4 book reviews by ljs

Book Review: Stone Cold
David Baldacci
Vision, NY
2007
511 pages

Guilty pleasures occasionally turn out to be uninteresting drivel. Such is the case with Stone Cold, another in a series of shootemup whodunit in the government
“novels” by David Baldacci, who is a one man pulp fiction industry. In Italy with idle time, I enjoyed reading 400 pages of 3 and 4 page chapters, each leaving part of the plot unresolved until the final climax of blood-letting. This particular Baldacci involves a beautiful con-artist, a tough guy casino owner, two or more corrupt government intelligence officials, one old double agent, one sainted ex-killer, and one killer soon to be ex- and approaching the sainthood of the first ex-killer, who, as the plot would have it, had to kill again to make things right. Then he cleans up after himself and resolves his knotty moral dilemma by …but I shouldn’t give the ending away. The reading level is somewhere around middle school level. The characters suffer no development at all. They are in the end as they are in the beginning. The plot involves lining up the characters to be shot or bombed in line with the progress of the chapters. As bad novels go, this is among the worst pieces of writing I have ever had the experience of reading. And I like some of Baldacci’s other “novels.” Maybe it was Italy.
Book Review: Same Kind of Different As Me
Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent
Thomas Nelson, Nashville
2006
244 pages

I was intrigued by the publicity for this memoir of a well-to-do white man and a homeless black man telling their life-changing stories in alternative chapters. The story traces the personal life history of Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Ron is a successful art dealer with a wonderful and very spiritually-centered wife, Deborah (Debbie), who tries to live out the part of the New Testament of the Bible in which Christ said to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Denver is a sharecropper’s son who was brought up by relatives and left the plantation to live a life on the streets. Ron and Denver meet up in a mission in a seedy part of Forth Worth, Texas, where Deborah has recruited Ron to work with her serving the homeless. Eventually both men change their hearts because of the tireless doing of good works on the part of Debbie. The stories are engrossing, particularly the first part of Denver’s story in which he describes the life of a modern day sharecropper in Louisiana. However, towards the middle and end of the book, the message of faith becomes distinctly evangelical Christian, and this reader wondered whether he had been misled by the publicity for the book. Even the covers do not indicate that the book has a distinctly Christian and evangelical message. I have no objection to such a message in itself, but I would have thought more than twice before buying it had I known this. One other concern I had with the book is Denver’s voice. Obviously an uneducated man, Denver’s narrative is meant to carry the sound of his speech. However, I wonder how much editing or plain out fabricating of his voice was done because of his low literacy. Is this an authentic voice or is it the voice of a white person interpreting the speech of an uneducated deep South black person? If you are a believing Christian with an evangelical streak, then this book is honey to your lips. If you are not, the book is still a good read, but a layer of doubt begins to creep in about the whole enterprise.
Book Review: No Country For Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
Vintage International, NY
2005
309 pages

No Country For Old Men has been realized as a film, so readers coming to the book may have a comparative experience in violence and relentless malevolence. I, who have not seen the film, got a strong and direct dose. The plot revolves around stolen drug money and a human killing machine’s persistent efforts to recover the money for his employer while the current holder of the windfall, which was recovered among a bunch of dead bodies in a desert, tries his best to keep it. Characters are introduced. None of them balances heavier on the scale of virtue than the scale of sin, unless we count the laconic, but patient, seen-it-all figure of Sheriff Bell, who in between the chase for the money, develops his lamentation on the wickedness of the world and the increasing hold that evil has around the neck of modern humankind. Bell seems to regret his role in it even as he bows to the need to punish under the law.

McCarthy is very good at a couple of things: first, he knows his guns and his desert country, and he describes them both in vivid detail, vivid enough to want to make you stay away from both of them. Second, McCarthy is a master of dialogue. The speech that flows from his characters has a rhythm that is a joy to read. I nearly put No Country For Old Men down after the first few pages, but I am glad that I stayed with it because of the dialogue and because McCarthy has absolutely no qualms about killing off a character with whom you’ve spent half of the book. Things change quickly in this novel and guns are the agents of change. I recommend this book for blood thirsty first year students at SBCC.
Book Review: The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Vintage International, NY
2006
287 pages

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a novel of the apocalypse, and also a buddy novel that fits in with McCarthy’s unsettlingly negative view of the human prospect.
A father and son wander the post-apocalypse United States, where gray ash falls from the sky and coats everything, where bodies lie on roadsides, trees are dead and bare, and water is covered in ashy sump. The father is sick and growing sicker. His son is thin and weak. Though the father knows there is very little left to hope for in such a world, he keeps hope alive in his son. He also keeps alive a moral sense which forbids the unnecessary taking of life and the eating of human flesh.

This novel is beautiful in a very sad way. McCarthy’s mastery of dialogue gives us a very clear and deep sense of how a father tries to keep hope alive for his son in a world destroyed by fathers and sons just like these two survivors. The images of destroyed homes, buildings, farms, shops, rural land and cities are vivid, not easily forgettable, nor easily read without an ominous shiver of the spine. The conversation between father and son is both real and upsetting as the father must skirt the edges of falsity in order to tend the slight flame of the son’s life spirit.
And there are guns. But then, in a McCarthy novel, there must be. This novel is very readable, even for low level students, but may just be too unyieldingly negative for a class book.

Possible New Readers for 103 level

This is a review of two books I considered for English 103. I have decided to use the second one, What Matters In America. So here are outlines for each of the books. Hope it helps.

READINGS FOR TODAY (Gary Goshgarian: Penguin, approx. $33.00, 2008)
Review by Anita Cruse
Recommend for English 103

Authors
The authors represent a diverse group as far as gender, ethnicity, age and experience

Original Sources (some of them)
Time The Guardian
Washington Post Smithsonian Magazine
Wall Street Journal The American Prospect
Atlantic Monthly The Chronicle of Higher Ed
New York Times New York Times Magazine
London Times New York Law Journal

Content
A. Introductory “lessons” on critical reading including effective practices that would provide a really good foundation for ACTIVE, ENGAGED, EFFECTIVE, ANALYTICAL Reading. (i.e. Annotating, Summarizing, Questioning, Outlining, Journaling), Includes writing component but at a level I think would support the vital relationship between reading and writing and not as an instructional book for teaching 80.
B. Themes – relevant and would resonate with a diverse student population:
Family Identity
Television Gender
Global Warming Race and Racism
Immigration University System

C. Follow-Up Opportunities – Each piece is followed by questions for critical thinking, analysis, further study, writing ideas, etc.

D. Varying length (2 pages, 5 pages, 8 pages, for example)

E. Each theme has Viewpoints, two pieces on same issue for multiple perspectives (an SLO in ES)

WHAT MATTERS IN AMERICA (Gary Goshgarian: Penguin, app. $36.00, 2010 brand new)
Review by Anita Cruse
Recommend for English 103

Authors
The authors represent a diverse group as far as gender, ethnicity, age and experience

Original Sources (some of them)
Time Huffington.com
The New Black Magazine Smithsonian Magazine
Wall Street Journal The American Spectator
The Boston Globe Applied Developmental Science
New York Times New York Times Magazine
Los Angeles Times New York Law Journal

Content
A. Introductory “lessons” on critical reading including effective practices that would provide a really good foundation for ACTIVE, ENGAGED, EFFECTIVE, ANALYTICAL Reading. (i.e. Annotating, Summarizing, Questioning, Outlining, Journaling), Includes writing component but at a level I think would support the vital relationship between reading and writing and not as an instructional book for teaching 80.

B. Themes – Somewhat more specific and narrow than in other Goshgarian book reviewed.
Is Fast Food Responsible For A Crisis In Public Health?
What Does Freedom of Speech Really Mean?
What’s the Big Deal About Immigration?
Can Religion and Science Coexist?
Why Do We Work?
Is Climate Change a Pressing Problem or Pumped-Up Propoganda?
Do the Media Promote a Culture of Fear?
Is the Internet Changing Our Social Lives?
Does Personal Privacy Have Limits?

C. Prereading Format includes
Connecting to the Topic Words in Context

D. Follow-Up Opportunities – Each piece is followed by questions in this format:
Considering the Issues
Craft and Content
Critical Thinking
Writing About the Issues

E. Varying length

F. Each theme has Viewpoints, two pieces on same issue for multiple perspectives (a SLO in ES)
G. Each theme includes section called Visual Connections (like Rereading America)

True Notebooks by Mark Salzman

This year I have realized that I would like my students to do more reading alongside of their writing. I am not yet sure how I will do this, so I'd be curious to read how others do it. Do you read in ENG 80? What kinds of texts? Is the class organized by theme?

One idea I've had is to use the book True Notebooks as reading material in ENG 80. It is a quick, high interest novel about a writer's year at Juvenile Hall. The novel includes the stories of the teens he meets in Juvie and also includes many samples of their writing. I think I could use the text to point out voice and stylistic devices as well as get students thinking about the decisions we make in life and their consequences. Most importantly, students would hopefully be engaged in a text that features one writer's process, his mental process, and leave students with something a little more meaningful. This novel touched me and I think it would speak to my students as well.

Has anyone else read it?

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

This was one of the most thought provoking books I've read this year. The novel is set in Detroit during the race riots, and since I am from Detroit I found this very interesting. Plus, the main character is very unique in that she is a hermaphrodite, and has to learn how to find her place in society.

Middlesex is part of Oprah's Book Club and has many literary elements one could use in an English class, however it is too challenging for lower developmental readers. If I taught ENG 103, I'd consider using it because I think it would lead to good discussions about: love, coming of age, trust, immigration, acceptance and tolerance. I also think students at SBCC could identify with the main character and that they'd be interested in reading about her teen years in San Francisco. I've heard that some teachers are already using this book, and I'd be curious to what they do with it and how they make it come to life to their students.

The Soloist by Steve Lopez

The Soloist by Steve Lopez is heart wrenching and it is real. As a reader who has had personal and up close experience with mental illness and loved ones, Steve Lopez’ book uncovers the lonely and excruciatingly painful world of the mentally ill, their care givers, care takers, and concerned relatives. It also gives voice to the health care professionals who spend their lives fighting for the rights of their patients and against systems of injustice. “The Soloist” shines a powerful light on the world of the schizophrenic.

Yet, as Steve’s work delivers the tragic world of the mentally ill and specifically the world of the schizophrenic in all of its disintegration and despair, he is able to lift one’s hope for the survival and independence possible for those who suffer from the harsh realities of the illnesses. His writing makes us laugh; it makes us cry; he writes the main character into the reader’s heart and, in doing so, the reader learns his genius and comes to appreciate the man and his talent.

Moreover, and possibly the most vital aspect of the book, is that in telling his story as a journalist, Steve Lopez highlights the humanity of the individual, Nathaniel Ayers. He gives him his individuality and recreates for the reader the incredible strength of the individual to endure, fight, and live with the day to day realities of his world. There is humor; there is love, friendship, and inspiration. It is a human story.

Mental illness is as old as the hills. The various diseases are often ignored; these diseases take the conscious lives of many of our good citizens; they are often seen as shameful. And, the fact that they are viewed as shameful relegates the victims to the world of “weaklings” and devastates the lives of millions.

Suggestions for the classroom

● Research – use the novel to analyze, discuss, and dissect how society deals with mental illness.
● Interviews – interview mental health professionals, the homeless, those who live with mental illnesses, care takers, relatives
● Documentaries as in-class research
● Movies – My Beautiful Mind, The Soloist – both based on true stories that can be researched
● Reading Journals
● Projects – give students the chance to suggest ways to help this population and then allow them to put together a project of their creation.