Unlikely Cast

Still from Aguirre the Wrath of God

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
New York : Amulet Books, 2015.
295 p. ; 21 cm.

A creative, funny, sometimes vulgar, and ultimately meaningful book about a young man - Greg Gaines - who strives to stay unattached through high school, but ends up pressured by his mother into a relationship with a dying girl - and has to question just who he is and what life means to him.

Part of the wonderful catch to this book is that until he's pushed to be friends with Rachel, the dying girl, Greg has one other "friend" - fellow amateur filmmaker Earl.  Earl and Greg also love film, and the film that they both love best is Werner Herzog's classic, Aguirre the Wrath of God (and so the graphic above).

A lot of the power of this book - which became a bestseller and was well reviewed - owes to it's humor and cynical slant.  Greg is not about to try and learn any deep life lessons from his involvement with Rachel - but he does come to sort of like Rachel in a normal, low-key friendship way.  He also comes to understand that his privileged life is nothing like Earl's life with his intensely dysfunctional family.

There is a lot of bodily, vulgar boy humor in this novel, but that surely is part of what made it successful.  Finally, the movie version of the book did extremely well at Sundance and was bought by by Fox which can only increase the book's appeal.

Snow Days

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
New York : Everyman's Library, 2011, c2004.
xxvii, 460 p. ; 22 cm.

I've had my eye on this novel for a while, and figured summer was a good time to read it.  I was interested in reading some international literature (and so the Mahfouz book) and thought that Pamuk might serve as an interesting window into Turkish culture.

I was not disappointed.  This is a rich and vibrant book.  Though published originally in 2002, the novel is very contemporary and relevant today.  Though the narrative thread of the novel is an exiled poet returning to a small provincial town in search of his lost love - it is very much a story of politics and religion. There are subplots involving headscarves, Islamic fundamentalism, coups, and political violence.  Also it is a story of exile, nostalgia, desire, and betrayal.  Reading Pamuk's novel, I could see why he was a Nobel laureate in 2006.

Pamuk is a great story-teller and his novel is wonderfully descriptive and evocative, and also deeply humane.  With Turkey frequently in the news these days because of politics, religion and international events - this novel makes for a fine and timely read.

I would recommend it to a student wanting to read international literary works, but many students might find it a bit slow and not so relevant to their own lives.

Bleak and Beautiful

The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz
New York : Anchor Books, 2008, c1984
158 p. ; 21 cm.

Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, and this little gem of a novel gives an example of why.

It is the tale of a man emerging from four years of harsh and humiliating imprisonment, only to find that his wife and her new lover are the ones who betrayed him to the police, and that his criminal mentor is a hypocrite and a man of means and power.   Bent on revenge, Said Mahran ends up destroying the only treasure he has left, his humanity.

In it's short, but intense meditation on the human spirit, this novel reminds me of another Nobel laureates fine little novel, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.

I really appreciated this novel of set in 1950s Egypt.  It is straightforward, compelling, and easy to finish, but leaves you with a lot to sit back and think about.

Horse Fatigue

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
New York : Vintage Books, 1995, c1994.
425 p. ; 21 cm.

I liked the beginnings of this novel a lot.  The main character Billy, a young man, gets involved in the trapping of a wolf and his attempt to return it to its range, a quest which leads him on a coming of age journey as he wrestles with the ferocious forces of nature and the sometimes kind and sometimes dangerous/savage forces of the human world.

This second novel of the "Border Trilogy" moves from being a powerful story of a young man and his quest to release a she wolf - into a repetitive and gloomier repeat of his All the Pretty Horses, the first book in the is "Border Trilogy." His next quest involves he and his younger brother seeking the horses stolen from his murdered family and the subsequent sufferings and tragedies they experience.

I enjoy the high style of McCarthy, but after a while I just started to grow weary with it.

If you love McCarthy, you will probably enjoy the novel, but I felt like it could have been far shorter and would have been more powerful if it had been.

More Than a Pretty Horse

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
New York : Knopf, c1992.
301 p. ; 22 cm.

I first read this book about fifteen years ago. I read it then because it had won the National Book Award and for the first few pages, I was not impressed. It almost seemed like a parody of Hemingway with its short, sparse sentences - but then, wow! it grabbed me with its lush romantic beauty and gorgeous descriptions and never let go.  Cormac McCarthy has become something of a major literary figure in American fiction, and so I wanted to revisit his novel ( I had planned to read all three of his "Border Trilogy" works, but only made it through the second one, The Crossing.)

All the Pretty Horses works as a love story, a coming of age novel, a quest novel, and and ode to the end of the horseback riders era in the Texas-Mexico borderlands.

The book is in many ways a tale of moralities.  What are the bonds of loyalty, friendship, family, and, of course, love?  It is a tale of integrity, of human-animal interdependence, of the beauty of the land and of the powers of goodness and evil.

I would definitely recommend this book to a student looking for a literary, but very readable and compelling novel.

Civil Rights Sailors and the Big Explosion

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin
New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2014.
1st ed.
200 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

From the dynamic cover, to the epilogue - I loved this book.  It is an amazing story of unsung Civil Rights heroes who took against racism in the US Navy during WWII and helped force greater opportunities for African Americans in the military - and at great cost to themselves.

This book has all the elements of a great tale - a massive tragic explosion, tales of personal courage, rumors of a conspiracy, the suspense of a trial/court martial, and a positive but not rosy ending. And in telling the tale, Steve Sheinkin brings to life the stories of very young men who simply wanted to be given a fair opportunity to be part of the US war effort in WWII.

I really like this book for bringing together so many important threads - worker safety, segregation and racism during WWII (including extreme violence against enlisted African Americans in the south), the stirrings of the great Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s, the early career of Thurgood Marshall, and the ways in which change occurs in fits and starts through resistance and personal courage.  And it's all done in the relatively brief space of just over 160 pages (along with great photos and illustrations).

I would recommend this book to any student interested in WWII, disasters, the Civil Rights Movement, the military, and US history in general.
   

Terrific Fair, Fairly Terrible

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
New York : Vintage Books, 2004, c2003.
1st Vintage Books ed.
xi, 447 p. : ill., maps, music ; 21 cm.

This is a fantastic and haunting book about the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Larson's book manages to convey just how incredible the feat of Chicago's hosting the world's fair was (having just over 2 years to organize and build the entire fair venue) - while also telling the story of serial killer Henry H. Holmes and his immense frauds and scams that helped him elude capture for so long.

The book is a wonderful glimpse into the turn of the century world of the US and Chicago, which had been destroyed by fire only a little over twenty years before.

The reader gets to learn so much about the founding architects of Chicago, the landscaping prowess of John Olmsted - creator of NYC's Central Park - the amazing invention of the Ferris Wheel and the massive turnout of visitors to the fair (including a one day attendance total of over 750,000 people!).  Following the story of killer, H.H. Holmes, also gives the reader a feel for the fast and loose business dealings of the day, the ease with which people could assume false identities, and the plodding nature of police investigations at the turn of the century.

I will definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Chicago history, true crime stories, and just an amazing read.