As part of my strategy to regain some peace in my life I have made a conscious decision to spend less time online (shocking, I know) and more time reading (even more scandalous).  Realizing that I’m also teaching over the summer I’ve kept my summer reading goals modest this year.  I haven’t purchased stacks and stacks of books but instead picked only a couple that I felt I could get through pretty quick.  I wanted to LOVE  what I was reading and not feel like I was back in school with a self-imposed assignment.  So, here is what I’ve got on my nightstand:

“The Bottoms” by Joe Lansdale

This was a recommendation from a fellow professor and I have to say I LOVED this book.  It was a complete page turner and I blew through it in three days.  Set in East Texas during the 1930’s it tells the story of a young boy who stumbles across the murdered body of a black woman.  The family and city turmoil that ensues is reminiscent of “To Kill A Mockingbird”.   Lansdale does a great job of capturing the feel of East Texas and the naked atrocities of racism during the 30’s.  I will be using this book in my class this summer and I cannot wait to lead class discussion – so many rich themes, so many great characters.  I highly recommend it.

“Eat, Pray, Love” by Michelle Gilbert

Okay, I admit I’m late on this one.  I know this book has been around for years and is now being made into a motion picture starring Julia Roberts.  However, I think books come to you when you need them most and right now I needed a book that reminded me of the importance of doing things that I love and relying on faith.  I’ve just started reading it and so far it has struck a real chord with me.  I’m eager to devour it.

“It Starts At Home” by Kurt Brooner and Steve Stroope

Finally, not a novel but a book to make me a better parent and wife.  David and I made the decision to pull Lucy out of private school and put her into public.  We have a great public school here in Texas and I can’t really say I’m necessarily concerned about the quality of her education.  However, I don’t want her to lose the faith-based foundation she was building in private school.  As a result, I picked this book up to help give us some ideas and direction on how to incorporate our faith into our daily lives.

“Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller

This was a recommendation from David’s cousin Emily (thanks Em!).  This was also a rather fast read.  I read the entire book in about a week.  Written in a free-flowing journal style Miller recounts his personal journey of faith touching on both his doubts and his sources for inspiration.  It is a rather different look at Christian faith since Miller is both a proud Democrat and liberal and summarily rejects the traditional “Christian Conservative” movement.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

This is my heavy hitter for the summer. I’ve tried reading this before and failed miserably.  However, my sister-in-law has also taken up the mantle and so I’m feeling empowered to get through it with a reading partner by my side.  I’ll let you know if we succeed.

I have a second stack of books if I somehow complete all these and still have time. That second stack includes “A Good Earth”, and another Lansdale novel.

I’m open to suggestions though and if you have something sitting on your nightstand that you think I would enjoy please leave me a note. (Please do not recommend ANY book in the Twilight series. Unless you are interested in hearing my well rehearsed lecture regarding the quality of Stephanie Meyer’s writing)

I’ve had several people ask me recently what I thought about “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger.  The easy answer is that I liked it.  I devoured the love story and characters as if it were a rich mousse waiting on me to slowly savor each bite.  Niffenegger does a fabulous job of developing these wonderful people with whom you can easily identify and who’s lives you want to know more about.

However, the quality that impressed me the most was the organization and structure of this story.  Yes, I’m an English teacher and at times I cannot separate the reader from the teacher and this story was a tour de force in structure.  It is mind-boggling how much forethought and planning must have gone into this story before she wrote a single word.  The time traveling and often times, overlap between the two characters could have been clumsy, confusing and awkward for the reader.  Instead,  Niffenegger seamlessly takes her reader back and forth from present to past to future without ever losing the fluidity of the story.  I applaud the monumental effort that must have been put forth to make this story work on a purely organizational level.

My only disappointment was in the ending, which felt weak and almost like an after thought.  Was she intentionally leaving loose threads so a sequel could be written? Oh, I hope not.  The book seemed to end suddenly with so many unanswered questions that I felt betrayed at the end.  I also at times felt the main characters struck me as a bit cliche.  She’s an artist, he’s a librarian, they live a bohemian lifestyle in Chicago that seems perfect for Hollywood to take and turn into a movie.  For my more conservative readers, this book has some very vivid sex scenes.  The multiple sexual encounters of the two main characters are described ad nauseum at times and in detail that I felt was unnecessary.  Call me a prude.

Overall though I felt it was a fabulous book, that was well written and crafted. I most definitely will be seeing the film in the fall and would recommend this book as a great summer time fling.

In 1996 a large technology firm recruited me to work in online media. It was a new and exciting field and everyday people were making predictions about what role the Internet would play in our future lives. One of those predictions was that the dawn of the Internet signaled the death of the book. I remember thinking that it was a ridiculous prediction. With a graduate degree in literature and a book addiction that would rival any heroin junkie I knew this would never happen. “Non-book” people thought I was foolish, and ignorant. But it was they who were ignorant. It is they who know nothing about the love and passion that a book addict has towards their precious tomes of knowledge.

The most obvious reason why technology will never replace the book has to do with WHERE we read – in bed. Many people read in bed or on a couch and a laptop just isn’t as comfortable as a paperback. Indeed, when I was a sophomore in college my Shakespeare professor insisted that we buy all of Shakespeare’s plays in paperback instead of an anthology because he recognized this very factor. You can hold a paperback with one hand, lying down, doing yoga, breastfeeding, cooking dinner, changing diapers, etc.

Some people might suggest that Amazon’s Kindle is a replacement for the book because it is small, and can be taken to bed or read on a couch. However, you can’t write on a Kindle. Like so many bibliophiles, I write in my books. Nothing pleases me more than revisiting an old book and finding my notes, thoughts or reflections scrawled out in the margins, or even better the thoughts and ideas of somebody else.

True bibliophiles are not just interested in the stories and adventures discovered between the pages. Oh no, a true bibliophile yearns for the smell of the bookstore. They languish in the soft tranquility of the library. It is the soft touch of the pages and the visual beauty of the words. It is the smell, the feel, and the very act of holding the book that is part of the attraction. As I am typing this, books surround me. On my right is a stack of western literature textbooks and on my left paperbacks that I plan to read over the summer. My books are my adult security blanket. They provide me with the comfort of knowledge, wisdom and the answers to any question I might ever have.

I’m sure there will always be a market for e-books and for technology like the Kindle, but for me, well I’ll stick with my paperback.