About a Book

Read enough adult nonfiction and fiction in a month, and then tell me you didn’t enjoy diving into the kooky and creative world Dav Pilkey offers in The Adventures ofCaptain Underpants . One part palate cleanser after the above reading list, the children’s novel is also a wild ride through Pilkey’s mind. According to the book itself, Pilkey was once cast out into the hallways during his school days because he was too disruptive. There in his seclusion, he drew, and laid the foundation for his successful career telling tale of a man in just underwear and cape, saving the world. Only a small section of the book focuses on how Pilkey’s career started. The rest goes to the unsuspecting hero. Spoiler Alert: this is an origin story, and Captain Underpants’ true identity is the principal of a school attended by the book’s two main characters, George and Harold. Pilkey gives two relatable boys in George and Harold, making it easier for kids (and adults) to find themselves in the adv...

Alan Lightman ’s Einstein’sDreams can feel a lot like a fever dream, as the author pitches the reader through 30 short imagined dreams that Albert Einstein might have had. Each dream is about time, and each dream has a different take on how time might function in the world contained within the dream. Head spinning? It will spin even more while reading this book. At the root of the book is Einstein, a man so entrenched in our collective psyche, it’s hard not to imagine his face, his drooping mustache, and his quizzical expression while reading Lightman’s work. Lightman places us in 1905, in Berne , Switzerland , where Einstein works on his paper on electrodynamics. The work affects the scientist and his dreams. In each, a world where time happens differently from the next is unveiled. In one, a human life lasts just a day. In another, they live forever. How time moves influences how the humans in that world live their lives. The idea is fascinating; the writing, less so....

In Mohsin Hamid ’s ExitWest , two lovers, Saeed and Nadia, flee an unnamed country in the middle of a civil war, travel through magical doors, and try to find new lives for themselves, first in Greece, England, and finally the United States. Through a mix of the horrors of war and the fantasy of the doors, Hamid tells the story of how Nadia and Saeed grow together and apart by the end. Saeed and Nadia’s personalities push Exit West along. Saeed is fairly shy and is lead by more traditional values about relationships and family, at least at the beginning of the novel. Nadia is independent and free spirited. Hamid does each character service by showing neither personality as better, each with its strengths and weaknesses. As they clash, we also see their mutual respect and love help them find middle ground. It is a study in compromise, which helps the couple survive. Another layer of Exit West is Hamid’s examination of how relocation for a refuge population changes the refugee,...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart purchased a cheap starling from a bird shop in 1784 after the bird sang an off-key version of the composer’s theme from his Piano Concerto Number 17in G . While not much is known about Star’s life once it became a pet of the Mozart clan, it is known the bird received its own attended funeral, even though Mozart didn’t attend his own father’s funeral not too long before. In Mozart’s Starling , Lyanda Lynn Haupt , an ecophilosopher and naturalist who thanks in her acknowledgments Beatrix Potter, and Georgia O’Keefe, and likely feels camaraderie with these artists who brought the natural world to life in their works, brings Star to life. In a compelling parallel, Haupt describes her rearing of Carmen, a starling she rescues and brings into her home. Mozart’s Starling was engrossing in large part because of Carmen. Haupt rightfully describes starlings as invasive birds which many ornithologists show disdain. Placed in a home with a loving caregiver a...

In Oryx and Crake , Margaret Atwood imagines a world where science and big business run the world, and have turned it into a dystopian nightmare. Navigating this new world, and showing us how it got here, is Jimmy. He grew up in a world already crumbling, weighed down by a depressed mother and an addiction to Internet porn. He was ready for the world to fall apart by the time the genetic mutations took over. Atwood makes Jimmy the book’s centerpiece, relegating the eponymous Oryx and Crake to surface sketches. We see the three interact, and we learn how each played in each others’ lives, but Jimmy is the one who gets the most back story, the most complex write-up. Oryx, on the other hand, comes across as sexy and usable; Crake feels demented and destined to destroy the world with his scientific genius/madness. Neither ever moves past caricature. The joy of Oryx and Crake is in the tension. From the beginning, the world seems decayed, and an ominous tone sticks to the en...

My friend from high school recommended A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I asked for reading suggestions, commenting that it was worth another read. Confession: this is my first time. Betty Smith ’s novel seems like it launched a thousand books like it, and feels like an American story. The wonder of Smith’s writing is that, it’s hard to name many who have done it as beautifully. The book’s main character, Francie Nolan, is an intelligent little girl who loves reading and grows up in Williamsburg , Brooklyn in the first quarter of the 20 th century. Her mother Katie works as a cleaning lady and her father Johnny does odd jobs, struggling to hold onto just one because he’s an alcoholic. Francie is reserved, but you can see the New Yorker in her as she grows. She finds ways to make it there: attending the schools she wants, defending her little brother Neeley against neighborhood bullies and a world that wants to put a poor kid like her, and/or a girl, into her place. Francie reads ...

Mark Haddon ’s TheCurious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a bare bones first-person account of some days in the life of 15-year old Christopher, a young math wiz from Swindon , England whose autism affects how he experiences the world, how he relates to it, and how he tells his story. Haddon does service to his character and his book by laying it out as though Christopher wrote wrote the whole piece as an exercise in uncovering a mystery: when he finds his neighbor’s dog dead, Christopher sets out to figure out who killed the pup, and writes about his discoveries. Christopher tells us early on that he doesn’t lie, and everything that happens after that, be it heart-breaking or joyous, feels true. It is an often times painful, visceral ride the reader takes with Christopher. For a large chunk of the book, Christopher travels from Swindon to London , by foot, train, and subway, when he runs away from home. This solitary venture leads us into less interesting terr...

With a title like Buried in a Bog , a reader might expect a fast-paced murder mystery, but they won’t get it here. Sheila Connolly ’s main character Maura Donovan leaves her hometown of Boston to visit Ireland after her grandmother dies stateside. Grandma, who was Maura’s primary caretaker for much of her life, had asked Maura to make the trip. Maura has not known much of a world outside Boston , where the twenty-something worked in bars, and lead what seems a fairly sheltered life. She wasn’t particularly academic, though she is clearly smart, hasn't left Boston much, and as the novel begins we see her floundering for what to do now that grandma is gone. Connolly has written a study of a person who has just lost everything and has nothing holding her back, wandering for a new beginning, rather than a nail-biter of a mystery. Yes, there is a body found in a bog, and Connolly connects Maura to it in ways that set Maura in new directions.  The connections feel too con...