Readers & Writers 2007 Winter Reading List

Go to printer-friendly version

It’s a lot easier to think about snuggling up with a great book if “the weather outside is dreadful.” And, it looks like we’re in for it this year. A wonderful (I don’t consider snow “dreadful”) storm passed through the northeast this weekend and it feels like we’ve finally got ourselves a REAL winter, on the proper schedule (arriving before Christmas rather than in early February) for the first time in some years. This means that any day off, when I don’t feel like snowshoeing or hiking for 12 hours, I can feel totally at peace with reading (okay, and dozing a bit) through a wintry afternoon. Throw in a cup of tea, a purring cat or snoring dog, a wood fire—ooh, heaven.

Thanks to everyone who called in during our winter reading program. Special thanks to co-hosts Chris Robinson of Clarkson University and John Ernst of Elk Lake. I am always stunned at how many books they read, review and recommend. I hope you find something special and wonderful for yourself or for holiday gift giving.

The list is up on our website and you can always email or call me for an electronic or print version of the list. Send titles of books you want to recommend—classic or newly published—any time of the year. We’ll save your suggestions for the next list (in this case, July 2008).

Happy winter—in or out of doors.

Peace,

Ellen Rocco
ellen@ncpr.org
1-877-388-6277

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

Interspersed through this list you will find the 10 Best Books of 2007 from the New York Times. Including:

Man Gone Down, Michael Thomas

A first novel exploring the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.

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

I have not read enough books lately. So, I decided to make up for my sluggard performance by reading three books simultaneously—each interesting in a different way—but given my recent pace, you may finish one or more before I do. Let me know what you thought.

• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond. Like it or not, technomaniac or not, humans are connected to nature. When we forget that, we fail. Diamond explores principles of societal survival and sustainability through societies that failed or succeeded in the past, and through examples from today’s human cultures.
• When Madeleine Was Young, Jane Hamilton. I like the way Hamilton tells a story. This novel drew me in immediately.
• The Zero, Jess Walter. The author lives on the west coast but for this NYC native, he nails the sound and culture of the city’s police force. This strange novel is set in the months following September 11, 2001. His protagonist, a police detective, may be brain-damaged from a self-inflicted gunshot wound or excessive alcohol intake, or not. I’m halfway through and keep insisting I’m not going to finish it, and then I pick it up again. A troubling story, with some humor.
• Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, David Isay. This is what it’s all about—the stories of our lives, recorded and stored as part of our true national history. Beyond governments, beyond celebrities, the lives of regular folk are what tell our American story. And, look for the return of StoryCorps to the region in June and July of 2008—with stops in Saranac Lake and Glems Falls.

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

Only with a select group of contemporary authors can I be described as a reader of what is current. As an undergraduate I began to collect a list of books that I heard described by professors or classmates as important or essential, along with those books that were assigned but that I had the time or interest only to skim. Thus, after graduation, I carried away from campus a diploma and a sizable list of books to read. The latter has come to signify far more learning than the former. Over the years, I have worked to cross off titles, but I have continued adding new ones too. I am resigned to my mortality, and with this resignation is the acknowledgement that my reading list will never end. This is a great gift.

Literature and Poetry

• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore. This is a novel that defies attempts at summarization. It is a mystery story about what happened in a clearing of a rural area in Japan during World War II, when a group of students out picking mushrooms lost consciousness suddenly. The search for answers traverses time and space, quite literally. But the magic of this complex plot is found in the depth and humanity of the main characters. It is a truly remarkable novel.
• Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace. This is literally a novel that was lost in a fire. Kingston had to re-create the book from memory, but then also added a layer about the significance of the fire as a window onto her life. Memoir and fiction are entwined and become a deep reflection on what peace as a personal and political goal can teach.
• Ruth Ozecki, My Year of Meats. I stuck with this novel even after feeling bored and lost in the opening chapters. This determination was rewarded by a fictional interrogation of the meat industry in the United States. It will leave you remembering Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
• Ramon D. Hansen, Whit and Orpha: They Danced All Night. Hansen listens to Readers and Writers on the Air from his home in Carthage, and he kindly sent me this novel/family history that he wrote and self-published. It is a labor of love based on the diaries of his grandparents, Whit and Orpha Needham. Hansen’s creative use of the diaries of his grandparents will inspire you to do something with your own family history.
• Ron Padgett, How To be Perfect. Padgett is, in my mind, a funny poet. There are serious pieces in his writings. But the ones I look for are the ones that make me laugh. Padgett sees the great humor in the truth that “there is no synonym for synonym.” Look for him.

Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson, translated by Anne Born

In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.

Memoirs and Biography

• Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. This a memoir of Patchett’s friendship with Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face. In any close friendship there is the sensation that one plus one equals more than two, and getting at that quality of “more than” is the great gift bestowed on readers of this book.
• Mark Rothko, Writings on Art. Rothko’s abstract expressionism has been a personal source of interest for decades. It is work of emotional intensity that requires repeated viewings and all the help you can get in the form of the artist’s own reflections on what he saw himself doing, and where his work fits into the history of art. The writing is dense but revealing.
• Anne Atik, How It Was. Atik and her family were close friends of the author and playwright Samuel Beckett. This is a memoir of that relationship. The story is quite absorbing and touching, but, honestly, I keep turning back to this book because of the wealth of photographs of Samuel Beckett – great writer, and a really photogenic personality.
• Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story. This is a pretty pedestrian biography of a most un-pedestrian comedian. Does anyone remember Bill Hicks any more? For a time, in the mid-eighties until 1993, Hicks was the funniest, most insightful stand-up comic in the business. This book does manage to give glimpses into what was lost when he died, in his early thirties, of pancreatic cancer.
• Jim Newton, Justice For All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made. What I didn’t know about the life of Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from the early fifties to 1970, could have filled a book. And here it is.

Politics, Philosophy, Ecology

• Lawrence Weschler, Calamities of Exile. Weschler is one of the great journalists working today, and not enough people have been exposed to his considerable talent. This book is a good place to start reading him. It is composed of three, beautifully crafted, studies of political exiles: Jan Karan (Czechoslovakia), Kanan Makiya (Iraq), and Breyten Breytenbach (South Africa). Each profile evinces a sense of the pain unique to those deprived of a sense of home by brutal regimes. Exiles are the fastest growing population in the world today. This book gives them some degree of voice and humanity.
• Kathleen Dean Moore is a philosopher and nature writer. She is one of the most interesting thinkers on environmental issues working today, and I have happily read through her four books: Riverwalking, The Pine Island Paradox, Holdfast, and Pardons. Somewhere along the way in human history, we have managed to delude ourselves into thinking we hover above the biota. Moore’s work presents an image of herself and steeped in nature that is resilient, sick, and forgiving.
• Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil. This thick, extremely well-researched history of genocide testifies to the tragedy it documents with its very size. Moreover, Kiernan reveals patterns common to every genocidal event that can serve as opportunities to prevent future crimes or, if we persist in our blindness, auguries of bad things to come.
• Mark Danner, Torture and Truth. While we are remembering Bill Hicks, it is also important to remember that the crimes at Abu Ghraib were far more extensive and systemic than the trial of a few American soldiers serving as prison guards could answer with justice. Danner’s work illuminates the path from the torture of prisoners by American service personnel to the White House.
• Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights. Declarations of Human Rights have a deep history that is of decidedly mixed results. Such manifestos are always well-intentioned attempts to reveal something deep about the nature of equality and of what we owe one another, but often, these declarations work better to give the illusion of justice than to serve as barriers separating perpetrators and victims. Hunt’s rich history reveals this ambiguity in the discourse from the 17th Century to the present.
• Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God. Lilla’s book is a most interesting reflection on the political theology’s of the 20th Century – Nazi Germany, Iran, Al Qaida – and their antidotes in various conceptions of separation of Church and State. Lilla’s study examines the roots of political theology in Western political thought from Locke and Rousseau to Hegel, while locating the response in the “Great Separation” of divine and human authority in the work of Thomas Hobbes. This separation that is so much a part of American life in the form of judicial renderings of the Establishment Clause also leads to damning failures to reflect on the dangers of theocracy.
• Philip Zimbrado, The Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo is renowned in social scientific circles as the guy who devised and performed the most unethical psychological experiment involving human subjects, ever. The famous Stanford Prison Experiments where student subjects were used to study the psychology of relations between guards and prisoners has become the stuff of fiction and film. In this volume, Zimbardo reflects on his own frighteningly unethical role in that work, and extends these insights to a search for situational triggers for evil in places like concentration camps, prisons, and, in particular, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The psychological dimension of evil is not to be found in the recesses of the human mind or soul. Evil is not natural to the human species. Rather, as Zimbardo shows, evil is triggered by the architecture to authoritarian social structures. Now imagine a society designed to trigger goodness.

John Ernst, Winter Reading Call-in Co-host, Elk Lake

• Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson, trans. Anne Born. This short Norwegian novel won the Norwegian Bookseller’s Prize, Critics’ Award, and other prizes. It tells the story of how one cataclysmic event tears two families apart. Told beautifully and simply by a writer of great skill.
• Exit Ghost, Philip Roth. I was a big fan of Goodbye Columbus and then lost track of Philip Roth for years at a time. I read this novel in two sittings and was absolutely transfixed. This is the final chapter in the story of the writer Nathan Zuckerman, whom Roth introduced in The Ghost Writer. This is a dizzily brilliant concoction, indescribable but wonderful. Roth is an electric writer, dancing from dangerous peak to peak, never looking down. It is a bravura performance.
• Silence, Thomas Perry. A crackling suspense story by a master of the genre. The story has all the hallmarks of Perry’s best work—clever identity switches, car chases, pursuit and hiding and sudden death. Characteristically in his books, nobody is what they seem at first. Bottom line: I don’t think there are many other suspense writers as good as Thomas Perry.
• The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, Judith Jones. The author is a senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf Publishers wehre she has worked with every major food writer of the past 40 years, including Julia Child, who she discovered, and whose recipes for Mastering the Art of French Cooking she tested in her own kitchen at home. What is compelling about this book is Jones’ fierce devotion to good food—not in great restaurants prepared by professionals—but at home with fresh ingredients, inventiveness and love. Jones knows how to tell a story and does so well. This is a woman who at the age of 91 lights a candle, bakes her own bread, and pours herself a glass of wine every night with dinner, to which she looks forward with undiminished gusto, whether she has guests or not. A bonus is a section at the end of the book with annotations on 50 of the author’s favorite recipes. Great for a gift, but first read it yourself.
• Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson. At the risk of courting controversy, I found this big, messy, foul-mouthed novel of the Viet Nam War a major disappointment. Johnson has written sever novels and three books of poetry. This novel was favorably reviewed in a front page piece in the New York Times Sunday Book Review and was recently announced as the winner of the National Book Award for fiction. While parts of it are undoubtedly entertaining, much of it seemed strained and overly familiar. In the end it all felt like a warmed-over version of Apocalypse Now. As a counter-weight, I read a well-received Viet Nam war novel published thirty years ago which also won a National Book Award:
• Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien. This 1978 novel has been called the finest piece of fiction to come out of the Viet Nam War, and to me it is the rare book that stands up to Michael Herr’s brilliant non-fiction portrait of the war in Dispatches. O’Brien won the National Book Award for novel.

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano, translated by Natasha Wimmer

A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.

• Rock Springs, Richard Ford. These are ten stories of hardscrabble life in Montana and Wyoming by one of my favorite writers, a master of his craft, and author of Independence Day, Sportswriter and The Lay of the Land. Richard Ford is one of a very small society of writers whose prose gives off an electric shock. The one reaction you will not have to his work is indifference.
• Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods, Chris Shaw. Adirondack guide, magazine editor, writer, radio commentator—Chris is a Renaissance man who took a canoe journey down a wild, rapids-filled, and beautiful river, the Usumacinta, running along the border between Mexico and Guatemala. He did it when the area, Chiapas, was in the midst of a Zapatista uprising, and bandits and drug-smugglers haunted the river banks. If a whirlpool didn’t get you then gunmen might. This is the story of that trip and it’s told on many levels—the daily hazards of the journey, the political and environmental history of the region, and the opening into the spiritual heart of Mayan civilization. Chris Shaw is an elegant writer who uses words with grace and precision. He has been compared to Jonathan Raban, Bruce Chatwin and Peter Matthiesen. Think Songlines crossed with Into the Wild.
• Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: An Environmental History, Jerry Jenkins, Karen Roy, Charles Driscoll and Christopher Buerkett. This is a scientific detective story that plays out over thirty years, with the Adirondacks as the setting and main character. It is the story of the most pressing environmental threat to the region and of how it was discovered and identified. And it is a chilling assessment of where we are in terms of a solution and how far we still have to go. All four of the authors are scientists (Jerry Jenkins is perhaps best known as the author of The Adirondack Atlas) and the amazing thing about this book is that it can be read on several levels. The narrative is direct, compelling, and written in crystalline layman’s terms. Along the generous margins are fascinating color charts, maps, and annotations for those with the interest and knowledge to probe deeper. A beautifully-produced book just out from Cornell University, a landmark in studies of the Adirondacks, its past and its future. A great Christmas gift for some lucky Adirondacker.
• Our Man in Havana and Loser Takes All, Graham Greene. This past summer Graham Greene madness struck me. It happens to me about every 40 years, having written my college thesis on Greene’s “serious” novels, I suddently developed an urge to read his early novels and all the so-called “entertainments.” Out of this orgy of Greene came these two books I would recommend to anyone who has missed them.

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.

Margot Ernst, Elk Lake and NYC

Great young adult books I re-read this summer:

• The Outsider and That Was Then, This Is Now, S.E. Hinton.

Connie Meng, NCPR theatre critic and announcer

• Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson. A fascinating portrait of a fascinating man, written so that the layman can grasp his concepts.
• In the Fall, Jeffrey Lent. At the end of the Civil War, the wounded son of a Vermont farmer is found in the woods by Leah, an escaped slave. The novel is the story of their life together in Vermont and of Leah’s family’s inability to escape her past. A terrific story.

Bea, Malone (a 14-year old bookworm extraordinaire)

I would like to introduce you and the NCPR listeners to manga. Manga are Japanese graphic novels, with stories that often take many volumes to resolve. There are many different genres of manga and graphic novels, and manga may be aimed at adults, teens or little kids.

• Bleach, Tito Kubo. Definitely my favorite series, Bleach is about a teen named Ichigo Kurosaki who can see ghosts. Ichigo finds that some of his classmates also have strange powers. The books tell of their adventures and can get a little violent at times, but there are still the random bits of comedy. The seris is aimed at people 13 or older. As of December 2007, there are 21 volumes with the 22nd expected in early 2008.
• Ouran High School Host Club, Bisco Hatori. This series is about a scholarship student, Haruhi, at a school where everyone is rich and powerful. Hilarious adventures, recommended for readers at least 13 or older.
• Hikaru no Go, Yumi Hotta. Hikaru was a normal kid until found a Go board. When he touched the Go board he becomae bound with a spirit from the past, which only he can see. Fun for all ages.
• Kino no Tabi, Keiichi. Not a manga, but amazing. Kino travels the world with her motorcycle Hermes. Volume one out now, with a second expected next year. The book makes you think about how we see the world.

I have also been reading these books:

• The Uglies Series, Scott Westerfeld.
• Bloody Jack Series, L.A. Meyer.
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.
• Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery.
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

Beverly Camp, Hero’s Welcome, North Hero VT

Two books I have loved recently, each telling a wonderful tale of love and loss and how one deals with both…complex characters and many-layered. I was especially intrigued by the way each author was able to write as well from the male protagonist point of view—I had to remind myself that the authors were women.

• The Three Junes, Julia Glass.
• The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard.

Susan Dillon, Potsdam

In keeping with the Readers & Writers food theme:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver
• Art of the Inner Meal: The Power of Mindful Practices to Heal Our Food Cravings, Donald Altman.
• Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm, Jon Katz.
• How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian, Mark Bittman.
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan.
• Raw: The Uncook Book, New Vegetarian Food for Life, Erika Lenkert, Juliano Brotman
• Slice of Organic Life, Alice Waters.
• Vegetarian Revenge: Better Living Without Chemistry, Karen Q. Petersen Mann, Philip E. Mann.

Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson

The author of Jesus’ Son offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.

David Carson, Long Lake

• Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis. Schulz was a complicated (and flawed) man whose life can be viewed in his comic strip.

Fred Goss, Ogdensburg

• The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta. His latest. Since discovering him, I’ve read all his stuff. Go back to the first, Bad Haircut and Other Stories, a “novel” in the form of connected stories and The Wishbones, about a wedding band in New Jersey (but not the movie with Drew Barrymore). On the other hand, Election (Reese Witherspoon in the movie), Little Children (Kate Winslet in the movie), and the first I read, Joe College. The problem here is that, as a Yale coed, Jodie Foster is a character in the novel but is now too old to play herself in a movie version.
• 1812: War with America, Jon Latimer. From the British/Canadian view…interesting to remember those 200 year old cannons across the river at Ft. Whatsis were pointed at the enemy, us.
• Lincoln’s Sword, Douglas Wilson. As a Lincoln buff I’m looking forward to this one. Wilson’s Honor’s Voice, the presidency and the power of words, about Lincoln is excellent and won awards a few years ago.
• An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England, Brock Clarke. I’m 2/3 of the way through the book with the greatest title of the year. It’s an entertaining read but I haven’t yet decided whether Clarke is very talented or simply weird.

Melinda Goss, Ogdensburg

• Mademoiselle Benoir, Christine Conrad. A novel in the form of letters about a young American man who moves to rural France and falls in love with and marries an older woman.

Ellen Beberman, Vermontville

• Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey. A forgotten gem. This book has integrity.
• The Periodic Table, Primo Levi. New find for me. This is the first book I’ve read by Levi, but not the last. His sentences are packed with meaning, yet easy to read.

A dis:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver. Found this awfully self-congratulatory. Somehow everything seemed to go perfectly for them. The local foods movement hasn’t yet come of age, at least not with this book.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.

Julie Goren, Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, Arkville

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver. It’s a beautiful look at both the environmental and cultural reasons to eat locally. The book is replete with research, personal experience, Kinsolver’s musings on what eating locally meant to her, and recipes and essays on nutrition contributed by Camille Kingsolver (Barbara’s daughter).

Sally Lynch, via email

• To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy, William Golding. It’s very different from his Lord of the Flies. The first book in this trilogy, Rites of Passage, got the Booker prize. The author received the Nobel. They are exciting sailing adventure stories, set in the early 1800s. There is humor, romance and tragedy. Golding was justly proud that these novels were “a good read.”

Rob Sprogell, Long Lake/Key West

• A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut.
• Good Dog. Stay., Anna Quindlen.

Kathy Kelly, via email

• Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, Elizabeth Samet. I sent this on to our daughter in Germany. Her husband has been to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. It goes very deeply into the moral fabric of war and the literature that shines light on this difficult experience.

Chris Bigelow, via email

• The Translator, John Crowley. Published in 2002, set in the period of the Cuban missile crisis, which many of us remember very well. The story covers the relationship between an exiled Russian poet and his American translator.
• The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett. Patchett is the author of Bel Canto, the Magician’s Assistant, and anew book, Run. The Patron Saint of Liars is a much earlier book. The setting is the '60s when young pregnant girls went to a home to have their children. In this case, Rose, married and pregnant, arrives at St. Elizabeth’s home.
• The Widow’s War, Sally Gunning. A historical novel set in pre-revolutionary America. Lyddie Berry is a whaler’s wife in the Cape Cod area, until her husband dies. The book is about the fight Liddie wages to keep her property, have her own friends, and have a say over her own life. Of course, all of these go against what is considered the proper conduct of a widow.

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, Mildred Armstrong Kalish

Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.

A listener in Colton, via email

Here are some of my 2007 favorite reads. The first one is a classic zen book that I always seem to come back to:

• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, Shunryu Suzuki.
• Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga, Rolf Fates and Katrina Kenison. A mindful and inspirational book about Yoga. My yoga teacher recommended it to our class.
• A Book of Luminous Thing: An International Anthology of Poetry, Edited and Introduction by Czeslaw Milosz. A wonderful book of poetry, because what is lovely winter without some good poetry.

Elisabeth Rankin, via email

• The God Factor, Cathleen Falsani. Marvelous unique read by the region columnist from the Chicago Times. It came out in paperback earlier this year. Christian Science Monitor named it one of the best books of last year. I’m giving it to all my friends for Xmas. A real gem.

Sue-Ryn, via email

• Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. It’s fascinating—highly recommend it to anyone working with farm or domestic animals. It’s given me a new perspective on some of my rescue dog’s behaviors.

Anne Sienkiewycz, via email

• Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett. My all-time favorite book. If anyone likes historical fiction this is the book to read. I am currently reading World Without End, the sequel…hard to put down.

Valerie Moody, Saranac Lake

Here’s what I’ve been reading during the past year:

Non-fiction:

• After the Finish Line: The Race to End Horse Slaughter in America, Bill Heller. (Heard about it on NCPR—excellent journalism!)
• Galileo, A Life and Fragile Innocence, James Reston, Jr. Also discovered through NCPR.
• An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter.

Fiction:

• Ancient Evenings, The Executioner’s Song and Castle in the Woods, Norman Mailer.
• Horse Heaven, Jane Smiley. She’s a tremendously versatile author.
• History Lesson for Girls, Aurelie Sheehan.
• Anything by Isabel Allende.

Susan Olsen, Saranac Lake

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Rick Riordan. This series of three books are among the cleverest and most engaging I’ve read recently. The premise is that the Greek Gods of myth are actually REAL, still alive, and still having children with mortals! (Mt. Olympus is now on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building.) The protagonist and narrator, Percy Jackson, is a “half-blood,” as the children of gods are called. The three books so far are called, The Lightening Thief, The Sea of Monsters and The Titan’s Curse. My children, ages 11 and 13, just can’t enough of them, and to tell the truth, neither can I. My 8-year-old nephew, 40-something sister, and 70-year-old mother are all also hooked. The books are smart and stimulating.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin

An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.

Rosalie Smith, via email

• The Madonnas of Leningrad, Debra Dean. The power of imagination, the severity of the siege of Leningrad.
• Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen. Great story of circus on the road, in the Depression…great characters.

Melissa Macdonald, Weekly Adirondack columnist, Old Forge

I have two books to suggest for your winter list…they make a good pair…both are coming of age novels, both are quirky and have many grotesque characters. I have a feeling, if she were still alive, Flannery O’Connor would have loved both of these books. The first book of the two could quite possibly have the best first two lines ever:

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close. So begins…

• The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall. Edgar is a half-Apache orphan who does survive this catastrophic event to spend a length of time in St. Divines hospital (the cooks here will remind you of One Flew Over the Coo Coo’s Nest) where he is given a Hermes typewriter on which he begins to record his life story. Edgar moves on to Willie Sherman’s orphanage (it may as well be a jail) and then is taken in by a Mormon family in Richland, Utah. All the while Edgar searches for the mailman who almost killed him.
• The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch. The protagonist, Miles O’Malley, is a young boy who is not an orphan but also leads a solitary life. Miles lives on the shores of the Puget Sound which he explores relentlessly at night during low tide. He’s intelligent and very knowledgeable about ocean life and obsessed with Rachel Carson.

Peter Brouwer, Potsdam

• A Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas. An honest and moving memoir of how life goes on after her husband’s catastrophic accident.
• Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen. A rich story of memory and adventure set amid the traveling circuses of the 1930s.
• Jake Fades, Trumpeter, David Guy, A wonderful story of impermanence and letting go. What to do when your teacher is gone, leaving you to pick up the reins?
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy. A harrowing, but also somewhat hopeful, post-apocalyptic vision of the future. Spare, but poetic, prose.

Meredith Prime, Lake Placid

• On Chesil Beach: A Novel, Ian McEwan.
• The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin.

Called in during the broadcast:

Nancy, Indian Lake

• Spook Country, William Gibson.
• The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas.
• My Sister’s Keeper: A Novel, Jodi Picoult.

Linda Cohen, Old Forge Hardware Store, Old Forge

• The Power of the Dark Goddess, George Bryjak.
• Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, Rosemary Mahoney.

I hated:

• Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert.

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History, Linda Colley

Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.

Hollie, Potsdam

• Watching Out, Ann Granger. One in a series featuring Fran Varady. Mysteries from present day Britain.

Betsy Kepes, NCPR book reviewer, Colton

• Run, Ann Patchett.
• Away, Amy Bloom.
• The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer. Great read for sixth graders.

Dan, Bombay

• Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives, Dan Millman.

Beth, Potsdam

• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini.

Keith, Heuvelton

• Wild Fire, Nelson DeMille.
• The Road and No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy.

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Alex Ross

In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.

Jay, Colton

• The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner.
• Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones.
• His Dark Materials Trilogy—The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman.

All of the above are fantasy, appropriate for young adults.

Nancy, Queensbury

• The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine.
• Beware of God, Shalom Oslander.
• The Master Butchers Singing Club, Louise Erdrich.

Ann, Sacketts Harbor

• My Father’s Dragon Trilogy, Ruth Stiles Gannett. Good for youngsters.
• Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter.
• Henry Huggins, Beverly Cleary.
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy.
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut.

I did not like:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Pat, Winthrop

• Woodswoman Parts 1 & 2, Ann LaBastille.
• One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, Sam Keith and Richard Proenneke.

Brad, Akwesasne

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie Sherman.

Tammy, North Creek

• No-Eyes Series, Mary Summer Rain.
• Agnes Browne Series, Brendan O’Carroll.

Elizabeth, Saranac Lake

• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Rein.

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

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