"Pride and Prejudice" Forever. And Ever.

Will the world ever get tired of rewriting Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Probably not; this is unfortunate, because it’s already been done about a million times. For those of you who don’t know, Pride and Prejudice is a classic novel about the proud Mr. Darcy who is destined to fall in love with the lively (and prejudiced) Elizabeth Bennet.

Because most of the rewrites of Pride and Prejudice are modern, they are also quite a bit racier. Some stories put Elizabeth and Darcy in modern settings while others are sequels that speculate about the subsequent lives of the characters. All offer dramatically different portrayals of the lives of two of the best known literary figures.

Luckily, Southwestern College’s Library has a variety of different versions to choose from:
The classic: Pride and Prejudice
Sequels: Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy & Elizabeth
A Modernization: The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy

Check with your Librarian if you’re interested in a book from a different location.

‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Manga Edition): An Illustrated Leadership Fable’ by Patrick Lencioni

It is safe to say that I wouldn’t have read this book if it weren’t in graphic novel form. Furthermore, I wouldn’t have read this graphic novel if it weren’t something curriculum-related that I purchased for our library. Lencioni’s story is about a business with disorganized unsuccessful leadership that hires a new CEO to turn the company around. Several meetings take place in which she confronts the tension of the existing management and attempts to teach them to work together effectively.

The end of this book gives specific advice for carrying out the team reformation that the author recommends. It’s difficult to say whether this book would be helpful to me if I were actually in a team leadership position. Most of the advice makes sense and is clearly explained. But is the advice too simple? It seems like some of the things discussed may be obvious, but maybe this is the problem – management techniques that work are so deceptively simple that they get overlooked.

As I’m sure some are aware, Lencioni has written The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (non-Manga edition), on which this edition is based. I can’t comment on how similar the content is, not having read the original. However, as a person who reads very little in the way of business management books, I can say that this is a tolerably entertaining, quick and painless read.

eBooks

Sometimes you need a certain book right now and you don't want to take the time to go to the library or pay money at a bookstore. If this is you, you might want to read books on your computer or other device (like an iPad or Kindle). Or you might want to download a book to an iPod or other similar device so you can listen to it while you drive. Here are some sites that might help you find what you need:

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare A searchable web version of the complete works of Shakespeare, including a glossary, discussion area, and links to other Shakespeare resources.

eBook Locator Thousands of eBooks by author, title, publisher, subject, and publisher. Also includes reviews, excerpts, and author bios. This site will guide you to bookstores as well as to libraries and other free sources.

Ohio eBook Project. Free eBooks for Ohio residents to download, for iPods or other devices. You’ll have to download some software first, but once you’ve done that, the process is smooth.

Project Bartleby Archive If you’d like to read books on your computer rather than listen to them, Project Bartleby offers a wide selection of older works, including much of the required reading for the American Literature course.

Project Guttenberg Over 33,000 books are available for download to a PC, Kindle, or other device.

‘Farewell Summer’ by Ray Bradbury

I think I may be getting too old to think about my mortality. Is this a contradiction? Maybe. What I really mean is that I’m getting to the point where aging and death is no longer interesting – just scary and depressing. Nevertheless, Ray Bradbury’s war of youth versus age is fun to read. Farewell Summer is the long anticipated follow-up to his classic Dandelion Wine. The story continues to follow Douglas and his younger brother as they interact with the elders in their town.

At some point I started getting the feeling that the aim of this book was to provide as many quotable phrases about life, age and death as could possibly be contained in 200 pages. There’s nothing wrong with this – there is definitely something to be said for being able to succinctly summarize important concepts in ways that are clever enough to be memorable. One such memorable quote:
“Life gives us everything then takes it away – youth, love, happiness, friends”
Unfortunately, I’m sure this is exactly right.

'A Sight for Sore Eyes' by Ruth Rendell

Obviously, I've read several Ruth Rendell books, so I'm in a position to make some comparisons. This is probably the book that I have been least enamored with of all her novels thus far. However, she manages to redeem herself well before the end of the novel. In true Rendell fashion, she managed to surprise me near the end of the book and I was left feeling very satisfied with the novel as a whole.

The book has a few primary story lines. Teddy is a young man who was neglected as a child and has grown up warped and unable to create or maintain relationships with others. Francine's mother was murdered when she was a child and Francine is repressed and over-protected by her step-mother. Harriet is an aging beauty who lives in an impressive home with her older husband. Anyone who is familiar with Ruth Rendell stories will realize that these three stories will eventually intersect.

Similar to other Rendell stories, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good suspense novel. Ruth Rendell does what most other writers are not able to; she tells you who the primary antagonist is and what his motivations are without making her story humdrum.

FastWeb for Scholarships

Registering with FastWeb to receive scholarship information takes about 10 minutes. It's well worth the trouble, because the FastWeb bot will then sift through thousands and thousands of scholarship opportunities to find just the ones for which you might qualify.
Having good grades is a plus when applying for scholarships, but there are other ways to qualify. Some scholarships are for students in a specific field of study and some are promotional scholarships. Promotional scholarships are contests that are sponsored by companies who provide scholarships as a form of advertising. These tend to be easy to apply for, but may be harder to get because they attract so many applications. Scholarship applications from nonprofit organizations take more effort to complete but may ultimately bring better results.
To check out what kinds of scholarships are available for you and to set up an account, go to www.fastweb.com.

Why Should I Sign the Library Sign-In Sheet?

It's important to our accrediting bodies, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) and the Ohio Board of Regents (OBR), that the library be used. The sign-in sheets are the main assurance Southwestern has to offer them that people are coming to the library and using its resources. It also helps justify new purchases. So, please sign in each time you visit the library!

'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest' by Stieg Larsson

I’m sure that anyone who has heard anything about the final installment in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy has heard nothing but good. And rightly so. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is a satisfying conclusion that resolves many of the complex issues that Larsson created. This book is certainly not for you if you haven't read the first two books of the trilogy - they are not stand-alone books.

When the Girl Who Played with Fire concluded, Lisbeth Salander was in a dangerous situation, physically and legally. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the story of Lisbeth’s recovery and the investigation of her supposed crimes/offenses. Of course, Mikael Blomkvist is still Salander’s greatest advocate; he helps to track down and unravel the conspiracy that caused her to be abused and declared legally incompetent.

Stieg Larsson has posthumously proven himself to be one of the most talented suspense writers of our time. Even though Larsson died before the publication of his books, they are certainly not unfinished. All three books were delivered for publication prior to Larsson’s death, and I can’t think of anything that is missing. The trilogy is great for suspense readers, but also for those who simply enjoy a good book.

‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is set in England shortly after World War II. The main character is an author trying to decide on a topic for her next book; she had been writing satirical commentary on the war until recently. A letter arrives from a stranger who lives on the channel island of Guernsey, and they begin to correspond. Though the entire story takes place during 1946, the lives of the island inhabitants haven’t really moved past the German occupation. The people still show signs of being deprived of life’s comforts, and friends and family members haven’t all returned to the island. Even though it is a wonderful story about friendship, reading, love and family, the book also serves to illustrate how long tragedy stays with a community.

This book is written in a very interesting (though certainly not unheard of) style. The narration comes in the form of letters written between the characters, and there isn’t any actual narrator at work. I should say that the narration comes from selected letters, because not all of the characters’ correspondence is included; there are references to events and conversations that we don’t hear of firsthand. I enjoy this; I feel that readers and authors are hesitant to leave anything to the imagination, which is what fiction is supposed to be all about. Happily, Shaffer and Barrows were able to omit letters that they did not deem necessary without leaving anything wanting in the story.

The Legend of Zelda Fitzgerald

It seems that people think about Zelda Fitzgerald a lot less often than they did in the 1970s, when I first read Nancy Milford’s biography, Zelda (PS3511 .I9234 Z8 1983). Perhaps more than 60 years after her death, it’s just too hard to imagine anyone like Zelda anymore. Perhaps her story seems just too sad, today, to tell that much.

Known her beauty and vivacious personality, Zelda married F. Scott Fitzgerald when she was 19. Scott was already a successful writer, and the couple lived on about $20,000 a year at a time when the average annual income was less than $1,000. They had a lot of fun—drinking, dancing on tables, traveling—for awhile. Their marriage deteriorated. Ernest Hemingway suggested that Zelda was jealous of Scott’s success, and Scott was jealous of Zelda's possible interest in other men. At age 27, Zelda wrote and painted, and was very serious about ballet. However, 27 is too late to begin a dancing career. Scott attributed her first mental breakdown, where she heard voices and had waking dreams of phantoms and other horrors, to excessive devotion to dance. After 1931, Zelda spent as much time in asylums and sanitariums as she did with Scott and later with her mother in Alabama. She died horribly in 1948.

It seems likely that Zelda’s illness would have a bad outcome even today. However her diagnosis and treatment would have been different. When she left an asylum after a year and three months’ visit in 1931—it’s hard to imagine anyone staying in an asylum for that long today—“her case was summarized as a ‘reaction to her feelings of inferiority (primarily toward her husband). . . She was stated to have had ambitions which were ‘self-deceptions’ and which ‘caused difficulties between the couple.’” The doctor’s idea was that if Zelda could get rid of her artistic ambitions, her prognosis for full recovery was good.

While in the institution, Zelda wrote an autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz. When Scott read it, he became furious, because he had been using the same events from Zelda’s life in his own novel. The idea seems to be that because he was the better writer, he deserved the material. He forced Zelda to eliminate scenes similar to those he had in mind for Tender is the Night. There is no doubt that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a vastly better writer than Zelda—but does that mean she should lose the right to document her own life?

What can we learn from Zelda Fitzgerald’s sad life? That you can go from the top of the world to somewhere near the bottom awfully quickly? That doctors do not have all the answers? Zelda is an engrossing, thoughtful, and perhaps cautionary read even for those not interested in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Moo

Perhaps because most of my jobs have been at colleges, I usually enjoy reading fiction about them. Moo (PS3569 .M39 M66 1995) is a very funny novel by Jane Smiley about a school that sounds a lot like the University of Iowa or Nebraska. Unlike Southwestern College in almost all ways, Moo U incorporates the state's agricultural school, which explains the secret presence of a hog, the victim of a rogue experiment, growing larger every day in a closed-up building called Old Meats. We get to see into the minds of about 100 different characters--including the pig's--and it's a testament to Jane Smiley's skill that we hardly ever get them mixed up.

Only a few of the characters are evil, but quite a few are eccentric, from the dean of the agricultural school (who plans to marry a cafeteria worker and get her pregnant through "artificially induced multiple births" that will "bring science into the service of the greater glory of god") to the paranoid farmer (who hangs around the dean's office wearing a bulletproof vest to protect himself from "the FBI, the CIA, and the big ag businesses, all of whom ... wanted to get him out of the way before he perfected and marketed his invention").

Although their courses are pretty different from what Southwestern students take, the Moo U. students' concerns are pretty similar: grades, finances, family, jobs, social lives, illness, psychological issues. Will the four roommates whose freshman year we follow return next September as sophomores? How will Moo U. react to the state's budget cuts? What will happen to the world's largest pig? Anyone with a sense of humor or an interest in academic life would probably enjoy finding out.

'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls' by Steve Hockensmith

The first Pride and Prejudice and Zombies book had the advantage of being able to use Jane Austen’s own language and storyline – just add zombies. The prequel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, does not enjoy this same advantage. The author, Steve Hockensmith, created the story using many of Austen’s characters, without Austen’s famous wit to animate them. Oh well.

That said, those who enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will probably enjoy Dawn of the Dreadfuls. The book is fun and zombie-filled; including more of those sexual references and innuendos that would surely make Austen blush (or worse). In my humble opinion, it wasn’t quite as good as the first, but really, people who read these books aren’t really looking for good writing. Or at least, hopefully they are not.

The Girl who Played with Fire By Stieg Larsson

Of course, I wouldn’t have read The Girl Who Played With Fire without first reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I can happily report that I have enjoyed The Girl Who Played with Fire as much or more than the first installment in the series. The original book featured recent crimes and not-so recent crimes, and we certainly get more of the same in this book.

One of my favorite things about the first book is that it was an investigation into a mysterious crime from many years ago. My favorite thing about this book is that Investigators Blomvkist and Salander are more personally involved in the investigation that takes place. Though Blomvkist is technically working on articles for his news magazine Millenium, he contributes the amount of energy that he does because of his personal involvement. Larsson successfully creates suspense right to the last page.

I suspect that people who enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon tattoo will enjoy this book as well; there is much to be said for reading the first book before starting this one. As with any series, there is catch up information for those who didn’t read the book, or who haven’t read it recently, but Larsson builds on many relationships that were established in the first book. In my opinion, this would be quite confusing if you haven’t read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Normally, I don’t read many suspense/thriller novels, even though I typically enjoy them. The fact that this series is a bit of a sensation has attracted me though. I recommend the book, and I’m looking forward to The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I feel like I must have been the last person to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I heard good things about it from both my parents and my advisor on my Master’s thesis. So writing about it feels very unoriginal. Yet here I sit, writing about it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a wonderful suspense story about an unlikely pair investigating an old missing person case. A middle aged journalist who was recently convicted of libel partners with an unpredictable, punk private investigator. The two are trying to find an explanation for the disappearance of a teenage girl from a seemingly isolated island in the 1960’s.

Of course, the key for any suspense writer is to arrange circumstances and characters so that the solution to the mystery isn’t obvious. Larsson has created a cast of characters diverse enough to keep us guessing without making it confusing. (Though, as this book was originally written in Swedish, there are far more surnames beginning with “Bj” than the average American is used to).

One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that although the translation is excellent, there are still occasional spots where the wording seems a bit strange. Perhaps this is because I enjoy the foreignness of it. There are points that seem like a dubbed movie - you can tell that it isn’t really what the characters are saying, but it doesn’t matter. Whether you find these slightly awkward phrases charming or not probably won’t make much difference in the end; it’s a clever book that most will enjoy.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Why have humans in different parts of the world been so consistently dominant over the people in other parts of the world? How do some societies manage to produce so many trade goods and services while others simply work to sustain themselves? These are just a few of the questions that Jared Diamond attempts to answer in Guns, Germs and Steel.

As the reader may guess, Diamond states that economically and politically dominant countries have prospered because they possess guns, germs and steel. This may be obvious, but it is not this conclusion that takes up the bulk of the book. Rather, Diamond tries to explain how European and Asian cultures have been especially prosperous without resorting to racist or ethnocentric assumptions. Some of his most interesting points are the following:

The geographic layout of Europe and Asia are more conducive to the spread of
cultures and technologies than other continents.
The fact that humans first evolved in Africa and migrated north through Europe and Asia before reaching other continents helped to preserve more large animal species for later domestication.
These things don’t necessarily mean that Europeans and Asians are more intelligent or innovative than other societies, but that their situations have been better suited toward some types of developments.

I really enjoyed this book; I am not an anthropologist or archeologist, but I found the topic very entertaining. Diamond writes in a way to explain these complex evolutionary topics to people who are not well acquainted with the field (though I think a little bit of knowledge of human evolution is helpful). Diamond's writing and conclusion were enjoyable; I felt that I took away a good deal from reading this book. And the topic was an admirable one, reminding us that people of different cultures aren’t as dissimilar as we sometimes seem.

The Financial Lives of the Poets (and the rest of us too)

Many of us have been affected in some way by the recent economic depression, and Matt Prior the hero of Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets is no exception. When we meet him, his life is nearly in ruins - the book was just published last year and is set in our current depression. The protagonist is only days away from losing his home, he has no job, his family is deeply in debt, and he suspects that his wife is being unfaithful. You'd think that things couldn't possibly get any worse.

Interestingly enough, the day before I began reading The Financial Lives of the Poets, I heard a story on NPR talking about California's financial woes, and suggestions by some that legalization of marijuana for recreational use could alleviate some of these problems. In this context, Matt Prior's decision to become a drug dealer to save himself from economic downfall seems less satirical than it may from a distance. This is something that I am especially fond of in this novel - the concerns of the main characters are immediate. (One can only hope that the economy will improve enough to make this book seem dated in just a couple years.)

Whenever I read a book/essay/article that is meant to be at least mildly satirical, my mind slowly drifts to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (which I love dearly). These two pieces aren't so very different. Neither author is actually promoting the solutions that are presented in their respective works, but both are presenting a challenge: Let's come up with a better or more realistic solution.

As Matt Prior exacerbates his situation, we root for him. After all, he wants the same things that many of us want; a comfortable home and security for his family. Hopefully those who read this novel will learn from Matt's mistakes - he reminds us that life isn't about things but about the people with whom you share them.

Baby Love

The death of J. D. Salinger seems a good occasion to write about Joyce Maynard’s Baby Love (PS3563 .A9638 B3 1981). Joyce Maynard doesn’t get the respect she deserves, perhaps because she published her first book, a memoir, when she was 20. Or maybe it’s because she doesn’t shy away from sensational subjects: To Die For fictionalizes the Pamela Smart story.

Baby Love is the story of four teenaged friends--three single mothers and a fourth who hopes to become one. There are plenty of other characters as well: an escapee from an institution for the criminally insane, and the equally insane—and not entirely less criminal--grandmother of one of the babies. One of the young mothers, Tara, perhaps the most likeable character of the novel, contemplates running off with a birthing cult. The cult members may also be insane, but they’re so much better than Tara’s actual family that we can only root for her to move on in with them.

The escapee from the detention center has his eye on one of the characters. There’s a tragedy.

And yet this book is neither a Mary Higgins Clark-type thriller nor an instance of hard-edge naturalism: it’s humor from start to finish. One reason is because we’re clearly never meant to identify with the characters; they’re all too broadly drawn to be real.

Here, for example, is what the crazed grandmother takes with her on a planned trip from New Hampshire to Disney World:

There are Mrs. Ramsay’s TV and a twelve-volume set of the Golden How and Why Encyclopedia. There are two African violet plants and a pressure cooker, a plaster cast of the Praying Hands, a beach umbrella, Mrs. Ramsay’s Barbie Doll collection (one is the 1962 version, with a bubble cut and the Dinner at Eight evening gown). There is a framed photograph of Mrs. Ramsay’s son Dwight in his Cub Scout uniform, an autographed copy of Lawrence Welk’s autobiography, Wunnerful, Wunnerful, four boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax. The reason for that is they don’t make Borax the way they used to anymore, back when Ronald Reagan was the host of Death Valley Days. Mrs. Ramsay happens to know they mix in chalk dust now. She found out just before they started doing it, so she bought enough of the old kind to last her.

If you enjoy a little tastelessness in your humor, Baby Love is absolutely worth your time.

Bitstrips by the Dozen

I’m not an artist at all. When it comes to creating attractive pictures that resemble anything, I’m useless. I’ve played around with Bitstrips.com a bit in the past, and I’ve been happy with how easy it is to use. I’ve found that the characters, objects and backgrounds have been very easy to manipulate, but I haven’t come up with any concept for a comic strip that seems engaging enough to be produced on a regular basis.

Bitsrips for Schools has many more possibilities than the limited work that I’ve done. I have read some reviews of teachers saying that students were asked to create comic strips depicting scenes from books that they have read for class. I’m trying to imagine how wonderful and disturbing Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury comic strips could be. An assignment that involved Bitstrips.com wouldn’t only be good for gauging reading comprehension, but also for encouraging computer skills and the use of imagination.

I’m also picturing some really neat Criminal Justice assignments – students could create scenes that depict appropriate and inappropriate officer responses to situation. (Of course, this could end up being MUCH more disturbing than any Kurt Vonnegut book.) The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of using Bitstrips in papers and classroom presentations – hopefully others will agree!

Review: 13 Steps Down By Ruth Rendell

If asked, most people can name a couple mystery writers without much trouble, but Ruth Rendell is a mystery/suspense author who I had not heard of until recently. I’ve always enjoyed a good suspense story, and they help keep my reading from being overwhelmed by books on serious subjects. Rendell’s books are particularly enjoyable because they are clever in a way that not all mystery writers manage to be.

13 Steps Down is about a man named Mix Cellini who is obsessed with a serial killer who had lived in his neighborhood years ago. Mix rents a small apartment in the house of an elderly, reclusive woman who needs extra money. Both are isolated from the outside world and their companionship does little for the mental well-being of either.

If nothing else, this novel may be one useful in motivating procrastinators. The antagonist of 13 Steps Down is constantly putting things off when he can’t afford to. He regularly offers very sensible sounding reasons as to why he puts off urgent tasks, for example: going to work, hiding incriminating evidence, etc. Even though the reader knows that he is a dangerous, delusional man, it is so frustrating listening to him put off so many important tasks.

Also, women in suspense novels always seem to have male protectors that are investigating the crimes against them. Though this is partially the case in 13 Steps Down, Rendell manages to impress me with the independence of her female characters. Possibly my favorite part of this novel is at the end when we get an unexpected affirmation of one character’s self-sufficiency.