Book reviews

The heat still rages around us and the past week has been filled with lounging around in Grandma's air-conditioned house or out at the air-conditioned mall. Not much activity going on in either place. I have made numerous trips to the library to check out books that I've heard about or stumble across and I usually buy a book or two at the used book stall. What better way to spend a sweltering, hot day than inside a cool room with a book! (But sometimes the book reading turns into a long nap...)

What I'm actually doing is looking for an appropriate book for some of my students, ladies, to read. They like something with an American flavor about it, not necessarily contemporary fiction but maybe not classics that they have already read in their younger days. We have over the years read; To Kill a Mockingbird, Sidetracked Home Executives, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Last Lecture, The Phantom Tollbooth, Holes, American Pie, and Where the Heart Is. I need to start finding the next book for us.

My Year of Meats turned out to be a book about a woman acquainted with both Japan and America, she being a sort of liaison between the two cultures. You can see how I might relate to that. I found myself laughing and nodding at the common occurrences that are not so common in another culture. Lots of dialog (that always makes a book easier for students to get through) and of course sprinklings of Japanese language. But I think a bit too much sex in there for my ladies...

I read Agatha Christie just because I don't think I've ever read anything of hers... I enjoyed that immensely but the English is a bit antiquated for my ladies.

I picked up a dollar book called Jewel at the library which I really, really enjoyed but it is probably too long for my ladies' class. It was interesting to read as it followed a family crossing the country into California and mentioned many of the towns (and the city where my mother lives today!).

Of course I had to get in an easy read from the library, A Quilter's Holiday, but since my friends aren't quilters I don't think they'd appreciate that much...

And I guess I'll be taking back books loaned to me by my friend. Implosion, Water for Elephants, Three Cups of Tea, Bonhoeffer.

Any easy-to-read, realistic American culture (not too much sex... it is so embarrassing to read aloud with my ladies...), lots of dialog books that you've read recently? Amazon allows me to buy almost anything these days.