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The Death of Bees by Lisa O' Donnell (2013)
If this is the foretelling of how the year's fiction is going to be, it will be a very good year for fiction, indeed:
"Today is Christmas Eve.
Today is my birthday.
Today I am fifteen.
Today I buried my parents in the backyard.
Neither of them were beloved."
Through the voices of daughters Marnie and Nelly and their neighbor Lennie, this story is told. You'll keep turning the pages until there are no more and then you'll think about what you just read. Marnie and Nelly are left with no parents. Who killed them? Why did Marnie bury them in the backyard? Will the secret be safe? Who will care for the girls now? Dark comedy, sad family tale, love story, thriller. How does nosy neighbor Lennie play into this?
Watch the story unfold. You may not be able to help getting pulled into this gripping, morbid scene.
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (2012)
Looking for a darkly charming story taking place in Scandanavia that flashes back to major events in history? Look no further.
Compared to Forrest Gump, we meet Allan Karlsson at a nursing home, on the verge of a celebration of his 100th birthday. A celebration he has no plans to attend. He embarks on a journey with no clear agenda, starting with his escape through his bedroom window. Hilarity and deaths ensue. Police follow.
Flashbacks involving Stalin, Mao, Truman, et al, tell the story of Karlsson's accidental fortuitous discoveries and mishaps, intertwined with the present-day adventure where he picks up cohorts along the way, a la "The Muppet Movie" making his 100th birthday one to remember. Entertaining and well told. Though not meant to be 'realistic fiction.'
After many underperforming NYC high schools were closed and reinvented according to the population needs, Brooklyn's International High School at Prospect Heights was developed to serve the needs of immigrant families, here fewer than four years.
The school is a United Nations of educational facilities, bringing together students who speak over twenty languages from forty-five different countries. The mandate of the school is to integrate students into the American culture while teaching them English, academics and hopefully preparing them for college or other post secondary programs. It is no easy task.
Many students escaped nations where there was war, no clean water, education was a rich-man's privilege, getting out meant hiding in a suitcase for 24 hours, arranged marriages were the norm and still expected when the children arrived in America. The staff made their advisory groups into family units. Not every story was a success story. And not every child who wanted a space at the school was able to get one. Space was finite and immigrants seeking an education seemed infinite.
When immigration is a front-page story and a theoretical talking point for many, this book tells the reality. It's a scary reality for many. Even just getting to school is a daunting task. If you want to know what it's like to live the immigrant experience, this book gives a good look at that slice of life.
If you have a loved one or a friend taking the Bar exam, you might want to read this book. Alex Wellen takes us through this experience like no other. From his law school days, internship interviews, bar review, the exam, the waiting period, the results and life after the bar, Wellen shares one man's experience taking what is probably one of the most notoriously difficult Bar examinations in the country, the New York Bar exam.
He obsesses over the Tier 2 status of his law school and what that means for his employment prospects. In fact, every lawyer he encounters along the way, in interviews (tier 1), in dating prospects (tier 1) in friends (tiers 1 and 2), we find out exactly where they stood. Depending on your aspirations, this may be an entirely accurate reality or a ridiculous portrayal of what it means to study law and join the profession.
Ultimately, as many lawyers, he does not end up where he originally thought he would. He shares a lot about his own life at the time, that while very important to him and surely bearing on his 'bar experience' may not particularly interest the reader or reflect on the average law candidate's bar experience. However, the point is driven home that no matter how much you strive during law school, there is the distinct chance that you will not pass the bar exam, especially not on the first try. And without it, you will not practice law. Hence, if you went to law school, it IS entirely fair to say that if you want to practice, at some point in your life, everything will turn upon the results of this exam.
Written by the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, this book is truly respectful and passive outreach. And what it is NOT is proselytization.
The New Atheist movement, with headliners like Dawkins and Hitchens, angry, argumentative and loud, are not the type of people who can be described as having found 'common ground' with the religious. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Part of their dogma, if you will, is to tear down the belief systems of the religious by showing how they can harm society and at times they degenerate farther into calling the people who sign onto such belief systems as having blinders on or being duped, stupid or foolhardy. Not exactly a way to bridge gaps or garner understanding. Though the New Atheist movement doesn't want anything of the kind.
Steadman, an atheist trained in theology, is concerned with finding common ground, working together to understand each other and use similarities to improve the world. Angry New Atheists, he says, don't represent atheists in general, though they are the loudest and currently quite popular. They are actually Anti-theists, which is very different from being atheist, without a belief in a god, for they are against people having a belief in gods. Stedman has no problem with others believing, though he does not. If this is what drives them to do good works and be the good in the world, that is fine with him. If atheists and religious folk can get to know one another to eradicate hate and work together, all the better.
Formerly a Fundamental Christian, and now a specialist in Interfaith Relations, Stedman's thesis is that more can be accomplished in the world by bringing the non-secular together with the secular to work toward common goals, more plentiful than we know. Sounds far more positive than angry debate and hatred and debunking other's beliefs. From either side of the aisle. For an angry New Atheist is nothing but a Fundamentalist on the opposite end of the spectrum. Worth a look for this young man's mature attitudes about how to have a strong opinion but not push it on others.
I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b
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