Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -the deliria- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.
This story is set in a future dystopian society where love has been outlawed. Amor deliria nervosa is the name of the disease that people used to call love. At the age of 18, everyone goes through a surgical procedure that cures them of the possibility of contracting this highly contagious and emotionally crippling condition. When the story begins, Lena has 95 days left until her procedure and she is set to be paired by the state with a compatible match for marriage. I don't even have to tell you what happens inside those 95 days.
Of course, Lena falls in love, but the story of her awakening is more than just a tale of romance. The spiritual power of love is contrasted with the soulless power of the state and as Lena surrenders to love, a near Shakespearean drama unfolds. Lena learns to follow her deepest longings rather than do what she is told to do. She learns think for herself, speak from her heart and do what is ultimately going to free her from the tyranny of society. Far from being a disease, love is revealed to be the cure.
Oliver's books is fast-paced and delivers. It's a book you'll want to read and then pass on to your friends.
Emory's own Joseph Skibell authors this epic tale of the idealistic anti-hero Jakob Sammelsohn. Dr. Sammelsohn, exiled by his pious Hasidic father for the crime of reading secular books, finds himself lovelorn in 1895 Vienna. He falls madly in love with a woman he spies from a theater balcony and the ensuing obsession takes him into world of Sigmund Freud in the early days psychoanalysis. The woman turns out to be Freud's most notorious neurotic, and the young Dr. Sammelsohn becomes involved in a cure gone terribly wrong.
Next Sammelsohn meets the creator of Esperanto and becomes infatuated with a beautiful devotee of the the common world language. Fueled by passion for world peace, the two romantics enter the dirty web of politics behind the universal language movement. Again, mystical events intercede in history causing Sammelsohn to bungle his work in the cause.
Sammelsohn finally ends up in the Nazi occupied Warsaw Ghetto in the 1940s. He befriends a rebbe and ends up on a trip to Heaven where he finds not exactly what he was expecting.
Skibell is a masterful satirist, who deftly weave historical tales into otherworldly scenarios, blending hilariously egotistical characters with mystical phenomena and factual events. The story of his protagonists personal exile is ingenious, incongruous and hugely compelling. The story begs the big questions born of human suffering with high Jewish humor. After finishing over 600 pages, I wanted to know what happens next to the endearing Dr. Sammelsohn. Is he curable? I hope not because I want to read the sequel.
In the video below, Skibell performs a song about his book.
So many people blogged about The Book Thief during short term that I decided I had to see what all the fuss was about. I read it over the summer and enjoyed it very much. Zusak's characters were compelling and believable - from Death's wry wit and resplendent metaphors to Hans Hubermann's gentle presence to the irony of Mama's affectionate swearing. I even grew fond of Death. And now I know where the tittle of Greg's blog comes from!
Death himself narrates the story of Liesel Meminger, a German girl growing up in under Hitler's rise to power. Death's perspective on humanity is sometimes surprising and often profound. He becomes fascinated Liesel when he comes to take the soul of her younger brother and begins to follow her life. As you can imagine, the story is full of both personal and political intrigue.
Markus Zusak (See interview below) is a rising star in the world of young novelists. According to his website, he has written four novels before The Book Thief. His other books are The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, Getting the Girl and I Am the Messenger. Zusak is the recipient of a 2006 Printz Honor for excellence in young adult literature. He lives in Sydney.
One of my favorite aspect of the book was its emphasis on the power, beauty and magic of words. Zusak's writing style is innovative and poetic. The Book Thief is a book of books.
I just finished The Science of Trust by John Gottman. Gottman rose to national prominence as a couple's therapist and researcher after Malcolm Gladwell (in Blink) wrote about his uncanny ability to predict the success of a couple's relationship after observing a 3-minute interaction between them. In The Science of Trust, Gottman describes how he quantifies couples' communication patterns, translates them into mathematical equations, and then uses them as predictors of whether the couple will be happily married, unhappily married or get a divorce.
According to Gottman, the key predictor in the success of a relationship is a couple's ability to manage conflict. Happy couples do not enter "negative/negative" conflict states (when both parties are in retaliation mode) as frequently as unhappy couples, and when they do, they do not usually become absorbed by such states. Unhappy couples enter negative/negative states more frequently and have far more difficulty exiting the states as they find these states absorbing. Gottman suggested that happy couples don't enter these states as often because they have more control over the regulation not only of their emotions, but of their physiology. There were distinct correlations between physiological arousal and negative states. Gottman's research was clear that once a person enters a negative physiological state ("flooding"), communication is completely ineffective. In other words, when someone becomes overwhelmed with negative emotions (like anger or even worse, contempt), rationality is out the window and conflict can't be resolved until the person's nervous system calms down. Gottman's research also shows that the outcome of a conflict usually determined with in the first 3 minutes of the interaction. He stresses the importance of beginning the discussion tactfully, expecting a positive outcome and remembering that your partner is a good person who is sometimes annoying (rather than a selfish person who is only out for him or herself). Here's a 1-minute clip of Dr Gottman talking about how he can predict divorce.
One of the fascinating parts of this book is about the roles each of the partners plays in resolving conflict successfully. For instance, the wife is often more effective at turning a conflict around by being positive about her husband, while a husband is more effective if he is influenced by his wife's negative affect. His last chapter is called "The Mathematics of Relationships: Power, Imbalance, Trust and Betrayal." There are two interesting elements of this chapter. First, Gottman reveals himself as a total math nerd. Second, he shows solid evidence that couples who share power in relationships are happier. Duh, right?
A lot of what Gottman teaches us in this book is common sense and intuitive, and his research only serves to confirm what is glaringly obvious--such as the idea that trust is a fundamental building block of happy relationships. Other things he covers are revelations about how couple dynamics operate. He draws some clear conclusions, but plenty of other things about love and relationships, trust and betrayal remain mysterious and inexplicable. The implications of his research, however, goes beyond couple relationships and can be applied to any relationship: parent and child, teacher and student, friendships, business and professional relationships, and even issues of national and international diplomacy. If you like math and/or are fascinated by love, read this book.
The Fall of Rome by Martha Southgate is set on the campus of Chelsea, an elite, all male, Connecticut boarding school.The story is told from the perspectives of three different characters:Jerome Washington, a Latin teacher and the only black member of the faculty; Jana Hansen, a white literature teacher, new to the school; and Rashid Bryson, one of a handful of African American financial aid student who is struggling to adjust to the rigorous academic culture of the school (for which his inner city school has not prepared him) and life among a wealthy student population. Rashid decides to attend Chelsea the wake to his older brother’s tragic death.His parents, once supportive of his education, are now so traumatized by the grief of losing a son that they are emotionally absent from Rashid.Rashid sees Chelsea as a way to escape the pain of his home life and at the same time pay tribute to his brother.
An overarching theme of the book is race and class diversity, and the character’s different perspectives on these issues play into the events that move the plot of the story. The fact that Chelsea has only one black faculty member and that he is a scholar of classical Roman antiquity speaks volumes about the school’s issues with diversity.That Jerome so strongly identifies with the historical roots of European culture also symbolizes the disconnect he feels with his own roots and culture.Jerome feels that he achieved his position in life as a result of his own hard work and feels that other African Americans from lower class backgrounds must rise above their condition in the same way he did. Jana, on the other hand, is more liberal in her ideas and is determined to provide the help Rashid needs to adjust to the rigors of the exclusive private education he signed up for.
The book is fast paced and held my interest throughout. The characters are complex, and while Southgage illuminates the conflicts between them, she never fully resolves them. I think this is the mark of a great writer. Her novel doesn’t neatly solve Rashid’s (or Chelsea’s) problems, but we see significant growth and change, and even some hope.The book is a commentary on the state or race in our culture today, particularly in elite private academies.This is a very good book and a must read for students in a school like ours.
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones is set in Southwest Atlanta in the 1980s. Jones grew up in Atlanta and this is her third novel set in the the city. The story in Silver Sparrow is told from the point of view of two different teenage girls. Jones chronicles the life of two half-sisters who grow up only a few miles apart but didn't know each other. They have different mothers, yet shared the same father. James Witherspoon married Laverne (Chaurisse's mother) when she was 14 years old and pregnant. While he was married to Laverne, James became involved with Gwen (Dana's mother) and fathered Dana. He lives with Laverne and Chaurisse, but visits Gwen and Dana on Wednesday nights. Dana feels second best to Chaurisse because Chaurrise is his daughter in "public," while James keeps Dana hidden, afraid that his wife and other daughter will discover her existence. In some ways Dana feels fortunate because she knows about Chaurisse while Chaurisse knows nothing about Dana. When the two girls inevitably meet, Chaurisse is fascinated with Dana because she has long, thick hair and Chaurisse considers her to be beautiful, a "silver girl." Chaurisse believes she is chubby and unattractive and feels inferior to Dana. Dana, of course, cannot tell Chaurisse the truth, and this sets the stage for complications in their relationship. Through this story, Jones explores the damage lies and secrets do to relationships of all kinds. Ultimately James is found out, and though there is intense competition for his love and attention, nobody wins in this sad story.
Tayari Jones also wrote Leaving Atlanta, which won a number of awards. The backdrop for the story is the Atlanta child murders from 1979-81. Jones was a child living in Southwest Atlanta during the time when thirty African American children in nearby neighborhoods were murdered. For more information about Tayari Jones and her books, click here. To find out what she is reading, visit here blog. Jones will be in Decatur on Thursday, July 28, at Eagle Eye Bookshop.
I usually read more than one book at a time. Right now I'm reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okaoafor.
Who Fears Death is a post apocalyptic novel set in a futuristic subsaharan Africa. The heroine is a 16-year-old girl who is a social outcast because she is the product of a violent rape as an act of war between two tribes. Onyesonwu is discovering that she has magical powers like shape shifting and traveling to the land of the dead, and she must learn how to use her power wisely. The author uses fiction as a means to address intense social issues like racism, war, sexism, genocide, rape and female circumcision. She combines themes of race, class and gender with fantasy fiction to create a world that's eerily mirrors our own. This book is not for the faint of heart. There are some brutal scenes in which the author does not flinch from portraying scenes of violence. Interestingly, it's not that depressing because our heroine clearly intends to overcome the horrific discrimination she faces. Will she find her power? Will she ultimately use it for the good? I don't know yet, because I haven't finished the book.
While the summer isn't over yet, this is the most powerful book I've read so far. Author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer has established himself as a master story teller. In his first two books, you get the sense that he's drawing on real life experiences and family histories to create his fiction, and in Eating Animals, you get to see the source of his material. Eating Animals is Foer's work of non-fiction. Weaving a tapestry of stories of his family history with stories of the farmers, activists, animals, and virtually everyone he meets along the way, he exposes the cruelty of animal agriculture in a way that no one has before. When his son was born, he wanted to be a good father, so he decided to investigate how to feed him in a way that was truly nourishing and healthy. His book, the story of that investigation, combines impeccable research (with 17 pages of footnotes), devastating data and brilliant storytelling. It is his storytelling, however, that keeps the reader interested and engaged, even in places where the cruelty is difficult to bear. Throughout the book, he intertwines stories of his doting Jewish grandmother's complex relationship to food. A holocaust survivor who came very close to starving before the end of WW II (and a quirky, compelling character who is recognizable throughout his fiction) she has experienced a trauma that she transmits to succeeding generations of her family. Although he never makes a direct comparison, the reader cannot help but compare, through his juxtapostion of stories, the cruelty of the Jewish holocaust to the slaughter of animals he describes so unflinchingly. Foer makes a case for the argument that our capacity for disconnection and denial is at the center of all human cruelty. Our relationship to food is central to our identities and our relationship with others, yet we feed ourselves without knowing (and often willfully denying) where our nourishment comes from. Indeed, the conscious denial of not only the slaughter methods, but the conditions in which most farm animals are breed and raised, is necessary for us to continue to support the industry with our money and our appetites. Foer's book is not judgemental, just sensible and compassionate. Like all serious writers, he does not back away from emotional truth. Characteristically, where most writers stop, Foer dares to contintue writing, always taking his topics a little deeper than the reader is prepared to go.
This book seriously challenged the way I eat. Like Foer, I had vascillated between vegetarianism and meat eating for a number of years. While watching Food, Inc. had a temporary effect, reading Eating Animals was far more powerful. Why is this? I believe it's because of Foer's brilliant writing: his compelling characterizations of people and animals goes beyond the mere facts of the matter (which only appeals to our intellects) to the emotional truth where a deeper connection within ourselves makes permanent change possible. Foer makes us realize that eating is central to who we are. We are what we eat and eating compassionately changes our bodies as well as our souls.
Freedom (TM), another high-tech thriller by Daniel Suarez, is the sequel to Daemon, which I read earlier this summer. In Daemon, Matthew Sobol, a computer genius and video game designer, creates a program that goes into effect when triggered by his death. The program (or daemon) manages to create nightmares of network security, kill a lot of people, pretty much bring down the infrastructure of society and take over the world. It hacks the data of major corporations, banks and the government, manipulating people and institutions who must either do his bidding or...well, die. Sobol leaves video records that guide the investigation into his crimes. At the end of Daemon, Sobol's motives are still not enitrely clear to the reader. While he seems undoutedly sinister at the beginning of the book, by the end the reader is wondering if maybe he's not such a bad guy. Does he have a larger plan for the world in mind?
In Freedom Sobol's motives are revealed. Because the world has already been taken over by corrupt megacorporations who have bought government influence, Sobol's program is actually trying to do a good deed and win the world back for common humanity. Unfortunately, the daemon does not shy away from violence, but uses it to his advantage, creating gruesome bloodbaths in a number of places. (According to my sources, this is a play on video game violence.) In fact, the ending of Daemon was so ridiculously violent that I almost didn't read Freedom. Well, I thought about not reading it, but you know how inquiring minds are. They have to know and I had to know what Matt Sobol's grand plan actually was.
Some of Suarez's best writing is in the sections in which he fictionalizes technology. A lot of the action actually occurs in a video game-like setting. Sobol creates an alternate web called the "dark net" which has its own economy and is governed by the daemon's logic and by popular vote. A character in the game (meaning any member of the dark net) can click on another character's icon and get all sorts of personal data, as well as a matrix of their connections to other characters. Imagine someone being able to click on your head and having access to anything you've done on a computer ever -- and your email contacts and Facebook friends list. This easy access to information as well as the fact that almost everything is vidoe taped creates a kind of transparency that is weird, but interesting to imagine.
At times Suaraz's writing degenerates into the didactic. I don't like it when a fiction writer tries to teach a lesson. Of course, all good fiction writers do this, but the lesson should be so suble that the reader is unaware of being taught. Suarez is at his worst when writing about farmers and their victimization by a megacorporation that is taking over their farmland, patenting seeds, planting only one crop and basically running them out of business. One of the characters (a farmer's daughter) has to convince her father to join the dark net to fight this company. She teaches us about Monsanto's (not the name Suarez uses in the book) escapades in the Midwest in a thinly veiled lecture on the evils of industrial farming.
By far the creepiest thing about this book is how true it is. Reading it during the Gulf Oil Disaster, I was already wondering why BP seemed to be in charge of the clean up rather than the regulatory agencies of the government. Then the stories of sex and drug parties for MMS employees came out. And now the $10 million tax write off for BP. And what about Ken Salazar's relationships to the oil industry? What about all those government subsidies to the oil industry ( depreciation tax write offs) and the hold that industry seems to have on congress? Is does seem that people who speak up against them have paid a price. The haunting question Freedom asks is this: How true is Suarez's fiction?
Here is the first in a six-part interview with Suarez on "What the Tech?" in which he talks about the technology behind his fiction, how he wrote the book and marketed it. Interestingly, he self-published the book before it was picked up by a mainstream publisher.
Jonathan Safran Foer says he lived in the brain of Oskar Schell for two and a half years to write this book. Oskar Schell is the quirky, nine-year-old protagonist of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer's second novel. Foer interweaves stories of personal trauma, family history and international tragedy to acheive insight into love, loss and the search for meaning. One of the first post 9/11 novels published, the book has been widely acclaimed.
No one writes characters quite like Foer does. Where most writers stop, Foer pushes a little further, delving deeper into the psyche of his subjects, adding details and description, thoughts and feelings that breathe life into his pages. Oskar, for instance, is a precocious child, raised by progressive parents on the Upper East Side of New York City. He is mulitlingual, a pacifist, a vegan and an amateur astrophysicist. Oskar is also lost in a sea of grief at his father's death. It is through Foer's portrayal of Oskar's remarkable intelligence that his pain becomes palpable for the reader. Oskar's intense and questioning mind needs answers. When he finds a key in his father's closet, his story takes on the dimensions of a quest as he searches to find the lock the key opens. And like most quests, it does't lead Oskar where he thinks it will.
Oskar's story is interwoven through parallel narratives with those of his grandparents, survivors of Nazi occupied Dresden. Each narrative has a distinct style and vocabulary and each character has a personal story to tell. The stories are tied together by a shared history and the impact of a single, horrible event on the course of a human life.
Foer also uses "postmodern" technique to take the book beyond the conventional format of a novel. He includes photographs, handwritten notes, codes and script written over script to convey his messages.
This is the first of three books I will read by Jonathan Safran Foer. Next I'm reading Eating Animals which is a nonfiction book he wrote after he and his wife had a baby. He wanted to know more about how to feed his child. In it he explores not only the way our food is produced, but the culture of eating and our various attachments to food. After that I'm reading Everything is Illuminated, which is supposed to be hilariously funny, but in a dark way. I've already seen the movei and it was excellent. I love his writing and look forward to reading more of his work.
Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal is a nonfiction work about passive entertainment. Boal's title evokes the classic 1960s book on education by Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is about passive education. Friere is a personal hero of mine (and Oman's) and some of the theory behind our race, class and gender course is based on his work.
Boal applies Friere's theories on education to theater. He traces how theater has evolved over the centuries from something with more audience participation to a model in which the audience sits passivly and watches. He suggests that through empathy with the characters and catharsis through the action in the story, spectators are rendered passive. He belives that when spectators have no control over the outcome of the story, it affects them in their lives outside the theater. He believes this passivity translates into the spectators' wider life and that our model of theater helps to create a general society that is helpless and incapable of social change.
Boal started a "people's theater" in Peru in which audience members participate in the action. They improvise a scenario in which spectators have the opportunity to change the action to see what kind of outcomes may arise. He gives a series of theater exercises at the end of the book, and they sound truly fun. We plan to try some of his ideas out next year in race, class and gender. Boal has presented workshops on his methods all over the world. I got this book from Elisa Hernandez, and she and I plan to go to one of these workshops for training in his methods. Unfortunately, Boal died last year, so we won't be training with him personally, but he left behind a movement in theater and many people are teaching his techniques.
Boal's theories on story are thought provoking. He even makes me question The Hero's Journey as a story model. According to Boal, story is a powerful educational force, and through it we are conditioned to believe that power resides in individuals and that those individuals are usually someone outside ourselves. He makes a good point, but that's only because most theater (and literature) is bad. A good story motivates, changes and empowers the reader. I'm left with the question what makes good story and what activates people to make positive changes in the society they live in.
Testimony by Anita Shreve is, on the surface, a testimonial against teenage drinking. Set in a elite boarding school in Vermont, the story revolves around a sex scandal that occurs ostensibly as a result of binge drinking. The author says in the clip below that if she could chose an audience for this book, it would be teenage boys.
The story unfolds through the voices of each of the major characters and with each entry, the plot thickens. Suffice it to say, things are not as they appear on the surface.
This book has gotten excellent reviews. I read quite a few and not a single one questioned why Shreve does not go more deeply into the back story of the girl who was involved. She deepens almost every other character's story. I was left wondering what would motivate a girl to behave this way and Shreve did not answer my question. I thought it weakened the book considerably.
A daemon is a software program that runs continuously in the background of a computer system. It's invisible to users until an "event" happens that triggers the program. In this case, the "event" is Matthew Sobol, a legendary computer game designer's death. Sobel is the architect of a program that once activated, takes on a life of its own. Essentially, Suarez's daemon is on the way to systematically taking over the world. It runs, of course, on logic, and the author does a good job of making the story plausible. Since virtually all of our institutions dependent on computers, it's not difficult to feel vulnerable to this sort of attack. Plus, certain aspects of this dystopia are similar to the world we live in already. We don't have to imagine the presence of nefarious minds tampering with our data. We read about technology spies and hackers in the news.
This book is by no means great literature, but an interesting commentary on today's political, technological and economic climate. I want to follow up with Freedom before the summer is over, but I'm in no rush. According to my sources, Sobol's motives for creating the daemon are revealed in Freedom, and they are not what you think they might be.
I just read about this book in the New York Times this morning. It's based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The book hasn't been released yet, but is getting great reviews. Since some of you expressed an interest in reading Shakespeare, this provides a great incentive. A lot of schools start with R&J in 9th grade, so here's your chance to get a head start. I suggest you begin by watching two film adaptations of the play. First watch the award winning 1968 version by director Franco Zeffirelli. He stays true to the scene and setting of the original play. The second film is a modernized version of the story made in 1996 and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo. They update the scene, but retain the original dialogue. After watching these two films, you'll develop an ear for the language and will be able to read and understand the play.
After reading the play, the novel Juliet should be far more accessible and interesting. The character Juliet, by the way, was 13-years-old in Shakespeare's story. To read an Amazon review of the soon-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. book, click here.
Here are a few cool video trailers that students created in Anna's short term course last year. To see more book trailers created by Paideia students, click here.
Better yet, here is a trailer for The Good Theif that Grace and Ellery made in Greg's lit class.
I start a lot of books I don't finish. In fact, it's rare that I actually read a book all the way through. Either I'm very hard to please or I have a very short attention span...or both. I need a page turner. Is that bad? I won't list the titles of all the books I have started and not finished because that would be rude and besides, there isn't enough room here.
The last book I read all the way through was The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Stockett is an Atlanta author and I like to keep up with local writers. The Help is set in Mississippi during the 1960s and the story is told from several Characters' points of view. Some of her characters are wise and wry and others are just plain ignorant. Among other things, the book is a social commentary on racism in the South during that time.
I read all the time. I read news article, professional articles and do plenty of research to prepare for classes I teach. I sometimes feel a bit recalcitrant because I don't read more fiction. But then when I stop and think about it, my life is more interesting than most books. Still, it's great to find a good book that you can't put down. Feel free to send me your recommendations.
One of the first books I ever owned was One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. I was six years old at the time, and I loved that book. In fact, I still love it. I think Dr. Seuss was one of the greatest writers that ever lived, and he is probably my favorite poet. I'm fascinated by his capacity for language and word play. He manages to combine silly poetry with deep themes and writes on a level both children and adults can understand. One of my favorite books is Horton Hears a Who. I loved that book so much that I couldn't go see the movie. I was afraid it would ruin it for me.
Theodor Seuss Geisel's political ideas are often reflected in his childrens books. The Lorax is about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; The Sneetches was about racial equality; The Butter Battle Book, about the arms race; Yertle the Turtle, about anti-fascism and anti-authoritarianism; How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was about anti-materialism; and Horton Hears a Who! (1954), about anti-isolationism and internationalism. Geisel expressed strong opposition to racism and anti-semitism both in and out of his books.
Dr. Seuss also left a little known body of fine art. Here are a few examples of his drawings and paintings.
