"You said 'tomorrow' yesterday."
Someday books are ones that I want to read but can't get to quite yet. Maybe I'm already involved in a great story, or I really want to wait for a time when I can dedicate myself to a particular book. We all have our own list of Somedays because we can't read all the books we want to all at once. My Someday list is quite long, and scattered in many places at once (on my B&N profile, my iPhone, scribbled onto multiple sticky notes, etc.) Not only do I want to consolidate everything into one space, I want to share it so that others can take my recommendations too (because I'm a teacher and that's what we do!)
So here it goes, my self-assigned Summer Reading List. At this point, it is by no means comprehensive and is certainly subject to change. (I tried adding small thumbnail pictures of each book but there were so many that my computer froze up and I couldn't get the post to publish.)
Pride and Prejudice is surely my favorite classic and one of my favorite stories overall. It's time for a reread. In keeping with the classic spirit and having Jane Eyre so highly recommended to me by one of my students and my grandmother, this is definitely my next classic.
The are the newest books on my shelf waiting to be read/reread are:
31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan
Secretariat by William Nack
and Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (also see previous post about her newest book Unbroken.)
Recently, I've jumped into the world of trail running. I love it because it's so much more scenic and very different than what I've been doing for the past 6 years with "pounding the pavement" on the streets and sidewalks. I started exploring the website for the Appalachian Trail and it completely captured me! A new goal of mine, a "bucket list" item I guess you could say, is to hike the entire 2,700 miles from Georgia to Maine. Whether all at once (which I'd love to do but isn't really logistical) or in pieces over a number of years, I will complete this trail. It will require lots of preparation with physical conditioning, research, and careful planning, and of course a dedicated partner to hike with. What better way is there to begin than to read about a real person's experience on the trail? I will be reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods very soon.
Cleopatra is said to be one of the most interesting women in history. I became familiar with Cleopatra, A Novel by Stacy Schiff when one of my students began reading it for a research project. When a 14-year-old recommends a biography to you that's something to make note of!
Here are some other sure-to-be-good books that have been on my Someday Shelf - the bottom one of my bookcase - for quite some time now.
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy is the second book of a trilogy I started almost two years ago now. One thing I've learned from my students is that it's ok to keep a book on your Someday list for a while, until the time is right to read it.
Two books by Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon and The Lovely Bones. I've been interested in seeing what her writing is all about for a while now too.
The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor interests me with its historical depression-era setting. I've always liked historical fiction, and I'm pretty sure I wrote in an earlier post about why it interests me so much.
One of my responsibilities to be an effective teacher is to keep up with the ever-changing world of youth literature. Hooray! No problem there! The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series by Michelle Paver looks like a good one and it shouldn't take long to read all five books. Others to borrow from my own classroom library include The Book of Ember series by Jeanne DuPrau, which is supposed to be very good and is recommended to those who enjoy books like The Hunger Games. How could I pass up a book like Rain, the debut novel by local teen author Kieryn Nicolas? I'll also be reading her second book Flawless Ruins. I read A Wrinke In Time so long ago in school that I don't remember much about it except that I was unsure about it at first but ended up liking it. I'd like to tackle the whole quintet eventually.
As always, I welcome recommendations and am always looking to add to my ever-growing Someday list (no matter how much I read, the list continues to grow!) Now I'm just waiting for the last 5 weeks of school to finish up so I can lay out by the pool with the sunshine and as many books as I can handle! (That is, between running Summer Camp and working at Hallmark, my new part time job which I love. But no, I'm not over-committed.)
Happy reading!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
True stories are the most powerful stories for anyone to read. While I enjoy fiction immensely and stand in awe of authors who can create a new world and practically convince readers of its existence, I stand in greater awe of stories that seem like they're too outrageous to be true but really happened.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was recommended to me last year by my student teaching mentor. I didn't really know what it was about other than being set in WWII, but I did know that it was written by the author of Seabiscuit, and the cover looked appealing, so I decided to try it out.
It was an amazing book. No, it was more than amazing. I don't even know the word to describe how great it was.
Louis Zamperini was the most troublesome child I have ever heard of. I thought of all the kids I've worked with or taught at camps, day cares, and in school, and couldn't think of one that came close to wreaking the havoc that Louie did. The first few chapters start off describing his childhood escapades, defining his personality and setting the stage for the rest of his life. As he grew, his older brother convinced him to channel his wild spirit into running track and Louis ended up competing in the Olympics. He was becoming famous for breaking records all across the US, even meeting Hitler at the 1936 Games in Berlin, and worked his tail off training to run a four-minute-mile. This was a feat that at that time had never been accomplished anywhere in the world, and he was so close in his training to be able to reach his goal for the next Olympic games until WWII got in the way.
Suddenly finding himself in the role of an Air Force bomber, Louie’s troublemaker spirit stayed with him as he completed mission after mission, barely making it back alive from some of them, with his crew in the Pacific. The amazing thing about Hillenbrand’s writing is that she can describe everything down to the last minuscule detail in such a way that the reader is fully captivated. I couldn’t put the book down while reading about the nine hundred and something-odd bullet holes (she writes the exact number in the book) in Louie’s plane when he returned from one particularly difficult mission. One thing that really struck me was how she described the safety precautions - or lack thereof - for the war planes in the first years of America’s involvement in the war. Many more soldiers died because of accidents or faulty equipment than because of the enemy. It is a mechanical accident that gets Louis into trouble when his plane crashes over a wide stretch of the Pacific, and this is where we really start to see his resilience and survival skills take control.
Just thinking back to the book, the treachery of the vast open ocean and the deathly abuse of multiple POW camps that Louie endured, makes me pause and reflect. Everything is written in such detail and I could not put it down. It was not an enjoyable read as in uplifting or fun, but it was incredible in a different way. Theoretically, anyone could have written a survival story about a WWII POW, but in this case everything is absolutely true (there are pages and pages of citations in the back of the book from documents and research that Hillenbrand used to write the book as well as the many interviews she conducted with Louie, his family and friends, and many other sources.) After reading Unbroken, I know that Louie was meant to survive and that his story was meant to be shared with the world.
I imagine that at one point he may have thought his greatest contribution would be breaking the four-minute-mile, but in reality I believe that it was the way he lived his life after his WWII experience. Never in a million years would I wish the things he went through onto anyone. There were many times reading this book that I found myself stopping to gasp, or read a page again because I couldn’t believe what I had just read. I kept flipping back to pages that had old pictures of Louie, his family, his fellow soldiers, and his captors on them. Those were what really hit this book home for me, seeing the actual people from the events.
This is a must-read. Let me repeat that: THIS BOOK IS A MUST-READ!!!!! I don’t care if you “don’t like” non-fiction or were never interested in war-time settings. Those things aren’t what this book is about. This book is about Louis Zamperini, his amazing story, and connecting yourself with him and a piece of our history that is in danger of being forgotten because nobody really wants to remember.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was recommended to me last year by my student teaching mentor. I didn't really know what it was about other than being set in WWII, but I did know that it was written by the author of Seabiscuit, and the cover looked appealing, so I decided to try it out.
It was an amazing book. No, it was more than amazing. I don't even know the word to describe how great it was.
Louis Zamperini was the most troublesome child I have ever heard of. I thought of all the kids I've worked with or taught at camps, day cares, and in school, and couldn't think of one that came close to wreaking the havoc that Louie did. The first few chapters start off describing his childhood escapades, defining his personality and setting the stage for the rest of his life. As he grew, his older brother convinced him to channel his wild spirit into running track and Louis ended up competing in the Olympics. He was becoming famous for breaking records all across the US, even meeting Hitler at the 1936 Games in Berlin, and worked his tail off training to run a four-minute-mile. This was a feat that at that time had never been accomplished anywhere in the world, and he was so close in his training to be able to reach his goal for the next Olympic games until WWII got in the way.
Suddenly finding himself in the role of an Air Force bomber, Louie’s troublemaker spirit stayed with him as he completed mission after mission, barely making it back alive from some of them, with his crew in the Pacific. The amazing thing about Hillenbrand’s writing is that she can describe everything down to the last minuscule detail in such a way that the reader is fully captivated. I couldn’t put the book down while reading about the nine hundred and something-odd bullet holes (she writes the exact number in the book) in Louie’s plane when he returned from one particularly difficult mission. One thing that really struck me was how she described the safety precautions - or lack thereof - for the war planes in the first years of America’s involvement in the war. Many more soldiers died because of accidents or faulty equipment than because of the enemy. It is a mechanical accident that gets Louis into trouble when his plane crashes over a wide stretch of the Pacific, and this is where we really start to see his resilience and survival skills take control.
Just thinking back to the book, the treachery of the vast open ocean and the deathly abuse of multiple POW camps that Louie endured, makes me pause and reflect. Everything is written in such detail and I could not put it down. It was not an enjoyable read as in uplifting or fun, but it was incredible in a different way. Theoretically, anyone could have written a survival story about a WWII POW, but in this case everything is absolutely true (there are pages and pages of citations in the back of the book from documents and research that Hillenbrand used to write the book as well as the many interviews she conducted with Louie, his family and friends, and many other sources.) After reading Unbroken, I know that Louie was meant to survive and that his story was meant to be shared with the world.
I imagine that at one point he may have thought his greatest contribution would be breaking the four-minute-mile, but in reality I believe that it was the way he lived his life after his WWII experience. Never in a million years would I wish the things he went through onto anyone. There were many times reading this book that I found myself stopping to gasp, or read a page again because I couldn’t believe what I had just read. I kept flipping back to pages that had old pictures of Louie, his family, his fellow soldiers, and his captors on them. Those were what really hit this book home for me, seeing the actual people from the events.
This is a must-read. Let me repeat that: THIS BOOK IS A MUST-READ!!!!! I don’t care if you “don’t like” non-fiction or were never interested in war-time settings. Those things aren’t what this book is about. This book is about Louis Zamperini, his amazing story, and connecting yourself with him and a piece of our history that is in danger of being forgotten because nobody really wants to remember.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)