I’ve had East of Eden on my list for a long time. Back in high school, like almost every other kid, I had to read The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. I enjoyed Mice but found the tale of the Joads lacking in some way (maybe, because as my grandfather put it, The Grapes of Wrath is “such a downer“).

Anyway. Here I am in my thirties with that essay about the dusty Depression and the Joads’ journey to California far behind me, and there is East of Eden sitting on my bookshelf. And I’m going to admit that I was hooked right from the first page.

I don’t really understand why we think The Hills provides us with plenty of drama when there’s something as well written as a Steinbeck novel to fill the necessary quota of lying, cheating, whoring and murder. I mean, seriously, this book has it all, plus some Biblical allegory (I’m not giving anything away when I say “Cain and Abel”).

The story begins with Adam and Charles Trask, two brothers from different mothers, who spend their growing-up years, respectively, trying to dodge and trying to attract their father’s attention. Of course some resentment simmers – really simmers – and eventually Adam leaves the farm to wander the countryside, join the army, do time in jail, and other things.

No sooner does he come back to mend fences than Cathy enters the picture, and tears the two brothers apart again. Cathy’s not the type of girl you really want to get involved with, for various reasons I won’t go into here, but that doesn’t stop Adam, who marries her and takes her out to California to start a new life. Also, to get away from Charles, who thinks the whole Cathy situation is bad news.

Turns out Charles is right, and Cathy is bad news. And in the end, Adam ends up raising his twin sons, Aaron (sorry, Aron) and Caleb (Cal) on his own, with the help of his Chinese, um, manservant, Lee. Of course Cal and Aron have a contentious relationship, too, so the whole Biblical situation repeats again, only without anyone swinging a hatchet at anyone’s head this time. And as they’re growing up, Adam makes a fortune and loses it, and the boys find out some pretty unsavoury things about their mother (though we learn all the really unsavoury things, and they just learn one or two of them).

So, see? Drama, cheating, lying, murdering. And in the midst of it all are some really fantastic characters, like the Trasks’ neighbour, Samuel, who likes philosophical discussions, and Samuel’s wife, Liza, who’s as practical as they come. And Lee, who hides his brilliant intellect and perfect English behind a stereotypical facade, speaking in pidgin English and wearing a queue. Suffice it to say that thanks to the plot and all these interesting people, I couldn’t put the book down. I devoured it. And if you pick it up, I promise you will, too.

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Skurnick writes a column for Jezebel.com, and this book is a collection of some of her posts, as well as posts by several guests (including Jennifer Weiner). Basically, Shelf Discovery explores some of the popular young adult fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, and Skurnick’s impressions after having reread her favourites as an adult.

I dug this book for so many reasons, chief among them that whenever I turned to a new “installment,” I was catapulted back into my elementary-school library, where I’d pore over Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Paul Zindel, Norma Klein, and others, trying to extract the paperbacks (marked with a blue dot) from the shelves without getting a massive, mind-blowing shock should I accidentally touch the metal.

Lizzie Skurnick and I had the same reading habits, pretty much, but maybe that was par for the course for any voracious reader our age. The food porn in Farmer Boy? Remember it like yesterday. Davey’s angst in Tiger Eyes? Got it. The girl in the crystal globe in that creepy Jane-Emily? All over it. Sneaking a copy of Wifey home in grade eight? Come on. You know you did it, too.

A couple of my favourites are missing from this book – the S.E. Hinton, for one. But V.C. Andrews is there, rounding out the chapter on stuff we should never have been allowed to read. Paula Danziger gets a nod for The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, but my personal favourite was The Pistachio Prescription (especially because I had never eaten a pistachio when I read it!). Also missing, by Norma Klein: Mom, the Wolf Man & Me, and Sunshine, over which I bawled my eyes out repeatedly.

But then that’s the point of this book. The reading list belongs to Lizzie Skurnick, and even though it largely matches up with how I spent my reading hours between the age of, oh, eight and fourteen, the odds of it matching perfectly are pretty slim. It’s enough that throughout the book I laughed over how alike were our impressions of our favourites, how much I wanted to revisit the books that weren’t included and how much I regretted passing over some of the classics the first time around.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if the library has a free copy of A Wrinkle in Time.

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Dogs and dog ownership is pretty much what unites all the characters in this book. Jody and her white pit-bull mix, Beatrice. There’s Polly and her brother George, who find an abandoned puppy in Polly’s new apartment (vacated in that most New York of ways, when the previous tenant commits suicide). There’s the restaurant owner and his puppies. There are Doris and Everett, who don’t care much for dogs at all but find their lives transformed, indirectly, because of contact with them. And Simon, a reclusive social worker who lives down the street, who enters into a complex relationship with Jody.

The New Yorkers isn’t a deep read, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable. I did enjoy it, very much. Some of the stories were heartwarming and funny, and others made me bust out bawling. The Amazon listing for the book cites a Seattle Times reviewer who says that if The New Yorkers ever became a movie, it’d be directed by Nora Ephron, and everyone would be wearing fuzzy sweaters. Sometimes that’s not so bad. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you want in a book: a good laugh, and a good cry.

I’m not going to pretend to be a literary snob with this list. Ultimately, I like a good book, and good books are good for any number of reasons. There are plenty of books I’ve read over the years that make me savour every word, to linger over sentences and dissect how the writer put it all together. There are others that do nothing more than offer escapism, with colourful characters and diverting plots. The New Yorkers was one of the latter, and that’s fine with me!

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Get it – corrections?

I don’t know why I thought that. I think I had it mixed up in my head with The Reader or something, which isn’t about jail but is fairly bleak, and so I had this sort of POW, Holocaust thing attached to it, rather than the satire it is. I finally found out it wasn’t about jail, and I really wanted to read it. And then I read that Franzen told Oprah to go take a flying leap when she wanted to add this book to her Book Club, and I really wanted to read it. Especially when she called him ‘elitist, so there.’ (I don’t know about the ’so there.’ It’s implicit, if you ask me.)

So anyway. The Corrections is not about jail, The Corrections is about a dysfunctional modern family. “Is there any other kind?” you ask. Well, no, probably not. But a book about a perfectly functioning family would be a very short book. It would also be total, total fiction. And boring.

The story starts with Chip Lambert, a college professor who is toiling away at a screenplay that he at first believes is brilliant but rapidly realizes, after giving it to a high-powered movie exec, probably isn’t. It’s a stack of paper he desperately wants back in order to make the titular “corrections” that he believes will save the story and, for once, allow him some success. Chip has a few issues with the media and society in general, and spends most of his days trying to get his students to realize that pop culture is filled with Corporate Agendas and Hidden Messages. His students don’t appreciate Marshall McLuhan or Noam Chomsky as much as Chip does, though that doesn’t seem to stop Chip from starting an affair with one of them. Long story short, everything self-destructs, Chip loses his job and ends up working in Lithuania.

Meanwhile, his parents, Enid and Alfred, are facing their own issues. Alfred is struggling with the onset of Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and Enid is struggling with her embarrassment and inability to deal with a future that doesn’t match her vision of twilight years spent surrounded by a loving family.

But it doesn’t stop there. Chip’s siblings are also battling personal demons and lives filled with upheaval. His brother Gary is, despite appearing to have everything, hopelessly depressed. His sister Denise, who seems, on the surface, to have everything under control, has made some seriously questionable decisions (the kind you think only Chip could make) that have left her life in ruins.

What it all seems to boil down to for the Lamberts is a the modern family’s impossible search for happiness. Their relationships are often empty and unfulfilling, their lives filled with stuff. The book traces the family from the early days of Enid and Alfred’s courtship, through Chip, Gary, and Denise’s childhoods, to the “one last Christmas” Enid is dying for them to spend together. In the meantime, Franzen fills in the corners with disquieting accounts of big business, whose benevolent message, as usual, hides something deeper.

The “corrections” in the book refer to far more than the editing of Chip’s screenplay. Every Lambert is trying to “correct” something – unhappiness, loneliness, missed opportunities. Each other. In the end, we can realize it’s an impossible task, even if they can’t.

So totally not about jail.

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I’ve wanted to read Howards End for a long time. I saw the Merchant-Ivory movie in the 90s, and I loved the story, but for some reason shied away from the book. I’m so glad I finally picked it up. Forster wrote it in 1910, before the First World War, but I found it in many ways a very refreshing read. There were things he wrote about – the rampant development in London, the isolation people felt from their neighbors – that resonated with me in ways I didn’t expect.

The story follows the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, who live in Wyckham Place with their brother, Tibby. The Schlegels are “intellectuals” – they are not wealthy by the standards of their circle, but they enjoy going out to concerts, reading, and discussion topics of Great Social Importance with their friends. The story begins when Helen Schlegel goes to stay with the Wilcoxes, a wealthy family the sisters met on vacation, at their country home, Howards End.

The novel chronicles the relationship between the two families, starting with Helen’s (extremely) brief affair with one of the Wilcox sons, the subsequent fallout, and the relationship that develops, awkwardly at first, between Margaret and Mrs Wilcox. Knowing the Schlegels are going to be evicted from their home (to make way for a complex of flats!), Ruth Wilcox leaves Howards End to Margaret, someone who appreciates the beauty of the place as she does. When Ruth passes away, her family conspires to keep the property within the family – not because they care for it as much as Ruth did, but because it’s a financial asset to them.

(OK, whoops, I didn’t mean to hit ‘publish’ there. Not done!)

Of course, you have to know hiding this information from Margaret could not possibly end well, and it certainly doesn’t, especially since she ends up marrying Henry Wilcox. Meanwhile Helen has an unfortunate entanglement with Leonard Bast, who is trying to work his way up in the world as a clerk. Forster neatly illustrates the divide between the classes with the Wilcoxes, Schlegels, and Basts and makes some interesting comments on the blurring boundaries of the new twentieth century.

As I said above, even 100 years later this book holds a surprising relevance, as the Schlegels lament the rampant greed and consumerism that seems to color their social circle. They seem to be searching for meaningful relationships and connection in a society that’s slowly steering towards the impersonal and disconnected. One can only wonder what they’d think of Facebook, condo complexes, and front-drive garages.

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As it turns out, his style is exactly the type of style I aspire to. I am a huge fan of stories inspired by people living regular lives. I was thinking about this earlier. I really often aspire to write like, say, Alice Munro or Richard Ford, but let’s be real here. I’m not nearly that poetic. I’m not as poetic as Tom Perrotta, either, but his style is much closer to my reality. The people are real, the situations are authentic, and the narrative is filled with wit.

To recap the story briefly: Sarah and Todd, both stay-at-home parents of toddlers, meet one summer. Both are in marriages that have lost their sheen, living lives vastly different than those they expected. Todd is (half-heartedly) working towards passing the bar exam while his film-producer wife is the major breadwinner, and Sarah, married to a middle-aged ad executive, has long given up her dreams of activisim and PhD’s.

They  meet at the park one day, when Sarah kisses Todd on a dare (to the horror of the other mothers present). Over that summer they bring their children to play together at the park and pool, and start an affair that offers escape from their less-than-satisfying lives in suburbia. At the same time, Ronnie, a convicted sex offender who has been released from jail, moves in with his mother. His life brushes up against Todd’s and Sarah’s in some unexpected ways, and as with everyone in the story, no one is as they seem from the outside.

Someone pointed out that writing about suburbia is nothing new, and that’s true. But I often think it takes special skill to make us want to read about characters whose lives are so similar to ours. And that’s perhaps what I liked most about Little Children. It takes a darker view of suburbia, yes, but it does it through the eyes of three-dimensional characters.

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When I first met Mike (and Ron and Len), Len was only three. She still had that crazy-Dalmatian personality – they were both riotous bundles of energy who wrestled in the backyard and pulled for their entire walks. She was up in my face, literally – so much so that for a long time I thought she was the bigger dog. In reality she was a runt, a little stocky but also very delicate, but she was busting out all over with love, just waiting for someone new to discover how fabulous an hour of chin scratching  and Len-loving could be.

Over the years, as we got to know each other, she mellowed a little. She still loved a good run in the yard or a long walk on a sunny morning, but she also loved curling up with the pack to watch a movie or have a nap. In the last year or so, she’d taken to snuggling up on the couch beside me, her head resting on my leg, submitting to long love-ins while we all watched Dexter or 24 or whatever we’d recorded on the PVR. She’d actually coax us to sit on the couch together, milling about the room and staring at whichever of us had dared sit down in the chair across the room, until we relented and took our rightful place on either side of her. There’s a special dimension to movie night when you have a sweet Dalmatian head on your lap. I can’t explain how soothing it was to sit and rub those silky ears, to feel her burrow against me and hear her sigh.

She had a job to do, of course. She was the household Guard Dog. When Ron no longer hear, Len became her ears – they communicated effortlessly. She was the ears for all of us, really, alerting us to potential danger, whether it was her nemesis (the collie from down the street) or Jane’s Addiction (she wasn’t so sure about those dogs at the beginning of Been Caught Stealing). She sounded the alarm whenever the mailman arrived, the FedEx guy came by, or one of us came home.

For a long time she was also public liaison for the household. I met so many people in our neighborhood while we were out on walks the last two years. She won them all over, nudging them for affection and trotting off with a spring in her step after getting it. She even won over our crusty old mailman in the end – in the last few weeks he’d say hello and point out where all the ice was on the sidewalk; he’d seen her fall one day and struggle to get up, and I think he knew she was doing her best.

I know a lot of people say you can learn volumes from your dog, but it’s true. I’d often think on walks how she  and Ron were both filled with joy to be out in the fresh air. Len would come greet us at the door no matter what was going on with her that day. She’d lick your face if you cried, and sit beside you when you needed someone. She forgave instantly, ready to shake a paw the second you were – no hard feelings. She devoured every dinner with gusto and thought veggies were the best treat ever. She played hard, and she slept hard. It was all the simple things that made her happy.

I never thought I would own dogs, let alone fall in love with them so completely. I feel blessed to have known such a wonderful, small creature – and I feel doubly blessed to have known two. I hope that in spite of her rough beginning, Len knew in the end how much her pack loved her. And I hope that somewhere, she and Ron are snuggled on a couch together, butt to butt, in a universe with all the baby carrots and roast chickens they can handle. I can only hope to put as much love in the world as she did.

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Bitter Grounds is the story of several families in El Salvador – rich and poor, their fortunes all revolve around the country’s main export, coffee.

The story spans several decades, from the 30s to the late 70s. It begins in 1933, when Mercedes Prieto and her daughter Jacinta come across the headless body of a member of the National Guard. The next 24 hours see their lives change irrevocably, as they lose their home and much of their family in a massacre – the government’s attempt to quash an uprising by plantation workers, who are demanding better conditions.

Over the years, Mercedes and Jacinta find their lives intertwined with those of the wealthy Contreras and Tobar families. Jacinta and Magda Tobar raise their daughters, Maria Mercedes and Florencia, together. The tale of the two girls occupies most of the last third of the novel, as Flor and Maria Mercedes take two very divergent paths in life – Flor marries into a wealthy family and has children, and Maria Mercedes joins a revolutionary group.

Benitez’s style is sometimes very formal, and the book often felt to me as if it were a translation, rather than written in English – and I think this, more than anything – is what kept me from finishing it a decade ago. In some ways I found it to be the standard “family epic”, spanning decades and great historical events, told through the eyes of “regular people” whose lives are intertwined in remarkable ways (and often end in tragedy). She gives equal time to the story of Jacinta and her mother, Mercedes; to the story of Jacinta and Benito, grown and working for the Tobars; and to Maria Mercedes and Flor, the rich girl and the servant’s daughter. The lives of the rich and poor women often mirror each other closely – both suffer deep losses, have children, make sacrifices on similar timelines.

At any rate, what often kept me reading was the account of the unrest in El Salvador, and how it affected both rich and poor. Novels have such an amazing capacity to open windows (doors, whatever) to stories from history, and Bitter Grounds, which won the National Book Award in 1996, tells a story many of us have forgotten or never knew in the first place.

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