Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (#17, Reader's Choice)

What can I say about Jodi Picoult's newest installment? The woman knows her formula. She knows what her readers want, she knows the types of characters and the types of gut-wrenching situations. Picoult knows to hold a little back until the end, just to keep you reading as fast as you can. I blazed through this one just to find out the kicker, which in Jodi Picoult speak is a heart-wrenching confession from one of the characters that will have you shaking your head or crying or both.

Nineteen Minutes is a bout a school shooting and it is creepy to read in the wake of the recent VTech shootings. It is a study of an incessantly bullied kid turned killer. The strange thing, though, is that you will sympathize with the shooter. Her depiction of high school is right on, and the things the popular kids do to the kid who shoots the school up are unbelievably cruel. It made me think back to my own high school days. There were definitely those kids that continually got picked on, but I guess that is just the way high school is. It can't be like Can't Buy Me Love, where Patrick Dempsey's character gives a great speech about treating everyone nicely and then gets to bask in the slow clap for his wise words. Life is just not that simple.

As for Picoult, I enjoy her books to an extent. The most prominent thing is their formulaic construction. She uses stock characters, and situations that are eerily similar. Reading Nineteen Minutes and The Pact so close together makes that very apparent. I would like to see her give us something new, something different. A novel where I can't describe the characters, the impending accidental love story, the messed up teens, and the 'shocking' confession that comes at the end. Surprise me.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel (#16, Contemporary Literature)

I am always skeptical of books like this one. They stay on the New York Time's Bestseller List and become quite popular. Second and third editions of the book have questions for book clubs at the back and if you read these questions ahead of time, you spoil the story. I of course learned this the hard way. That said, Life of Pi is a great book. Martel weaves a beautiful story about a 16-year-old Indian boy trapped on a rescue boat with a giant Bengal tiger. I worried initially about the monotony of the narrative. No dialogue, no nothing for all the time Pi is trapped in the boat with the tiger but I was pleasantly surprised. Pi's voice never gets old. I never tired hearing about the different sea animals he eats, how he gets freshwater, how he lives on a small boat with a tiger without being eaten.

Books that detail survival on the open sea are always interesting. This reminded me a lot of Ahab's Wife, specifically the part where they find themselves stranded at sea. This type of situation seems to be one that allows writers to dig out the core of their characters, to find out what makes them tick and to leave questions in the mind of the reader as to what they might do in a similar situation. Could you make yourself eat another human being? Could you bring yourself to kill a sea turtle, let alone drink its blood? Pi attempts worse things in his quest for survival, and although they are comical and heart-breaking at times, his attempts make you wonder if you would be trying the same things. Read Life of Pi.

King Richard II by William Shakespeare (#15, Classic)

King Richard II is my last official school-related entry. I am officially done with my undergraduate career as an English major and to close it out, I have the Shakespeare history play King Richard II. Reading this after writing my 15 page paper on Henry IV makes me wish I had read it before turning it in. There are a couple scenes that I could have used in my argument. Oh well.

Shakespeare wrote this entire play in poetic verse, which is one of the reasons it is so difficult. I really enjoyed Richard's descent into madness and Bolingbrook's ascent into power. There are a lot of funny scenes in this play, especially the one where Bolingbrook inquires as to the whereabouts of his errant son, Hal. He then suggests his men scour all the lowly taverns in London to find him--which is precisely where his opening scene in Henry IV begins.

My total count of Shakespeare plays read in college sits at a healthy eight. I can live with that. But now, the summer reading list beckons. I have a long list of books waiting for me and about 11 books to read so that I can catch up and be on pace to meet the 50 books goal.

A Life In School by Jane Tompkins (#14, Nonfiction)

Read this book and you will never want to go to grad school for English literature. Jane Tompkins paints a pretty grim picture of what it is like to study literature in grad school and then go on to teach it in the collegiate arena. It doesn't seem very fun. We get to hear all about how it beats her down, depresses her and makes her life a living hell--that is until she meets Stanley Fish. Fish, one of the foremost literary theorists of our time, changes the way she looks at the study of English lit and she does a 360 that allows her to follow her passion. She breaks her new criticism chains and starts looking at literature from a more cultural, political standpoint.

It is interesting to read about her experimental teaching phase, where she starts rebelling against the traditional classroom set-up of lecturer and students, and turns it into students as the lecturers, while the teacher sits back and listens. This role reversal was just one of her new teaching methods that she implemented while at Yale as a means by which she alleviated her own stress and anxiety about always being under the professor microscope.

I found her writing to be too introspective, too whiny. It really is a book where we learn all about Tompkin's perceived shortcomings and emotional ups and downs. There is just something off-putting about a perpetually negative narrator, especially when the book is a memoir and everything is true.

Trace by Patricia Cornwell (#12, Reader's Choice)

Steph has her weird time traveling/sci-fi books as her guilty pleasure and I have my murder mystery/crime scene as mine. I have some sort of obsession with televisions shows such as CSI, Criminal Intent, and Law and Order: SVU, Patricia Cornwell books are my reading equivalent. I can pick up her book as I crawl into bed and it will be finished by morning. All this said, Trace was not good. I have read many of her books and some of them were enjoyable mysteries, Trace was not.

Read it if you want, but don't expect much suspense or for it to be comparable to any of her novels that have you trying to figure throughout who did it and how will they be caught. BORING.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (#11, Classic)

Another great classic. It took me quite some time to get into the book, but once I was about half way through I couldn't put it down.

In one book Dickens was able to dispel any romantic notion I ever had of the proletariat rising against the bourgeoisie and making a better world for everyone. Basically my new theory is that power in any one's hands is dangerous and intoxicating and will only lead to bad acts. What is better: A feudal system with people basically as slaves, or a regime that beheads every person of privilege regardless of their actions? Is there no happy middle ground?!?

The book was full of interesting, complex, and truly memorable characters. Sydney Carton, who gives his life for a friend and utters the memorable line "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Madame Defarge, who I mistakenly believed at the beginning was going to do something good, and she turns out to be the true evil character, stuck with an old grudge and willing to eliminate anyone in her way. And of course Lucie Manette, every Dickens novel has to have the "golden-haired doll" and she is the idea of perfection and all that is good in a book of utter chaos and evil.

If you haven't read it you should.