Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

It is really difficult to criticize a great book like Speak. The layout, plot and characters are all wonderful and just as they should be. If I were in a position to require such things, I would say that every girl from 12-18 should be required to read it, and most other people would benefit from it as well. All in all, this is a really good book about the horrifying yet realistic life of a teenager.

The book begins with Melinda Sordino’s first day of high school. Melinda called the police at an end of summer party, getting several kids into trouble. Before high school even begins, she is ridiculed and ostracized. Melinda starts school lonely and misunderstood and things just keep getting worse.

I’ve read this book multiple times, and I was especially struck by how little identity people seem to have; I think this is intentional. There is a running joke throughout the book about the school being unable to select a mascot. Girls seem to change themselves to fit into the clique of their choosing. Melinda sits in an outdated bedroom that no longer reflects who she really is. I feel as though Anderson is telling us that the trauma and depression that Melinda is suffering is all-consuming. But then again, does anyone really know who they are in high school?

Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was surprising to me; I didn’t know what to expect and had heard very little about it. Apparently, I am in the minority, as it has been a selection for Oprah’s Book Club in the past and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Middlesex is the story of three generations of a Greek-American family living in Detroit as told by Calliope or Cal. Calliope, later Cal is of the youngest generation in the story, raised as a girl, but becoming masculine as an adolescent. Cal is the product of frequent genetic mutations of a close-knit Greek community that hails from a very small town. In 2010, it is no surprise to us that inbred communities tend to have abnormal genetic traits, but of course, Cal’s ancestors had no way of knowing that this would be the case.

As I read this story, I’m tormented not by how unusual and painful Calliope’s puberty is, but how normal and painful it is. How different am I really from Cal? The feeling of alienness in one’s own body, the shame of being imperfect and different from other girls- I don’t think any of this is so unique. Perhaps that is the point; interesex individuals and hermaphrodites aren’t really so different from those of us who only exhibit characteristics of one sex.

The book feels like a cross between Forrest Gump and Lolita, the single male narrator that covers several decades in history while trying to explain a sexual situation that is foreign to most. The book is a startling contrast of the tragic and the comic, and Eugenides himself points out, but that seems to be the case with most things.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I feel like I must have been the last person to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I heard good things about it from both my parents and my advisor on my Master’s thesis. So writing about it feels very unoriginal. Yet here I sit, writing about it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a wonderful suspense story about an unlikely pair investigating an old missing person case. A middle aged journalist who was recently convicted of libel partners with an unpredictable, punk private investigator. The two are trying to find an explanation for the disappearance of a teenage girl from a seemingly isolated island in the 1960’s.

Of course, the key for any suspense writer is to arrange circumstances and characters so that the solution to the mystery isn’t obvious. Larsson has created a cast of characters diverse enough to keep us guessing without making it confusing. (Though, as this book was originally written in Swedish, there are far more surnames beginning with “Bj” than the average American is used to).

One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that although the translation is excellent, there are still occasional spots where the wording seems a bit strange. Perhaps this is because I enjoy the foreignness of it. There are points that seem like a dubbed movie - you can tell that it isn’t really what the characters are saying, but it doesn’t matter. Whether you find these slightly awkward phrases charming or not probably won’t make much difference in the end; it’s a clever book that most will enjoy.

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

When I initially read an NPR review about this book, I was immediately interested. Not only is Gawande attempting to present solutions to preventable failures in the medical professions, but in other business environments as well. The Checklist Manifesto is Gawande’s non-fiction account of how to construct and implement checklists in meaningful ways. His particular area of interest is that of safe surgery, but he also offers examples in construction, aviation and investments, to name a few.

The style of this book is very anecdotal. He immediately grabs the reader’s attention by sharing a couple gory surgery horror stories about failures to address key steps or pieces of information in operations. He continues this pattern throughout the book, each section tells a story about how he learned about checklists in a variety of settings and how each checklist is effective or not. His journey is that of a surgeon who is researching checklists for the WHO; he tells us how he came up with the idea, how his checklists were constructed (and re-constructed), and how checklists have measurably changed surgical practices in several of the world’s hospitals.

As an aside, I can barely fathom how Gawande manages to write books in between all of his other jobs. He is a surgeon, a director for patient safety with the WHO (World Health Organization), Harvard professor and father. Any one of these tasks seems like it could be all-consuming. He must be very organized – I suppose he uses checklists to keep track of it all.

Side note: This is not Gawande’s first book. Check out Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science (RD 27.35 .G39 A3 2002 )

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

I recently decided to re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. This is as much due to my lack of self restraint as it is to the quality of the books themselves. (Not that the books are lacking in quality, I am just completely unable to resist). The public library’s well stocked rows of several Harry Potter volumes call to me. I just can’t resist putting away the adult fiction for the wonderful wizardry that is Harry Potter.

I don’t know how important it is for me to provide a summary in this case, since I think most people are at least loosely familiar with the storyline, but I’ll do my best. In this first book of the seven-volume Harry Potter series, an orphaned, eleven-year-old Harry Potter discovers he is a wizard and begins his schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, he befriends fellow students Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, and encounters the dark wizard Voldemort.

There isn’t much that I can say about the merits of the series that hasn’t been said before, so I’ll stick to a couple general observations. First, I never fail to be impressed by J.K. Rowling’s foresight. It as if she had every detail of all seven books planned out in advance. She has said before that she always knew how she would end the series, but I’ve never heard her quoted as saying that she had every detail planned before she starts. It really seems like she did.

The Harry-Dumbledore relationship progresses wonderfully through the series, similar to that of a real life relationship with a mentor. After the final six books of the series, it is easy to forget how little the two knew of each other at the beginning. This isn’t news to anyone who has read the series, but it is nice to back up and remember the beginning. If nothing else, I hope that by praising the books, I can convince other fans to re-read them, and possibly persuade some new readers to pick them up.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein

The title of this book is misleading for a couple reasons. First, it is not a list of 36 arguments for the existence of god (although this information is in the appendix). Second, the title makes it sound like the author is making a case for god’s existence. Even if you take the novel format into account, this is not the case (The appendix that includes arguments for god’s existence only includes the arguments so they can be refuted). When I initially discussed this with a friend, I was chastised for not calling the book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (I kind of think it is a pain to include this subtitle in conversation), but it does help one know what to expect.

The book takes place during a couple weeks of Cass Seltzer’s career; he is a university professor of the psychology of religion and an author who has recently written a book about atheism. The book is not a list of 36 arguments for the existence of god, but he did include an appendix in his book (I believe that Goldstein’s appendix is meant to be Seltzer’s appendix). Even though the book spans a short amount of time, approximately half of the chapters are flashbacks, so the reader really gets to know Cass from the time he was in his 20’s. Several periods of Cass’s life are explained, his relationship with his eccentric mentor, his background as an Orthodox Jew, a failed marriage and a happy new relationship.

Although this is a book about one man’s explorations in religion and life, we can easily put Cass Seltzer’s atheism in perspective. Can’t we be good without the expectation of an eternal reward? Can’t we love our fellow humans without feeling that we are obligated by our religion? In my opinion, the book is less about the faiths that people embrace and more about the ways that they share their faiths and lives with others.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a difficult book to review, because aspects of the plot are quite mysterious for long periods of time, and I would be doing the reader a great disservice by revealing many details. The protagonist of the novel is Kathy who is now 31 years old. Never Let Me Go is written as a memoir might be; the bulk of the novel tells of her childhood and her friendships at Hailsham. Though the children’s lives could be described as sheltered and idyllic, the reader is aware that this is simply a façade.

In many ways, this is a science fiction novel; the students of Hailsham exist in a world that differs from our own, even though the similarities are abundant. I might refer to this as “light science-fiction” – more than anything it is a relationship/friendship drama. I think that this is all for the better; there are many, many, many books that talk about the conflicts of relationships and friendships (almost every book). Ishiguro’s book introduces another element to this fiction equation, but without making the story unrelatable.

Though this is a side note, I am always impressed with authors who choose to write novels with protagonists of the opposite sex. In this case, Ishiguro is a male with a female narrator. (The Harry Potter series is another excellent example of this phenomenon) My point in mentioning this is that I think Ishiguro does an excellent job. The attitude of the narrator seemed plausible and natural.

I based my selection of this book on the fact that I really enjoyed Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, and I didn’t really know what to expect. In many ways, the books are similar, personal dramas with disturbing back stories (Remains of the Day’s protagonist was employed by a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer). And more importantly, both books are touching, well written novels that readers will enjoy.

(Also, I didn't realize until I finished this book, but it is being made into a movie. I want to see it, but knowing me, I'll wait until it comes out on DVD)