stealing from friede1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/Read more... )

In 2006, I barely updated. I feel crappy about that. I am really, really going to try harder to be a better blogger this year. It was a very busy year, and I frequently found myself prioritizing work over updating this site. I mean, honestly. What was I thinking? So, no more of that. As we speak, I have two classes to teach tomorrow I haven't ( Read more... )

I read The Kite Runner in one sitting, really, as I waited for a delayed flight, took the flight, and rode the train up from NYC. After the first 100 pages, I spoke to someone on the phone and said, "You should read this; it's good." At the end, I wanted to find a rewind button on my own life to retract that statement ( Read more... )

King Leopold's Ghost was first read by my father, who gave it to my mother, who then insisted that I read it. It is an incredibly gripping nonfiction account of the colonization of the Western Africa region known now as the Congo ( Read more... )

After Christmas, I read Truth and Beauty, a memoir by Ann Patchett. I finally got around to reading her most acclaimed novel, Bel Canto. I don't frequently choose books because of authors, and I think I would have been unlikely to have chosen this one otherwise. I think I would describe it as more romantic and ambient than things I usually read ( Read more... )

I have not done a good job as of late keeping up on my book postings. Now that I'm finally on vacation, I'm going to try to post about my little backlog of things I've read.

Life on the Outside is the story of Elaine Bartlett, a woman who served sixteen years in prison under New York's Rockefeller drug laws. Bartlett acted as a courier of ( Read more... )

The Long Boat ( Read more... )

Cause when love is gone, there's always justice ( Read more... )

I finished Jesus Land a few weeks ago. A memoir by Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land chronicles her adolescence, first spent in Indiana in the home of her fundamentalist parents, whose rules and punishments defy logic. To a certain extent, part one of her book is a pretty standard story of the misguided and harmful abuse children can be subjected to in ( Read more... )

I don't really know what made me pick up Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's better in the first half than the second; it gets bogged down a little bit by the religion component in the second half. That said, the characters are imperfect and dynamic, and there's something kind of cathartic about reading about ( Read more... )