What We Read in 2005

Need ideas for your own reading pleasure? Need gift ideas? Take a look at what some of Ohlone's employees have been reading this year. So various!

Professor Mark Brosamer, English Department

• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (Ohlone College Library owns) - A fine book! I'm a sucker for novels about India, so I loved this one. Still, objectively speaking, this is a charming, heartbreaking story about survival and loss, set in Bombay.
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Ohlone College Library owns) - I have friends who hated this book, saying Franzen rubs your nose in the dysfunction of American suburban family. Call me a masochist, but I happen to like that kind of thing. Lots of minutiae (think modern-day Faulkner).
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (Ohlone College Library owns) - An engaging "huis clos," set entirely within the walls of a South American villa. Romantic, almost a page-turner, but too well written.
• House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Ohlone College Library owns) - I saw the film first (excellent) and had to read the book, which didn't disappoint. A patiently developed plot, complicated characters, and locally set along the moody coastline just south of S.F.--it's a slow-motion train wreck from which you can't turn away.
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Ohlone College Library owns) - A fascinating journey through the highly coded world of geisha training and practice. Lovely writing--a 400-page haiku.
• A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke - If Peter Mayle were 20 years younger, less sophisticated, and had lived in Paris, he might have written this book. Funny in parts, it's really just another book following the hijinks of a confused foreigner in Paris (this time a sex-starved British lad). For the die-hard francophile only.

K.G. Greenstein, Library

• The Master by Colm Toibin (Ohlone College Library owns) - Biographical fiction that focuses on the last two decades of the ex-pat American writer Henry James. Really fine look into the James' family dynamics and Henry James' interior demons and because one thing often leads to another … Daisy Miller by Henry James. I always knew what was going to happen but what a neurotic pleasure cruise it was getting there.
• Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates - Charismatic and mysterious sculptor Adam Berendt dies in a boating accident and his friends and acquaintances come undone. Entertaining look at the East Coast upper middle classes. Oates writes with great knowingness about the visual arts and this novel is populated with characters mostly despicable but always interesting.
• Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Ohlone College Library owns) - After Didion's husband John Gregory Dunne dies of a sudden heart attack she orders an autopsy but she doesn't throw away Dunne's shoes because he may need them when he comes back home – magical thinking. Very personal and very moving account of Didion's grief over the death of her husband of almost 40 years.
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. (Ohlone College Library owns) - What Librarian Kathy Sparling said.
• Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (Ohlone College Library owns) - One of the all time great historical novels about the Civil War, specifically the Battle of Gettysburg. Imaginative depiction of the internal lives of the military men such as Generals Lee and Longstreet.

Professor Cynthia Katona, English Department

• A Separate Peace by John Knowles (Ohlone College Library owns) - In the summer of 1942, Gene and Phineas form a "separate peace", a friendship so fine that it seemed to hold the germ of its own destruction within it. Against the background of WWII, a group of young boys in a New England boarding school come to terms with the idea of war and with their own fitful maturation.
• Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas & Other American Stories by Hunter S. Thompson - In the title story, Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo find themselves in Las Vegas alternately covering the Mint 400 motorcycle desert race, and a National Convention for narcotics prosecutors, while also searching for the American Dream and the ultimate high. Other stories in the collection involve the killing of Ruben Salazar, and the decadence of the Kentucky Derby.
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Ohlone College Library owns) - Gotama Buddha and sees the face of enlightenment; he throws himself into a life of luxury and sensuality with the famous courtesan Kamala; he discovers the love of having his own son; and yet he yearns for more, until he finds peace and freedom from Self by the side of a clear, flowing river.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Ohlone College Library owns) - This is the story of Amir and Hassan, friends since childhood, who despite suckling at the same breast, and living in the same household, have experienced the social upheavals in modern Afghanistan in entirely different ways: Amir as the son of a man of importance in Kabul, and Hassan as a poor servant from a despised ethnic minority. Their fraternal love for each other, and for kite running, is overwhelmed by the strife between fathers and sons, and the heart-rending politics of their beloved country. Nevertheless, redemption is always possible, even when the devastation seems most complete.
• Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins - Readers looking for a neat, tidy plot, should give this novel a pass; however, anyone interested in Viet Nam, Japanese tanukis, circuses, Zen Buddhism, sex, and/or the English language, will find more than enough to reward them here. Tom Robbins returns to the 1960s imbued preoccupations of his earlier novels: the nature of time, the benefits of recreational drugs, the joys of sexual abandon, the importance of respect for nature, and the art of not taking life too seriously, while still knowing it's sacred.

Kathy Sparling, Library

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. (Ohlone College Library owns) - Marilynne Robinson wrote one "instant classic" novel in 1981 (Housekeeping) and now, nearly 25 years later, her second novel completely repays the wait (and is the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner). Robinson is the kind of writer who makes most other writers look like they are just casually dabbling in the craft. Pretty much every sentence in Gilead is perfect and beautiful, every character memorable, and the story, though quietly told, is compelling. The novel takes the form of a letter written in 1956 by a dying elderly pastor to his young son, and quietly muses on ordinary family dramas and profound spiritual questions amidst historical events including the abolitionist movement and the Civil War.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. (Ohlone College Library owns) - So, it's not Gilead. But Michael Chabon is an entertaining writer, and for those who might find Gilead short on plot and adventure, this novel more than compensates. Set against the backdrop of pre-WWII New York, two "boy geniuses," one a recent escapee from occupied Prague, create a superhero "The Escapist" and revolutionize comic books, while finding romance, riches, and adventure.
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. (Ohlone College Library owns) - This novel takes an alternate historical path as its premise: it imagines that Charles Lindbergh won the presidency over FDR for his third term, and that the U.S. signed an "understanding" with Hitler instead of joining the war. Life in New Jersey after that gets pretty uncomfortable, and then scary, for the book's young Jewish protagonist. The story raises interesting ideas for these times of debate over U.S. involvement in “other peoples’” wars.
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. (Ohlone College Library owns) - Funny and accessible science writing that describes the personalities and foibles of the discoverers along with the scientific discoveries themselves.