The Physics of Baseball by Robert K. Adair

I've always enjoyed playing baseball.  As I grew up, I played every position, though shortstop was my favorite.  I was a solid hitter, an excellent fielder, and a fast runner.  I had a strong but erratic arm, and I never had the size to play even college baseball.  I played for about eleven years, mostly during the summer.  This is my background as I began reading The Physics of Baseball, a book that really ought to appeal to me.  And it did.  Sort of.


The author, a Yale professor of physics, has the perfect credentials to write the book: a love of baseball, an understanding of the game, and a Ph.D. in physics.  I was looking forward to reading it, but I often found myself disappointed.  Parts were really interesting, as when he discussed pitch velocity, air resistance, and the challenges of batting.  There were other times when he seemed to get caught up in the particularities of an aspect of the game and didn't spend enough time pulling everything together.  I found myself thinking, "Now that's really interesting, but what are the implications for players and fans?"  There was a little of that, but not enough for me.  He did not include his calculations (thankfully), and he went into enough depth to convey a thorough understanding and fulfill the book's promise.  He seemed to know enough about the game to couch the ideas in clear examples, even if they were a bit dated.  I guess I was looking for him to take the next step and discuss what his theorizing meant for the manager or the fan.  How did his calculations impact game strategy?  How might a player use the book?  Who is the real audience for the book, anyway?


This is one of several baseball books I've read (or tried to read).  Ken Okrent's 9 Innings, which documents in great detail, a mid-summer game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles, is another.  It's a good book, but it moves away from the game to explore the personalities of the players and managers and bit too often and for too long a time.  However, I did get a real appreciation for the Oriole Way, Earl Weaver, and Paul Molitor.  The Curious Case of Sid Finch, a fiction novel which was as forgettable as the author, is a third.  I'm looking forward to reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  The movie was fun to watch, and hopefully the book will develop the ideas in more detail.

Couple more titles

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
This was a very cool book--one of the first ones I read this year.  A fictional narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 (or so) Spartans stood against the entire Persian army (reputed to be hundreds of thousands strong), the book is filled with great moments of heroism and leadership.  The Spartan king, Leonidas, comes up with inspiring messages to his troops and always seems to have the right answer to address any situation.  Pressfield does a great job preparing the historical landscape so that the battle is more meaningful.  It would be nice to see him do the same with the Athenian victory at sea against the Persians that followed soon after the Hot Gates fight, but better to celebrate what we do have than lament what we don't.  The book is filled with great insights into human nature and fascinating observations about war.


The characters are well-developed and interesting, and the history (which I hope is fairly accurate) of the time period is as engrossing as it is depressing and disturbing.  I've read The Iliad and The Odyssey several times each, and they suggest a bleak, unforgiving, survivalist mentality that pervaded Greek culture, and while this book reflects that perspective to a degree, King Leonidas of the Spartans seems much more pensive and philosophical than warlike and vindictive, as he is often portrayed.  The culture of the Spartans, as illustrated in the novel, is harsh and violent, but not mindless and one-dimensional, as with the movie 300.  Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the movie, but I admit it was cartoonish and unrealistic.  Gates of Fire is much more realistic and, as a result, more enjoyable in the empathy it develops.


True Grit by Charles Portis
This was a February choice, and the serendipity of the season matched the tone of the novel: Bleak, harsh, direct, and unforgiving.  The narrator, a woman reflecting on a significant event from her childhood, is the same as in the film versions.  She is caustic and opinionated, unyielding and resourceful.  She knows her own mind and is a great companion on this journey of vengeance.  I saw the film version with John Wayne many, many years ago, and then the more recent re-make with Jeff Bridges (which I liked better), but the book helped develop the characters in ways the films could not.  The wry observations made by the narrator and her frequent attempts to rationalize her decisions made the book a great companion for the films.  Lots of humor, lots of action.  The irascible Rooster Cogburn is difficult to root against.  The characters are well-developed and compelling, and each one is driven by his or her own goals, making this a realistic piece of fiction.  The grittiness and details of the book make it easy for readers to immerse themselves in the setting.  This is a good winter read--not for the beach.

A Guide to Fantasy Literature by Philip Martin

I read this a couple months ago and have just now gotten around to posting.  This was a somewhat disappointing text.  I was hoping for something new and challenging, but this lacked the authoritative voice and originality that I was looking for.  The author didn't seem scholarly so much as enthusiastic and amateurish.  It's a short, easy-to-read guide that would appeal more to a casual reader (or writer) of fantasy than a scholar. There are few academic references in the book, but there are a whole lot of quotes from fantasy novels and authors. The organization is logical, and the prose is readable if not elegant. There are a few errors in the book--typos, really--and the author does not risk much, intellectually-speaking, or open himself up for serious critique.  It's pretty bland, overall.  The divisions of fantasy literature, or "rings" as the author denotes them (possibly a nod to Tolkien), into High, Adventure, Fairy-tale, Magical Realism, and Dark are over-broad, rough, and expansive, like cutting a piece of paper with an axe. The way the author describes it, "Dark Fantasy" is actually just horror literature, and most serious scholars would put more distance than Martin between the category of fantasy and fairy-tale or magical realism.

The first half of this short book deals with fantasy from an academic perspective and is more interesting to a reader than the second half which deals with fantasy from a writer's perspective. The first half is also more illuminating; the second half is fairly generic, as the information can be found in most books that deal with fiction-writing as a craft.

I recommend this book to a casual reader who knows little about fantasy but would like to broaden their understanding. A serious reader or scholar would likely find little of value here that might expand their knowledge base or challenge their thinking.  Farah Mendlesohn is MUCH more illuminating to read.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Short post today.  A really fascinating book filled with great anecdotes and applications of Gladwell's central concept.  Essentially, he says we humans should trust our instincts because, generally speaking, we're accurate on our first impressions--even if they take place within the blink of an eye.  We may not be able to fully articulate these impressions, but we shouldn't let that stop us.  There's a caveat, though: If we don't have a significant experience with something, or if we let our prejudices cloud our judgments, then we are apt to make a poor choice.  I guess the upshot is, trust your reaction to something if you know enough about it, but make sure your position isn't influenced by prejudices.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I wasn't quite ready for this novel.  It was harsher than I anticipated.  By "harsh," I mean it involved rather seedy, nefarious characters who, generally speaking, were really not good people.  The novel documented some pretty unpleasant activities, but there were characters one could root for, even though they occasionally let you down.  (So far, these characters sound like real people, right?  That's what I liked best about the novel.)


By the time the title is illuminated--the "goon squad" as a metaphor for "death"--we are ready for it, and it makes much of the book make more sense.  The characters, for all their faults and deficiencies, are very much like us: They struggle, they feel fear, they try to get things right but too often fail, they sometimes recognize their flaws (sometimes not), and they push through the narrative with admirable courage in the face of death.


The novel is told in a series of related chapters, each one devoted to a particular character and written sympathetically from their perspective (in the third person).  The characters' lives interconnect in unusual ways.  Time shifts are frequent in the novel, and as each chapter begins, the first task is to orient yourself chronologically.  Characters introduced as rather minor players in one chapter are discovered to be the main attraction in the following chapter, providing a motif of linkages which illustrates the clever "six degrees of separation" theory.  (Note: Kevin Bacon does not actually appear in this novel.)


This is definitely a character-driven novel.  The events, though at times unbelievable and bordering on fantastic, move the narrative forward and give the characters something to react to, to bounce off while living their sordid lives.  The separate chapters and intertwined lives of the characters eventually do cohere into an overarching narrative with a satisfying, melancholy, and eerily beautiful ending.


This is a gritty novel of life and death that borders on pulp fiction.  The characters are fully developed, round, and differentiated in various ways.  Their voices (unlike those in The Martian) are unique to, and indicative of, their personalities.  Most of the characters were interesting, and while some of the narrative lines remained incomplete, we learned enough about each character to satisfy us.  Well, pretty much.  I would like to have learned more about the young actress who deliberately insulted the General/dictator.  And the overweight rocker who tries to exploit his long-dead career by launching a tour he promotes as a very public suicidal march toward oblivion, but who ends up actually resurrecting himself and his artistic life, ironically.


I finished the book about two months ago, so I can't recall too many specific details.  I enjoyed it, even though at times reading it was akin to slogging through knee-deep mud.  I just felt so dirty...  This was no light-hearted romp through Hogwarts, and though there was humor, it was dark and grim.


Kind of like life, no?

The Martian by Andy Weir

This was an enjoyable novel.  Nothing literary about it, just a great summer read in the vein of Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe or the film Cast Away.  The main character--Mark Watney--has a great personality and sense of humor, making him easy to root for.  Highly intelligent, he solves problem after problem (after problem) with creativity and ingenuity, showing a tremendous will to survive against all odds.  Parts of the book stretch belief, like the public's continued interest in the marooned astronaut for many months and the lengths both the U.S. and Chinese governments go to in their rescue attempts.  Weir does his level best to explain these away, however.


The Martian, to quote Bart Simpson, is "like The Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing.  Damn, hell, ass cursing!"  This was an aspect of the novel that bothered me.  Okay, before you think of me as a prude, let me say that such elements--when used appropriately in a text--do not bother me.  I've read and enjoyed Anderson's Feed, Grossman's The Magicians, Halpern's Sh*t My Dad Says, and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (see the adjacent entry), so swearing as a concept does not bother me.  My objection is the appropriateness of it.  It just struck me as excessive and unnecessary in The Martian.  It didn't really serve a narrative purpose, develop character, illustrate some aspect of the society, or advance the theme in some way (the other books I mentioned generally do this).  I kept asking, Why is everyone swearing so much?  And it wasn't just Watney.  It was pretty much every character in the book.  Which brings me to Major Point Number Two.


The characters were generally flat with little to distinguish them, especially regarding their speech patterns.  I said at the top of the post that this isn't Literature.  It's a Summer Read.  Fine.  I still think the characters should be developed (at least some of them), have somewhat recognizable speech cadences, and grow (at least the main character).  It seemed as if all the characters were smart-asses who liked to swear.  None was really round or fully-developed, including Watney.  Also, Watney did not grow, change, or develop as a character.  He was pretty much the same at the end of the novel as at the beginning.  This is not a character-driven novel; it is governed wholly by plot.


*Mild spoiler coming...*  But the novel was a cool ride, for all those problems.  I had a hard time believing the final rescue sequence, starting from when he took off from Mars until he was brought aboard the rescue craft.  So many problems occurred that I started saying, "Enough already!  Just get the guy off the freakin' planet!"  Whatever.  It was still cool.  The science was interesting, and Weir made sure to explain everything as necessary, walking the line between glossing the concepts and burdening the reader with excessive detail.  The language was technical on occasion, but I was always able to follow the ideas, and the jargon both enhanced the author's credibility and helped maintain my own suspension of disbelief.  It's a fun book to read, and I recommend it for planes, weekend trips, and beach excursions.

Belated entries

I haven't commented on my readings in a long time--at least not publicly.  Most of my time these past few years have been spent first researching and writing my dissertation, then learning a new job as a professor of education.  I'm going to make an effort to re-establish myself here, for no other purpose than simply to jot down my reactions to some of the books I've been reading so I can uncover my thoughts on them and thereby clear my mind.  (By the way, I haven't been keeping careful track of the books I have read throughout the past few years, so I will forgo the list of "books read" until 2016.)  I'll begin with my Spring 2015 readings.

Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson (2006)

I freely admit that I should have read this one a long time ago.  It has been on my shelf for years, and I've just never seemed to be able to get around to it.  I'm glad I finally did.  Not quite 100 pages long, this little book provides an interesting perspective on writing assessment in secondary schools.  Most of the book provides a brief history of writing assessment and rubrics in U.S. education.  The summary is illuminating, succinct, and clear.  Wilson has done a solid job in her research but does not get bogged down in details, nor does her writing suffer from an excessively "academic" style: Her prose is always readable and interesting.  While she does interject various critical comments along the way, the intrusions do not slow the pace of the text.

The final twenty pages of the book is devoted to a re-envisioning of writing assessment without rubrics, though this part is less-well-developed.  She proceeds uncertainly and offers few specific ideas or examples to support her position.  For example, the "grading policy" (prepared by Linda Christensen) Wilson includes by way of illustration is a broad conceptual framework of a grading system for an entire course, not writing in particular.  Christensen (and, by way of explicit approval, Wilson herself) awards credit on an all-or-nothing basis for writing assignments.  While this system is largely aligned with the concepts on which the book is based (i.e., teachers should reward hard work, encourage revision, and support risk-taking), it is pedagogically dissatisfying in its vagueness.  I would have liked to see something more concrete, especially in the way the students reacted to her non-rubric-burdened classroom and the improvements their writing has shown.  Speaking of which, how does a student actually identify quality in their own writing?  In other words, how do they know they are improving?  Wilson notes that English teachers have a general sense of good and poor writing (though she states this as a broad and vaguely-articulated assertion), but for students she offers no specific ideas.  Rubrics, for all their faults, at least give students a starting place, a beginner's definition of "good" writing from which they can grow.  She seems more concerned with arguing against the use of rubrics than for a more effective system of writing assessment.

(Another, minor problem I have with the book is that nearly every example of student writing references narrative writing.  There are exactly two sentences in which Wilson specifically identifies literary analysis--but that's it.  This oversight limits her argument in uncomfortable ways when one considers the amount of writing in an English class that is devoted to literary analysis.)

It is easy for over-worked teachers struggling to keep up with essay-reading and essay-grading to clutch at Wilson's ideas like a drowning swimmer clutches at a life-preserver, and to feel a certain pride (often deserved, sometimes not) when Wilson praises their ability to assess student writing.  These two tendencies, I would guess, will win Wilson a great deal of support among English teachers.  But I was hoping for more substance in her argument.  After she says, "This system of rubrics does not work for students," I expect her to articulate what does work.  But she doesn't really do this in a meaningful way.  Having said that, she has gone far in disrupting the use of rubrics as a tool to assess writing.

Overall, I must applaud Wilson's research into the history of writing assessment and for her bold suggestion that English teachers reconsider how student writing is assessed.  After all, rubrics are a near-ubiquitous method of assessing student writing.  She has some good ideas, and she has started an important conversation that I hope will continue, especially in light of the new work on grading being done by Cathy Vatterott and Myron Dueck.  She has inspired me to re-envision my own writing assessment system as well.  If she had provided a more comprehensive system of writing assessment (she generally points the reader to writing assessment scholars such a Brian Huot for a more detailed approach), or tied in a writing pedagogy that aligned with her assessment beliefs, her book might have been more productive in its goal of reforming teachers' philosophies of writing assessment.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (2015)

It's really too bad this was published.  I say this with all respect to Harper Lee who, in To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote a magnificent Bildungsroman about the growth of a young small-town girl in the post-Reconstruction South and a father's love for his children.  I say "too bad" because I believe it sullies the literary reputation of a beloved author, an author who, given the controversies surrounding the novel, is unlikely to have approved of its publication in its current form.  At least, I would like to believe that.  As it is written, Watchman is, to be gentle, literarily unsatisfying.  Really, it's too poor to even publish.  I mean, there was a good reason it was not published when Lee first submitted it, and if it weren't for Mockingbird's success (and the piles of money to be made from the publication of another book by Lee), Watchman would never have been published today.  Simply stated, it is a bad book.

The narrative is disjointed, haphazard, conflict-less for the first hundred pages, didactic, and sloppy.  The writing is not bad in places, though.  It's downright pretty at times, especially when the author is reminiscing or describing the landscape.  But that is not enough to overcome the host of other ills from which the books suffers.

Most of the characters are so different from those in Mockingbird that one could argue that, rather than purportedly being a prequel, Watchman is merely another Maycomb book that uses the same character names and the same setting.  There were a few humorous flashbacks of Scout, Jem, and Dill playing together as children, but these seemed tacked on and self-indulgent rather than illuminating, critical elements of the novel.  Really, the book reads more like fanfiction than the work of an accomplished author.

In addition to characters who have changed in ways that are significant (and sometimes bizarre, as with Uncle Jack), some minor plot elements from Mockingbird were "misrepresented" in Watchman.  For example, the trial of Tom Robinson that Atticus lost in Mockingbird was somehow reinvented as a victory.

Think about that.  The trial was the major plot element, the driving force that illustrates the love Atticus has for his children and his staunch adherence to his principles, and which led up to Boo Radley finally coming out of his house.  Atticus lost the trial in Mockingbird, but Lee says in Watchman that he actually won the trial.  And that's not a metaphorical win, either.  She writes that Atticus "won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape charge."  She also notes that "Atticus could and did prove consent" on the part of Mayella Ewell.  Which means she and Tom had sex.  And Mayella was fourteen, according to the Watchman text.  How does one begin to reconcile these contrasting accounts?  I don't know, and I'm not going to try.

The ending of the novel is just as crazy.  In several debates (five, I believe, between Jean Louise and three different characters), Jean Louise attempts to understand her father's (and her almost-fiance's) participation in Klan-like activities.  Atticus defends his actions with weak arguments than sound more like rationalizations than logical reasons.  And even after the final confrontation with Jean Louise, in which it seems to be revealed that, rather than trying to win her over to his thinking or to defend his racist actions using antiquated arguments, he argued with her in order to see whether she would stick to her beliefs in the face of a man she loved and admired.  She is ultimately reconciled with him, largely because of that.  Wait, what?!  He's still on the Citizen's Council, still supporting a racist agenda, still providing tacit support to a known Klansman, still lending his good name and reputation to an ugly organization, but she's okay with that.

What most confused me about the ending was how it confounded the themes.  Was this book attempting to argue for states' rights, since at one point Jean Louise rails against the Supreme Court for "telling the South what to do yet again" in its Brown v. the BOE decision?  Was it about racism and prejudice and its effect on people, since Atticus and Henry are presented as racists who intend to intentionally lose a case involving a black defendant (who would certainly be condemned to die for the crime) in order to deny the NAACP an opportunity to use the case for political purposes?  Was it about Jean Louise finally detaching herself from her father and his beliefs?  Was it about nostalgia and the fact that, once she left Maycomb, Jean Louise would forever remain outside of it, even though Uncle Jack tried to convince her to stay in Maycomb and fight the Good Fight?  I just don't know.  The final scenes, with their fiery yet contrived speeches, muddled the themes in my head until I couldn't figure out what Lee was trying to do.

Overall, the book is heavy-handed and didactic, relying more on informing rather than evoking.  We are told many things about Atticus, including his heroism and integrity, but we are shown next to nothing.  Had I not read Mockingbird beforehand, I would have found Watchman even less believable and certainly less interesting.  I would be embarrassed to recommend Watchman to anyone, unless as an exercise in studying the development of a writer.

If Lee is happy with the book as a satisfying sequel/prequel to Mockingbird, an illuminating representation of her political philosophy regarding the South and states' rights, and as a final chapter in her own literary career, then shame on her.  If HarperCollins and Lee's literary executors conducted an end-around or intentionally misled Lee, publishing the book simply for the money and with no regard to Lee's place in the literary canon (which I think is much more likely), then shame on them.  Either way, it's Harper Lee's literary reputation that suffers, and that's the real tragedy of Watchman.

Books: 2009

From Homer to Harry Potter by Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara*
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (re-read)
The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien (re-read)
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (re-read)
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (re-read)
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Ulysses by James Joyce

Next fiction book: Middlemarch by George Eliot
*nonfiction

Ulysses reading schedule

Let's take six weeks on this one (thanks for the feedback!), starting on Father's Day (a nice present to myself). While Christie's book was called the best mystery ever written, Ulysses has been termed simply "the best novel ever written." Here's a suggested reading schedule:

June 28: Chapters 1-8 (~175 pages)
July 10: Chapters 9-13 (~190 pages)
July 20: Chapters 14-15 (~200 pages)
July 31: Chapters 16-18 (~185 pages)

Don't look for a lot of insight in my comments. I'll be happy to get through this book with my wits intact. I anticipate it will require many revisitations before I can feel comfortable with the novel. Still, it will be nice to have had the experience of reading the greatest novel by (arguably) the greatest novelist of the 20th Century.

Mystery novel

I am currently reading Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None. I'm not going to say anything about the specific plot or characters -- don't want to ruin anything for you -- but I will say that, although this is the first mystery novel I've ever read and I don't have any experience with the genre, I am really enjoying it and can see why it has been called "the best mystery novel ever written."  Several elements within the text seem like cliches, but since the novel was written in the late 1930s, it probably originated those elements which have since become cliches. An easy-to-read, compelling, fascinating character study. My students and I have generated several connections to modern-day texts (film, TV, and book), making the novel's influence apparent. A quick read, but very good so far. Hopefully, the ending will not disappoint.

His Dark Materials

Pullman's novels, according to his fans, are better than J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. These people must be crossovers from the Flat Earth Society. Someone, please pass them the Kool-Aid. Pullman's anti-God trilogy doesn't even come close to LOTR. It is less enjoyable than the Harry Potter books and less literarily rich than Le Guin's Earthsea books, and neither of those can touch Tolkien's books for their majesty, profundity, and satisfaction. Not even close. Pullman's works are really not even fantasy; they are closer to science fiction. Even so, I won't ever go back to them, and the only reason I re-read Compass was because I was teaching it and using it for my fantasy lit conference paper. The first book (Compass) is the best, but it's downhill from there. By the time I hit Book 3, I just wanted it to be over. The characters were inconsistent between books, the plot holes more disturbing, the morality more overbearing and heavy-handed, the coincidences more ridiculous, and the conclusion completely over-the-top and unbelievable. Don't waste your time with anything beyond Book 1, if that.

Books: 2008

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Faust by Johann von Goethe
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
Critical Literacy/Critical Teaching by Dozier, Johnston, and Rogers*
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Dubliners by James Joyce
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
Smith of Wootton Major / Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien
Quantity and Quality in Social Research by Alan Bryman*

Next: Middlemarch by George Eliot
(But first some nonfiction)
*Nonfiction

Young Adult Fiction

I recently read three young adult novels: Wicked Lovely, Elijah of Buxton, and I am the Cheese. I wasn't going to add them to my list of books read since none is particularly challenging. However, they are all full-length novels, and the shortest among them -- Cheese -- was also the best and most "literary". They aren't books I would normally pick up and read, but since they were also on the list of summer reading books for school, I figured I should be familiar with them. Elijah (written by Christopher Paul Curtis) was like the Canadian version of a poor man's Huckleberry Finn, though the second half was much better than the first, unlike the Twain novel, which got worse as it went along. The book is written in dialect, but it's not as intense a dialect as Huck Finn. The story isn't nearly as interesting, either. It's a coming-of-age story of a free-born black boy (about eleven years old) who lives in Buxton, Canada, in the mid-nineteenth century (antebellum). It's a good story for students to have read before tackling Huck Finn because it lends itself to many comparisons, but I wouldn't assign it to them as it's rather slow-moving. The ending is a bit dissatisfying as well.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr was better, but still only middling. Now this is going to sound sexist, but I'll comment anyway. It seems that the woman who wrote the book doesn't understand what women really like in guys, nor does she have any understanding of guys in general. The main male love interest is the type of guy who girls think they would like but in reality would quickly lose interest in: popular and self-assured but not arrogant, he really listens to her and supports her, he's strong but understanding, selfless, he likes to cook and keeps a clean house, he's independent but not afraid to commit to her, he doesn't push her romantically and is happy to go at her pace, he's jealous but not overly so, he wants to be friends and more-than-friends with her, he's self-sacrificing, and he isn't at all bothered when she doesn't want to sleep with him. In short, he's a metrosexual artificially-constructed pseudo-rebel and totally unbelievable, although I could certainly picture pubescent girls swooning over him. The author just can't write males. In fact, the main male rival for the protagonist's affections is almost immediately won over by Keenan's charm. The ending of the novel was stupid and the author refused to make any choices. None of the characters suffered significant and permanent loss, nor did they seem to change significantly. I would not have been surprised to find out that the book was actually written by a thirteen-year-old girl. The book did have some interesting scenes, but overall it was so slow-moving that I suspect the author dragged things out from a lack of ideas. I can see the appeal to young (female) readers, but I don't think many young males would like it.

I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier was excellent. Typical Cormier, which is to say unflinching, compelling, interesting story, dramatically tense. It's a difficult book to read, since the reader is forced to put a lot of pieces together, though Cormier gives a lot of help at the end of the book. The description is cliche at times and minimal. It moves forward steadily (the whole book is only 214 pages) and was certainly the best-paced novel of the three. Talk about making tough choices. Cormier's loyalty is to the story, not the characters (unlike Marr), and his ending supports that philosophy. I enjoyed The Chocolate War, though the ending was tough to swallow, and this novel did not disappoint either. This would have been a good novel to teach in school, since it was challenging and had many opportunities for discussion and making predictions. The novel unfolded like an origami, eventually bringing the reader full-circle.

All-in-all, I'm glad I read these. As an English teacher, it's important to connect with adolescent fiction, and it's satisfying to be able to chug three novels in a week, as opposed to my ten-day excursion on the Pequod, or the 100 hours of solitude I was forced to spend with Marquez's masterpiece.

Moby-Dick

This book would probably make my Top Five list, never mind my Top Ten. I can see why it's so well-considered among scholars. Brilliant descriptions, mesmerizing plot, captivating characters, scintillating prose, and memorable scenes. Loved it, loved it, loved it! I'll definitely read this one again, probably next summer.

I had heard about the "hundreds" of pages of descriptions about whales and whaling, and I was ambivalent about them. I tend to enjoy that sort of detail, but many people are turned off by those sections. I was about halfway through the book, still looking for those endless chapters of boredom, when I realized that I had been reading them all along. I had been enjoying them so much that I didn't realize I was "supposed" to be bored by them. (Except the one entitled "Cetology". I was pretty bored by that one.) I found the technical discussions fascinating and useful. I would have appreciated some additional ones about boats, however. (I don't know a top-gallant sail from a forecastle.) The incredible quantity of references, mostly Biblical, was most impressive. I'm fairly literate, but I didn't recognize half of Melville's allusions, except that they came from the Bible and classical literature, history, and mythology.

The characters were great: Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, and of course, Ahab. I was disappointed by Ahab, though. Found him a bit too one-dimensional (I guess he was supposed to be). Still, I would have liked more background on him. Melville seemed more intent on giving information about whaling and whales than about providing character background. I found this refreshing (if I can say that a 150-year-old book is "refreshing") because of the modern novelist's habit of providing too much character background (c.f. Stephen King), a tendency I find over-indulgent. Queequeg was easily my favorite character. From his bravery at saving Tashtego, to his ever-present optimism and his choice to not die when he was sick (talk about opposing the theme of Fate!), I enjoyed reading about him the most.

I thought the battles with Moby Dick were too fast and some of the descriptions difficult to follow, but there were some great scenes: Moby Dick rising quickly from the depths to bite Ahab's boat in half, surfacing beneath Ahab's boat, the Parsee lashed to Moby Dick's back, and the exciting (okay, symbolically-heavy handed) ending. (I'll probably re-read the final three chapters after the novel has "settled". I was a bit tired from having read the final hundred pages in one morning; I'd like to enjoy the chases again when I'm fresh.) Speaking of which, when I first saw "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" I was particularly impressed by Khan's curse to Kirk: "From hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." I remember thinking, "That sounds like an allusion." As I was reading "Moby Dick," I thought, "This is probably the book from which Khan's quote was taken. It would be perfect." I figured it would occur -- if it did at all -- when Ahab encountered Moby Dick, so I kept an eye out for it. But I didn't see it, didn't see it, didn't see it, and ultimately I was almost disappointed. Almost. Best line of the book.

I feel like I should talk about themes, but there simply isn't room here. Nor do I have the time.

Final comments: A profound book. Ahab is appropriately larger than life, although I found Wolf Larsen to be more intimidating as a captain. The prose is muscular but dense at times. The novel resonates like nobody's business. I'm glad I waited as long as I did to read it; I needed all the seasoning I could get to enjoy it. I hope I'll be able to teach the novel some day.

Note:  It is now five years later, and I have had the chance to use Moby-Dick in my Advanced Placement Language and Composition class three times.  The first time did not go over that well, as most of the students (to my later disappointment) did not read the book.  The next two groups mostly did (I think).  The final group (2012-13) was academically better prepared for the task and more intellectually curious, so I'm pretty confident they read it.  Many of the students even said they enjoyed it.  I use the book to help the students grapple with archaic prose, and the novel is well-suited to do that.  I also want to share with them my love of the novel.  I recognize that the book is massive, so I edited the book down for them, cutting out about 1/3 of the novel.  I hope some of them go back and read the whole thing, and I know that several this past year did accomplish that task.  I am proud of those who completed it as well as those who even attempted it.
-MF

The Sun Also Rises

This is my third Hemingway, though I read The Old Man and the Sea quite a long time ago. I enjoyed this one, though not as much as A Farewell to Arms. Seemed less polished overall--the prose, I mean. I liked the characters: they seemed realistic and compelling. The fiesta section of Part 2 was great, and I found myself eagerly anticipating the descriptions of the bull-fights. Parts dragged, but it was a quick read and I liked it. Not a favorite, though. I figure if I read one more--For Whom the Bell Tolls--I can allow myself an informed opinion of him as a writer.

Faust

Impressive work! Reminded me of Paradise Lost, probably because of the religious theme. Difficult to read at times, but worthwhile. Before reading this, I had been considering the reasons for human existence, and I was pretty pleased with myself when I came up with "striving." I figured that humans--and all life on the planet, in fact--were put here to strive and work and improve themselves as individuals (sorry Darwin!). I thought I had something really original there, until I realized that Goethe had figured out pretty much the same thing a few hundred years ago. Whatever. At least I had the same thought as Germany's great uber-literati.

Next...

I am reluctant to do this, but I will have to put aside much of my reading for enjoyment in favor of professional texts. I am going to turn more to nonfiction as I prepare for my next (and possibly last) major academic endeavor which I anticipate will take much of my free time for the next few years. I will still continue to read, but not nearly at the same pace I have been doing for the past couple years. Ah, well. I have to prepare myself for more sacrifices in the future (e.g., fiction, poetry, and NaNoWriMo). I am sure it will be worthwhile, though.

The Grapes of Wrath

Blew me away! I had not been looking forward to this novel. For some reason, I thought it would be boring or difficult to read. It was neither. The story and characters were so compelling that I couldn't put the book down. I loved the dialect Steinbeck wrote in for much of the book. Too often, even skilled novelists who try to write in dialect either can't get the intonations and speech patterns across accurately/effectively, or they try too hard and end up confusing the reader (as in Wuthering Heights). Steinbeck struck the right balance, and after a while, I found myself reading in an "Okie" accent.

I liked his intermediary chapters which mixed nonfiction with fiction to give the reader a sense of what was happening in the world. Sometimes the Joads fell victim to the worst-case scenarios presented in these chapters; sometimes they avoided them. I found myself looking forward to reading them to see how the Joads would handle them. Clearly, they were meant to foreground some issue or event in the novel, to provide some kind of real-world possibility of what might happen.

The characters were varied and realistic, even as they attempted to illustrate the archetypal migrant farmers. The family dynamic, the politics, the social reality -- all were portrayed vividly in immense complexity. There's so much I could say about this novel, but there just isn't space here for it. Loved Ma for her strength, Tom for his steadfastness, Al for his loyalty despite his urge toward independence, Pa for his work ethic, Uncle John for his self-loathing and guilt, Casy for his back-country philosophy, and the dog for his early flattening on the highway.

Ending was ambiguous, but I'm sure Steinbeck intended it that way. We don't know what happened to Tom, Noah, Al, and the rest of the Joads. I am reluctant to assume the worst, despite the harshness of the impending situation (i.e., three months of unemployment looming and no money cushion) because they had escaped hardships in the past. The final scene in which Rose of Sharon suckles the starving man was a disturbing end to a disturbing book.

The way the family faced adversity was truly inspiring. I don't know where Ma got her strength, but it was there when she (and the family) needed it. One of the most memorable quotes from the novel, and which sums up all that is admirable about the attitude of the Joads, was spoken by "Family-First" Ma as the flood waters are rising, threatening to wash them out of the railroad boxcar in which they are living: "Worse off we get, the more we got to do [for each other]." Amen.

A Farewell to Arms

Well, my first major Hemingway (I don't count The Old Man and the Sea as a "major" work, though it was pretty cool) in my back pocket. Pretty good. More "literary" than I thought. There was a delicacy and an intelligence beneath the surface of the text that I had not expected. Kind of like reading the poet Michael Berry: deceptively complex, touching, and graceful. I was impressed. I can easily see why Hemingway is Berry's favorite author (or one of his favorites). I enjoyed the sparse prose and the inexorable, consistently-paced movement of the plot which I found easy to read and enjoyable. There were several scenes I did not anticipate, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The unexpected shooting of Aymo, the near-shooting of Frederick, the escape into Switzerland (and his near-capture). I appreciated the atmospherics of the novel as well. The discussion between the two provincially-partisan Swiss guards after the border-crossing as each extols the virtues of his home territory and attempts to convince Frederick and Catherine to visit (with all their money, of course). This novel was quite a change from the dense Victorian prose of Dickens and a startling contrast to the flowing, poetic style of Nabokov. I'm looking forward to The Grapes of Wrath next. This would be an interesting work to read right after having finished Catch-22. Both have similarly cynical (maybe disillusioned?) takes on different wars.

Lolita

I wasn't really looking forward to reading this book. The only other Nabokov book I read, The Defense, was about chess (a metaphor) and wasn't particularly interesting. Perhaps it was my age (early twenties). Perhaps the subject of the book. Who knows? Lolita, on the other hand, was wonderful! The subject was disturbing, to be sure, but the style was poetic and beautiful, and Nabokov did a great job making this pervert simultaneously disgusting and sympathetic. We appreciate the honest portrayal of his emotions, his desire for Lolita, who is herself a spoiled, vicious, unpleasant, self-centered, rude brat. But we also turn away from the actions of this lust-filled pedophile who repeatedly rapes a twelve-year-old then listens, sexually satiated, as she cries in her bedroom. We feel bad for him as he tries to make the best of a sham of a life with Lolita, while trapping her--his sexual slave, literally--in a twisted relationship from which she cannot escape. Masterful!

The book is filled with surprises and interesting twists of the plot. The language is beautifully poetic and sensually imagistic. Sure, it dragged in sections, but overall the writing was easily strong enough to hold the book together. Nabokov constantly reminds us of Humbert's perversion and Lolita's youth throughout the text, just to make sure we are never won over by the haunting and hypnotically poetic prose. I especially like the elliptical references to sexuality incorporated throughout the book. Humbert seems to be disgusted with himself and cannot even bring himself to discuss his lust in the frankest of terms, treating their unions with delicacy and tact. I could not put the book down, finishing it in two days. The only question is, what book on my Top Ten will be replaced by Lolita?