He mea hoihoi - Interesting Things

Korelitz, Jean Hanff. Admission [F Korelitz]
Based on actual experience since the author was a part time reader for Princeton's Office of Admission, Admission is about a Princeton admissions officer, Portia Nathan. Her personal life is as complicated as the processing of college applications. The book has a surprise ending, well worth reading to the end.
-Anne Yamasaki

Keillor, Garrison. Liberty.
Just finished this book, even laughed out loud a couple of times which would earn me peculiar looks in a Minnesota cafe. As an ex-Minnesotan from a small town, I have to say Keillor has identified the sui generis nature of small-town Minnesotans. I know these people. I am of these people; fellow Minnesotans who have read the book say, "I know these people. This is our town."
The story takes place just a few weeks before the Lake Wobegon annual Fourth of July parade, the town's big hurrah. Clint Bunsen, chairman of the committee has evolved the parade from being a procession of antique tractors driven by Norwegian bachelor farmers to something that CNN wants to cover. Unfortunately, Clint is going through late male menopause, wants to escape his life, his wife, and his town and flee to California with voluptuous Miss Liberty, Angelica Pflame. Keillor's homespun humor, deadpan philosophy, and pretty accurate characterizations of Minnesota archetypes makes this a pleasurable read. You betcha.
-Steve Wagenseller

Finkel, David. The Good Soldiers
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Finkel follows a battalion of soldiers to Iraq in 2007 during America's "surge" to bring peace and stability to that country. "The Good Soldiers" is riveting and heartbreaking as the soldiers, many 18 and 19 years old, square off against a an enemy who is largely invisible. Finkel takes you inside the soldiers' experience, creating a vivid, visceral portrait of war and its aftermath. The writing is top-notch, the story unforgettable.
-Carlyn Tani

Lee, Chang-rae. The Surrendered. [on order]
A haunting, beautifully written novel that traces the lives of two survivors of the Korean War: June Han, whose entire family was killed in the conflict; and Hector Brennan, a young American GI she befriends at a missionary-run orphanage. Weaving back and forth in time, the story delves into how June and Hector's lives intersect around the figure of Sylvie Tanner, a young missionary wife, and the transgressions that follow. The novel has great urgency and passion, with wartime scenes that are arresting and emotionally fraught.
-Carlyn Tani
Note: Carlyn was reading an uncorrected proof that Chang-rae sent her. The book will not be released until March 9, 2010. Cooke Library does have copies on pre-order. Deb

Connolly, John. The Book of Lost Things.
I just read The book of Lost things by John Connelly- A coming of age story seen through familiar fairly tales- dark and exciting - but a good look at the literary experience -
-Joshua Hayashi

Smithson, Ryan. Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year Old GI. [956.7 Sm62]
This Ryan's story. He calls himself a true "GI Joe Schmoe," and he describes his journey to and through Iraq and back home in personal with an eye for rich detail that made me laugh out loud a few times and quietly weep many times. In the end, his one soldiers tale has changed my understanding of what it means to go to war. I highly recommend it, but will warn that I am biased by having never been in the armed forces. My other big caveat, perhaps this is a book that guys will enjoy more than women, I haven't compared my impression with anyone else's.
-Jamey Clarke

Chaon, Dan. Await Your Reply
The reader follows three different stories about people who live lives of deceit. There is a boy who fakes his death so he can start life anew with his "real" father, a girl who runs away with her high school history teacher who may or may not be who he says he is, and a brother who becomes obsessed with locating his long lost schizophrenic brother. I found each story to be equally interesting, and then about half way through the novel, I realized all the stories were going to connect. When they did, my mind was somewhat blown.
-Tim Dyke

Hansen, Ron. Mariette in Ecstasy
My kind English department Secret Santa gave me this short novel about a novitiate to a convent in upstate New York in 1906. Mariette experiences God's presence so directly and so intensely that she begins to bleed from her palms and feet. Some treat her as a saint, and others treat her as a charlatan. As a reader I was never quite sure what to believe. Was she crazy? Was she confusing sexual longing for religious fervor? Was she genuinely touched by God's hand? The story moves swiftly, and in certain ways these questions are resolved. In other ways the questions still are with me after I finished the book, but I choose to believe that the ambiguity is intentional on the part of the author. The writing is beautiful and the characters are memorable.
-Tim Dyke

Green, George Dawes. Ravens
A dysfunctional Southern family wins millions and millions of dollars in the Georgia State Lottery. A psychotic bully and his partner in crime (who I will admit comes across to my reading mind as both psychotic and sympathetic) scheme to extort half of the winnings from the family. Mayhem, comedy, chaos, and philosophical musings ensue.
-Tim Dyke

Sandford, John. Rough Country
Okay. You either read the kind of books they sell by the checkout line at the supermarket or you don't. If you do, then this is a really good one. A charming, bass fishing, indie-rock-loving police detective named Virgil is reluctantly pulled from vacation to investigate the murder of an advertising executive at an all female love farm in the Minnesota North Woods. Suspects include a Sapphic country singer, a sewage company entrepreneur, and a randy lifeguard.
-Tim Dyke

King, Stephen. Under The Dome [on order]
I read this 1000+ page novel in two and a half days. The pages turn themselves. A small town in Maine is trapped under an invisible dome. Half the story involves attempts to fight the supernatural forces that have caused the dome to appear, and the other half involves attempts to fight the dark forces of human nature that manifest during disaster. This is pure Stephen King fantasy, but it also read to me as a riff on life in post-9/11, post-Katrina America. That said, it's more of a ripping yarn than anything else, but it did stay with me, and it did get me thinking. The entire story is compelling, but I thought to myself that if the author didn't provide a good explanation for the appearance of the dome, I was going to be disappointed. Thankfully, when the explanation came, I was completely surprised and completely satisfied.
-Tim Dyke

Byatt, A.S. The Children's Book
I've read this 600+ page novel for two and a half weeks, and I am still barely half way through with it. This is a slow read, at least for me, but as I tell my students, slow isn't always bad. The book follows the fortunes of a family in England during the late 1800s. An author of children's fantasy stories agrees to allow a talented orphan boy to come live with her family. At varying points in the novel, the story follows the orphan, the author, the author's children, the orphan's sister, and a handful of other characters. We travel through history with references to the trial of Oscar Wilde, the Dreyfus Affair, and other significant events of the times. The narrative is occasionally interrupted by the actual fantasy stories created by the fictional author. The novel is getting me to think about how no one in any family tells the story of their upbringing in the same way. It makes me think about how personal history affects world history and how world history affects personal history. It has me considering how fiction grows out of reality, and it speaks to how impossible it is to hide the parts of family life that we might want to keep hidden. It's a slow read because it asks me to savor every page.
-Tim Dyke

Benioff, David. City of Thieves.[F Benioff]
A page turning grandfather's story about surviving WWII in Russia.
-Darcy Iams

Comment: I also really enjoyed reading City of Thieves. The book is about a young boy's adventure during the siege of Leningrad during WWII. That said, I did not expect the humorous touches. Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of grim events described by the main character, Lev. But when Lev and Kolya are sent on an impossible mission, their interaction brings touches of humor to the situation.
-Deb

Ratey, John. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. [612.7 R18]
I used to kvetch about mandatory K-12 PE and the way that undesirable sports activities inevitably eroded my hard-earned GPA. A klutz in comparison to my Varsity-letter decorated classmates, I was the girl who lobbed tennis balls over the court walls, not because I was deliberately evading P.E.--that would've entailed way too much hand-eye coordination on my part--but because of simple misfires. Yet, I grudgingly admit that over the years, I began loving physical exertion, especially when I was allowed to elect my own exercise regimen, whether it was cartwheeling across a balance beam, striking the "Warrior Dancer" asana in yoga, or mastering Shotokan karate kata. I also discovered early that I had a talent for long-distance running and relished the easy fluid meditation of running through the streets of Manoa and Makiki and St. Louis Heights in the early morning hours. Ironically, I, the high school klutz, discovered my inner athlete in college and graduate school. My earlier struggles with coordination, as if by magic, ceased, and I found that that a steady daily diet of running, swimming, dance, and yoga provided a welcome respite from daily stress and academic pressures; if anything, I felt more grounded and sharper, simply by making time to exercise. Turns out that my alma mater's staunch conviction, echoing the Greek classical principle of "sound mind, sound body," was absolutely founded in truth: research that's borne out by John Ratey's excellent book.

Ratey's Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain is the most fascinating and inspiring text I've perused in a long spell: a must-read for educators and anyone who's interested in optimizing their holistic health and cognitive resources, decreasing stress, and staving off mental, as well as overall physical degeneration (that's everyone, right?). An associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Ratey examines the myriad benefits that exercise has on cognition, summarized here.
Exercise:
1. Strengthens the cardiovascular system, creating less strain on the body's and brain's blood vessels. It helps neurogenesis, as well as counteracts vascular damage.
2. Regulates fuel. Insulin levels drop with aging, creating waste products in cells that damage blood vessels, which then increase stroke risk. Exercise helps the body's efficiency.
3. Reduces obesity.
4. Elevates stress threshold: while some cortisol, a neurotransmitter released during stress, is good, chronic overload is deleterious and triggers cell death.
5. Lifts mood. Neurotransmitters, neurotrophins, and connectivity shore up the hippocampus against atrophy associated with depression and anxiety. Elevated mood also reduces one's chances of developing dementia.
6. Boosts immune system by rallying immune systems antibodies and T cells. Lack of activity poses the greatest risk factor for cancer.
7. Fortifies bones, reducing osteoporosis risk.
8. Boosts motivation by counteracting the natural decline of dopamine.
9. Fosters neuroplasticity. Building a strong brain guards agains neurodegenerative disease. Moving the body also elevates the supply of neurotrophic factors necessary for neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, as well. Furthermore, aerobic exercise further strengthens connections between brain cells, creating more synapses, causing stem cell division, and forming more functional neurons in the hippocampus.
10. If combined with cognitive challenge, helps to build neural networks. In moderation, the stress created by aerobic physical exertion, followed by mental/intellectual stimulation, is beneficial. Hence, one could reasonably expect students' classroom performance and mental acuity to increase, if P.E. was a regular part of their daily school curriculum; it'd be particularly optimal if P.E. was scheduled first thing in the morning.

I strongly recommend Ratey's book. Provocative, it may well transform the way you teach, view exercise and overall health, and change your--and others'--lives.
-Lara Cowell

Clark,Taylor. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture
Long ago, in a verdant valley not so far away, dwelt a small coffeehouse located in a small suburban strip mall. Though its daily brew was admittedly acrid, Coffee Manoa nevertheless created a haven. Kathy, the owner/head barista, knew everyone by name, greeting customers with warm aloha, and the locale was perpetually blessed by double rainbows arcing above the tangle of aerial cables, the then-KC Drive Inn, and the slick, inky, oil-slicked concrete expanse of the Manoa Marketplace parking lot. There, eccentric poets, artists, professors, poor students, up-and-coming folk musicians, counter-culture holdovers, and caffeine junkies alike held court, recited Proust, debated philosophical issues, played endless games of chess, and lingered at the outdoor tables for hours, long after the last orts of scone had been fed to the ravenous doves and the espresso drained to the lees, without fear of expulsion from Eden. And then, one day, Starbucks moved in on the corner of East Manoa and Huapala, a site haunted by businesses past: Bank of America, and before that, Manoa Chop Suey. Coffee Manoa shuttered its windows, and the neighborhood was never quite the same after that...

Despite its decidedly mixed critical reviews, I found Taylor Clark's Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture an addictive, fun, and fast read. Clark chronicles the rise of legendary corporate giant Starbucks: how it built its expansive, international empire of clean, well-lighted coffeehouses and became those popular, yet simultaneously despised purveyors of tasteful music, pandering to high-maintenance no-dairy, double-venti caramel frappucino drinkers. He also documents the social history of coffee and America's consumption of the glorious bean, as well as ponders the ethical quagmire surrounding the economics of coffee (if you buy Fair Trade, can you drink your morning brew, sans guilt?) Clark also offers some provocative tidbits: contrary to popular conspiracy notions that Starbucks single-handedly deals death-blows to small, mom-and-pop cafes like Coffee Manoa, the caffeine mogul's ubiquitous presence actually increases sales at competitor coffeehouses, something you might've already surmised, taking a gander at the brisk action happening at the Manoa branch of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, just a stone's throw from the aforementioned Starbucks. So grab a cuppa joe, and start reading.
-Lara Cowell