"snow day" reading - Posted by Gail

No snow at 10 PM, no snow at 2 AM, no snow at 6AM but enough ice and potential bad things to make today one of all teachers' and students' favorite wintertime occasions: a snow day! What to read?

I began my celebration with Carl Hiaasen's Basket Case. I had abandoned Hiaason for awhile, feeling a certain repetitiveness to his wackiness. But this one was floating around the house and I was in the mood for some lightness. Basket Case is way down on the wacky scale (only a fight with a frozen lizard so far) and even the main character, an obit writer for a Florida newspaper, is pretty much in the normal range.

My next decision is between two other books in progress: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell or Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle. I bought (a pretty rare event) Cloud Atlas last week because it got rave reviews ("The best book I've ever read!") from my school's music teacher. I had asked him what he had been reading lately, a fairly safe conversation to have at the copy machine/with most teachers, and he lit up. So I begin it on my train trip to visit the Hall's newest reader (to-be) Murphy and got through the first chapter, a journal, which took me to the South Seas with a bizarre cast of characters from Moriori slaves to a blackballed doctor; I read the second chapter, letters from a failed musician to a partner-in-corruption, in the early morning over the weekend. Now I could continue reading a chapter set in the Pacific coast and involving a reporter. Each "chapter" is linked in some surprising way to the previous one.

Or I could pick up Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle, another new-to-me author whose book I found on the New Book shelf at my branch library. I did what I see students selecting books in my high schol library do every day: pick up something that looks like a possibility based on the cover or maybe the title, read the flyleaf and decide to try it out. This flyleaf talks about deaf characters, mistaken identity, and assures me that the book is " both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love and identity, from one of America's most versatile and entertaining novelists." A few chapters in I have met the characters, been to jail and am now ready to go on the quest for justice and love.

Or perhaps I could pick up again Fly on the Wall , a new teen book from my school library. I typically read a couple of these a week and some are truly excellent regardless that they are young adult genre. Here is the summary, as found on the back of the title page in young adult and children's books (why not in adult books???) "When Gretchen Yee, a student at the Manhatten School for Art and Music, wishes she were a fly on the wall of the boy's locker room, she never expects her wish to come true in such a dramatic way." How is that for a grabber plot? And interestingly, it has a PINK COVER! If you have been folowing the NYTimes discussion, begun with Maureen Dowd's column about the "re-feminization of the American novel", you will know that chick lit has spread and pink covers have taken over. In a letter to the editor in today's Times, a mom of a 12-year-old explains how her daughter picks books:" Pink books. I have never read a bad pink book." Well here is a bad one that I don't think I can finish.

Today is the Grand Opening of a new Goodwill store on Route 1 in Orange, one which is advertising a large selection of new (?) books. I have picked up some super books during my prowls of Goodwill stores (did you think all those birthday and Christmas books came from B&N?) but there is some very nasty stuff coming down outside.
Decisions, decisions...