So Good It's Medieval

Loved Book of the Day: The Pillars of the Earth
Author: Ken Follet
Genre: Historical fiction
Content: Medieval England; sex; graphic sexual violence; war
Length: 990 pages

Before finally sitting down to read The Pillars of the Earth, I had heard more about this novel from friends and family than I can remember hearing about any other book. The usual commentary ranged somewhere from, "I couldn't put it down for an entire night straight," to "It was the best book I've ever read." No matter what the feedback, though, I always got pretty much the same answer when I asked what it was about: "Um, it's about building a cathedral. But not really! I mean, it's about a ton of different things. Like...well, I can't explain it. You just have to read it!"


I have to admit that it took me a good year to get over my disinterest in reading a book "about building a cathedral" - it sounded so boring, and the book looked so dense, that I couldn't imagine loving it. But all those people couldn't be completely wrong, so I finally cracked it open one day, just to see if I would find myself turning the pages.


You can probably guess that I turned all 990 of them.


Maybe you've heard about The Pillars of the Earth (Starz just made a TV miniseries that got great reviews), and maybe you noticed all the buzz about it when Oprah put it on her 2007 booklist. It can be tempting to avoid hyped-up books like this one, just out of spite. To get over that misplaced knee-jerk reaction, I only had to read the first few sentences until I was hooked. But just to reassure you that this book is tried-and-true, I'm going to try to give you a much better description of its epic Medieval story than just telling you it's about building a cathedral (even though it kind of is)...

The Art of Memory-Telling

Loved Book of the Day: Maus
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Holocaust literature; Memoir; Biography; Historical fiction; Graphic novel
Content: The Holocaust; death; violence; family tragedy
Length: Maus I: 159 pages Maus II: 136 pages


With the publication of Maus I: My Father Bleeds History in 1986, Art Spiegelman catapulted to notoriety for one simple reason: He wrote a comic book about the Holocaust.

At first, the real value of the work he had accomplished was overlooked for the juicy controversy that whirled over one polarizing question: "Could something as serious as the Holocaust be portrayed effectively - and tastefully - in a comic book?" Once everyone had calmed down (and actually read the book), the answer was a resounding "yes." 

Five years later, Spiegelman published part two of his graphic narrative, Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, which was received with widespread critical acclaim. In 1992 the collective Maus won the Pulitzer Prize Special Award, making it the first comic book ever to win such accolades.

It's tremendously helpful to know all of this before you sit down to read Maus because the general concept of reading an illustrated comic about pogroms and Auschwitz is one of the most daunting, troubling ideas there is. But Spiegelman's medium is (obviously) not your average comic book.

Author and professor Deborah Geis put it best when she explained that "Maus is not exactly a comic book, nor is it exactly a novel, a biography (or autobiography), or a work of oral history - and yet it is all of these things." Spiegelman uses a unique graphic style with animal imagery, depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats (Americans are dogs, and Poles are pigs). Maus is a son's humble attempt to record his aging father's Holocaust story, but it transcends the mere act of writing down an oral history by portraying physical representations of the past, the present, and the simultaneous fallibility and importance of memory.

Heartbreak -> Genius

Loved Book of the Day: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Author: Dave Eggers
Genre: Fictionalized memoir; Autobiography
Content: Family tragedy; illness and death
Length: 437 pages

My first year of college was spent looking for another college to transfer to. I was intensely unhappy where I was, and spent most of my time studying or - you guessed it! - reading. A huge upside to my abject unhappiness was that I discovered some of my favorite novels during this time of my life, dedicated as I was to whiling away the days until I could break free to a better place. I distinctly remember when I picked up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius on one of my frequent excursions to the campus bookstore. It wasn't prominently displayed, and I chose it randomly from a shelf crammed with memoirs (it's possible I saw the term "heartbreaking" emblazoned on the spine of a book and melodramatically thought I would relate, given my emotional state at the time). I always like to pick books that are hidden away because it makes me feel lucky, like I've stumbled upon a secret gem, when it turns out to be good. And this one did.

It's not often that a book's preface will stand alone as an intriguing read.

It's even less frequent that a book's table of contents will grab you so completely that you've read it all the way through before you realize you haven't yet started the book.

And it's rarer still to begin to peruse an acknowledgments page and suddenly find yourself laughing, furrowing your brow in deep contemplation, and flipping through the pages eagerly to read more of the fine print.

Enter Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the Pulitzer Prize Finalist that opens with a page pronouncing "THIS WAS UNCALLED FOR," and continues on to scramble the genre of autobiography inside out and treat you to an emotionally riveting, beautifully crafted story of tragedy, resilience, vulnerability and loss.

At twenty-one, Dave Eggers becomes an orphan. His father dies first, from lung cancer; his mother follows five weeks later after a painful fight against stomach cancer. Eggers is left the guardian of his eight-year-old brother, Toph. Wrenched from his carefree, bohemian lifestyle into the grips of parenthood and responsibility, Eggers must learn to navigate a daunting new reality while still grappling with the suddenly tragic twist his life has taken.

Gone are the Excuses Not to Read It

Classic Circle

Loved Book of the Day:  Gone with the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Genre: Romance; Southern literature

Content: Civil War history; sex; some violence; Old Southern culture

Length: 959 pages*

The sensationalized pose of a dashing Clark Gable clutching a raven-haired Vivien Leigh to his chest with unbridled passion. An impossibly long black-and-white film depicting the Old South in its worst and final hour. Delicate white women in billowing petticoats waiting helplessly to become the spoils of war...

Whatever over-wrought, obvious image it is that comes to your mind when you hear Gone with the Wind, please promptly forget it.

Margaret Mitchell's world famous novel is a classic that deserves the label. Sometimes we hear about a hyped-up classic so many times that we feel we know the characters, the story, and the themes without ever reading a word. (Classics tend to be a bit on the bulky side, too, so it's not hard to want to avoid them.) But Gone with the Wind, winner of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize, is the first in a list of classics that you really should make the time and effort to read. 

Here's a few surprising reasons why: Scarlett O'Hara is not beautiful. She is - despite her reputation as a spoiled, manipulative damsel in distress - one of the most intriguing, strongest, and most resilient female characters in American literature. And her story is so much more than a romance.

Read Your Way to Rome

Loved Book of the Day: Cleopatra's Daughter
Author: Michelle Moran
Genre: Historical fiction
Content: Ancient Rome; some violence; some sex
Length: 411 pages

For the most part, I was laying out by the pool during a recent Florida vacation while reading Cleopatra's Daughter. By the middle of the first chapter I was mentally transported from my lounge chair to the hot, gritty streets of Alexandria, Egypt, two-thousand years ago. The rays beating down on me were the same that scorched Alexandria as the legendary Cleopatra, her three youngest children huddled behind her, stood in obstinate wait for Octavian's men as they marched through her beloved city determined to claim her throne.

If you're an ancient Rome aficionado, and you love the genre of historical fiction, you should probably just go buy this right now.

As the title suggests, this book is not about the ill-fated queen whose celebrated beauty and charm seem to be as persevering and timeless as Rome itself, but about her daughter, Selene. Selene is our narrator, and her perspective is as headily captivating as her character. The only daughter of Marc Antony and Cleopatra, she is a princess who shares her mother's strong will and outdoes her mother's exotic beauty. We have heard little about her before, and it's surprising and rather curious that the child of such human dynamos would be so widely forgotten. Moran unearths a gem in Selene and so unleashes a continued history of the greatest love story of all time.

To be Read at a Vanishing Pace

Loved Book of the Day: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Genre: Psychological thriller; Gothic fiction*
Content: Adult; sex; some violence; family drama
Length: 245 pages

I bought The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox at an airport, grabbing it somewhat blindly when I realized the bookstore was having a 2-for-1 deal. An hour into my plane ride I realized what a lucky grab that was.

Maggie O'Farrell writes a novel unique from any I've read in a long time, even in terms of basic subject matter. This novel explores the female psyche and divulges all the terror of a woman's worst fears with disquieting realism. Writing from multiple points of view, and switching back and forth between past and present, sane and insane, O'Farrell intertwines the thoughts, conversations and experiences of different people in the world of Esme Lennox to flesh out a haunting family story of terrible secrets, female oppression, and the trauma of betrayal by the closest of kin.

If you're looking for a story with a happy ending, read no further - but I can promise you a satisfying psychological thriller.

A Mysteriously Good Novel

Loved Book of the Day: Case Histories
Author: Kate Atkinson
Genre: Mystery; Hard to classify*
Content: Adult; sex; violence; murder
Length: 310 pages

One day, I looked over at my bookcase and saw a book I'd never noticed before. I don't know how Case Histories ended up in my room, but I assume it had something to do with my aunt Leslie, an avid reader whose impeccable book choices seem to travel from house to house throughout the family. Whatever the mysterious reason this book landed in my lap, I'm just glad it did. Case Histories is essentially a story about stories: the stories that make us who we are, shape our families and our children's lives, and haunt our consciences from one life-changing moment onward. As the book's title implies, Atkinson's fourth novel delves into histories - in particular, three dark, puzzling histories that plague three separate families and alternately shock, disturb and intrigue the reader.

The novel begins at full force with three unrelated but equally horrifying tragedies: the disappearance of a 3-year-old girl from her own backyard during the oppressive heat of summer; the brutal, seemingly senseless stabbing death of a doting father's adored daughter; and an overwhelmed new mother's crazed axe attack that leaves her defenseless husband dead at the foot of her baby's crib.


It's clear from the outset that these histories are indeed all cases of the same thing: family tragedy. What's so striking about Case Histories is that the tragedies themselves don't overwhelm the book. Instead, they seem to help the story along its way to revealing the even more powerful elements of truth and healing that will bring closure, if not reclaimed happiness, to those families left struggling with the intractable aftermath of unsolved crimes against their loved ones. Perhaps that's why this book, notwithstanding its admittedly depressing premise, is an entertaining, often fast-paced read that will literally give you goosebumps and tug at your heart strings at the same time.