Book Recs...or Books I'm considering

Got the laundry to the mat just in the nick of time. Can't see past the fire-escape for all the water. A deluge, cascading from the sky for more than 20 minutes. Oh there will be flooding. And those poor artists opening their studios this weekend for showings in Brooklyn. As..my Granny would have said "raining cats and dogs" while the weathermen call it torrential rain. The old children's ditty "it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" comes immediately to my mind. Some phrases no matter how hard you try are forever embedded in your consciousness. ( Read more... )

In other news...found some interesting Books rec'd on Good Reads to try:

1) The People of Forever are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu

Here's the blurb: Yael, Avishag, and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside that single, intense second just before danger erupts.

It's by a young woman who served in The Israelie Defense Forces for two years.

2.) The White Forest by Adam McOmbre

Here's the blurb that intrigued me: Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father at a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of manmade objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation, with the goal of discovering a new virtual reality, a place he calls the Empyrean.

A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

Sounds like a new and rather innovative twist on an old trope.

3.The Black Count:Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss.

It's a biography, and I'm not usually a fan. But this one looks interesting. It's about Alexander Dumas' father, General Alex Dumas, who rose up from slavery to become a top General in the 18th Century. Whose history was the inspiration for all of Alexander Dumas' novels.

Here's the blurb: The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.

Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

4. I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High by Tony Danza

This chronicles former actor Tony Danza's experiences as a rookie teacher at Philadelphia's Largest High School - with 3600 students. If you remember Tony did a reality series for a bit about teaching at a public high school. The book appears to be better than the reality series was - although it got decent reviews, I never saw it.
(I'm prejudiced against reality shows - they tend to grate on my nerves.)

Here's the blurb: Entering Northeast’s crowded halls in September of 2009, Tony found his way to a classroom filled with twenty-six students who were determined not to cut him any slack. They cared nothing about “Mr. Danza’s” showbiz credentials, and they immediately put him on the hot seat.

Featuring indelible portraits of students and teachers alike, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had reveals just how hard it is to keep today’s technologically savvy – and often alienated -- students engaged, how impressively committed most teachers are, and the outsized role counseling plays in a teacher’s day, given the psychological burdens many students carry. The book also makes vivid how a modern high school works, showing Tony in a myriad of roles – from lecturing on To Kill a Mockingbird to “coaching” the football team to organizing a talent show to leading far-flung field trips to hosting teacher gripe sessions.

Reminds me a little of Up The Down Staircase - my favorite of the real life work place non-fiction teacher books. I adore non-fiction novels about the workplace or professions.

Not sure I'll get all of them. I have a tendency to buy more books than I need. ( Read more... )