same way The Great Gatsby does, but it has a sustainable storyline filled with memorable characters that I love coming [...]
I can’t remember the last time I read a book and cried nearly every page. Lisa Genova doesn’t mess around; Still Alice goes right for the jugular. Alice is a Harvard psychology professor in her 50s, happily married with three adult children. She has all of the typical stresses of life, but one additional stress [...]
In my last review of Augusten Burroughs’ work, Magical Thinking, I was pretty seriously disappointed by his attitude. So much so that I decided I would give him one more chance to show me he wasn’t a self-pitying blowhard with Running With Scissors, but if he didn’t deliver then I would be done with Mr. [...]
I read Magical Thinking on recommendation from a friend who understands and appreciates my intense germaphobia. She had read his essay entitled “Rat/Thing,” where Burroughs goes into his bathroom in the dead of night and discovers a “rat/thing” in his bathtub. What follows is one of the most hilarious (“this meant, naturally, that I would [...]
I grew up believing that Stanley Kubrick’s movie “The Shining” was the epitome of horror. Jack Nicholson? I mean, come on! And Jack Nicholson with a big ax screaming “Heeeeeeeere’s Johnny!” after smashing through a door? Is there greater horror than this? Yes, there is. And Stephen King knew it when he wrote The Shining. [...]
In my (imaginary) book, Markus Zusak wins the award for coolest ideas ever. His first novel, which happened to make #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List, is The Book Thief…a book narrated by Death. Let me repeat: Death is the narrator of this book. And it isn’t Death waxing poetic about his average [...]
One of my secret passions is historical literature. While I absolutely love a good story, I also love learning about the past; combining the two can bliss me out. People of the Book is the second Geraldine Brooks novel I’ve read, and, since she’s a Pulitzer winner, my expectations were pretty high. The novel is [...]
The answer to the question is two minutes and forty-five seconds…the question is “How long did the Challenger astronauts fall, alive, to the earth.” The Time It Takes to Fall was recommended to me by a fellow teacher; she described it as a coming-of-age novel that takes place during the Challenger disaster in 1986. She [...]
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. McEwan slid under my radar for a very, very long time. I can’t even really remember where I first heard of him—though it was a few years ago. He is who I go to when I don’t want to mess around…when I need a book that I know I [...]
One of the aspects of Sherman Alexie I love the best is his ability to draw in reluctant teenage boy readers into his novels. His work grips them to the point that they are almost able to forget they’re doing that deplorable activity we call ‘reading.’ In fact, one of my students last year fell [...]
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