The Last Lecture- Randy Pausch : Each year at a series known as The Last Lecture, a Carnegie Mellon University faculty member is asked to deliver what would hypothetically be a final speech to their students before dying. It is a wonderful tradition in which both speaker and listeners take a moment to reflect upon what matters most in this life. In September 2007, the speaker, 47-year-old computer science professor and father of three, Randy Pausch, didn't have to imagine that he was confronting his imminent demise because, in fact, he was. Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and, at the time of his Last Lecture, had only been given three to six months to live. Pausch's speech, entitled "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," was every bit as upbeat and inspirational as the man himself. Rather than focusing on dying, it was a speech about living, about achieving one's dreams and enabling the dreams of others, about truly living each day as though it were your last.
The Dovekeepers – Alice Hoffman: But nothing she’s written would prepare you for the gravitas of her new book, an immersive historical novel about Masada during the Roman siege in the 1st century. “The Dovekeepers” is an enormously ambitious, multi-part story, richly decorated with the details of life 2,000 years ago. What’s more, as Anita Diamant showed so popularly with “The Red Tent,” the world of ancient Judaism provides fertile ground for exploring the challenges of women’s lives, and, fortunately, this time Hoffman treats her favorite issues without throwing up much of the fairy dust that too often clogs her work.
The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern: The setting is the late 19th and early 20th centuries in and around major world cities — New York, London, Paris, Boston and so on. The Cirque des Rêves is an entertainment that whirls through these cities, appearing suddenly, disappearing suddenly, filled with psychics and contortionists and elaborate rooms and labyrinths of great holographic intensity. People are overwhelmingly drawn to the circus. Some, known as “rêveurs,” even go so far as to follow it from town to town dressed uniformly in black, white and red à la Diana Vreeland, maybe. Caught in the power vectors of the Cirque des Rêves are two special children, Marco and Celia, who grow to adulthood over the course of the novel. Both are orphans; both have been hypertrained by stern guardians in telekinetic and psychic powers; eventually, it is revealed that the two have been groomed since an early age to be each other’s “opponents” in a contest of magical creation, of which the circus is the arena. The guardians have created this contest for what seems to be nothing but their own sense of power, and they are ruthless in seeing it through to the end: death for the loser. Celia grows to be an illusionist whose illusions aren’t really illusions (she turns clothing into birds and can change the color of a fabric with her mind, among other powers); Marco can create entire worlds at will, invented environments of great beauty, simply by passing his hands over one’s eyes. Eventually, of course, they meet, fall in love, defy their fate.
The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco: The novel, titled “The Prague Cemetery,” is the story of a secret agent who “weaves plots, conspiracies, intrigues and attacks, and helps determine the historical and political fate of the European Continent.” The novel begins in Paris in March 1897, and the main character, Captain Simonini - an adventurer and a forger, who works for the secret police a half of the states of Europe, as well as weaving conspiracies and preparing the assassination. According to Eco, "the characters of this novel are not imaginary. They all lived in reality, but actually the main character, but including his grandfather's mysterious message Banyuelyu abbot, gave rise to all modern anti-Semitism." "The nineteenth century was eventful in more or less monstrous and mysterious - and then a mystery death of Ippolito Nevo, and forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that inspired Hitler's extermination of the Jews and the Dreyfus affair, and endless intrigue who wove the secret police of different countries, and the Masonic sect, and Jesuit plots, and other events that would seem worthy of the novel with a sequel, when they would not authenticate the documents."The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – Maggie O’Farrell: In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?
Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks: Year of Wonders: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a fictional portrayal of actual events that occurred in the small English village of Eyam in 1666. When a plague strikes the village, residents make the extraordinary choice, led by a young priest, to quarantine themselves to prevent further spread of the disease. The story is told through the eyes of a young maid, Anna Frith, as she witnesses the disintegration of her small community as death takes its toll on every family, including her own.
Pigs in Heaven or The Bean Tree - Barbara Kingslover:The Bean Tree - The heroine of The Bean Trees, Marietta (otherwise known as Miss Marietta, Missy, and Taylor Greer) is determined to avoid becoming a pregnant teen. Her early years in Eastern Kentucky have been heavily influenced by her perception that Pittman County is "behind the nation in practically every way you can think of, except the rate of teenage pregnancies." She has also been influenced by her supportive mother, and by her work with "blood and pee" in a hospital lab.
After saving enough money to buy a '55 Volkswagen bug, Taylor drives. away from .Pittman County. She renames herself Taylor Greer when she runs out of gas in Taylorville. Then she acquires an unwanted and abused Cherokee baby girl outside a bar in Oklahoma. She names the baby Turtle, for her habit of "holding on."
Pigs in Heaven - "Women on their own run in Alice's family." So thinks Alice Greer, sixty-one years old, as she is about to leave her second husband, Harland; and the novel appears to offer no argument against this. She, her daughter Taylor, and Taylor's informally adopted daughter, Turtle, all seem fated to lives uncomplicated by relationships with men. But simplicity is gone forever when Taylor and Turtle (who is Cherokee) appear on TV by a coincidence of fate, and come to the attention of Annawake Fourkiller, a lawyer for the Cherokee nation. Taylor finds herself in a conflict between her own and what she thinks of as Turtle's best interests, and those of the tribe. Citing the Indian Welfare Act, which states that all adoptions of Native American children must be authorized by their tribes, Annawake determines to try to invalidate Turtle's adoption. Meanwhile, fearing that she will lose her daughter, Taylor takes Turtle and flees Arizona, leaving behind her devoted boyfriend, Jax. Along the way to resolution of this seemingly irresolvable conflict, many lives are changed.
Jane Austin – Anything She Wrote
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