I recently finished reading Pontoon by Garrison Keillor, another novel in the Lake Wobegon series.  As usual it was enjoyable light reading.  Since I was often reading it in bits and pieces, I occasionally had a hard time distinguishing between the multiple female protagonists.

Last week I finished reading Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.  From Wikipedia:

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a book by Michael Lewis released in 2006 about American football. It features two dominant storylines. The first is an examination of how offensive football strategy has evolved over the past three decades in large part due to Lawrence Taylor's arrival in the 1980s and how this evolution has placed an increased importance on the role of the left tackle. The second storyline features Michael Oher, the current starting left tackle for the Ole Miss football team. Lewis follows Oher from his impoverished upbringings through his years at Briarcrest Christian School and on to his current position as one of the most highly coveted prospects in college football.

It was definitely enjoyable and interesting to read, especially since I’m a big football fan.  Big Mike’s is a “heart-warming” story of sorts, and it will be interesting to follow him as he makes the move to the pros next fall.  Here’s a link to an article by Lewis about Oher in NY Times magazine (link).

A few months back I finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel.  From Wikipedia:

Night is a work by Elie Wiesel based on his experience as a young Orthodox Jew of being sent with his family to the German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the Second World War.

Wiesel was 16 years old when Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945. Having lost his faith in God and humanity, he vowed not to speak of his experiences for ten years, at the end of which he wrote his story in Yiddish, which was published in Buenos Aires in 1955. In May that year, the French novelist François Mauriac persuaded him to write the story for a wider audience. Fifty years later, the 109-page volume, described as devastating in its simplicity, ranks alongside Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl as one of the bedrocks of Holocaust literature.

Back in August Wiesel spoke at an event in honor of Rochester College’s 50th anniversary (link).  We were hoping to attend, but it turned out we had a previously-scheduled camping trip that conflicted.  It was a rather amazing book to read…so hard to imagine that it could have happened or what it would have been like to endure.  One of the most amazing parts to me was the death march (again from Wikipedia):

In or around August 1944, Eliezer and Shlomo are transferred from Auschwitz II-Birkenau to Auschwitz III, the work camp at Buna-Monowitz, their lives reduced to the avoidance of violence and the constant search for food. "Bread, soup — these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach." The only time they experience joy is when the Americans bomb the camp. "[W]e were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life."

In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, the Germans decide to flee the camp, taking around 60,000 inmates, mostly Jews, to camps in Germany, on what becomes known as the death marches, shooting anyone too weak to continue. Eliezer and Shlomo march to Gleiwitz to be put on a freight train to Buchenwald, near Weimar.

An icy wind blew in violent gusts. But we marched without faltering.
Pitch darkness. Every now and then, an explosion in the night. They had orders to fire on any who could not keep up. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of this pleasure. If one of us had stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch.
Near me, men were collapsing in the dirty snow. Shots.

A few months back I finished reading Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You).  From Wikipedia (link):

I Am America (And So Can You!) is described as being a "pure extension" of The Colbert Report, delving into the views of Colbert's "well-intentioned, poorly informed high status idiot" character on what he considers to be the most pressing issues facing America. The book draws some influence from the literary endeavors of the character's pundit models, such as Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor (2000) and Sean Hannity's Deliver Us From Evil (2004), which Colbert says he forced himself to read as a reference.

I love The Colbert Report, so I enjoyed the book too.  I didn’t like the red margin notes because it was too stressful to stay on the look-out for them and make sure I read them in context.  I took the book with me on my trip to Germany last January (though I ended up not reading any of it on that trip) and remember noticing someone else (probably an American) reading it in the (Amsterdam?) airport.  As I got up to board the plane, I showed him that I had my copy with me, and we shared a moment of solidarity.

We recently listened to the first Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) as a family after picking up the book on tape set at Goodwill.  I think Elliot and I were the only ones to make it through the whole thing.  Finn fell asleep as we were listening to last chapter while lying in bed, and Lisa missed a few different parts due to being distracted by other activities.  Elliot really enjoyed it.

I recently finished reading “I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark” by Brian Hall.  From the Publisher’s Weekly review:

Narrated in multiple distinct voices, this retelling of the story of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's legendary expedition is less a historical blow-by-blow than an engaging character study of the two men. Hall focuses on a few significant episodes in the journey-such as the hunting accident that wounds Lewis and causes him to sink into his famous depression-as seen through the eyes of Lewis, Sacagawea, Clark and Toussaint Charbonneau, Sacagawea's French fur trader husband. The result is a memorable portrait of the expedition leaders.

I started reading it a couple years ago.  It was slow going as I read it it little chunks.  I don’t think that was the best way to read this book.  I had a hard time keeping track of who was narrating…Lewis or Clark…and the Sacagawea sections were also difficult to follow (intentionally, intending to represent her native American perspective).

As I finally neared the end, I managed to “lose” the book about a year ago while on vacation in Tennessee.  It was one of those rare occasions when I was sitting in the the back of the van, and I stuck the book in a seat-back pouch.  Fast forward a year, I’m finally in the back of the van again and find the book…and finally finished it off.

I think I would have liked the first-person, faux-diary format better if it had stuck with one narrator.  I’m glad to have learned a bit about Lewis and Clark but figure it would have been more enjoyable in bigger chunks.