The Last Lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch

Dr. Randy Pausch had such an incredible sense of humor and ability to express that humor with his “Last Lecture”.  This is another lesson in the importance of making wonderful memories with your family & friends by a terminally ill professor. I was inspired by his courage as I was with Morrie Schwartz in “Tuesdays With Morrie”.  Worth reading!

Page – Rock Hill                      ISBN  9781401323257

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

If you want a reminder of how important your time spent with friends can be, then this book will definitely be that for you. You will laugh & cry but it was one of the most inspirational books I have read. You can’t help but like Morrie Schwartz  with his common sense  and wisdom : “Everyone knows they’re going to die.. but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.” is so on target. Definitely a biography that is readable and memorable.

Page – Rock Hill                                   ISBN  0385484518

Drood by Dan Simmons

“My name is Wilkie Collins, and my guess, since I plan to delay the publication of this document for at least a century and a quarter beyond the date of my demise, is that you do not recognise my name.” So begins the novel Drood and the exploration of the still unresolved mysteries of the dark final days of one of our greatest writers, Charles Dickens. It may also provide the key to Dickens’ final, unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens, who was at the height of his career and popularity, was in the Staplehurst train wreck while travelling with his secret mistress. After narrowly escaping death and trying to rescue fellow passengers, Dickens encounters a ghoulish figure named Drood who had been travelling on the train in a coffin. Along with the narrator Wilkie Collins (who is Dickens’ friend, frequent collaborator and secret rival), Dickens pursues the elusive Drood in an effort that leads the two men into a nightmarish world beneath London’s streets. What is behind Dickens’ deepening obession with corposes, crypts, murder, opium dens and the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies? Collins begins to wonder if Dickens is mad and whether Drood really exists or is merely a cover for the author’s own murderous impulses. Collins himself is the most unreliable of narrators: he is an opium addict and is prone to nightmarish visions. What is real and what isn’t?

This book has a wonderful historical backdrop and was very enlightening as to the life and times of Charles Dickes. Dan Simmons weaves an interesting plot with many intriguing psychological puzzles. Even though Drood is rather long, I think interested readers will find it hard to put down!

Mary Beth – York                               ISBN  9780316007023

In the Cut by Susanna Moore

Some of the books I read come from book recommendations on librarything.com, a very useful (and free) website that connects you to other readers.  Once you list your “favorites,”  you receive helpful “automatic” and “member” title suggestions based on what you’ve listed in your “library.”  Librarything.com is how I discovered Susanna Moore.  Because I enjoy novels told in alternating voices of various characters in the story, a member recommended I read Moore’s The Big Girls.  This led me to find other books by Susanna Moore.

     If you’re interested in the intricacies of language, you’ll enjoy In the Cut.  The narrator is an intelligent teacher of writing and a scholar of language, and she is in the process of writing a book about dialects and eccentricities of pronunciation.  She’s fascinated with the way that people use (and misuse) words, and her college students give her plenty of material for her research.  Many of the entertaining examples from student Cornelius’ trash-talk (or woofing) can’t be printed here on YC Reads, but here’s a small sample of her observations:

         Two women sitting next to me on the subway were talking about a man.  One of the women said,

        he just want to conversate and I just want to blowse through my magazine.  I could kill that man.

        A dangerous combination for me.  Language and passion.

        I have often noticed that words that are incorrectly rendered have an onomatopoetic logic, as well

        as a kind of poetry, that is more appealing, sometimes even more accurate , than correct usage.

        The wrong words are sometimes so close to a truer meaning that they are like puns…For example,

        Old Timer’s Disease, rather than Alzheimer’s.  Abominal for stomach.  Athletic fit for epileptic fit.

        Chicken pops.  Very close veins.  The prostrate gland.

 OR this:

           “I’m sorry,” I said.  “Sorry that she was killed.”

          He nodded.

          “How was she killed?”

          “Her throat was cut.”  He paused.  “And then she was disarticulated.”

          What a good word, I thought.  Disarticulated.

 

    Living alone in New York City, her best friend accuses her of being a word casuist.  She appreciates his reference to her precise and decorous examination of words, but she does admit to “a certain rigidity, a certain prudishness.”  However, there is little “prudishness” in other aspects of her language and life!  Don’t let the intellectual side of this scholarly narrator discourage you from reading the book, as there is a lot more to it than a fascination with language.  Speaking of words…if you’re offended by the f— word, then this book is not for you.  However, Susanna Moore doesn’t haphazardly use the word in each sentence, as some authors are prone to do.  It’s what’s happenin’!  The New York Times Book Review calls it “a ferociously uninhibited erotic thriller.”  This whodunit will not only titillate but terrify you to the very end.   

Jennifer L. – York                         ISBN  0679422587