A Terrible Beauty by D.W. St. John

This is the most truthful book about teaching that I have ever read. 

Originally published in 1998.

D.W. St. John's A Terrible Beauty has been rolling around for a while now. I read what must have been the original imprinting of the book back in 1998. The teacher who was the heart and soul of the 7th grade team at the inner-city middle school I taught at for 7 years found it at her local library, read it and passed it on to the rest of us to read. She liked it so much that when the local library wanted it back she reported it lost and paid for it so we could all read it (remember, this was in the days before Amazon.com was popular - heck, we just got a computer in our classrooms that year!)

What struck us all about the book was the fact that it spoke so much truth about teaching - the mindless meetings, the hovering parents that question every move and every grade on every assignment, the worthless parents that don't even raise their own offspring, the kids who do nothing but expect to be rescued, the kids who do everything you ask and just do so-so but love the class because they learned so much anyway (you just love those kids), overcrowded classes, mind-games from administrators, athletic directors covering for their stars, administrators that don't discipline (Kids sent right back to your classroom five minutes after they called you a motherf*****r because, you are told that if only you would have taught your class better that one kid with a felony sheet as long as your arm would love to learn about French or math or whatever...) and on and on.

The reader is also allowed to see the power of a gifted teacher using a variety of strategies to reach kids and not only deal with the subject matter, but help that student as a person.

Is Dai O'Connel a good teacher? Fundamentally, he is - but he has giant flaws, the kinds of  flaws that will get your fired, and properly so. Mostly, he is the tool in the story that is used to talk about American education and he should only be viewed as such. He takes the reader on a huge tour of the problems and the joys experienced by teachers. This is the most truthful book about teaching that I have ever read.

He is targeted for firing by the central office of his school district because he fails too many of his students. The person sent to fire him is a too-young administrator who admired him from afar when she used to teach in his school years ago. They develop an improbable romance that, while sweet, is far-fetched.

All of that is window dressing, though. This is a book about teaching and the only thing that I want to know is if Mr. St. John would come back and address these same issues but also the climate of standardized testing the rules over everything nowadays (this book was written before No Child Left Behind changed everything, and not necessarily for the better).

I read this on my kindle and whoever scanned the print version of the book into its e-book format did a horrible job. There are numerous formatting and spelling errors caused by computer error.

I rate this admittedly flawed book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Terrible Beauty by D.W. St. John.

Reviewed on July 3, 2013

Unthinkable (Jane Candiotti and Kenny Marks #4) by Clyde Phillips

Published in August 2013 by Thomas and Mercer

This is my 1,000th review on my blog. I have several good books that are already read and just waiting to be reviewed, but only one could be my 1,000th review. This is the best of that small bunch of books and it is really quite good.

This is the fourth book in a series of books about married San Francisco homicide detectives Jane Candiotti and Kenny Marks. I had not read any books in the series until this one and the reader does not have to read them in order to join in.

Candiotti and Marks are called in to a nasty murder scene in a fast food restaurant. Six strangers are massacred in the basement storage area right after the lunch rush. They have nothing in common except for the way they died. To make everything much, much worse, one of the victims is Marks' nephew.

The San Francisco Police Department starts to sort through the clues and work through the pasts of all of the victims looking for a motive and their search leads them to a former gang member who is conducting an investigation of his own and he promises to deal with the murderer in his own way...

Photo by Rich Niewiroski Jr.

This story grabs you from the first moment and pulls you right through. I flew through this book and I was genuinely surprised by who actually committed the murders and the ending is quite satisfying.

Disclosure: the publisher sent me an advance reader's copy of this book through the Amazon Vine program at no charge in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Unthinkable by Clyde Phillips.

Reviewed on June 30, 2013.

A Milestone: 1,000 Reviews

I have suffered with abibliophobia for years (the Kindle App on my smart phone has allowed me to work with this problem quite well). I have successfully passed it on to my children - and I think this is important because of the following thought:

And for those who wonder how I could have ever read so many books...

Cage Life (short stories) by Karin Cox

This e-book was published in 2011 by Indelible Ink

The common theme uniting the two short stories by Australian writer Karin Cox in this kindle e-book is a caged in, trapped feeling.

The first short story ("Cage Life") features a mis-matched couple, a free spirit wife and her straitlaced husband. She feels trapped in her marriage, living in a soul-less house and raising a toddler. They met in college in a drug-filled flophouse (there is way too much description of this part of the story for me) and she is afraid that she and her husband have moved too far apart, that the marriage was based on a temporary willingness to meet each other halfway. But, something heartbreaking happens (that I cannot disclose but it strikes you right in the heart) and it changes everything. I rate this story 3 stars out of 5.

The second short story (The Usurper) is one of those stories that mislead the whole time until you get to the very end and they you have one of those delightful "Ah-Ha!" moments and you realize what the story is really about. I rate this story 5 stars out of 5.

So, two stories. One rates 3 stars, one rates 5 stars. That makes a 4 star average.

Reviewed on June 28, 2013. This e-book can be found here on Amazon: Cage Life (Love in the Time of Literature Book 1)

Yesterday's Gone: Episode 1 (The Post-Apocalyptic Serial Thriller) by Sean Platt and David Wright

Published July of 2011 by Collective Inkwell

If you are a fan of Stephen King's post-apocalyptic novels The Stand or Cell you may want to check out Yesterday's Gone.

Platt and Wright are teaming up to write a series of short e-book novels (Amazon estimates this book to be about 116 pages long) to tell the story of a world where almost everyone has disappeared without a trace. There seems to be no pattern - the good, the bad, the rich, the poor, men and women have disappeared. And, a similar mix has been left behind.

Platt and Wright use "Episode 1" to introduce this world and the people that are left behind. Being an introductory episode, the lack of character development is understandable. I found myself less worried about the characters and much more curious about the setting - this strange world where almost everyone is gone. There are hints but no real answers (thus the impetus to move on to "Episode 2").

6 "Episodes" make up a "season" and Platt and Wright have completed 3 seasons, or 18 episodes with the promise of more. Platt and Wright have a lot of writing experience together - they are working on multiple series together, promising a book a week. That is a stiff schedule (I assume they have already worked ahead) but this first one indicates that this series has potential.

As of this writing, the first "episode" is free as a Kindle book on Amazon.com. It can be found here: Yesterday's Gone: Episode 1.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5.


Reviewed on June 26, 2013.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Famous People Who Returned Our Calls: Celebrity Highlights from the Oddly Informative News Quiz by NPR

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2009.

Performed by the guests and cast of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Duration: 2 hours and 29 minutes.

If you have not discovered NPR's weekly radio show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! , then I pity you. This clever show is truly one of the funniest shows on radio or television or just about anywhere and this collection is promoted as a distillation of 12 of the best visits from a very funny crop of celebrity visits.

They truly are all funny. Even the people who I had never heard of like Philippe Petit and Michael Pollan were funny and interesting. Other, more well known personalities (at least to me), like Carrie Fisher (Star Wars), Jane Curtin (Saturday Night Live, 3rd Rock from the Sun) , Neal Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, How I Met Your Mother), and Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek) were as funny or funnier than I expected.

This audiobook focuses on a part of the show - the "Not my job" segment. In this segment a celebrity is asked 3 questions about a topic about which they may not have any particular expertise  and if they get 2 of the 3 correct they win a prize for a listener. For example, Leonard Nimoy, who is famed for playing Mr. Spock on Star Trek was asked questions about advice from baby experts like Dr. Benjamin Spock. Fearless tightrope walker Philippe Petit was asked questions about the phobias of certain celebrities.

For me, the funniest moment came when one of the hosts (comedian Paula Poundstone) went after healthy food expert Michael Pollan about Ringdings. Of course, it was all done in fun and this is one truly enjoyable audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Famous People Who Returned Our Calls: Celebrity Highlights from the Oddly Informative News Quiz.

Reviewed on June 24, 2013.

My Mother Was Nuts: A Memoir (audiobook) by Penny Marshall

Published by Brilliance Audio in September of 2012.
Read by the author, Penny Marshall
Duration: 8 hours, 30 minutes.
Unabridged.

Penny Marshall, best known as Laverne DeFazio on the TV show Laverne and Shirley, tells all (or at least a lot) in this name-dropping memoir. If you are offended by frequent use of curse words and references to drug use, My Mother Was Nuts is not your book.

Let me begin with an important point in my review: I listened to it as an audiobook that was read by Penny Marshall. This is important because I think it added immensely to the experience despite Marshall's relatively poor reading style. She mumbles, slurs words throughout and pauses at weird moments to take a breath but that is part of Penny Marshall's style. On top of that, at emotional moments, such as the death of her mother and discussing the 9/11 attacks the listener can hear the emotion in her voice. Add to that her famed New York accent, her great impersonation of her brother Garry (creator of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley among other shows) Lorne Michaels (creator of Saturday Night Live) and Robert DeNiro and you have an enjoyable experience.

The title of her memoir comes from the difficult relationship Penny Marshall had with her mother, who was also the director of a dance studio in the Bronx and the person who taught Penny how to dance, sing (sort of) and, most importantly, entertain. Penny's father seems to have been mostly an enigma in her life - a colorless personality who worked in advertising.

A still from the opening credits of Laverne and Shirley

Penny's tales of her childhood are both sad and side-splittingly funny. The name-dropping starts early. She knew Calvin Klein from the old neighborhood. She worked with Marvin Hamlisch at a summer camp, etc. Penny's college years started out strong but ended with a forced marriage due to pregnancy. After a divorce, Penny's career in Hollywood starts, thanks to contacts created by her brother Garry (already an established script writer by this time) and the story goes into the stuff most people picked up the book to hear about. Penny Marshall does not disappoint, telling numerous name-dropping anecdotes and her life with up-and-coming celebrities off of the set.

Sometimes the book focuses too much on name-dropping (especially in the NBA section towards the end) and not so much on actual story-telling, but that is when I thought to myself that she is almost seventy years old and this story often reminds me of older folks (like I am some sort of spring chicken!) reminiscing about their younger days. That being said, there are times when the name-dropping is fun, especially if you think about how many of these people worked together on different projects and you get a real feel for how connected Penny Marshall is.

So, is this a great, insightful, soul-searching memoir? No. It's just Penny Marshall telling you about her life. That's it. It's an imperfect life but it she tells it pretty well. It's sometimes funny, sometimes sad and usually interesting. She leaves this advice: "Try hard, help your friends, don't get too crazy, and have fun."

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: My Mother Was Nuts: A Memoir

Reviewed on June 22, 2013