JOCELYN KELLEY’S PICKS

• The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty
• Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
• Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
• The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nichole Bernier

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• The Mansion of Happiness by Jill Lepore
• Quiet by Susan Cain
• Imagine by Jonah Lehrer
• Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

• This Bright River by Patrick Somerville — This I have not actually read but I'm dying to read.
• Arcadia by Lauren Groff
• The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
• Island Practice by Pam Belluck
• Townie by Andre Dubus III
• Mrs. Nixon by Ann Beattie — Technically this is fiction, but if anyone's read it, it sort of defies category.

June 1, 2012

BOSTON — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates over 35 percent of Americans are obese. That astounding figure puts more than one third of the country at high risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
 
Some who are overweight or obese decide to make changes to reverse weight gain, including getting more exercise and adopting a new diet. For those who choose the latter, there is a head-spinning array of choices available: low-carb, no-carb, low sugar and high fiber, in addition to celebrity-endorsed diets and weight-loss programs.
 
But setbacks such as unusual foods, a new eating schedule or a complete ban on favorite dishes can derail even the best-intentioned dieters.
 
Food writer Peter Kaminsky was 35 pounds overweight when he decided to make a change. After he grew large on a steady stream of rich foods and large portions — the spoils of the trade — Kaminsky was forced to make a change.
 
“I was a chunky boy,” he said. “I topped out at 205."
 
So Kaminsky developed a diet that allowed him to enjoy the foods he wrote about without sacrificing anything he loved. He focused on maximizing flavor, minimizing portions and cutting out anything not strictly necessary. He wrote up the results in a new book, "Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well)."
 
One tactic that helped: “Get rid of processed ingredients because [you’re] going to put on weight very quickly,” Kaminsky said. “Buy the best ingredients you can afford — and that ain’t foie gras. That’s whatever’s in the farmer’s market.” Cook, or live with someone who does, and you can make those ingredients taste good.
 
Kaminsky’s approach — flavor first — has allowed him to honor his foodie roots while making crucial lifestyle changes. He said his diet is a way to maximize the “flavor per calorie” of everything he eats, from breakfast through dinner and every snack in between.
 
According to the author, the diet has paid off: “Now I’m 166 pounds.”

You don't need a spit or a cauldron to make these cookies inspired by "Game of Thrones." (Abbie Ruzicka/WGBH)

 
BOSTON — A little more than a year ago, roommates Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer began a food blog with the idea of cooking the medieval recipes from the "A Song of Ice and Fire" (Game of Thrones) series by author George R.R. Martin. The two started testing out the medieval foods they read about in the series by searching for the recipes online and through medieval cookbooks and altering the recipes for modern-day palates. 
 
Their blog, "Inn at the Crossroads," became wildly popular amongst Game of Thrones fans. With the blessing of George R.R. Martin himself, Monroe-Cassel and Lehrer have turned their food blog into a new book: A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook. 
 
Elizabethan Lemon Cakes
Recipe excerpted from “A Feast of Ice and Fire”
 
Makes 36 small cakes
Baking: 15 minutes
Prep: 5 minutes

2 1/2 cups flour, plus more as needed
1 egg
2 cups granulated sugar
2 egg yolks
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
Grated zest from 2 lemons
1 1/2 teaspoons milk
 
Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a large baking sheet.

In a large bowl, combine the flour and granulated sugar. Cut in the butter, then add the zest and the whole egg and yolks. Mix thoroughly, adding more flour as needed, until the dough is no longer sticky and can be easily shaped by hand.

Roll the dough into balls about 1 inch across and place them on the prepared baking sheet at least 2 inches apart, giving them room to spread as they bake.

Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are just slightly golden. Allow the cakes to cool for a minute before moving them to a cooling rack.

Mix the confectioners’ sugar and milk to a smooth consistency. Once the cakes have cooled, use a spoon to drizzle the icing over the cookies.

For the icing:

3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/3 cup lemon juice, plus more if needed
1 teaspoon unsalted butter, softened
Yellow food coloring (optional)
Garnishes such as candied orange peel, pomegranate seeds or decorative sprinkles (optional)

Mix the confectioners' sugar and lemon juice together in a double boiler over medium heat, stirring all the while. Stir in the butter. Mix until the icing is a nice, smooth consistency, suitable for pouring. Add more juice, if necessary. If you would like, tint the icing yellow with food coloring. 
 

 
BOSTON — Forget "recession," forget "downturn." We're in a depression, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman says in his new book — and he thinks he knows how to fix it.
 
We may not recognize it, because we don't see the breadlines and dust bowls of the Dorothea Lange era. But with the bad times at 4 years and counting, and 4 million people out of work for more than a year …
 
"A recession is when you're going down. A depression is when you are down," Krugman said. "It's not as bad as the Great Depression — but that's hardly a recommendation."
 
He criticized President Barack Obama's approach to handling the problem. Rather than stimulus, the country backed into what Krugman called "anti-stimulus."
 
"You have unprecedented austerity. If we had continued to expand public sector employment at the same rate that it took place under George W. Bush … 1.3 million more people would be employed as school teachers, firefighters, policemen and so on," he said. "And that austerity is a major reason why we are not actually recovering from this depression."
 
Krugman's solution? Investment by the federal government.
 
"In 2009, there was a real question, what we should spend stimulus money on. Now it's just — let's restore those public services. Let's rehire those school teachers. It's actually very easy to come up with a quite substantial boost to the economy which we could do very quickly. We could be recovered from this thing faster than almost anybody imagines," he said.
 
The feds can borrow money cheaply — and it's not the time to focus on cutting debt: "When you're in a depression, when you're in this kind of condition, is a really bad time to do fiscal austerity." Once the economy has come back, he said, then you can look at shrinking the deficit.
 
But if we continue on the current path, he predicted recovery could take a good 5 to 7 years.
 

There are people who like baby showers: women in their 20s, grandmas to be, people who already have babies and people who love to look at stuff. These are 'the Shower People.' There are people who hate baby showers: women in their late 30s to early 40s who think they might want kids but haven't met the right guy yet (a.k.a., me!); also, people who don't like looking at stuff and have to pass it around and say, 'Oh, it's a shirt, only it's a tiny shirt!' or 'It's pants, only they're tiny!' (a.k.a., me!). This deadly combo made me really have to steel myself to go to a baby shower.

The challenges women face advancing in business are subtler now than in the bra-strap-snapping old days, but Beers believes it's still difficult for women to present themselves effectively.
 
Today, she thinks women tend to fall into one of two extremes when creating a work persona: too soft or too hard. On the one hand, "'Mother hens' don't run companies," Beers said. On the other hand, she had to learn to soften up. In her early days climbing the ladder, "I behaved like my boss who was extremely tough and I thought that's how I showed I meant business."
 
One key to the puzzle: Realizing that you can be different selves at home and at the office. "You get to practice different parts of you at work — and that's why we like work," she said.
 
And if a boss tries to tell you to choose between your different selves, as one did to Beers when she decided not to travel when her daughter was young, she suggested taking the long view: "It's a long life. You get to make some choices."

BOSTON — RoseMarie Terenzio was a wisecracking girl from the Bronx, more crazy about Howard Stern than John F. Kennedy Jr. But the latter had a job open and Terenzio landed it, becoming what any young woman would envy: the personal assistant to the Kennedy heir.
 
In her new book, "Fairy Tale Interrupted," Terenzio shares her memories of Kennedy and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy from the early days at "George" magazine to the night of the fatal plane crash.

She reflects on a fight they had before taking that fateful flight in 1999, and its significance — or, she says, its lack thereof.
 
"It was a spat like any other," she says. "Unfortunately, their spats were played out publically. The fact that she wasn’t going to go was just like any other wife or husband saying, 'You know what? You can go by yourself. I’m not going to go.' But because of what happened, it was played up so much."

However, Terenzio emphasizes, "The book is not just about how they died. It’s about my experience, my fairy tale interrupted in their circle and then out of it. I was sort of a fish out of water and they took me in their circle."

BOSTON — Our fascination with vampires has been deep and enduring. From the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron to “Twilight” and “True Blood,” the vampire has been a popular muse for generations. 
 
According to Harvard Extension lecturer Sue Weaver Schopf, over 1500 novels, 500 movies and hundreds more short stories and poems have featured vampires. 
 
"It's the biggest cultural phenomenon of our time," Schopf said on “The Callie Crossley Show” on Dec. 14.
 
Schopf, who usually studies the 19th century, saw the trend and decided to design a course to encompass the breadth of vampire film and literature. She debuted the course, called "The Vampire in Literature and Film," last fall.

"One of the most remarkable things that we saw was that about 75 percent of the class was female," she said. "I think there's something there that really resonates with women." 
 
Vampires also historically been stand-ins for difficult political and cultural issues, according to Schopf.
 
"They've become a kind of metaphor for immigration in a way, for any sort of disenfranchised group, who want to come into a normal group and assimilate, to be part of that group,” she said. Many authors draw on the idea of the vampire as outsider, “the person who is different, whom you fear, who you don't want to come into the community… that's become a very powerful way of talking about our current anxieties about things like immigration, or sexual difference, or racial difference, or racial hybridity. That's what really got me interested in these books."
 
Students have gotten interested, too. Hundreds have enrolled in Schopf's vampire course, which is taught simultaneously in the classroom and online at the Harvard Extension School website.

GEORGETOWN, Mass. — We are living our retirement dream. Rick started making wooden ornaments for gifts back in the mid-‘70s in Georgetown. Both sets of parents were living in town also. We bought a small cottage-turned-home, and he began digging, with pick and shovel as his dad had done before him, to create a work space underneath the house. He set up a few tools, and continued making ornaments. Many years later, we sold that first home and moved to where we are now, on North Street.
 
It is always Christmas here. Rick makes more than just ornaments now... wooden trucks, spinning gravity-powered carousels of all sorts, tops, puzzles, doll furniture to fit the popular 18" dolls, a rocking baby cradle, a rocking motorcycle and scroll-cut plaques for the US military branches.
 
I have always painted the ornaments and now make coverlets and quilts for the doll furniture. I play Christmas music out in the shop all year long, and during the school year spent many hours sitting in that happy setting to correct student essays.
 
I continued teaching until this past June, 2011, when I had to retire due to limitations caused by multiple sclerosis. I began self-publishing the writings I'd been doing for years... some on teaching, some poetry, and some on living in the small town of Georgetown after growing up in the City of Boston. I continue to quilt, continue to donate infant quilts to the neonatal unit of Lawrence General Hospital (something I'd started anonymously with a group of students who met after school to stitch with me) and now I am making one for the Linus Project and for the ALS patients project.
 
Our parents are gone now, and our children grown. But we are living our happily-ever-after years, right here near the center of town, where we can walk to everything basic when we, too, reach the age when we can no longer drive. I just published a book, through Amazon, and on sale at our shop and at Little's Block of Shoppes in Georgetown Square. The title of the book is "Georgetown at the Turn of the Millennium." In it I share stories of our town.

Terry and Rick Palardy are the proprietors of Wooden Toys and Gifts in Georgetown, Mass. You can read Terry's writing at Beyond Old Windows.

Cover of Elaine Sciolino's book. (Courtesy Times Books)

BOSTON — For the French, seduction isn't simply a question of sex. It's a mindset that transcends sexual conquest, relating to how one approaches one's life as a whole. Elaine Sciolino, Paris correspondent and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, offers a few tips for Americans in her new book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life. She shared some thoughts on the book over email. 

Seduction ≠ Sex

Sciolino described seduction in France as omnipresent in everything: From sharing a meal, to the scent of a perfume; from a walk through the Versailles gardens, to a night-tour of Paris — or the elegant hand-kiss of a charming man. "It is an all-encompassing word that can stand for persuasion, attraction, influence; soft power," Sciolino explained.

Sciolino makes it clear that seduction is a force that seems to infiltrate all areas of French life, whether it is present in flirtatious conversation or political debate. "I was fascinated by newspaper headlines that more than often made use of this word, séduction, to qualify situations, people, or even objects. Saying that a politician is 'a seducer' does not necessarily mean that he is physically or sexually attractive, it can mean that he has great charisma, that he is a talented speaker, a brilliant mind," Sciolino said.

Nikos Aliagas demonstrates the je ne sais quoi of "the look." (via greekadman/Creative Commons )

The Look

In her book, Sciolino describes seduction in France, and in Paris particularly, as being inextricably wrapped up in a strong sensibility of quiet sophistication; much of which is transmitted and translated between people non-verbally throughout the culture. Sciolino explained the foundation of seduction as, le regard, "the look." It is without question, the first step in the art of French seduction.

"'Le regard' is the electric charge between two people. Their eyes lock and there is an immediate understanding. So much of seduction and seducing the other has to do with le regard, it holds promise and mystery, it's much more subtle than words, it has to do with the body without being overtly physical and sexual, but it can be enough to destabilize another, or to form a strong connection," Sciolino said.

I asked Sciolino to boil the game of seduction down to three rules (for busy American readers), or in this case, three acts of the "play." She accepted the challenge.

Author Elaine Sciolino on Charlie Rose in July 2011. (via Charlie Rose)

Act One: Le Regard

"Master the look. You never walk alone on the streets of Paris. (This is not New York!) Someone is always looking at you and you can look back. The look is powerful. There is something chaste and pure about 'the look,' as there is no sullying of the body. But there is also something inherently unfaithful about it, because with the look, you never stop falling in love. Stendhal, the nineteenth- century novelist, said, 'You can say everything in one look, and yet you can always deny the look, for it cannot be quoted word for word," Sciolino said.

This seemed to beg a question. Should "the look" be accompanied by a smile?

"Smiling is complicated in France," Sciolino said. "Avoid it in the beginning. Americans are accustomed to smiling at strangers; the French, particularly the Parisian, are not." That might help explain why some Americans find Parisians rude.

"The reluctance to smile does not indicate the absence of kindness in the French character, but it does signal reserve. A French smile is fraught with too much meaning to be bestowed as a mere pleasantry," Sciolino said.

Act Two: Intellectual Foreplay

"Turn conversation into a verbal caress and learn the pleasure of process. For the French, life is rarely about simply reaching the goal. It is also about the leisurely art of pursuing it and persuading others to join in. How much fun would sex be without the flirtation, or dinner without the bouquet of the wine? What joy is there in words without wordplay, or in ideas without fencing and parrying?" Sciolino said.

Act Three: The Kill

"Where an American might see 'the kill' as the sex act, the French might see it in the moment of pre-consummation. Some of the most unlikely characters throughout French history have valued the sizzle more than the steak. Georges Clemenceau is best known in the United States as a French prime minister. But he was also a novelist. There's a line in one of his novels that I love: 'The most beautiful moment in love is when I climb the staircase,'" Sciolino said.

This idea of anticipation as the apex of seduction is clearly illustrated on the jacket of Sciolino's book. In this case, a well-heeled woman climbs the staircase. One of the things a reader takes away from Sciolino's book is that for many French women in particular seduction = war. But is war a good metaphor for seduction?

"Arielle Dombasle, a singer and actress who is a character in my book, told me that seduction is war," Sciolino said. "So did Moliere's fictional character, Don Juan. Seduction can be war, but it's much more than that. Seduction has so many different facets. It's not simply war, it's not simply persuasion, it's a combination of all these different tactics, skills, emotions, processes. That's what makes it so complicated," Sciolino said.

Part Two: The Fallout Of Infidelity In France & Seduction In Politics

Andre Dubus III, New York Times bestselling author of "Townie" and "House of Sand and Fog"

"The Hair of Harold Roux"
Thomas Williams
(Bloomsbury, 2011)

This now little-known book was the 1975 National Book Award Winner in Fiction, and it's just being re-released by Bloomsbury USA. Dubus wrote the introduction to the new edition, and he is ecstatic to see it back in print.

"Stephen King actually told me that he thinks it's the best novel he's ever read in his life, including Dickens," Dubus said. "I read the book a year ago; I still feel as though I read it an hour ago."

"The Oxygen Man"
Steve Yarbrough
(Touchstone, 1999)

Yarbrough is a novelist who teaches at Emerson College. Dubus described this novel, a story of race, class and hardship in a small Mississippi town, as a 300-page poem.

"They're a population of human beings that don't get near enough respect or attention in our culture, in my belief," Dubus said of the book's core characters, who exist at the margins of society. "Yarbrough writes about them with such dignity and compassion."

Tom Hamilton, bassist for Aerosmith, history buff and voracious reader

"In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin"
Erik Larson
(Crown, 2011)

The author of the much-loved "The Devil in the White City," a novelistic account of a serial killer in the background of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, returns with the historical narrative of the family of U.S. Ambassador to Nazi Germany in the first years of Hitler's reign. The book follows the ambassador, William E. Dodd, and his daughter as they come to recognize the danger growing in Berlin.

"Everything was just being rebuilt, and reaccomplished. And then all of a sudden it just started getting darker and darker," Hamilton said. "Over the period of the book you find out how that enthusiasm turns into raw disillusionment and raw terror."

"City of Thieves"
David Benioff
(Viking, 2008)

This comedic novel follows a pair of young adults in the midst of the Nazi siege of Stalingrad in 1942. A Russian officer forces the two of them to find him a coveted carton of eggs, setting off a bizarre and tricky search.

"Like Dorothy with the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, just trying to deal with life as they go on this mission to try to find eggs for the Russian general," Hamilton said.

Steve Almond, author of "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life"

"Trophy"
Michael Griffith
(Triquarterly/Northwestern University Press, 2011)

"It's about a carwash 'host associate' who is crushed by a giant bear. And the novel takes place, I kid you not, in the final second of his life," Almond said. "I promised you total weirdness, Emily, and I am supplying it."

"But it's an absolutely brilliant, strange meditation on love and loss and how memory functions in our life." Almond pointed out it is likely the only novel you'll read on the beach that takes place within the span of a single second.

"Songbook"
Nick Hornby
(McSweeney's, 2002)

This memoir from the best-selling author of "High Fidelity" chronicles his personal relationship to a set of very specific, beloved songs. "It really revolves around the emotional experiences that people have when they listen to particular songs, the eras that they relive," Almond said.

Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights; director of American Studies at Boston College; columnist for the Boston Globe

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down"
Anne Fadiman
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)

A famous anthropological study of Lia Lee, daughter of a Laotian Hmong family living in California, who suffered from severe epilepsy.

Rotella described it as several books at once, so you can have a huge variety at your fingertips for your summer reading: "It's one book that's a family drama, a medical thriller, an immigrant narrative. It gives you a history of the Hmong people from pre-history through the Cold War."

"The Heroes"
Joe Abercrombie
(Orbit, 2011)

This fantasy writer's latest installment, part of the "First Law" trilogy, is a dark and strange war story. "If you take J.R.R. Tolkien, and reverse the polarity of everything in J.R.R. Tolkien," Rotella said, you would end up with something like this trilogy. "They're sort of noir fantasy stories. In a lot of ways the opposite of that kind of J.R.R. Tolkien kind of noble, high-flown heroic fantasy."

Hank Phillippi Ryan, investigative reporter for 7News in Boston; award-winning author of the novel "Drive Time"

"Starvation Lake"
Bryan Gruley
(Touchstone, 2009)

"I think this is perfect for the zeitgeist in Boston right now," Ryan said. "It is a murder mystery about hockey!" Set in a small Michigan town, the fictional Starvation Lake of the title, the novel follows an reporter who investigates the murder of the local hockey coach.

Gruley has often been compared to Dennis Lehane. "It is that kind of tone: that sort of bleak, personal tone," Ryan said.

"The Other Side of Dark"
Sarah Smith
(Atheneum, 2010)

With a plot concerning treasure hidden by an ex-slave trader and Frederick Law Olmstead's Emerald Necklace parks, this young adult novel comes right out of local history: "It's a really interesting — a little bit spooky, a little bit scary — look into Boston history." Ryan said. The protagonists are a young white girl and a young black boy who get drawn into a drama with the ghosts of the past. "It also is a really kind of straightforward story about the complicated racial issues that still linger here."

Kristan Higgins, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of seven romantic comedies, including "My One And Only"

"Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart"
Sarah Maclean
(Avon, 2011)

"Summer isn't complete unless you have a romance novel on the beach," Higgins said. This one in particular is a romp around British high society, full of scandal, gossip and comedy. "It's a very heartfelt historical romance," she said.



"A Lot Like Love"
Julie James
(Berkley, 2011)

Another screwball romance novel, "A Lot Like Love" follows a businesswoman who is pressured by an FBI agent to give up information on her Mafia-connected associates.

 

Alicia Anstead's Picks 

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
 I just saw Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris," Anstead said. "I am now obsessed with Paris in the 1920s and 30s." Anstead thinks of this period, when the highly productive "Lost Generation" of artists and writers convened in Paris — as having shaped American culture in the 20th century more than almost any other time or place.

Gertrude Stein was a huge figure in this generation, and she wrote this novel about her lover, editor and confidant, Alice B. Toklas, in the guise of an autobiography. The book is as much chronicle of Stein's life and their time together.

Vintage; 252 pages.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The bestselling trilogy of young-adult thrillers, Anstead said, is great for summer entertainment at really any age. These post-apocalyptic novels concern a society in which a pair of children are selected annually to fight to the death in a televised event.

“I think they’re extraordinary fiction for young people,” Anstead said. She felt that Suzanne Collins had successfully transported her to another world.

Scholastic; 384 pages.
 

Callie Crossley's Picks

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable
This new reexamination of the controversial figure's life earned sad notice when the author passed away, two days before its release.

But the book's praise was well and thoroughly earned on its own merits. "He spent 20 years refuting what we think we know about Malcolm X," Crossley said. Marble reveals that the man presented to us in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was a misleading, sometimes fictional image. Plus, the book is 600 pages long — perfect for a long summer.

Viking; 608 pages.

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson, the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the long African-American migration to the Northern United States.

“A lot of book clubs are off for the summer, and they pick a book that is going to be either thoughtful, or long, and spend some time really revisiting it," Crossley said. “It’s stunning, it reads like a novel.”

Random House; 640 pages.



High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, by Jessica B. Harris
"A combination cookbook and cultural history," as Callie called it, Harris chronicles the cuisine of the African diaspora and its huge social significance. The book is a full-on celebration of the food and social traditions that sustained Africans in the Americas, and the culture that evolved in the wake of slavery.

Bloomsbury; 304 pages.



 

Yu Jin Ko's Picks

Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin
This novel, which has been a huge bestseller in Korea, is the story of a family searching for their mother, after she disappears into the crowds one day at Seoul Station.

But this may not be the right book for those who want something light or fun for the summer. “It’s not an escapist fantasy, but rather sends you on a guilt trip,” Ko said. “It’s a tear-jerker, and it wrings every last tear form your body.”

Knopf; 256 pages.



Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
This classic short story (here collected with several others by Dinesen), which later became a popular film, tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community who treats her employers to a decadent feast.

Ko recommends it in part because, while he shares the summer fascination with food, this story is likewise less escapist and more a tale of, as he put it, "An intractable desire that never fully yields to satisfaction.”

Penguin; 256 pages.


On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Despite the title, Ko doesn't think this one is quite right as a beach book. “In many ways it’s the antithesis of the summer reading book," he said.

"Summer reading — a lot of summer reading, I should say — has a particular relationship to desire. Which is that it enacts a fulfillment of desire that leads to a new state — new states of being, new forms of self-actualization, etc. But there’s a category of novel that explores what happens to people when desire is deferred, or unrealized.”

For Ko, McEwan's novel is another story that movingly expresses and relates an unfulfilled desire. Which may be, in the end, a fine thing to contemplate — what is possible, impossible, and what you really want — over the long summer months.

Nan A. Talese; 208 pages.

Dr. Ilan Stavans is founding academic host professor at Amherst College, and co-founder of the Great Books Summer Program.

Related Putting The Breaks On The Summer Slide What's So Super About Super Why Reading Camps

Download the 2011 Great Books brochure.

A conversation with Great Books Summer Program co-founder, Dr. Ilan Stavans

Dr. Ilan Stavans is Founding Academic Host Professor at Amherst College, and co-founder of the Great Books Summer Program. Dr. Stavans holds an endowed chair as Lewis-Sebring Professor of Latino Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Stavans is a prolific author and editor and is well known for his books, such as Spanglish, as well as his definitive collection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry. In 2010, he created the Great Films movie based on a session at Great Books.

Dr. Stavans, please give us some background on the Great Books Summer Program.

The GBSP is a terrific way to spend the summer immersed in ideas and with people who love them. Designed for middle- and high-school students, Great Books Summer Program invites young people to engage with the literary classics (Plato, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Whitman, Tolstoy, Kafka, et al): to open them up, to debate them, to re-imagine them, to apply their message to our time. During the session, campers may enact plays, write stories, recite poetry, and perhaps even make movies, with the guidance of thought-provoking adults who themselves are teachers, writers, and actors.

I co-founded the program a decade ago. My dream was to open a space where teenagers would thrive in, through, and around ideas, to inspire them to have the passion I feel toward books. I combined that vision with Peter Temes who was then the President of the Great Books Foundation and we created the program to employ the love of ideas with the “Shared Inquiry” method, always looking to foster the camper’s critical thinking skills. That’s what we need in this complex universe: critical thinking.

What type of young person would enjoy and benefit from the Great Books program the most?
 
An engaged, intellectually curious young person interested in the various aspects of culture.

What’s a typical day like at Great Books? What are some of the books that are read and discussed? Who are some of the guest authors?
 
A typical day starts with breakfast, followed by a morning meeting which features a poetry slam. Then comes a lecture with a distinguished thinker about Homer’s The Odysseyand after a short break there is yet another lecture about Pablo Neruda’s Spain in the Heart. Afterward is a discussion section, in which small groups of campers reflect and share ideas on the content of the lecture. Then comes lunch. A free hour allows campers to take hikes, swim, or stage a play. The afternoon might features electives which include creative writing, visual art, music, theater, and various literature related topics. Each evening features an event—there may be a movie showing (Duck Soup, O Brother Where Art Thou, Citizen Kane) or a guest speaker (Debbie Applegate, Joseph Ellis, John Sayles). In the late evening, campers might read the poetry of Emily Dickinson under the starry sky.

Why do you feel it’s so important for young people to continue learning during the summer?

First, learning shouldn’t be a task. It should be fun and Great Books helps to remind campers that the pursuit of knowledge can be a lively and engaging affair. Second, we all know the importance of maintaining academic progress over the summer, to avoid summer slide. Bright young people should engage in academic pursuits to help enhance what they have learned in the previous school year and to prepare themselves for greater academic challenges in the year to come.

How does Great Books Summer Program help prepare kids for college?

It makes kids intellectually curious, inviting them to reflect in engaging fashion about the political, social, cultural, and moral issues that define us. In addition, campers that attend the Great Books Summer Program are participating in college-level reading and thinking under the tutelage of our experienced staff who make tacking the great philosophical questions of our time both accessible and interesting. The skills that the campers gain in close reading and in expressing their ideas will prove invaluable in their college experience.

Do you offer scholarships or financial aid to cover the Great Books tuition fee?

We do indeed. Limited financial aid is available to help offset the cost of tuition.

For more information on the Great Books Summer Program, visit:

http://www.greatbookssummer.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Books-Summer-Program

BOSTON — In his new memoir, A Reason To Belive, Gov. Patrick recounts his unlikely rise from a difficult youth on Chicago's South Side, to Pepsi executive, to Massachusetts governor.

But in an interview with WGBH's Emily Rooney, Patrick says his story is not -- and should not be -- all that rare.

“It was not an unusual aspiration in our neighborhood. It’s not an unusual aspiration in this country,” he said. “We were just trying to become the middle class.”

In the book, Patrick explores how that childhood, and the people and organizations who helped him along the way, developed his political convictions, showing in his personal life the roots of his policies and principles.

Patrick said community leaders in his youth and a scholarship he received to study at Milton Academy helped give him a practical idealism. 

Patrick says his time at Milton was transformative, and advocates strongly for programs like A Better Chance, which gave him the scholarship that allowed him to go there, even as initiatives that are seen to carry an element of affirmative action have lost favor in recent years.

“There’s talent in every community, and sometimes you have to go find it. And it’s incumbent on us to go and find that talent, and bring it out, and bring it into the mainstream and let it flourish,” Patrick said.
 
But, Patrick explained, his time at Milton further strained an already-rocky relationship with his father, who was relatively absent during his childhood after he left Chicago to be a musician in New York.  When Patrick lived in Milton, he and his father began to spend the occasional weekend together, but the elder Patrick voiced strong discomfort with how he felt his son was abandoning his racial identity.
 
“He was very disapproving of Milton,” Patrick said. “I think he felt very misunderstood. And I think I only came to appreciate how deeply misunderstood he felt as I got older and we found our way back to each other.”

The two would reconcile later, when Patrick was in law school and invited his parents to come and live at his crowded house in New York. “I write in the book about how important it is to save a place,” Patrick said.
 
Patrick and his wife, Dianne, say they have worked hard to build a supportive community around their own family. So they were not worried for their daughter, Katherine, when she told them she was gay. “That she feels supported enough by us to go be her whole self in the world is what we’ve been trying to offer these children of ours,” he said.
 
They feel that their core beliefs have also helped them put in perspective certain battles with the media that have sometimes seemed like distractions. “We didn’t want to spend all our energy fighting those battles. We weren’t there for those sideshows,” the governor said.
 
There was the controversy that ensued early in his administration when a chief of staff was hired for the First Lady, at the same time that the state’s budget and services were being cut and workers laid off.
 
The couple both felt that the situation was overblown in the media. Diane Patrick said she wrote a very long, therapeutic open letter to the media to explain herself, and showed it to her husband. “Deval said, ‘That’s good, now put it away,’” she said.

Jocelyn
• Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• Rin Tin Tin by Susan Orlean
• Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
• Bossypants by Tina Fey

Evan
• The Great Big Book of Horrible Things by Matthew White
• Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth
• Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer?
• Pilgrimage by Annie Liebowitz?
• The Other Walk by Sven Birkerts

Emily
• Townie by Andre Dubus III
• Lost in Shangri-La  by Mitchell Zuckoff
• Basketball Junkie by Chris Herron
• Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews
• Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal


FICTION

Jocelyn
• The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
• The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
• Swamplandia by Karen Russell
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
• Blueprint for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell

Evan
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Iliad, translated by Stephen Mitchell
• Binocular Visions by Edith Pearlman
• Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
• Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman


BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS AND KIDS

Jocelyn
•    Divergent by Veronica Roth
•    Dear Bully edited by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones
•    Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell

Evan
•    Steampunk!, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant
•    I Want My Hat Back by John Klassen