Uprooted

Uprooted

by Naomi Novik

Enter the fantasy world known as the kingdom of Polnya, and the life of Agnieszka, a teenage girl whose world gets turned upside down when she is chosen at an annual ceremony at which a young teenager is chosen to live with ‘the Dragon’.  Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is a fun and engaging young-adult book whose purpose is to bring you into a world of wonder, surprise, friendship, and suspense.  We are first surprised that young Agnieszka is the Dragon’s choice as opposed to Kasia, the beautiful best friend of Agnieszka.  The Dragon is allowed to choose a teenage girl as a reward for serving as the protector of the land for the King.  While Agnieszka is initially an unexpected choice, we later learn why: she has secret powers she didn’t know she had – but the dragon did!  When the Dragon is called away to rescue the land from evil powers, Agnieszka is called home (to help Kasia) and realizes she has special powers that can help save townspeople.  During the escapade, she almost dies and is rescued by the Dragon, who is not happy with her for leaving the tower.  Later, her friend Kasia is captured and brought into the forest where she is permanently stuck into the wood.  Again, Agnieszka and the Dragon are needed to remove the evil spirits within her and attempt to extricate the evil spirits.  The last and major fight for Agnieszka, the Dragon, and Kasia involves the King’s son, Marek, who wants to find his mother who has been trapped in the evil woods for years.  The ensuing journey has a great deal of surprises for Agnieszka and the Kingdom of Polnya.  A fun read that keeps you interested through the end.  Friendship always seems to rue the day in this classic young-adult book.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

by Arundhati Roy

A rainy first day of my summer vacation, so I decided to finish reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy.  The book is set in India over a period of a few decades.  I can’t say I loved the book as the stories developed slowly with lots of new characters interspersed throughout. Additionally, the two main characters intersect eventually through the war and the ensuing destruction that occurred in India during the late 1980s to early 2000s.  While the stories were slow in terms of action and significant details, some of the characters and their lives piqued my interest.  There are two main characters: Aftab, the son of a Muslim couple, who was born with male and female body parts; and Tilo, a female architect who gets caught in the intelligence service of India and the leader’s heinous attacks on anyone in his way.  The reader learns first-hand the impact that living in the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Syria) has on the common people.  One of the more interesting stories involves Aftab changing his name to Anjum and transitioning to female and a ‘hijra” (an intersex person in the Indian culture).  Anjum’s transition, life within the hijra community, becoming a mother, and attempting to find happiness in a world that is full of destruction is her challenge.  Tilo’s journey includes falling in love, escaping the violence and destruction around her, and arriving to a better understanding of her role in the life of others. Lots of people come into and leave her life throughout the story.  It was twenty years between books for Roy, and she clearly utilized a good amount of historical moments in time here, including battles that occurred throughout the Middle East.  An important story in better understanding the devastation that so many experienced – I just didn’t connect with the intermingling of the various stories.   

The Healing of America

The Healing of America

by James Morrison

I hate when I read the wrong book…same title, different author.  Though a bit dated and inaccurate in some of its predictions, The Healing of America by James L. Morrison is a good read. Written in 1997, the book focuses on welfare reform in the late 1990s.  Morrison provides great data trends (the wealthy are getting wealthier – that continues to be true), but not all of his predictions make it to the present.  His most compelling arguments come in the last chapter: how to reform the welfare system.  “The inner city is the land of the forgotten”, though in some cases the inner city is composed of the ultra-rich, such as in Manhattan, San Francisco, and other booming cities. The poor, on the other hand, are driven to the “other side of that line” to places perceived as more “invisible”.  We do need to continue to balance individual and community rights, create more self-directed communities, change laws that harbor prejudice towards people of color, and enter a mindset of fitness for all.  The book mixes data points, theory, and practical principles very well.  A great read for public policy, economic, and activists/civic leaders who want to make a change in our society to level the playing field.

O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather

I just couldn’t put this book down.  I started last night and finished while on the elliptical this morning at the gym with a marathon session – longest time on an exercise machine in years!  The book, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, tells the story of the protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, and the struggle of being raised in the western frontier part of the US during the early 1900s.  The Bergsons, an immigrant family from Sweden, lived on a large farm in Nebraska.  Before Alexandra’s father died when she was in her teens, he asked her to run the family, which included two elder brothers and a younger brother, Emil.  When the land turns into a dust-bowl because of the lack of rain, it appears that the family will go broke; but under her steady guidance, they purchase more land, and when the weather changes three years later, Alexandra has built a fortune.  She dedicates her life to her family and always stays solo while her two older brothers marry and have children. She devotes a great deal of time to educating her younger brother who goes away to college. He eventually comes back and falls in love with his childhood love, Maria, who is married to the always-jealous and angry Frank.  Meanwhile, Alexandra welcomes an old beau, Carl, back home, but her older brothers believes he has only returned to take her money.  Like most good novels, the unexpected happens and it appears all is lost.  I won’t divulge the ending – it is sad has yet has a closure that the reader can respect.  The early stages of seeing women as heroines in early twentieth century literature.  You won’t be disappointed with this easy-to-read book, I promise!

All-American Poem

All-American Poem

by Matthew Dickman

All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman provided a nice contrast compared to the traditional RA Favorite books.  This selection of poems is an escape from style I typically read (over my head intellectually and hard to grasp).  Dickman’s humor and dark side on his take of the American experience makes you smile, giggle, and say “uh-huh” often.  He hits the mark on falling in love, dancing, discussing various local customs across the US territories, and of course contemporary music.  From Oregon to Detroit, Elvis to Tom Petty, crossword puzzles to Coca-Cola, Thanksgiving to Christmas, Golden Gate Bridge to Chinatown (there is one in each large city in US), Wal-Mart to Mall of America, baseball to Kool Aid, this is truly an all-American view of our culture, our idiosyncrasies and what makes us who we are as US citizens.  There is a little bit of our culture that will touch your heart and your emotions.  Easy to consume this selected group of poems.

The Souls of Black Folk

The Souls of Black Folk

by W.E.B. Du Bois

I always find myself reading strong, reflective books during plane rides.  On my flight back home from Chicago, I finished W.E.B. Du Bois’ book The Souls of Black Folk.  Du Bois, born in 1868, lived a long life: 95 years.  Harvard educated, Du Bois was a sociologist and historian who provided candid and honest commentary on the state of race-relations between whites and blacks in the United States.  The book is a collection of short, reflective essays that point to how the United States wasn’t (and still isn’t) united for all in education, prosperity, freedoms and equality.  The articles focus on moments within the development of the South after the Emancipation Proclamation and how the needle really never moved far from its historical roots.  Du Bois’ book title notes how black people must stay conscious of how they view themselves, but also how they are viewed as a race.  The fourteen chapters weave in traditional music and how it reflected on the community’s struggles as well as data points on education and the realities of prejudice and hate, and the poverty which black people have been forced to live in, even with ‘slavery’ no longer in existence.  This is an important read for 100 years ago, but also today since much of what is discussed rings true today.  When will we, as a society, address the inequities that black people face, the acts of hate targeted towards them, and seriously evaluate the laws that hold people of color down?  Well-written and would suggest our civil leaders in government, educators in our schools, and any other organizational leader read as a book club book with their staff.

Give and Take

Give and Take

by Adam Grant

Give and Take is a great book by Adam Grant, who is now a Wharton professor studying organizational behavior. He writes this book as a very young PhD who studied the difference between ‘givers’, ‘takers’ and ‘matchers’ within organizations.  While almost everyone would assume that ‘givers’ are traditionally seen as ‘doormats’ in the business world, Grant argues otherwise.  In this compelling best-selling book, which is so helpful to anyone who leads an organization, Grant provides data points AND real life stories to illustrate the importance of ‘givers’ in the world.  Givers are not only people who provide time and energy mentoring, but also do the extra things to ensure that the entire team wins, not just the individual, when we create ways to give back.  He has a robust resource website, www.giveandtake.com, that explains relevant concepts and illustrates how “reciprocity rings” can be helpful.  He concludes with some helpful hints on how to be a better ‘giver’:

·         Test your quotient of giving

·         Run a reciprocity ring

·         Help other people craft their jobs – or craft yours to incorporate more giving

·         Start a love machine

·         Embrace the five-minute favor

·         Practice powerless communication

·         Join a community of givers

·         Launch a personal generosity experiment

·         Help fund a project

·         Seek help more often

I plan on using this book in my RA talks summer when they return for the fall.  A great read for all as our society has really stopped putting others first.

Trainspotting

Trainspotting

by Irvine Welsh

Reading on a plane can be a fun thing, especially when it’s not bumpy!  During my flight to Denver for ACUHO-I, I finished Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, a Scottish author.  The book is a series of short stories which are set in Scotland in the late 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic.  The stories all revolve around a group of friends, mostly drug addicts (heroin being the drug of choice), some of whom have contracted HIV.  The challenge of the book is reading the dialogue in a Celtic (cockney) dialect, which is hard to read for those who prefer “hardcore” English (dialects are not fun to interpret).  The stories follow the various outcomes of those who share needles and have sex with each other during a time of rapid infection within this community.  Abuse, neglect, and lack of self-worth were all apparent throughout.  The characters were real and the reader was drawn in to want to help them.  A pretty raw book.  Its author captured the feelings of fear, self-hate, and invincibility that led the characters to continue to make the choices that ultimately led to death.  Brutally honest, highlighting a community that needed their story told.

Prep

Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

A beautiful day on the boat in Lake George reading the coming-of-age story of a young girl. Lee leaves home in Indiana to attend the highly competitive and expensive boarding high school named Ault, a fictional East coast, co-ed school.  The book, Prep, is written by Curtis Sittenfeld, who also attended a boarding school in the Northeast (and many believe that this is an auto-biography of her days in high school).  Lee comes from a lower middle class family who allowed her to attend after she was awarded a very generous scholarship.  The book is a reflection on her four years at Ault, mostly turbulent, but with a few high points.  Lee has a hard time fitting in with the ‘rich kids’ but does find a friend in Martha, the daughter of very wealthy parents. Lee goes into great detail regarding the relationships that she has with her peers, not all of them good ones.  Her inability to connect stems from her self-consciousness about her parents, who don’t have significant schooling, her lack of financial means, and not feeling as academically prepared as her peers.  From her first week in school, Lee is smitten with “Cross”, short for Crossman, a classmate who is also in the same grade.  They have one or two conversations during freshman year, but in senior year that all changes as Lee decides to enter a physically-charged, secretive relationship.  Although she faces many struggles, Lee is smarter than she thinks, receiving multiple college offers from top-tier schools (albeit not Ivy League, but top-rated nonetheless – sorry, not NYU).  The book highlights many of the issues that challenge high school students: self-esteem, bullying, suicidal ideations, eating issues, and ‘falling in love’.   The book shares a perspective on how race, class, and educational preparedness are issues that the elite boarding schools haven’t really addressed on their campuses and, I would echo, haven’t been addressed in our society as a whole.  The book may be best suited for a youthful teen. 

Maus

Maus

by Art Spiegelman

Imaginative delivery combined with an important story makes one special book.  Maus by Art Spiegelman is one of these books.  Spiegelman tells the real-life story of his parents living through the German Nazi invasion of Europe in WWII.  The twist to this book is that Spiegelman is a cartoonist and the book is done in graphic art. The drawing is terrific and he illustrates the Jewish people as mice, the Nazis as cats, and the Polish people as pigs.  The book begins as Spieglman, a man in his twenties/thirties, is trying to learn about what happened to his family when they were in the midst of the annihilation of Jews.  The story moves between the present (Spiegelman meeting with his father) and the past (his father’s recollection of the takeover of Germany, and how he and his family attempted to avoid death).  I have read a number of books on the topic and would say Spiegelman’s is one of the very best.  A horrific experience that must never be forgotten.  My only suggestion is to make it into one book, not a series of books.  Book one ends after his parents are captured by the Nazis.  Art work is spectacular.