Half Broke Horses
Jeannette Walls, 2009
288 pp.
February 2010
You can't help but read Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle and not wonder "where on earth did her mother come from?" (Not earth maybe, but...where?) Walls began this book, her second, writing about her mother but ended up focusing on her mother's mother instead.
A most happy decision as it turns out. Lily Casey Smith, reared in early 20th-century Texas, is an American original—smart, feisty and undeterred by setbacks that would unhinge the best of us.
Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead, 2009
288 pp.
January 2010
At 15 Benji Cooper is a nerd—someone forgot to leave him the instruction manual on cool. He fumbles the latest handshakes, wears braces and a "f**ked up" haircut, loves Dungeon and Dragons and Easy Listen' music. Worse, he's never kissed a girl and can't get anyone to call him "Ben."
Benji is an African-American who attends an all-white private school in Manhattan, but he spends his summers in the affluent black neighborhood of Sag Harbor, right around the corner (well hidden, of course) from the uppity-upscale white Hamptonites.
The Motion of the Ocean
Janna Cawrse Esarey, 2009
336 pp.
December 2009
She calls him an a**hole in the very 1st sentence: he's the skipper of the boat...and also her husband. Yet by the 3rd sentence, you're feeling the initial pangs of love (this is a guy who cooks; need I say more?); by the 3rd chapter, you're completely hooked. Husband-skipper Graeme is a champ and a heart throb.
But this is Janna's story—and so, you wonder, what's wrong with her? That's the real subject of this charming, humorous travel memoir.
One for the Money - Finger Lickin' Fifteen
Janet Evanovich, 1996-2009
November 2009
Stephanie Plum is hilarious. Or maybe it's Evanovich who's funny—I'm not sure. Stephanie Plum is so real it's hard to believe she's merely a character in a series.
If you haven't read Janet Evanovich's mysteries, you're in for a treat. Though it's not necessary, you might as well start at the beginning—with One for the Money...or Two for the Dough...or Three to Get Deadly...and so on.
Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 2008
208 pp.
October 2009
Poor Ms. Hempel. She doesn't think much of her skill as a teacher...nor does she think much of her job. But we readers know differently.
The tip-off is that Ms. Hempel loves her students—seeing them, deep in their core, as things of beauty. To her enduring credit, she manages to coax that beauty, as well as their sheer originality, out from under the protective shells of their middle-school selves.