In Persepolis, Satrapi shows the reader what it was like growing up in a war with regimes that over time grew increasingly radical and dictatorial about morality and strict dress codes, especially for women. Her parents were more liberal and allowed her many freedoms, but in public she needed to conform or face the wrath of the regime. The story ends with Satrapi leaving her family behind for Austria at the age of fourteen.

Satrapi illustrates in Persepolis 2 how difficult it was to conform to a new life outside of Iran and shows her growing up on her own. As with many typical teenagers, she makes many wrong choices in her life, but ultimately returns to Iran and completes her schooling, getting married along the way.

Satrapi’s illustrations are beautiful and her depictions of life are clear. The language in the novels, to me, sometimes seems to be more simple than necessary, but to reach a young audience, I would guess the language is appropriate. Her willfulness is entertaining and even sometimes frightening.

She does not hold anything back, even when her experiences might be construed as cruel. For instance, Satrapi falsely accuses an innocent man of saying derogatory things to her when she is afraid the regime will see her first with her make-up on. The man is taken away by the regime and more than likely will be tortured. Throughout both books, she does not hesitate to give her opinions about the regime, war, and how these things have affected her.

These books give the western reader insight into a potential previously unknown world of oppression that should urge them to learn more about this society, its background, and what a little civility, tolerance, forgiveness, and understanding could do to make this world a better place for everyone.

I would recommend these books to anyone interested in history, war, or even, more simply, the growing pains of life.

Find a copy of Persepolis or of Persepolis 2 at a library near you.

The Hunger Games debuted in 2008 to little fanfare, as many books do, but the word-of-mouth marketing machine of bookstores and libraries turned it into a sensation. The protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is sixteen years old. She lives in a post-apocalyptic society called Panem, in which the United States as we know it has collapsed, and a controlling government rules from the Capitol. The country has been divided into Districts, and in those Districts, the citizens struggle to survive. Each year, to show the government’s power, the rulers of Panem stage a competition called The Hunger Games. Two children from each district, called tributes, fight to the death in a televised, all-too-real version of Survivor.

I realized that I could not review Mockingjay without revealing spoilers for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy. However, I can give an overview of the series as a whole. The first book’s strengths lie in the character development of Katniss and her struggle to survive in the arena of the Games. The suspense comes from wondering if she will live or die. By the second and third book, it is clear that Katniss will live – but we must derive what we think she will do from what we know of her character. I wasn’t surprised by the wrap-up, although I felt that it was a tad rushed. There was so much more we could have learned from Katniss and her friends, so many things we could have seen that just weren’t shown.

All three books are gripping reads. The grief that permeates the series, the constant sadness that haunts all the characters, the violence, the death – these are the realities of life during war. And yet, we still have Katniss, the strong, likable female hero: the one who brings us hope that life goes on, even during bad times. I look forward to seeing how these books are portrayed onscreen, and re-living the story with our characters again.

Look for The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay at a library near you.

The soldiers portrayed in the book are almost all young men, from a variety of walks of life, but each is set apart slightly from the rest, haunted or damaged in some way by the past and by the present. The men of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’ platoon use tranquilizers to cope with firefights, long for lost loves back home, and the ones who survive the landmines and guerilla battles of their tours return to their homes forever changed, and in some cases irreparably broken. They find the landscape of Vietnam surreal and supernatural, almost alive in their darkest nights on patrol.

Tim O’Brien narrates the story, a man in his 40s reflecting back on the War; he is the real Tim O’Brien, but he is also a fictional character at the same time. In these two roles, he serves both as an almost-omniscient narrator, and also as a real-time observer of events as they unfold. The story becomes a work of metafiction as the real Tim O’Brien changes places with the fictional O’Brien to tell the stories. The transitions are almost seamless, but the question arises: what is the truth, and what is embellished? And further to that point, does it really matter? The stories O’Brien tells are the stories of almost everyone who fought in combat in Vietnam. In that sense, the characters are Everyman figures, despite their highly individual backstories, world views, and ultimate fates.

O’Brien addresses the line between fact and fiction within the stories themselves; hashing out truth and reality are common themes in the book, whether manifest in O’Brien relating stories to his young daughter 20 years after the fact, or in any of the soldiers twisting and subverting their day-to-day reality in order to cope with events at hand. Azar, a soldier, proclaims “Honest to God, I sometimes can’t remember what real is.” The same lines are blurred for both the characters and the reader — leading to an ultimately realistic and hard-hitting story about the war and the people who experienced it firsthand.

Moreover, The Things They Carried can be viewed as a starkly honest narrative telling one man’s story and many others’ stories as well. The simple summary of the book is that it’s a war story, but it is also a deep and beautiful meditation on truth and reality.

The Things They Carried is the book that is the focus of The Big Read currently happening at Hiram College. If you can, attend some of the events at Hiram and in surrounding communities. If not, and you still want to participate, talk about the book here.

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Will Lavender’s Obedience promised to be a new version on the formula—a psychological thriller set in the college classroom. The book opens as the cool Dr. Williams—we know he is cool because he wears jeans, Nikes, and carries no papers or syllabi—opens his Logic and Reasoning course with the simple announcement: “There’s been a murder.” And that, he goes on to explain, is to be the course. The seven young women and men in the course have six weeks to use logic and reasoning to prevent a hypothetical murder.

The premise, ridiculous as it is, is fun. Each of the three main characters, Dennis, Brian, and especially Mary, are drawn into the hunt for the killer. The problem is that these three act in a way that shows little logic and no reasoning. Lavender has a dim view of students, it seems. I’ve never known students—even freshmen, and certainly not upperclassmen like these—to so wholly accept an assignment without challenge or remorse. Moreover, I’ve never known students so unable to see through a professor’s hidden agenda. When it becomes clear that the murder may not be hypothetical, these students don’t think for a second that they are being played. When they feel emotionally abused, the most they muster is a half-hearted attempt to walk out of class or a note to the dean. I’m generally willing to suspend disbelief in the service of a good story, but it becomes clear as Obedience progresses that Lavender only respects his villain: his other characters are only pawns to be manipulated, toyed with, and controlled. Little respect for characters translates eventually as little respect for the reader, and what was a promising novel eventually becomes grating.

Will Lavender obviously revels in dropping in references in Obedience to Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” experiments from the 1960s. Milgram showed that given the correct circumstances and prompted by the right kind of authority figure, almost anyone could become a torturer. In subsequent years, Milgram became a figure of infamy in psychological circles because of the lasting trauma he inflicted on his experimental subjects. After finishing Obedience, it seems that Lavender has learned Milgram’s lessons on torture, but he has yet to consider the kind of lasting trauma he might inflict on his readers.

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The Malzieu is the lead singer of the French band Dionysos and the book should be paired with their album La mécanique du cœur (which roughly translates as the mechanics of the heart– the same French title of the book). An animated movie a la Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride is in production. Here are two YouTube videos for a taste of what the movie will be like: French only or French with English subtitles.

Find this book at a library near you. Also available as an audiobook.

The contributors, including two playwrights, a biographer, poets, novelists, memoirists, essayists, a physician, a musician, and two actresses write about relationships, careers, and the inevitable current of change. The reader soon discovers that no two women respond to the fluidity of life in the same way. Furthermore, these individual responses to daily living create very unique and singular lives. Also, the writing styles vary from woman to woman, essay to essay. Some write with unabashed humor or using silly anecdotes, while others are serious and convey their heart’s deepest concerns.

For example, novelist Beth Powning suggests that “a new language [is] learned” through the art of living in her contribution. She lives on a farm and experiences dynamic natural cycles up close. She admits to being more aware of life’s ambiguities because she appreciates life as a process. Ms. Powning questions whether that which was once living ever completely dies, r are past losses a necessary fertile ground for present opportunities and future aspirations?

Similarly, Christiane Northrup, M.D., an obstetrician/gynecologist, uses her voice to offer another insight. While admitting life comes with no guarantees, she observes, “pain is inevitable but suffering and misery are optional.” She explains her philosophy by recounting a memory as a medical student: immersed in endless study, she continued to passionately play the harp, because her parents always stressed balance of body, mind, and spirit. Dr. Northrup aligns this belief to her practice of medicine as well. She treats pain and disease as rooted within the whole person. Therefore, she invites her patients to become acquainted with the whole body concept of inner balance for healing. Within this mindset, western medicine and eastern holistic practices co-exist.

Another authentic voice, that of writer Gretchen Haight, invites readers to “breathe the freshness of uncertainty and hope.” She explains that in order to resonate our own personal truth outside of ourselves, we first need to grasp it internally. By questioning and understanding our choices and behavior, we empower our future possibilities. That means examining those things which didn’t turn out as we had planned—our failures. Ms. Haight acknowledges that our society likes to sweep so-called mistakes under the rug. But to be truly authentic and free, we must celebrate our losses as stepping stones to success.

Each author uniquely presents her story of fulfillment and surrender. The individual voices of In the Fullness of Time blend together, rejoicing the resilience of life.

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Milner divides his lengthy book into three broad but overlapping segments–acoustic/electrical (ending largely in the 1920s), analog, and digital. His brush is broad, but often focused on individuals, as he examines innovations in contexts that are simultaneously economic, political, and artistic, with no single force dominating, but always in tension. Edison’s cylinders may have been a more faithful recording medium than Victor’s discs, but were more difficult to produce, thus sacrificing sound quality for ease of manufacture. Acoustic/ electrical recording controversies foreshadowed the analog/digital wars decades later, where ultimately certain advantages of the former in each case lost out to the latter, sometimes for practical reasons, consumer preference or ease of use, business decisions, or capital investment.

In every part of Milner’s narrative, personalities stand out. Quirky geniuses (Leopold Stokowski, Les Paul), annoying blowhards (several sound engineers and corporate executives come to mind), and elitist audiophiles all put forth their best and worst efforts to change the medium, be first, or cash in. Technology resides not just in the choice of distribution formats with which we are more familiar (vinyl vs. compact disc), but the standards behind them (45 rpm vs. 33 1/3 rpm, 4 1/4 in. vs. 4 3/4 in.), and the studio recording equipment tapping into the sounds of the musicians and altering them in mysterious ways. Milner gives us an extended tour of the evolution of the recording studio, from the space requirements for analog recording (the church-like acoustics of Columbia’s studio and the attempts to reproduce that sound in cramped studios) to the consoles used for capturing and mixing the sounds. That the author devotes half of the book to the last three decades suggests the accelerated rate of change, with the introduction of digital recording, digital processing, and eventually, digital tools to make the studio (in some cases) obsolete. The power of digital technology, reflected not only in the artist’s newfound freedom, but also in the ability of mixing engineers to manipulate recording to alter what was or create what never was. This even extended to radio stations’ ability to modulate frequency and change how a recording sounded on air (more compressed, or “hotter”) to better compete with other stations.

Resistance to any and all changes are duly noted by Milner, among those who pine for the old days when vinyl created a warmer sound (1960s), or when compact discs created a full range of sounds (1980s) but had not yet been compressed (mid-1990s), or when singers would actually have to sing on key (pre-AudioTone, late 1990s). Spice Girls, anyone?

Some might read this book and see progress, others the decline of civilization. Probably neither is true nor entirely false. In either case, Greg Milner supplies considerable food for thought and ear for those of us who live on music.

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A parent tries to do the best for their child, but does a parent ever do too much? If so, “hovering” occurs, thus, making one a helicopter parent, a phrased coined when Baby Boomers’ kids entered adolescence. Taking a developmental perspective from elementary age through college, Marano pinpoints several critical years in a student’s development and the consequences, often times unintended, of overly invasive parenting. With pressure to have the “perfect child,” this book argues that parents create a stressful environment from birth, leaving a child conditioned to believe one must never fail, and as having never failed – either through the fear of risk-taking or constant rescuing from a parent – the child never learns resilience necessary for the real world. Even a benign request in middle school such as “Mom, I forgot my gym shoes, can you bring them” can give off a message that mom will always be there to rescue you, even though not having your gym shoes for one day may result in a few points off your grade, but certainly life will go on. This book points out that more and more, parents are calling colleges to request schedule changes, inquire about why a course is offered during a time where a potential assistantship exists, or tell the coach their kid deserves more playing time, causing stress for all involved. Even at an appropriate developmental time-point to address issues such as roommates, dining hall plans, or parking spaces, parents are the ones stepping in and fixing it for their young adult child, further perpetuating the notion that “parents will fix it for you.”

Morano explains that more serious consequences may evolve over time, including chronic anxiety, depression, and lack of confidence in one’s ability to solve their own problems. These byproducts become especially apparent in the college years and post-grad life, as there has been a huge increase in students being seen in college mental health centers for issues greater than “my boyfriend dumped me.” Additionally, a student may be plagued with a fear of taking chances, or even of disappointing a parent with choice of job, location, or further graduate school plans.As a result, critical problem solving skills and independence may never have been fostered through high school and even into college.

While the content of this book may be difficult for parents to accept, it is a necessary read for anyone with a college-bound student. The delivery of this topic is informative, not critical, and provides perspective from leading higher education and psychological professionals, as well as students who have experienced these issues, with helpful suggestions for fostering adaptive ability in any stage of a child’s development. This creates an open dialogue with parents as opposed to an attack, which may have unwanted negative backlash. Students, too, can learn a lot from this book, as an adult child also has the responsibility to create a healthy set of boundaries and express their needs without being concerned about being feeling shame or selfishness (a typical byproduct when a child grows up attempting to fill the expectations of the parent and not themselves). A quick read with useful information and a fantastic index, this book should serve as a reference for those in the field of higher education for years to come.

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Sprinkled throughout the book are moments of historical significance, such as the killing of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., and lunch counter sit-ins. These mentions are deftly interwoven into the story, functioning rather like incidental music in a film: they heighten the drama of the women’s dangerous task, and quietly remind readers of context they should already know.

In terms of the writing, Stockett is a bit heavy-handed at times with her use of dialect, especially when writing in Aibileen’s voice. Honestly, had I not agreed to write this review, I likely would have ditched the book midway through the first chapter, frustrated by substitutions of “a” for “of” and “spec” for “expect,” phrasing that would cause no difficulty when spoken but which made me stumble in printed form. Still, I’m glad I stuck with it. The dialect becomes more manageable after that point, creating a story that is touching, if mostly predictable. My only other concern regarding the book is that the real and agonizing truth of the times is rather sanitized, and Stockett takes pains to ensure that the most (often literally) painful parts of the story are told only in third person and only after the fact by switching characters at key intervals. Even Minny’s tale of the Terrible Awful (which is so gut-wrenching that The Help is worth reading just for it) is told only long after its actual occurrence.

All in all, the book is no To Kill a Mockingbird, but it holds up. Now it’s just left to be seen whether the movie version (which is scheduled to begin filming this summer and will be put out by Dreamworks) can hold a candle to this sweet and sincere novel.

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As Death Without Tenure opens, Pelletier is on the eve of submitting her tenure application along with copies of her scholarly publications. Karen’s basking in the glow of her accomplishments is ended by the intrusion of Miles Jewell, former English Department chair. Miles tells her that the administration has declared that only one person per department per year will be granted tenure—Enfield’s attempt at balancing the tenured faculty members with the untenured. Karen realizes that her tenured is no longer assured.

The other English faculty member eligible for tenure is Joe Lone Wolf, a popular Native American professor who has not yet completed his dissertation. The current English Department chair, Nick Hilton, is actively promoting the tenure of Lone Wolf. Seeing himself as an instrument of social justice and progressive thinking, Hilton proclaims that Lone Wolf’s “speakings” should be given the same importance as Pelletier’s publications.
As in Dobson’s earlier novels, Pelletier finds herself unwittingly involved in a murder when Joe Lone Wolf is found dead from an overdose of Peyote buttons. Lacking the support of her college-age daughter, Amanda, who is touring Nepal, and her boyfriend, Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski, of the Massachusetts Bureau of Criminal Investigation who is in Iraq serving with the National Guard, Pelletier must face the double crisis of her colleague’s death and her tenure struggle alone.

I really enjoy the way Dobson populates Pelletier’s world with memorable English faculty: Sally Chenille, a punk professor who makes the circuit of talk shows like Oprah and The View spouting the “sexiest tenets of cultural theory;” Harriet Pearson, the Director of Women’s Studies who fears that her scholarship is inferior to Pelletier’s and suggests that Pelletier might be too successful and would be better served at a larger research university; Miles Jewell, retired department chair who is suspicious of anyone teaching authors other than dead white men. Equally interesting are Karen’s non-departmental friends: Greg Samoorian, political science; Earlene Johnson, Dean of Students; Jill Greenberg, sociology; and a group of former students whose lives are still intertwined with Pelletier’s.

However, what truly makes Dobson’s mysteries appealing are two-fold: first, her insights into the vagaries of academic life–faculty who regard a professor’s healthy class numbers as indicative that the professor isn’t teaching substantive material as well as faculty and administration who regard the high numbers of students receiving A’s as indicative of excellence in teaching; second, the historical and literary focus of her plots: Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett’s autograph manuscript of The Maltese Falcon, Serena Northbury, a fictitious 19th century author; and a Peyton-Place-like 1950’s novel, Oblivion Falls written by the fictitious Mildred Deakin.

Looking for mysteries with a literary twist? Joanne Dobson is the writer for you!

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