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In the Margins
Artists, writers and civic leaders reveal their recent reads
Carl Gombert
Artist and Maryville College instructor
I am reading a number of Neil Postman’s best-known books (e.g. Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, The Disappearance of Childhood, etc.) primarily because I will be teaching a seminar on his work this fall, but also because they are provocative and engaging, and Postman never pulls his punches.
I recently read John Irving’s newest novel The Fourth Hand, which chronicles the adventures of a reporter whose hand is eaten by a lion on live TV. I have always enjoyed how Irving can take the most improbable and catastrophic plots and still spin richly detailed, moving and even inspirational tales, and this book does not fail to satisfy.
Finally, I am reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series at bedtime with my older daughter, which for me is a whole heck of a lot more rewarding than the Pony Pals that I’m reading with my younger daughter.
Jill Colquitt
Executive Shopgirl, Yee-Haw Industries
How to Be a Villian by Neil Zawacki: Why I chose it: Honestly, the cover, but also because I can open it to any page and crack up. The illustrations are great, and the descriptions will remind you of people you know mixed with cartoons from childhood. That could just be me. What it’s doing for me: Making me snort out loud.
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers: Why I chose it: Some friends recommended it last summer, so this is the perfect time to start. It deals with losing a family member and moving on in a whole new style with lots of honesty, self-deprecation and extremely funny observations, different than those rehash tearjerkers. What it’s doing for me: Causing welling up followed by bouts of uncontrollable laughter.
Bill Haslam
Knoxville Mayor
The Price of Government by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson. Great look at managing state and local governments in an era of “permanent fiscal crisis.” Good practical advice on a different approach to solving problems.
The Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill. The world before and after Jesus.
Mike Ragsdale
Knox County Mayor
I am reading God and Ronald Reagan by Paul Kengor. It was given to me as a gift, and it is outstanding. Since President Reagan is a personal hero, the book is very enjoyable reading and also very inspiring. I highly recommend it.
Alan Gratz
Author of Measured in Labor: The Coal Creek Project, and Samurai Shortstop, a forthcoming young adult novel from Penguin Putnam.
Just finished: Cold in Summer by Tracy Barrett, a young adult novel by a friend in Nashville. Currently reading: Michael Chabon’s Summerland. Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is easily my favorite book, and I hold high hopes for his first foray into books for children.
Jonathan Frey
Metro Pulse book reviewer
I’ve been reading Paul Theroux’s memoiristic novel, My Other Life, which traces a novelist named Paul Theroux through his career, extemporizing on the author’s real life. Along the way we’re introduced to real people (most notably a wonderful vignette of Anthony Burgess boozily dismissing an admirer), suspected caricatures of real people, as well as a mysterious writer who makes the claim, “There is no such thing as a novel anymore. It is an obsolete form. What has already taken its place? The work that is nearer to autobiography or memoir... It has more shocks and they are real shocks. Real flesh, real blood.” The increasing volume of memoirs published each year bears out this claim.
Sara Schwabe
Actress and leader of the Yankee Jass Band
I’m currently reading a sort of silly book called Welcome to My Planet—Where English Is Sometimes Spoken. It’s by a fellow Minnesotan, Shannon Olson. It’s a very funny story about a 30-something woman who is not married or in a serious relationship. She has a corporate job that’s unsatisfying and feels a severe lack of direction. She feels her “clock ticking,” but really has no desire to settle down. The characters are very well developed, and the story is pretty similar to the lives of a lot of 30-somethings I know. It’s nothing heavy—just a good opportunity to laugh at the similarities in your own life! Good beach reading, for sure.
The best thing I finished recently is The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. A 1930s surrealist morality story. It still blows my mind every time I think of it.
Vance Thompson
Founder/director of the East Tennessee Jazz Orchestra
The novel that I’ve read most recently was Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I also just finished pianist Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery. I picked it up to try to improve my practice productivity. So far, it’s had the opposite effect, but I haven’t thrown in the towel yet.
Marilyn Roddy
City Council member
Raney by Clyde Edgerton: Recommended by a good friend.
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines: It was the One Book One Community selection. Ernest Gaines novel was incredibly powerful. I wish I had had the time to participate in a discussion group.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd: Recommended by my daughter.
Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss: Eats is on my daughter’s summer reading list, and she is sharing it with me. It completely appeals to the editor in me. I am a “stickler” along with Ms. Truss. From the Shadow Side and Other Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee, by Jack Neely. It was a gift, and I have thoroughly enjoyed discovering Knoxville’s secret past. I plan to read The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown while on vacation this month, out of curiosity. I want to know what all the hype is about.
Marilyn Kallet
Director of the Creative Writing Program, University of Tennessee
I just got back from a research trip to Germany on family history and the Holocaust; then to Mary Anderson Center for a month to write poems on the subject. To prepare for the trip to Theresienstadt, I read W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz; to spur the poetry, I read and reread Mary Oliver’s Owls and Other Fantasies (her best in a long time); I’ve been translating German texts about rural Jewery, including “Schattenrisse” (“Torn Ghosts”) about the Jewish community in the Black Forest area; and for fun, I just read Jonathan Kellerman’s When the Bough Breaks, and am now reading Michael Connelly’s The Narrows.
Michael Knight
Associate Professor of English, UT, and author of Goodnight Nobody.
Wuthering Heights: It’s my summer project book. Every summer I try to read at least one “Great Book” that I either haven’t read or haven’t read in way too long. In this case I hadn’t looked at Bronte since grad school. I’ve been staggered since the first chapter by how good it is, how tense, how passionate, how scary in places, how thoroughly original. I’m not sure how I failed to notice all that the first time around. Also on my bedside table is a short story collection by Alice Munro called Hateship, Loveship, Friendship, Courtship, Marriage. Usually I poke around in the collection in the mornings, before I sit down to write. Munro is the best short writer alive, and I think the living writer most likely to be required reading in a hundred years. On deck is a novel called You Remind Me of Me by a strange and wonderful young writer named Dan Chaon. That’s the one I plan on taking to beach in a couple of weeks.
June 10, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 24
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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