Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

After hearing lots of hype for the book several summers ago and the recent film that hit theaters, I finally decided to read Water for Elephants. It was a great story—obviously well-researched, interesting, and well-written. The novel is about Jacob Jankowski, a Cornell veterinary student who joins the circus after tragedy strikes his parents and turns his world upside-down. The book is riddled with violence, love, and—my favorite part—the commentary of 93-year-old Jacob recalling his past.

One thing that bothered me about the novel was the constant anthropomorphism of the animals, and the repetitiveness of their descriptions. Nearly every time the elephant, Rosie, made an appearance in the book, she was described as having “her mouth open in a smile.” It got a bit old after awhile. The historical aspects of the book, however, were very interesting. Overall, it was a great read (and a great summer book for the beach).

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Jordan Gaines
Rating: Highly Recommended

William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey Into America belongs on any list of classic road trip novels. A Google search on road trip novels brings up several lists of great American road trip novels. Many of the titles are ones that everyone has heard of, if not read: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson. Blue Highways holds its own with any of those books, and you’ll find it on many of those lists.

The background of the book is something all of us can understand—life kind of falls apart, so you hit the open road to think about things. Least Heat Moon lost his job, his marriage falls apart, so he sets off to find America, driving and living in his van. The United States is not the only country with open spaces, but we are lucky in that the trails through our open spaces have in many cases become paved roads. We are doubly blessed in being such a diverse country. One thing you notice from Blue Highways is how different people are across America, and how similar. The book is one of the best observations of the little things in America that I’ve ever read.

Blue Highways is not without its faults. The author takes the caricature of the arrogant, more-cultured-than-thou, nouveau blasé academic to a whole new level. It doesn’t take long for his arrogance to rub you the wrong way, and you get the impression that if you met the author, you wouldn’t like him. However, by the end of the book I realized that the author comes off this way because his pretense of culture is really all he had, at least at that point in his life. He had his doctorate, but he had no job and his marriage had fallen apart. He was a failure at everything but his education, so that is what he clung to and brandished, because his failures were too hard to face, though I think by the end of the book he realized he couldn’t run from them and he does finally face them.

In addition to Least Heat Moon’s arrogance, the book is a slow read. Very slow. Parts of the book are like watching grass grow, only a lot less exciting. After a while, finishing it becomes a quest. Somehow, the author managed to catch some of the monotony that is part of every road trip. There were many times I put the book down because it was just too slow, but I always picked it back up again.

Despite the painfully slow pace and the author’s snotty attitude, the book is worth finishing. Looking past the author’s “I’m so cultured” commentary, there are some truly poignant observations on America. After finishing the book you want to hit the road yourself. That, I think, is what makes a road trip novel great.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Christopher Mehl, Ph.D.
Rating: Highly Recommended

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is an absolutely wonderful book that will keep you gripped until the end. It’s strongest point is its wonderful characters, whether they be based off ancient gods or of Gaiman’s own creation. Even characters with nothing more than a few pages of focus get fully fleshed out and feel more real than the characters most books spend chapters trying to establish. On the downside, the book is very long and tends to meander a bit. Still, this is an excellent book and a modern classic.

Availability: USMAI
Submitted by: Kevin Koeser
Rating: Must Read

If your favorite part of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was Holden Caulfield complaining about phonies then this is the book for you. Franny also likes to complain about phonies, specifically phonies in academia. These are the only works that Salinger that I have read, so I am assuming that everything he writes is focused on phonies. He should really try expanding onto new topics, but I guess he’s dead by now.

Anyway the book is split into two parts. The first part is, as I said, Franny complaining to her college boyfriend about phonies as he rambles on about some paper he wrote. The second part is Zooey taking a bath while talking to his mom, and then talking to Franny about stuff since she is depressed.

If you like Salinger’s style of writing and storytelling then you’ll probably really enjoy Franny and Zooey, but otherwise it’s a little hard to get into.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Kenneth Benjes, Lifeguard
Recommendation: Recommended with Reservations

The SMCM Library’s Summer Reading Program will begin on June 1 and  end on August 15, 2011.

The Summer Reading program is open to all members of the SMCM Library community including students, staff, faculty, alumni and residents of the Tri-County area (St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles.) You can read anything you want as long as a copy is available at the SMCM Library or via USMAI. To get points you must post a review on the blog.

See About Summer Reading for more information.

Thanks to all the readers who posted reviews on our first Summer Reading blog. Don’t forget to pick up your prizes!

I am rarely one for nonfiction travel narratives, but I am always happy to make an exception for Bill Bryson. Notes From a Small Island follows Bryson as he takes one final tour around Great Britain before he moves with his family to his home country of the United States. This book gives us history, culture, and personal anecdotes, both “present” and remembered to make us feel that we are there with him on his trip. But even with his great ability to capture the people and the landscape of wherever he is traveling to, I will read anything by Bryson because I know he will make me laugh out loud. Small Island was no exception. From his nightmare first landlord to the Manchester society for animals to the perils of Scottish Brogue, every point of Bryson’s travels is told with a dry humor that is absolutely irresistible. This is an easy read, and well worth the trip.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

I have found that after a while, Austen’s works show similar characteristics again and again with plots that are often simple enough to make any summary seem quite dull. For instance, Emma follows its heroine as she sets up matches through the town, falls in and out of love herself, until eventually settling with the man she loves most. But even though the plot does not scream adventure, this Austen novel is well worth the read because of the characters.

From Mrs. Elton, the mysterious wife brought to town by the clergyman, to Miss Bates who literally talks for pages, to Mr. Knightly, one of my favorite Austen hero’s, to Emma herself, whose naïvety to the world and blunders would seem off-putting in many, but charming in her, this novel is full of characters that you will fall in love with, or love to hate. Emma’s world at Highbury is brought so much to life, that you really hate to leave the people after the last page.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

Although I have not warmed to Alexander McCall Smith’s other fiction series, I relish each new installment in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In fact, after reading the first few books in the series out of order I purchased all of the books then on the market and read them in order, even rereading the ones I had already completed. I keep them all with the expectation that I’ll want to read them again some day.

The Double Comfort Safari Club follows McCall Smith’s usual framework of unfolding a handful of dilemmas for Precious Ramotswe to resolve with her usual blend of common sense and insight into human nature. Although Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni does not figure prominently in this installment, wicked Violet Sephotho is back and again up to no good. Grace Makutsi (and her talking shoes) finds herself facing a potentially-tragic development regarding her fiance Phuti Radiphuti. The title references a detective agency case where Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi find themselves a bit at odds with nature once they leave Gaborone and travel to a rugged area of Botswana to locate a safari guide.

In this volume, as with all the previous installments, McCall Smith intersperses his story lines with simple observations about the strengths and foibles of humanity and life in general. I suspect that if McCall Smith ever released a “Precious Ramotswe’s Guidebook for Life,” it would be an overnight best-seller.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended

Operation Wandering Soul takes place mostly in a Los Angeles hospital. It’s located in a poor section of the city, where most of the patients coming in have no money and were brought in due to injuries received while committing crimes. The main focus is on the pediatrics ward. The doctor is a man named Richard Kraft who takes care of a small group of patients that range from a child born without a face, to a girl who is losing her leg due to a mysterious disease, to a 12-year-old boy aging 3x faster than normal. Dr. Kraft is slowly becoming disenchanted in the world around him. He lived all over the world when he was a child and, to be honest, he hasn’t been happy since he moved to America.

In Dr. Kraft’s opinion, this is a world in which adults do more harm to children than good, including himself. It’s a world which would have been better if children were led away to live by themselves rather than living the lives they have now. Powers emphasizes this point by including moments in history and in stories in which adults harmed children and how they were better off without them. It starts off with the evacuation of all the children in London during WWII where a lot of the children were taking to “safe places”: temporary homes in which they were forced into labor, assaulted, and even beaten. A short chapter by chapter summary of Peter Pan was included to show how peaceful the world might be if there were no adults. He even included the Children’s Crusade and wrote about their unfortunate fate at the hands of the Turks.

The book climaxes when the children of the pediatrics ward want to put on a play. In this play, a pied piper leads all the children from a village away to a better place. All the children, that is, except three: the fast-aging child, the boy without a face, and the girl without a leg. The most emotional part is that all the children involved play themselves.

I recommend this book with reservations because you have to be willing to put effort into this book to understand and enjoy it. You can’t just fly right through without thinking about what you are reading or you will miss key points. I had a hard time finishing it because it was long and it was just overall difficult to read. I may give this book another try later on.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Marissa Parlock
Rating: Recommended with Reservations