Readers & Writers
2008 Summer Reading List

How many books can you read in a month? in a year? in a lifetime? No matter how I push the numbers around, the answer doesn’t compute—there are too many books I want to read, ought to read, need to read. When I was younger, if I started a book, I finished it. Period. It was almost a personal point of honor: “Okay, Ellen,” I’d say to myself, “You opened it, you finish it.” I have discovered one of the advantages of getting older: I no longer believe my lifespan will be infinite and, therefore, I no longer feel obliged to read past the first few pages if the writing is mediocre. And that is my standard—quality of writing. I’ll read a murder mystery or memoir, history or fiction, short story or poem, but the writing has to prove itself to me. And pretty quickly.

This list is comprised of suggestions made by my program co-hosts, John Ernst and Chris Robinson, both of whom are thoughtful readers whose suggestions have always stood the “quality of writing” test for me. Other recommendations for summer reading come from listeners across our coverage area. It’s a nice mix. Remember to visit your public library for suggestions, too.

As always, I welcome your reading picks throughout the year. I’ll include them on the next reading list. Contact me at NCPR: ellen@ncpr.org or 1-877-388-6277 or NCPR, St. Lawrence University, Canton NY 13617.

Thanks to Salon.com, scattered throughout this list you’ll find readers’ suggestions for Condensed Literature: classics summed up in six words. Like to know more? Visit salon.com’s Table Talk page: http://tabletalk.salon.com/

Moby Dick – My name is definitely not Isaac.

The Old Man and the Sea – Man catches fish. Sharks eat it.

Romeo and Juliet – Kids sneak around, get married, die.

Ellen Rocco, NCPR Station Manager/Readers &Writers Co-host

  • The Size of the World and Idles of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, Joan Silber. I just finished the first and felt my interior and exterior senses of the world expand and deepen. I haven’t read the second yet but it was a finalist for the National Book Award and I plan to read it this summer.
  • Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow. Lyncanthropy run amok in L.A.? How do I explain this one? Here’s a review that does better than I ever could: “Blending dark humor and epic themes with card-playing dogs, crystal meth labs, surfing, and carne asada tacos, Sharp Teeth captures the pace and feel of a graphic novel while remaining ‘as ambitious as any literary novel, because underneath all that fur, it’s about identity, community, love, death and all the things we want our books to be about’ (Nick Hornby).”
  • Key Grip: A Memoir of Endless Consequences, Dustin Beall Smith. From an old friend of mine who, in spite of a “first” life spent sky-diving and working on Hollywood movie sets, turns out to be a very fine writer, as well as college professor.

Chris Robinson, Clarkson University/Readers & Writers Co-host

Traditionally, summer is a time for reading fat novels. The sun and heat just don’t work well for non-fiction and serious reading; or so the story goes. But listeners of Readers and Writers on the Air will probably agree with me that reading is always a serious business. The time to read is often squeezed into busy days, even vacation days, and no one wants to squander these valuable moments on a dud of a book. Since I was a teenager, I tried to read something regarded conventionally as a classic during breaks from school. This was a good habit to get into and it actually prepared me well for my undergraduate courses in literature, philosophy, history, and politics. The real bonus was that reading great books made me a better writer. This summer I am working on several writing projects. This has led to a lot of re-reading of works of philosophy, theology, and political theory. The best part of my job is that I get to live through what I read. In the act of re-reading, I am given a rare chance to assess how I have progressed as a thinker and as a person over the years. The good news is that I have seen some signs of wisdom along with a growing silver tint to my hair. The bad news is I continue to exhibit my humanity with daily stupid mistakes. Reading can improve you only so much apparently.

Here are some of the books that are resonating with me these warm days:

Fiction

  • Stewart O’Nan, Last Night at the Lobster. I was required to read this book as part of an effort to assign a book to all incoming students at Clarkson University. It is a simple story of the closing of a chain restaurant located in a strip mall. The focus is on the manager and the pride he takes in his work. O’Nan is brilliant in presenting this depiction of the ordinary dignity of the workers in this otherwise non-descript establishment.
  • Don DeLillo, Running Dog. DeLillo is a favorite author, but I have missed a few of his earlier works. This is a Vietnam era novel that has those sinister undercurrents that fans of DeLillo respond to so positively.
  • Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. After reading Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore last summer, I decided to try to read all of his work. This novel is probably categorized as science fiction by the publisher, but I was carried away by the intricacy of the protagonist and the way Murakami explored the philosophical themes of mind and identity through this character.
  • Ann Patchett, Run. This is a relatively short, yet epic, family saga. It begins with the story of a statue stolen from a church two generations earlier, and passed down to the daughter who most closely resembles this representation of the holy mother. We come to the present generation, devoid of daughters, and still reeling from the loss of its beautiful matriarch. The circle holds despite the loss of its center. You cannot read this novel without admiring the depth of its characters. I find myself stopping every so often to reread whole pages simply to admire the fluidity of Patchett’s prose.

Non-Fiction

  • Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit’s writing is my personal big find of the year. She is a talented, thought provoking essayist on art, the environment, and politics. If you are looking for someone who might qualify as Thoreau’s successor on the literary landscape, Solnit is well worth a read.
  • Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. I am on a mission to get all my friends to read Weschler’s writings. This thin volume is an amazing description of what you will find if you ever visit the storefront Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. The exhibits here blur the line between fact and fiction to such an extent that you leave the museum and this book with a new and profound appreciation of the uncanniness of the world around us.
  • Luc Sante, Kill All Your Darlings.  There is no better writer on urban life and landscapes than Luc Sante. I first read his essays on the blues, folk, and jazz, and I guess that is what he is known best for (Greil Marcus wrote the Introduction to the volume). But I was taken by the book’s opening section on life in downtown Manhattan in the mid-seventies. This is the pre-Guiliani, and pre-gentrification era where it was possible to live cheaply in places like Soho and Tribecca. It would have been heaven if not for all the drug abuse and violence.
  • Phillippe Sands, Torture Team. If there is a must-read book in this election year, this is it. Sands wonders how trained lawyers can participate in the denigration of the law first in Hitler’s Germany, and then in the administration of George W. Bush. Sands is careful to distinguish between the two regimes; the lawyers authoring the torture policy for detainees in Guantanamo Bay are not Nazis. But their actions did contravene international and humanitarian law. The next Administration will have to recommit itself to the rule of law, national and international. The depth of the corruption in the Bush White House is stunning.
  • Timothy C. Shiell, Campus Hate Speech on Trial. Colleges and universities are places where freedom of inquiry is the central value. What is to be done when hate speech is uttered in this setting? For some, the answer is to be found in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. You cannot have free inquiry when some are ostracized and threatened because of their ethnicity, sexuality, religion, or gender. Perpetrators of hate speech must be excluded from the community. For others, the protection of free speech means that even hateful utterances must be protected. Such speech is dealt with best by exposure to reasonable counter arguments. Shiell offers a compelling analysis of this apparently intractable debate on campuses today.

A Tale of Two Cities – The times were good. Also bad.

The Grapes of Wrath – Desperate, noble poor get shafted. Repeatedly.

1984 – Rapacious government consumes truth, excretes war.

Macbeth – Soldier rushes fate, gets cocky, loses.

  • Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own. Pollan and I have at least one thing in common: our fathers had no carpentry skills to pass on to their sons. The art of house construction and repair appears to us as a great mystery. Pollan decided to redress his ignorance by constructing a writing studio out in the woods behind his house. A Place of My Own is a memorable study of the effort required to overcome one’s limitations and acquire new skills in middle age.
  • Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Oscar is a 300 pound bookish, lovesick nerd from the ghetto. His life with his sister Lola and their mother is a window onto the history of the Dominican Republic. This great novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year.

Poetry

  • John O’Donohue, Anam Cara. This book is poetic, as opposed to a book of poetry. O’Donohue was a great writer and spiritual thinker. Here he absorbs and distills the reservoir of Celtic wisdom on the necessity and weave of love and friendship. O’Donohue died this year, and I miss him. The book opens with his great poem “Beannacht” (Blessing). I know of no greater source of comfort in the English language.
  • Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes. Lee was featured on the Jim Lehrer Newshour earlier this year. His work reflects his multicultural background, his experience as exile and émigré, an all-important sense of humor, and a great love of language.

John Ernst, Elk Lake and New York City/Readers & Writers Co-host

  • Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates (1961). This is the second time I have read this novel, which has become a kind of underground classic, especially beloved by writers. For this edition Richard Ford has written an insightful and appreciative introduction. This is a harrowing and brilliant book, perhaps the definitive horror story of suburban life in the middle of the 20th century, by turns ironic, acid, terrible and full of feeling. This may be a masterpiece, the best thing Yates wrote, which is a high standard, real enough to peel off skin. Also by Yates: Easter Parade, The Good School, Cold Spring Harbor, A Special Providence and Complete Stories.
  • Lush Life, Richard Price (2008). Price is an established voelist who was co-writer on the HBO series, The Wire, for which he won an Edgar. He can write authentic street dialogue like probably no one else alive. He gets the tone, the diction, the inflection, the expressions—even the silences.  Also by Price: Clockers, Freedomland and The Wanderers.

The Hobbit – Bilbo took quest. Got the Ring.

Fellowship of the Ring – Twelve people tried to return it.

Return of the King – Ring got tossed. Frodo came home.

  • Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, Tobias Wolff (2008). These 31 stories, written over the past thirty years, are selected from two previous collections, plus ten new stories. Wolff’s stories are cut and polished with lapidary skill. He has been compared to Chekhov and Wolff’s stories do share with Checkhov’s the directness of the prose, the twists of character, the elliptical quality of the telling and occasionally the somewhat abrupt ending that leaves you wondering. These are sometimes uncomfortable stories to read, but they are told with a clarity and skill that is impressive. Also by Wolff: Old School and This Boy’s Life.
  • Wing Walking, Harry Groome (2007). Groome is a former newspaper writer and an Adirondacker who for almost 40 years was a business executive, retiring as chairman of SmithKline Beecham consumer healthcare. This is his first novel and it does for business what John Grisham does for the law. It is a corporate thriller; fast-paced and well-researched, with a real feeling of authenticity.
  • Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, Gary Paulsen (1994). This is the story of one man’s obsession with dogs and sleds and the outdoors that leads him from training exercises that nearly kill him in Northern Minnesota to competition in the Iditarod—an insane race across 1,180 miles of Alaskan wilderness, from Anchorage to Nome. Paulsen is a skillful writer who doesn’t waste a word. You feel his bonding with the dogs who become major characters in the book. You feel the terror and joy and sheer physical punishment of the race. And you begin to understand why someone would choose to live in this alien world, in an immense emptiness, with only the dogs for company. Also by Paulsen: Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass and Eastern Sun, Winter Moon.
  • On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957). I was lured by the various 50th anniversary editions of Kerouac’s seminal novel, which I first read in high school. I wasn’t ready for it then and largely failed to appreciate its poetry and wild rhythms. The pace of the book is punishing and it bears out the story that Kerouac wrote it in a non-stop orgy on a single roll of paper. But the writing is gorgeous, with brilliant riffs on jazz and musicians and on the look of the desert at dawn. And with all the sex and drugs, there is a sweetness and a longing in the writing that I had not remembered and had not expected. The novel is sad, funny, exciting and moving. It deserves to last and be read. It isn’t just about what it meant to be beat. It’s about what it means to be alive.
  • The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin (2007). This was on the NY Times 10 best books of 2007 list. New Yorker staff writer and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin takes the reader inside the Supreme Court during the critical period from 1991 to the spring of 2007, sketching the legal history of this recent period and the personalities and interactions of the justices, which are sometimes rather surprising. This is a forceful, clear-headed and fair-minded look at where the court has recently been and where it might be heading.

Anne of Green Gables—Red-headed orphans: Well worth the trouble.

A Confederacy of Dunces—Vile man pities self, hates world.

Canterbury Tales—Pilgrims set out; much hilarity ensues.

Chris Bigelow (via email)

  • The Russian Concubine, Kate Furnivall. This book is set in the 1920s in Junchow, China. It is a story about a Russian exile and a Chinese Communist. The book reveals so much about the time period and keeps the reader's interest with the love between Lydia Ivanova and Chang An Lo. Kate Furnivall's mother was a White Russian refugee in China, and Ms. Furnivall dedicates her book to the memory of her mother.
  • The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. This won the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, just one of the many honors it has received. It is a book that parents and children can read together and have meaningful discussions. The book thief is a young girl, Liesel Meminger. One of the more unusual aspects of the novel is the narrator, Death. Death is very busy in Nazi Germany, but has a special interest in Liesel.  
  • Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson. Petterson is a Norwegian writer. The main character, Troand Sander, is an older man running away from his grief and later has to face a trauma he suffered as a boy. The reader is carried back and forth from present to past, until finally all is revealed. I loved the last line of the novel, "and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt."
  • People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks. This is a fascinating novel about the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Brooks takes the true situation of the Sarajevo Haggadah being saved during the Bosian war and creates stories about this particular Haggadah from Seville in 1480 up to Jerusalem in 2002. One of the time periods covered is in Spain during the convivencia when Muslims, Jews, and Christians respected each others’ cultures. Oh to have that now.
  • Clara Callan, Richard B. Wright. This novel centers on two Canadian women in their 30s, pre- WW II. Mr. Wright captures the time period and the lives of these two women who experience successes and failures. Wright's insights into the emotions of Clara and her sister, Nora, keep the reader involved. The story is conveyed through letters between Clara and Nora and letters to both from a friend, Evelyn. The ending is effective and memorable.

James Vos, Burlington

  • An Uncommon Woman - The Empress Frederick, Hannah Pakula.  A well-researched and fascinating biography of Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, who was later to become Crown Princess of Prussia and subsequently the Empress. With her husband Frederick she sought to liberalize Germany. She was the mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
  • The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Edward Dolnick. It's about a Dutch painter/forger who fooled the Nazis (Hermann Goering, for one) by painting fake Vermeers - despite his lousy forgery skills. It reads like thriller!
  • Next up is Say You're One of Them, a collection of short stories by a Nigerian author, Uwem Akpan.

Charlotte Miller, Miami Beach, Florida

  • I no longer live in NNY, but NCPR helps close the gap between my old life and new. The summer (and winter) book discussions and call-ins are among my favorite programs. May I add to the list with Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs. If Burroughs fans are looking for a laugh, they won't find it here in this memoir about the author's father. He waited until his father died, then took three years to write it. We are left wondering how the author survived to tell the tale.

    Also, brand new from House of Sand and Fog author Andre Dubus III is Garden of Last Days - rich in character development with a sharp eye tuned to societal norms.

Oedipus the King – Man sleeps with mother. Gouging ensues.

The Scarlet Letter – Woman sleeps with preacher. Branding ensues.

Anna Karenina – Woman sleeps with count. Suicide ensues.

Chris Dunn, Potsdam

  • Shakespeare’s Wife, Germain Greer (2008). If had only one book to recommend for the summer it would be this. Something like seven generations of Shakespeare commentators are stood on their heads—much better than spinning in their graves. And they’re likely to stay so, and good enough for them. Since 1790 Ann Hathaway Shakespeare has been generally dismissed if not scorned on next to no evidence. Germaine Greer has, with considerable historical research, asked about her the great kind of questions—the kind that are obvious after they are asked, but that no one thought to ask until she did. This is—necessarily, considering the lack of hard evidence—a speculation about the possibilities of Ann’s life rather than a formal biography; but for the very first time a sympathetic, even empathetic consideration, and worth the reading of anybody interested even in simple justice and fairness, with just here and there some tightly controlled outrage. (To know Wm. Shakespeare better, her account implies, might not be to like him more.) Go get it.
  • What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Daniel Walker Howe (2007). This seems to me how history ought to be written. We’ve all heard of specialized histories of this group or that; Daniel Walker Howe has written a history of this country from 1815-1848 that puts it all together, and I mean all; and is besides very readable—which is saying something for an 855-page text, not including notes and bibliography. Maybe readers should be warned that he has little love for Andrew Jackson; even less than that for James Knox Polk. (I think in his heart Howe sees Jackson, and Polk too, as an early type of Bush. And I have to admit that by the end of the book, his own partisanship is almost painfully obvious.) Men, women slaves, the native American nations, religious life (including the Mormons), all are included. No matter what you’ve read about this general era, from the Battle of New Orleans to the Mexican War, this will tell you something new about the United States in the age of Jackson and his opponents.
  • The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order; The Coming of the New Deal; The Politics of Upheaval, Arthur Schlesinger. Now that I have finally read it, I can recommend all three of these books. The section towards the end of the second volume, about Presidential leadership, and the chapters in the third about Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Townsend and others are especially good, I think. It ends about 1936 with the second Roosevelt victory, and before the court-packing attempt, but for its period nothing could be more exhaustive—and the pictures of the infighting in FDR’s administration are fascinating.

Of Mice and Men—Literal, symbolic rabbits are petted, mauled.

The Divine Comedy—Hell, Purgatory, Heaven and sweet Beatrice.

The Great Gatsby—No one misses a charming bootlegger.

Phil Newton, Saranac Lake

  • I have a couple of suggestions that are centered in the North Country. The first is any book in the Clair Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series of mysteries by Julia Spencer Fleming. The Adirondack country and culture permeate these books, the characters are drawn from types we all know, and the plots have a strong dose of North Country social realism—ranging from ordinary folks struggling with a failing economy to disputes over land use and pollution. The first book, In the Bleak Midwinter, won all kinds of mystery writing prizes, and the series has only gotten better in subsequent books.
  • James Howard Kuntsler, the well-known Saratoga Springs-based writer and social critic whose non-fiction The Long Emergency predicted that our petroleum-based, high consumption society is doomed, has written a new novel, A World Made by Hand, in which this has happened, and it isn’t pretty. L.A. and Washington D.C. have been nuked by terrorists; civil disturbances, plagues and mega-storms have devastated most remaining population centers, and what remains seems more like the early dark ages come to America than anything we now know. In semi-isolated places like Union Falls, New York, about 40 miles north of what is left of Albany, survivors struggle to hold together a world without cars, electricity, modern medicine and government. Even Public Radio is gone. In spite of this, the story is far from entirely dark, and contains strong themes that inspire hope that things not only might get better, but are ins ome ways already better without what Kunstler believes are the soul-destroying excesses of our modern world. I read this in as close to one sitting as I could, both for the entertainment and the message.

Marylee, Norwood

  • Ahab’s Wife, Sena Jeter-Naslund. Published in 1999, I heard a review of it on NCPR a while back and borrowed a copy from a friend. I would recommend it as a summer read.

Lynda DelSignore, Queensbury

  • The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, Ken Follett. Talk about a fat juicy read! Nothing very deep, but just good summertime page-turners.

Fred Goss, Ogdensburg

  • Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation, Cokie Roberts. Love Cokie, loved the book—a behind the scenes look at how things have changed, and/or haven’t, in politics and Washington over two centuries, seen from the distaff side.
  • Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life, Joseph Persico. The “inside story” of the women in FDR’s life. Well written and lots of new info even for a buff.
  • Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, Ted Sorensen. This deserves the praise it got from our best current historian (Robert Caro, LBJ biographer), but I wonder a bit if readers who “weren’t there” during Camelot (I was) will find it as intriguing as I did.
  • Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, Douglas Wilson. Last time I said I was looking forward to the next volume from Wilson (Honor’s Voice was the first, and I liked it very much). I found the newer one from the Lincoln scholar tough sledding. It turns a bit heavy going for the general reader as you consider four or five preliminary versions of the Emancipation Proclamation. Yes Old Abe wrote his own stuff, but he worked hard on it. Phrases like “Mystic chords of memory” and “better angels of our nature” didn’t flow effortlessly from his pen.

The Austen Oeuvre:

Sense & Sensibility—Unworthy entanglements neutralized, appropriate pairings proceed.

Pride & Prejudice—Hysterical mother marries off three daughters.

Mansfield Park—Poor relation annoys readers, weds cousin.

Emma—Alleged spinster, failed matchmaker makes match.

Northanger Abbey—Girl renounces pulp fiction, finds husband.

Persuasion—Yes this time, family be damned.

Or, to be utterly concise:

Worthy maidens get husbands they deserve.

John Scarlett, Rossie

A few of the books I am currently recommending to friends:

  • The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein.
  • Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, Kent Nerburn.
  • My Story as Told by Water; God Laughs and Plays; and, River Teeth, David James Duncan.
  • Armageddon in Retrospect, Kurt Vonnegut (posthumous).

Mary, Burlington

  • Bel Canto, Ann Patchett.
  • Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure, James West Davidson.

Bea, Malone

  • The Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz.
  • The Maximum Ride series by James Patterson.

Linda Cohen, Old Forge Hardware Store, Old Forge

  • Loving Frank: A Novel, Nancy Horan. The “Frank” is Frank Lloyd Wright.
  • The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom, Simon Winchester.
  • Adirondack Gold and A Summer of Strangers, Persis Granger. An Adirondack series for young adult readers.
  • Under an Adirondack Influence: The Life of A.L. Byron-Curtiss, 1871-1959, William J. Hern, Roy E. Reehil, Neal Burdick.

Ray Cook, Akwesasne

  • Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, Hunter Thompson.
  • Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach.
  • China Marine: An Infantryman’s Life after World War II, E.B. Sledge.

Leslie Ann, Cranberry Lake

  • Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson.
  • Literature from the “Axis of Evil”—Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations, Alane Mason, Dedi Felman, Samantha Schnee.

Rick Hunter, Malone

  • Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Barack Obama.

And, in response to our request for book series for adults, Rick recommends those by Alexander Mccall Smith and C.J. Sanson.

Hamlet—After much dithering, revenge is deadly.

King Lear—Three daughters, two bad, one good.

Jake, Indian Lake

  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
  • Thursday Next series, Jasper Ford.

Waiting for Godot—Nothing happens. Then nothing happens again.

L’Etranger (The Stranger)—Life’s not worth it. So what?

The Metamorphosis—Man turns cockroach. No one cares.

Bill, Minerva

  • The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II and The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II, Jeff Shaara.

Rosalie Smith, Massena

Recommendations from various grandchildren, all fiction except the first:

  • Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack Obama.
  • So Brave, Young and Handsome, Leif Enger.
  • His Dark Materials Trilogy, Philip Pullman.
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Ford.
  • Freak the Mighty, Rodman Philbrick.
  • The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin.
  • A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly.
  • The Color of Magic: A Discworld Novel, Terry Pratchett.

Recommended website: http://www.librarything.com/

Michelle, Keeseville

  • Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy.

Richard, Malone

  • Cheerful Pleasures, A.E. Coppard.

Kent, Indian Lake

  • Worlds Changing: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, Alex Steffen and Bruce Sterling.
  • Also recommended: Ode magazine.

Lynn, South Bombay

  • Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Jeremy Scahill.
  • The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich.
  • The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Patrick O’Connor.

Paradise Lost—Satan falls, tricks Eve, Adam follows.

The Iliad—Achilles sulks. Friend dies. Achilles fights.

The National Book Award Winners/Finalists for 2007

Fiction:

  • Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson. WINNER
  • Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinski.
  • Varieties of Disturbance, Lydia Davis.
  • Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris.
  • Like You’d Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepard.

Nonfiction:

  • Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner. WINNER
  • Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat.
  • God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens.
  • Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Woody Holton.
  • Ralph Ellison: A Biography, Arnold Rampersad.

Poetry:

  • Time and Materials, Robert Hass. WINNER
  • Magnetic North, Linda Gregerson.
  • The House on Boulevard St., David Kirby.
  • Old Heart, Stanley Plumly.
  • Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006, Ellen Bryant Voigt.

Young People’s Literature

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie. WINNER
  • Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One, Kathleen Duey.
  • Touching Snow, M. Sindy Felin.
  • The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick.
  • Story of a Girl, Sara Zarr.

The Bible (Old Testament)—Be good. Precisely how is unclear.

The Bible (New Testament)—Virgin gets knocked up by angel

Do send me your suggestions for great reads throughout the year. You can find previous lists at at the Reader's & Writers page. You can contact North Country Public Radio at radio@ncpr.org or write:

North Country Public Radio
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY 13617

1-877-388-6277

Fell free to email me directly at: ellen@ncpr.org