What To Read in the Post Harry Potter World

Summertime means a little more time. Time to kick back and do what we want. Time to read. Yes... read.

Reading is basic to being a functioning adult in society. Reading is everywhere, even on the Internet! So, hit the lake, the water park, pool, or ball field during the day. You can still find 10 miutes before falling asleep, and in that 10 minutes, is your time to read at least one book per month. Here is an updated reading list to get the whole family reading:
(click on the title or author and you will be directed, hopefully, to that author's page)

Middle School and Junior High:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians - I gave this to two fourteen-year-old boys I know and they each read, or should I say devoured, all three volumes in only two weeks. If 14-year-olds like it, it must be good. Volume four is out now in hardback, The Labyrinth of Fire, available at Wal Mart, WaldenBooks and Hastings Books and Videos. Good for boys and girls.

Airhead or any of the Meg Cabot novels. Really popular stuff.

Rumors by Anna Godbersen. I want to read this, too.

The Diary of Anne Frank is probably summertime school reading for middle school teens. Why not pair it with The Book Thief by Mark Zusak or How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. The Book Thief follows a young German teen who loves books Hitler wants to burn and whose family hides a Jewish neighbor at great risk. How I Live Now is about a girl in London and how she lives during a war set slightly in the future.

Senior High:
The Twilight Saga - Stephenie Meyers, a sweet-looking mother and graduate of Brigham Young University, knows how to engage girls with her Austen-eque vampire series. Ostensibly about vampires, the underlying themes of abstinence, family loyalty, doing the right thing, tolerance of others, and by all means young love, make her novels less about vampires and more about the real world and how to get along with the real people in it. I love this series - I would read it again! Waiting for the 4th book to come out.I have to admit, the pickings are slim for guys this age, except in the classic genre.

I haven't seen too many guys over 16 reading a book they weren't forced to read in the last four years since The Da Vinci Code was hot. I did have an intelligent young man who liked Chuck Palahniuk (his writings are violent), another one, now an English major, who tried House of Leaves (an odd thriller for the intelligentsia written by the son of former singer Poe), and, of course, several who enjoy graphic novels, like The 300, Batman, or Sin City. But I can't recommend any of those firsthand. Make sure they do their summer reading - I know so many young men who don't do it and have to take a lesser English class.

Dad:
Dads are probably going to want to read the new James Bond novel The Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, released under tight security this week.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Dad would defintitely make it all the way through this one. Just won the Pulitzer. It might make a good Father's Day present for a youngish, snazzy dad who likes to read.
Mom:

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez. Rodriguez's experience opening a beauty school in Afghanistan. Highly recommended by many who have read it.

Momzillas: It's a Jungle Out There, Baby! This was one of the most hilarious novels I have read since The Devil Wears Prada. Someone should write a sequel for mothers of teens....

Chez Moi by Agnes Desarthe. Short chapters make for easy concentration and starting/stopping points. French woman undoes bad past through cooking. If you like Chocolat or Like Water for Chocolate, this is for you.

It also wouldn't hurt to read or re-read the kids' summer reading novels. I have to admit one of the best finds was re-reading Ethan Frome, a novel I hated when I was in tenth grade. This summer I plan on re-reading my 9th grade nemesis, Great Expectations. Dickens and I went round and round with that one back then, but now I can give him some mad props...or something like that.
Have fun reading and don't worry about how much or what. Just do it.

Junot Diaz Saves the World

Junot Diaz is the author of the recently published novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The novel is an ostensible coming of age story about Oscar, nicknamed Wao as a subversion of the famous writer Oscar Wilde, a nerdy teenager who loves American pop culture and dreams of being the next J.R.R. Tolkien. Only, Oscar and his family are not natural born American citizens, but rather immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Their heritage is also of the darker-skinned Dominican. This throws a considerable wrench into things for Oscar, his runaway sister, and their mother, seemingly both in the DR and in the U.S.

Diaz knows firsthand what kind of wrenches can be thrown into the paths of immigrant kids from the Dominican Republic - that's where he is from. He was born there, but raised in New Jersey and did become a writer, maybe not on a par with Tolkien yet, but surely on his way, as he has written for The New Yorker and The Paris Review. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao will hit the big screen in '09 or '10. There is a weight and validity behind his words; they should be taken seriously. Oh, and did I mention he is a professor of creative writing at MIT?

Just what should be taken so seriously about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, you might ask? Its prose is unquestionably crude but lyrical, but an even weightier issue than the novel's literary achievement lurks just behind the cover of the Marvel comic books Oscar always reads. Ostensibly the novel is about tradition, melding old ways with new life in America, family history, and perseverance despite the odds. But Diaz also opens up the entire issue which has been starring the U.S. in the face for the last 100 years and despite the recent push for multiculturalism, viz. how to fit in in America or anyplace where Whites have dominated within the last 400 - 500 years, how to put all that history into some kind of rational order and understanding, how to synthesize it into a whole America where a kid (all kids) can be what he wants to be.

And, that's huge, but Diaz is also talking about the current state of teenagers here. Not just immigrant teenagers, but all American teenagers. Diaz brings to light just how hard life is for teenagers in America today through Oscar Wao (even though Oscar now belongs to almost another generation of kids who came up in the late 80's and early 90's). In a phone interview with Rich Fisher on Radio Tulsa January 3, 2007, Diaz even went so far to say that life is tough in America for all of us. This hit me like a ton of bricks, because chasing the American Dream is what it's all about, right?

Diaz makes the point that the competitive, superficial lifestyle of the U.S. paired with the fact that the traditional support mechanisms have broken down for families make fertile ground for teen rebellion, and I think he is right. Yes, it is also what made our country the world's Superpower and gives us so many creature comforts, but at what cost, real and potential? Our teens, regardless of how affluent, often work twenty or more hours per week. Even the poorest teen has an iPod and a cell phone made outside the United States, but can't identify the flag of Communist China.

I think Junot Diaz has hit upon something that could save the world, or at least the United States. He has opened up the dialogue about what America means, what both family history and national histories mean, and what our failure to provide kids with an understanding is doing to our young citizens. He has shown the very great need for a better support mechanism in our homes and in our schools. Most of all, he has de-object-ified the immigrant and shown us that in our diversity we are one, all with expectations of family and living the good life and fulfilling our own American Dream.

And, he has pointed out a great irony in our easy American life today - that, to quote Diaz, life in America IS hard. Now, that is something to open up a great debate about - have any of the Presidential candidates addressed this issue yet? That I would like to hear.