The Flight of Summer

We got home from vacation late last night and when I woke up this morning, School was waiting for me. Kind of like when my almost-4-year-old comes in in the middle of the night and stands as close as possible, silently waiting for me to wake up and soil myself. Her good morning message: "I know you and Summer have had a nice fling, but let's be honest, it's not serious and we are getting back together." She's a bossy little thing, but I love her. This post is dedicated to my sweet Summer, who treated me like a princess this year.

It was a great summer for reading and I feel satisfied reflecting on the literary places I've been over the past two months. The quick and dirty shortlist:

Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow

In March of 1947, emergency crews responded to a report of a strong odor coming from a brownstone on 5th Avenue and, upon arrival, were met with a wall of junk. Crews were forced to pull things out onto the sidewalk in order to get into the house. After breaking into an upstairs window and crawling over debris for two hours, one police officer discovered the body of the elderly Homer Collyer. His brother Langley was nowhere to be found. Police eventually removed 84 tons of rubbish and debris from the house, only to find, almost a month later, the body of Langley Collyer who had apparently been crawling through a tunnel to bring food to his blind and paralyzed brother when one of his contraptions fell on top of him and killed him. Homer is said to have died of starvation days later. This novel is E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized account of how they got to this point.

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Sabine has been in love with Parcifal since she began working as his assistant 20 years before the start of this story. They eventually marry, Sabine knowing full well that Parcifal is gay and dying of AIDS. After his death, Sabine embarks upon a journey of discovering who Parcifal really was that leads her from her comfortable California mansion to a bitter and brutal mid-western winter. Here she learns that, just like any good magic show, there is always more to the magician than what you can see.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

A ghost story and a love story about a twin who leaves her apartment across from Highgate Cemetery in London to her twin nieces whom she has not seen since infancy due to a falling-out with her sister. Elspeth haunts the strange girls while they develop relationships among her closest living friends both in the apartment above and the apartment below. Niffeneger is best known for The Time-Traveler's Wife, which I loved. Somehow this story was quite a bit weirder...

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

DO NOT tell my AP Lit. students that I read this book for the first time this summer. They are of the impression that I am a long-studied expert on this classic Russian tale. Do you know the story? The crime: murder. The punishment: six hundred pages of the guilty conscience of one Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

I am a big fan of Anderson's powerful YA books (Speak, Catalyst, Twisted), but this one was really tough to finish. Inside the mind of an anorexic teenage girl, the reader truly sees the struggle caused by this disease. Scary. And so sad.

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells

I happened upon this book while browsing the shelves of the library and was so excited! I love Rebecca Wells, who wrote The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood series. She has a way of creating a setting that makes you want to move to a place, even if that place is the Louisiana bayou. She also writes strong and vibrant female characters the reader can't help but fall instantly in love with. This book rivaled Half-Broke Horses for page-turner of the summer as it is the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of Calla Lily Ponder as she grows up, leaves home, and discovers the world her mama would have wanted for her.

Now I'm off to make calendars, set up my classroom, copy my syllabi, and update my school website...

Horses and Heroines

When I read The Glass Castle a few years back, I was sucked into a world so unbelievable and riveting I had to cancel all my goings-on and close myself into the bedroom until every last page was turned. And when I have that kind of connection to a piece of writing, to a story, it can sometimes make me reluctant to read other works by the same pen--for fear she can't possibly do that again and I wouldn't want to ruin her high literary standing in my internal critic's shop.

That being said, Half Broke Horses is brilliant. It's the life story of Lily Casey, Walls' maternal grandmother, told in first person the way only Walls can tell a life story: in short yet voluminous vignettes. Lily Casey was a woman not always dealt the best hand in life, but who always knew how to bluff her way to victory or to work her way out of a debt. She was fiercely ambitious, which often led to disappointment, but she always had a plan for what to do next. This is the kind of story you want to tell your daughter, whom you believe will be the first female president of the United States, to remind her that it's OK to want everything in this world.

I grew up with a fiercely strong and independent mother whose voracious belief that I would one day be the president was not to be extinguished. She also believed I would be a doctor and a lawyer; a teacher and a graphic designer; a famous artist and a famous writer. I'll never forget the Christmas of my 6th grade year. I was going through a phase where my dreams included Harvard Law School and my mom found a Harvard sweatshirt at the local department store. When I opened it Christmas morning she relayed the story of its purchase and the conversation she had with the clerk about her daughter who was going to be going to Harvard. "Wow! Congratulation, that is quite an accomplishment!" the clerk exclaimed, "What will she be studying?" "She thinks law," my mom replied, "but she may change her mind by the time she gets there."

This overwhelming belief that I was rocket-scientist material made me the dreamer I am today. It gave me confidence through adolescence and college--something a lot of women don't encounter until later and then, to some, it is fleeting. Even now, as a 31-year-old, there have been times I've overheard my mother boasting to another relative about some accomplishment of mine the way I might describe my own son's first steps or how he is surprisingly verbose for three. She is a great teacher of many things (hard work, follow-through, and weed-pulling to name a few), but the two most important lessons she has taught me in my life are how to believe in myself unwaveringly and how to believe in others the same.

Lily Casey was a believer and a dreamer. I like to think, if asked about the aspirations of her granddaughter she would have replied, "She will probably be one of the most profound memoirists of her time. That or the president of the United States."

"Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito."--Lily Casey Smith