School Reading

(Liz) Rarely do I have trouble getting into a book.  I'm the opposite of ADD with my reading; I don't drift off, and I devour almost everything I begin.  But then occasionally there's the book that doesn't click and I end up pushing it to the back of the pile for another day.  One such book is The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  EVERYONE loves this novel.  My closest friends.  My colleagues.  Go into a bookstore and ask.  They will tell you it's great.  So what the hell's wrong with me?

Last weekend I gave a book presentation to a parents group at St. Thomas High School in Houston.  It's an all boys Catholic school, and I was the special guest for the meeting that coincided with Homecoming and the school's annual book fair.  Had I known it was Homecoming I would have worn a corsage.  I've given presentations at several private schools and find myself impressed by the differences between my high school (fall carnival involves mazes of cardboard boxes taped together) and these schools (fall festival involves mechanical bulls).  Their school: future Hall of Famer Craig Biggio is the baseball coach.  My school: my basketball coach taught my biology class, but we had the seventh period class and the school could only afford six class sets of dissection materials, so I never had to hack into critters.

You're sending your kid to
an elite private school! Congrats!
Either he's going to break down or
die! Bring on Harvard!

After my presentation, I started thinking about school themes in books and movies.  I'm a sucker for a Dead Poets Society and School Ties.  Somehow poetry and Latin are far less tedious in film form.  And so I decided to give The Secret History another try.  This time, finally, after years of abortive attempts, the book clicked for me.  It's great.  So here's a quick list, by no means complete, of some of my favorite novels set in the fascinating, disturbing world of the elite education institutions.  Some common trends: the new kid/new teacher is always the focal point, never join the exclusive organization because you'll end up involved in scandal (and possibly murder), language classes are torturous, and the charismatic artists and geniuses are always trouble.  In short, should you find yourself in private school, find the Gianna and stick close to her.  She'll moon you, but you won't end up pregnant, plotting to kill anyone, or reciting poetry in the woods.


The Secret History.  Let's start with the book it took me so long to discover.  Richard, the average guy from California, transfers to a small, liberal arts college in Vermont. Once there, he ingratiates himself with the elitist group of five students and their teacher who are obsessed with the study of Greek.  The idyllic life turns Greek tragedy, though, as a night of bacchanalian frolicking starts them down the slippery slope to murder.  It's smart, dark, and worth all of the bookseller love.  I haven't finished it yet, so don't tell me what happens, 'kay?

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl.  Like your books too smart and clever for their own good?  Most of the time, aggressively clever stylizing in books irritates me, but this one is the exception.  The protagonist, Blue Van Meer, is a wise-cracking master of all things literary and cultural, and Pessl's first novel uses parenthetical asides masterfully (and in almost every sentence).  Blue enrolls in the elite St. Gallway School and connects to the popular kids (the "Bluebloods") and their favorite teacher.  A murder or two later, though, and Blue is in the midst of her own nightmare.  Special Topics was one of those books I couldn't quit talking about when it came out.  Lots of fun.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles.  It's pretty much required reading, right?  But I admit that I haven't read it since I was in high school and don't remember much beyond the charismatic Phineas (is that right?) and the quiet intellectual Gene.  They are attending the ubiquitous all boys prep school in New England, it's World War II, and everything changes after one summer.  Sure, your kids will get into the Ivy League if they attend these prep schools, but there's also the chance that they'll end up suffering or dying.  Is it worth it?

Cracks by Sheila Kohler.  New girl?  Check.  Private school?  Check.  Popular teacher/exclusive club?  Check.  Dark side of adolescence?  You betcha.  Cracks deals with the adult members of a girls' school swim team returning to their alma mater for a weekend when the school attempts to raise some money by rekindling their school girl nostalgia.  They instead are confronted with the kids they were, from cliques to swim meets to betrayal and darkness.  This is a great read and probably off most radars.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.  Dead Poets Society owes quite a bit to Miss Jean Brodie.  Welcome to the private girls school in Scotland, and meet Miss Brodie.  She's the woman with the unorthodox teaching methods who takes the best students under her wing.  She's a woman who isn't afraid to live (she has her romantic liaisons) and isn't afraid to bring out the best in "her" girls, but one of them will betray her.  Great book, and it's Muriel Spark, who's a great writer.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  Last year's Booker Prize Winner was on our best of the year lists and quickly found its place among my favorite books.  It's also a book about school chums, the philosophical genius kid who's new, and the dark secrets that shake their world years later.  Required reading, and at about 150 pages, it's required reading that doubles as a nice way to spend an evening or weekend.

Others?  What am I missing?  It just occurred to me that these books would make a great series for reading groups.

Best of 2011 Countdown: #3

Bronze Medals!  It's like Belgium at the Winter Olympics!  (I actually have no idea how Belgium performs in the Olympics.  They could be horrible.  I just like the idea of Belgium.)

Gianna:

Swamplandia!
Karen Russell
Knopf

I have a deep love and appreciation for the Florida Everglades. In fact I lived in Pembroke Pines, Florida, for quite a while…and sadly that huge town was once part of the Everglades. When they were building it up one would see alligators chugging along the backyards of new homes. I hope they took a contractor or two with them on their travels. The Everglades are a rich, mysterious, beautiful place. The locals that live nearest the heart of Everglades National Park (also known as Shark Valley, no...there are no sharks but plenty of gators) can be, in the nicest terms…characters. I think Susan Orlean did a great job of writing about the people that live in and around Everglade City in The Orchid Thief.  Anyway, the Everglades is a truly special and amazing place and if you’re going to write about such a place, man you better nail it.

 

Yeah, Russell nails it in Swamplandia! So many great things have been said about this novel (yes, another first novel on our list – though Russell did write an outstanding book of stories called St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – based on Liz’s life), that I will only say a few things. One, you aren’t going to find a more original plot. You will not find a group of characters like these who not only are strange but completely human and lovable. [Gianna is strange and lovable but possibly not human, I'm strange and human but not exactly lovable.] The book revolves around the Sawtooth family who own a struggling alligator wrestling farm, and if you don’t come out the other end of this book adoring this family, you have a heart of stone. You won't find a smarter, wittier book this year. You just won’t. Okay, I will leave it at that, but you haven’t heard the last about this book.

Liz:

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes

Knopf

I think this is the third or fourth time I've written about The Sense of an Ending on our little blog. What more is there to say?  Is it a surprise that the Man Booker Prize-winning novel is my #3 pick of 2011?  Probably not.  This book is pretty much perfect.  Short, tightly plotted, great characters, and a holy shit ending that smacks the reader upside the head.  It's a book that begs for discussion.  It's a literary novel that will appeal to book groups.  Did I mention that it's really, really, really good?

The Sense of an Ending is part Dead Poets Society, part A Separate Peace, part The Graduate.  It's a story about friendship and love and the secrets kept.  It's a story about betrayals and the over-intellectualizing of emotions and human relations.  Four friends, particularly Adrian and Tony, bond while in prep school.  Adrian, the genius of the bunch, goes to the elite university, while Tony goes to the respectable college.  There Tony meets a girl, one who is more cultured, more worldly, and in his mind, too cool for him.  He also meets her family.  Tony and his girlfriend visit Adrian at school.  Months later, after Tony and the girl break up, she begins dating Adrian.  Flash to the present: Tony is notified that he's inherited Adrian's journal after his friend's death.  What the journal reveals about Adrian remains a mystery though; the ex girlfriend from 20 years earlier won't relinquish it.  The plot twists keep moving a philosophical novel, and here is Julian Barnes at his absolute best.

Best of 2011 Countdown: #8

Gianna:

The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes
Knopf

I hope I don’t sound like too much of an idiot (I want to sound just enough like an idiot), but I absolutely love a well-done, compact novel. It's rare and it's incredibly hard to do. To write a well-developed original story with fully realized characters in fewer than two hundred pages is remarkable, yet Barnes has done just that.   This is a one sitting read, much like On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I know what you're thinking, why shouldn’t you read such a short novel in one sitting Gianna? Well some don’t lend themselves to it, some you don’t want to, some you can’t, and some blow.

Julian Barnes,
Man Booker Prize winner

Barnes has been nominated several times for the Booker,  and there is something so right about him finally winning it for this book. Liz called this book a masterpiece and while I hate agreeing with her about anything at all…she got this absolutely right. It’s a perfect book.

I won’t go into plot here, we’ve written about this on the blog two or three times, but I will say that Barnes hits major themes here: love, loyalty, life and death. Have I mentioned this is a perfect book? 

Liz:

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern

Doubleday

Words like "delightful" and "enthralling" best describe one of the biggest books of 2011.  Erin Morgenstern's first novel involving dueling magicians and the most incredible circus ever placed on paper has proved a sensation, and deservedly so.  I quite simply love this book.  I loved it when I first read it about 11 months ago, and I haven't shut up about it since then.  My booksellers love it.  My friends love it.  I want to visit The Night Circus.

Let's set the mood:

Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus is so descriptively stunning that if I possessed any artistic talent at all I would have created my own illustrated edition.  The film rights were optioned to Summit Pictures and there's lots of Hollywood chatter and speculation.  And Erin Morgenstern wrote this book during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual writing challenge to create a novel during the 30 days of November.  This book is charmed.  It's magical.