Ask-Dr-Kirk

What's On Your Summer Reading List?

ProfHacker at the Chronicle of Higher Education has a great list of book suggestions for summer reading.

Here are some more great books that I've enjoyed this past year.

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Room, by Emma Donoghue

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (I thought the book was better than the movie!)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack by Rebecca Skloot

 

What's the best book you've read this past year?

Summer Reading: Week 10

This may be the last fun reading I'll get to do for a while with the new semester starting up. This week's book was The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. The author uses an interesting approach that seems to be popular lately and that is to take real characters and write a novel about their lives. This one is about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, and gives insight as to how he got his start as a writer but told from Hadley's point of view. I really enjoyed it.

Summer Reading: Week 9

This week I read a book that I started to read years ago but didn't get past the first few pages. I'm not sure why. The book is One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. The premise of the story is that a Cheyenne Indian Chief proposed to President Grant in the mid 1800s that white women be sent to marry within the tribe. The children of these marriages would then help assimilate the Cheyennes, teaching them what it would take to live peacefully within the White culture. One of the women, May Dodd, writes about the experiences of the women in a series of journals. The book is fiction but written in such a way as to seem feasible.

 

Summer Reading: Week 8

Last weekend I went with a friend to St Pete Beach so I chose a beach book to read, Smoking Seventeen by Janet Evanovich. If you've never read one of her Stephanie Plum novels, these are the type of books you want to read just to be entertained. The best part is the wacky characters, starting with Stephanie who is a bounty hunter. If you haven't read any of these books, I would suggest starting with the first one in the series, One for the Money.

 

Summer Reading: Week 7

This week I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The book is narrated by 15-year-old Christopher who loves animals, doesn't like people, and is a whiz at mathematics. He is a fan of Sherlock Holmes and decides to figure out who murdered his neighbor's dog after he is falsely accused of the crime. Although Christopher is autistic, in some ways he is better able to cope with life than his parents and others around him.

Summer Reading: Week 6

This week I read the book, Room, by Emma Donoghue. The subject matter made it tough to read but the author does a great job of showing the special bond between a mother and her son. The book is told from the perspective of Jack, a five-year-old boy whose entire world is a 11 x 11 foot room. His mother does such a great job of creating a life for him that he doeesn't realize that they are prisoners and that his mother had been kidnapped years before.

 

Summer Reading: Week 5

This week I re-read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. If you've only seen the movie, the book is much better. I'm not usually a fan of science fiction but loved this story of Henry, a librarian in Chicago, and his wife, Clare. Henry suffers from a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel without warning. He essentially gets to watch Clare grow up. The story is very creative and engrossing and the second read was as good as the first!

Summer Reading: Week 4

This week's choice was The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. The story is told in third-person plural to illustrate the closeness of the three sisters who love each other but for various reasons don't seem to like each other much. Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia were all named for Shakespearean heroines by their father who uses phrases from various plays to communicate with his daughters. This is an interesting approach although at times seems to slow down the story. The daughters are very much locked into their roles in the family-Rosalind (Rose) is the responsible one, Bianca (Bean) the pretty one, and Cordelia (Cordy) is the free spirit. However, this begins to change when they end up back home when their mother is diagnosed with cancer. The book is Eleanor Brown's first novel and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Summer Reading: Week 3

This week I read Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. It's a non-fiction account of Abdulrahman Zeitoun who decided to stay in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in order to protect his painting business and real estate properties. He uses a small canoe to feed dogs that have been left behind when their owners fled and to rescue people after their homes are flooded. However, he is arrested and accused of being a terrorist because of his race and religion and is held without bond, not allowed a lawyer, or even a phone call for three months. The book is eye-opening as a first-person account of the tragedy of Katrina.

 

Summer Reading: Week 2

The book I read this week was Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I found the book amazing. Even if you aren't the type of person who underlines quotes you like while reading a book, this book may change that (Check out this blogpost of great quotes from the book).

It's the story of a young boy trying to deal with his father's death in the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. He finds a key hidden in his father's closet and is convinced that his father meant for him to find the lock the key fits and that this will provide him with answers to the tragedy. The author writes so well that I find myself wanting to read the book a second time already.

Summer Reading: Week 1

I love summer as it gives me a chance to catch up on some of the books I've been wanting to read. I'm always looking for recommendations and so thought I would share each week the book I've read and encourage you to share your favorites with me. 

This week's book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack.

You can read the New York Times review on the book here.