“The Best American Non-required Reading” is an anthology of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and graphic novels that is selected by a committee of high school students. As a high school teacher, I was curious to see what high schoolers would select as the best literature. I found their picks interesting and surprising. Wells Tower’s “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?” was eye-opening as it was shocking to read about the account of big-game hunting. Tower is open about his bias (anti-elephant hunting) but is objective in […]
So Bad
This week I gave up on a book. I wish it was this one; instead it was Emperor of All Maladies. That is a really good book, it’s just too dense. So I turned my eye to this, because I’m going to be discussing it with other folks at book club in a week. Man, it was bad. Not ‘Cinderella’s Diary’ or whatever that awfulness was a couple of years ago, but still bad. Yet somehow it has a 4-star rating on Good Reads. How […]
A miserable collection of short stories
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson was last years National Book Award winner for fiction. I try, each year, to read a couple of award winners just to appease my hoity toity lit sensibilities and see where the snooty think I “should be reading”. Often these are some of the most rewarding reads of my year (Redeployment or Brown Girl Dreaming last year as examples), but not so this time. Fortune Smiles is a collection of short stories that aren’t related in any way, and I […]