by Julia H. Jackson
Given the number of books published in the United States every year, it can be hard to keep up. This week, we bring you 2009: Book by Book, a literary review with one book for each month. Whether you’re in the mood for memoir, fiction, or graphic novels, we’ve got a little something for everyone.
January: Things I’ve Been Silent About – Memories, by Azar Nafisi
This memoir comes fresh from Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi reveals her journey from Iran to the United States, from writing to educating, from childhood to adulthood. An expert on Western literature, Nafisi recognized that the very act of open expression was dangerous in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She breaks the literary silence by answering lingering questions from her first book, probing into the nature of her father’s extramarital affairs, and exploring her life as a mother, wife, and teacher.
February: The Women by T.C. Boyle
The life of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright has been depicted in various ways, but none so creatively as this most recent fictionalized novel by Irish writer T.C. Boyle. The Women reveals another side to Wright’s darker nature by focusing on the important female characters in his life. The featured romances include Wright’s three wives, Olgivanna, Maude Miriam Noel, and Kitty, and his lover Mamah, who was murdered by one of Wright’s servants. Boyle’s creation is the narrator Tadashi Sato, an imagined apprentice to Wright, who undertakes the task of writing his mentor’s biography. Boyle’s mixture of fiction, gossip, and legend provides an original perspective on a talented, if not highly controversial, man.
March: How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Twenty-seven-year-old author Jonah Lehrer examines the human capacity for decision-making in this, his second science book for left-brainers. Lehrer, who is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and a frequent resource on the WYNC program Radio Lab, breaks down neuroscience by punctuating it with manageable, understandable anecdotes. He links the way our brains function to the decisions we make, and the effects that has on, say, the current economic crisis. An excellent introduction to the world of science writing for the left- and right-brained.
April: The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, edited by Paul Buhle, art by Ed Piskor and others
Perhaps Jack Kerouac’s most famous quote is his affinity for “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar and editor Paul Buhle approach the world of Beat writers and artists by delving into the realm of underground comics. The history includes stories of Keroauc, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, as well as unsung heroes such as “hobohemian” Slim Brundage of Chicago’s College of Complexes café. Although some of the stories’ facts are contested, the book itself is a testament to the unruly and revolutionary nature of an artistic generation.
May: Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s fifth novel follows Benji, an African-American teenager who represents the “black boys with beach houses” by spending his summers at Sag Harbor. The characters challenge what it means to be “post-black” by resisting the urge to give into racial stereotype. Benji and his friends have BB gun wars, lust after hip-hop star Lisa Lisa, and confront the message behind “turning the other cheek.” Whitehead’s story is fiction, but follows the nuance of memoir, and offers a fresh voice not only for African-Americans, but for citizens of the Obama generation.
June: The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards: Stories, by Robert Boswell
Every word in this book packs a punch, as evidenced by the original title. Boswell’s thirteen stories feature the lost, wayward souls whose desires compete with their limited environs: addicts, cleaning ladies, fortune tellers, priests, all teetering on the edge of their own specific “heyday.” Boswell’s work goes beyond the short form; previous books include Century’s Son and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak. This latest short story collection is a great glimpse into his Southwestern world.
July: In the Heart of the Canyon, by Elisabeth Hyde
If you’re looking for an adventure, look no further than Hyde’s latest novel, whose diverse cast of characters are forced to examine their neuroses whilst navigating the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Hyde takes on it all: a quarrelsome husband and wife with their two teenage sons, a divorcee and her obese daughter, an elderly couple on their last trip, an arrogant college grad, a middle-aged Harvard professor and, of course, a dog named Blender. The river guides wade through both water and conflict as they attempt their 125th trip down the canyon. This is a warm, well-written summer read that will inspire the adventurer in everyone.
August: Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers has done it again: he has combined sleek prose with real characters to prove a point without sounding preachy. Zeitoun follows the odyssey of a Muslim man and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Our hero chooses to stay behind while his wife and children flee to safety, preferring to navigate the murky waters of the city streets to rescue his fellow citizens. Complications arise when his good intentions are mistaken as something more sinister, a plot choice that mirrors the confusion and chaos of FEMA politics and America post-9/11. Eggers skirts political criticism by couching it in a carefully written, beautifully handled novel.
September: Juliet, Naked ,by Nick Hornby
Hornby welcomes us to the world of fandom with his latest novel, which revolves around a bizarre social triangle: Annie, her distant partner Duncan, and musician Tucker Crowe, Duncan’s hero. The plot thickens when Annie posts a review of Crowe’s latest album, “Juliet, Naked,” before Duncan does, sparking an unexpected correspondence between her and her husband’s idol. Hornby confronts the hidden side to popular icons, exploring the sincerity of fans and their adoration; a concept he himself might have some experience with, after publishing wildly successful High Fidelity and About a Boy.
October: Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon’s memoir gives a modern portrait of manhood from the perspective of a successful author (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union), husband, and, above all, father. His story is told in a series of linked essays that follows his childhood, his parents’ marriage and divorce, and the comedy of errors that is the transition to adulthood.
November: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s ambitious new novel follows the lives of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through the eyes of Harrison Shepherd, who has a Forrest-Gump-like ability to participate in a series of notable historic events. Shepherd works for Lev Trotsky, a lost political revolutionary, and returns to the United States in time for the chaos of World War II. Kingsolver, who brought us Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible, merges history with fiction to shed light on an exciting era of the twentieth century.
December: Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell
A surprising, humbling diary brought to you by the Julie of Julie & Julia fame, Powell’s latest book follows the grisly details of an extramarital affair that forces to examine her intentions. Her intimacy is not limited only to her lover; Powell is suddenly struck with a desire to learn how to butcher meat, a process that feels familiar as she painstakingly dissects her own love life. A private, yet modestly open meditation on what it means to redefine love, if not for her husband, than for the pursuit of challenge.
Are we missing something? What was your favorite book of 2009? Let us know!
By Adam Krause
Now that we’re in the thick of the holiday season, many of us are going the distance to see family, whether on a plane, Amtrak or Greyhound. Long, boring trips are the ideal time to make a dent in your reading list. Here are ten books, each under 250 pages, perfect for one day of travel in each direction. Just don’t read them while driving on the interstate.
1) Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell 
Orwell is best known for his allegories of political paranoia, 1984 and Animal Farm. This is his first published book. Though he called it fiction, it is an account of his experiences working as a low-wage dishwasher in Paris and being homeless in England. It is written with wit and keenly observational prose that keeps it fresh today, and provides such advice as how to keep customers from detecting rats in a poorly run restaurant and how to use a taut rope as a pillow while sleeping on the street.
2) St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
This short story collection, published when its author was only 25, is absolutely crazy. Russell’s subjects range from the title story, about a school run by kindly nuns whose mission is converting the children of werewolves into real human girls, to a story about a family of minotaurs heading west on a covered wagon. No matter how bizarre the situations, Russell never loses sight of her characters’ human side.
3) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
This first novel by Indian journalist Aravind Adiga is narrated by a chauffeur in New Delhi who murders his rich employer. The chauffeur, who comes from a remote village that he refers to only as “the Darkness,” ruled by greedy landlords that resemble storks and wild boars, makes clear that India’s recent economic rise is only for a few, and that most Indians still have to seize whatever they can get. The novel has been criticized by Indian intellectuals who doubt Adiga’s authority to write in the voice of India’s poorest citizens, but the wicked intelligence of the narrator as he maneuvers through one tricky situation after another makes the novel a fast, gripping read, whatever you think of its message.
4) Sula by Toni Morrison
Though the epic Beloved is better-known, many critics consider this slim novel Morrison’s best book. It chronicles the lives of two girls who grew up in the Bottoms, a rural black community: one who stayed behind to raise a family and the other, Sula, who left for the cities and returns to wreak havoc among the menfolk. The novel reminded me of a compressed One Hundred Years of Solitude; Morrison’s story moves so swiftly across three generations that it seems almost magical.
5) Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Funnier than Pale Fire and less scandalous than Lolita, Nabokov again satirizes America and academia in this comic novel about a bumbling Russian professor in New England. Pnin’s adventures are small-scale (getting on the wrong train while trying to be clever with the timetables, and thinking a prized punch bowl has been smashed during a faculty dinner party) but his awkward charm eventually wins over even the narrator, who has spent most of the novel mocking him. He may even make you reconsider that nerdy professor who you gave a 0 to on RateMyProfessors.com.
6) An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir of having gone to France to have her child, then losing the pregnancy, deals with harrowing and personal subject matter in a way that is never sentimental or simplified. There is room for witty observations about the French (who, at the public pool, “could gossip while doing the backstroke”) and yet the reader can’t help but feel the magnitude of the author’s grief through McCracken’s clear-eyed essayistic detail.
7) The Quiet American by Graham Greene 
This is the story of the friendship between a jaded British war correspondent and a young, idealistic American who thinks his country should come to the aid of the French in Vietnam. The Brit, however, thinks that the American’s high hopes will only lead to bloodshed, and his private prayer is, “God save us always from the innocent and the good.” The book was written in 1955 but perfectly predicted the Vietnam War, and may come back into relevance with President Obama’s recent troop increase in Afghanistan.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
If you have seen the movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, don’t think you know the story of The Virgin Suicides. The novel is notable for having been written in the first person plural, in which a Greek chorus of suburban boys tells the story of their longstanding obsession with the five enigmatic sisters who killed themselves. The boys hardly appear in the movie, but the beauty and originality with which Eugenides depicts their intense speculation about the doomed Lisbon family makes the novel a completely different experience.
9) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro has movingly captured the voice of an aging English butler who has given every part of his soul to a level of service that has come, in the modern world, to seem increasingly meaningless. The best demonstration of this comes during a scene in which the butler does his best to cater to a chaotic dinner party while his father dies in the upstairs bedroom; Ishiguro makes this unbelievable character choice seem absolutely plausible and sad. If you think you would never be interested in reading about a repressed butler, this novel might prove you wrong.
10) Embers by Sandor Marai 
Finally, this novel by Hungarian anti-fascist, anti-communist (so not very popular in Hungary until recently) author Sandor Marai is a brilliant, sustained duel between a retired general and the childhood friend who betrayed him on a hunting expedition long ago. The dramatic confrontation takes place at the general’s castle, in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, just before, for many Hungarians, the era when their whole world turned upside down.
It sounds like a simple enough task to do. Read over instructions and follow what the words on the page tell you to do. Unfortunately, there are plenty of students who struggle with following directions accurately. Telling your teacher, “I missed that part in the directions,” or, “I didn’t completely understand the directions,” will not fix your grade or create any empathy from your instructor. When it comes to assignments, it is not merely a case of reading the instructions once and starting on your project. Many students fail to complete some step in the prompt that can greatly impact the grade on the project. There is hope, though. With a few simple steps to follow, you can greatly improve your ability to follow directions with great success.
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By: Julia H. Jackson
“I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.” – Alfred Hitchcock, in an interview with BBC reporter Huw Wheldon, May 5, 1965.
In 1954, notable director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes sat down to adapt the Cornell Woolrich short story “It Had to Be Murder” into Rear Window, what later became one of the most renowned films in American history. The original story featured only three characters: injured journalist L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries, his girlfriend Stella, and Lars Thorwald, Jeff’s neighbor, who he suspects has murdered his wife. Hitchcock and Hayes expanded Woolrich’s world to include a star-studded cast (featuring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly), a complete Greenwich-style apartment complex, and a minimal score by Franz Waxman. Somehow, Hitchcock and his team created a suspense-driven universe that played on themes of isolation, voyeurism, and romance. Just how did they do it? In today’s Write Like You Mean It, we’ll share some of Hitchcock’s own personal philosophies for creating a Window of your own.
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By Adam Krause
One of the great things about the English language is the way it is constantly evolving (for instance, the phrase “Schwing!” was all the rage in the early ‘90s, and hardly anyone says that anymore. Ask an older sibling – or Wikipedia – if you’re unsure of the definition.) Sometimes, however, terrific words get swept aside in favor of shiny new ones. In this series, we will look at words that have fallen into disrepair, and try to patch them up by showing their modern equivalent. Sometimes a word has been replaced by a compound word that is more specific to today’s world, and sometimes the exact same word has a completely different meaning than it carried in another era. Most often, though, there is no longer an exact term that brings the same succinctness and zing to what it is describing as these antiquated words do. In our effort to bring back words from the past, here’s Eduify’s first installment of 5 old words.
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