The 40 book Challenge discussion

Post your reflections here.

My first 3 books are ones that I already completed this year.


Fahrenheit 451 was my first step into reading Ray Bradbury. This is my 2nd read of the book, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed this fast read and the tribute it is to books. This is one of the texts that I should have read in high school, but it was never part of my classes. This is one that I would recommend to students who need something quick to jump into that will engage them in the text and the author's purpose.


Out of the Silent Planet is a great high school level read for students looking to get deeper into C.S. Lewis's fiction. The Space Trilogy starts readers moving deeper into different types of allegories that aren't as direct or familiar as they are in Narnia. The confrontation the protagonist encounters when he meets other sentient beings with reasonable souls presents a thought-provoking scenario that students can grapple with. This text got me really excited about the rest of the Space Trilogy. Out of the Silent Planet has a story that moves quickly in different directions than the reader may imagine.


Perelandra is the 2nd book in the Space Trilogy. Lewis is always able to take an unexpected approach when he tells his stories, and that is what I've enjoyed most about these books. Perelandra takes the allegory in a different direction than in Out of the Silent Planet and presents lots of interesting ideals that students may have thought about. When I was a kid, I used to consider other animals and how Christ's work would be applied to them. Would redemption on earth stretch to other planets, or would there be another similar story there? Lewis addresses this question in Perelandra. The downside of Perelandra for me was Lewis's constant description of color and how different Perelandra was as a world. I got really tired of the descriptions and ended up skimming paragraphs until I got to more story.

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. She has a fresh and joyful way of seeing and hearing the beauty of creation and translating that in her poetry. Her metaphors are so quick and simple and earnest. I recommend her work for a nice, rainy day (or an extended snow break). The collections of hers that I own are filled with dog-eared pages of favorite poems.

Mary Oliver is a Christian and a lesbian. It may be my inference, but I feel that some of that conflict comes out in her writing. Thirst was published the year after her partner of 40 years died. The poetry in this collection has lots of reflection and sorrow, but it also has a yearning for grace and Christ's redemption.

The title poem is amazing:
"Thirst"

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowy learning.
― Mary Oliver, Thirst

Another favorite:
“Praying"

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
― Mary Oliver, Thirst

I picked this up at Goodwill, and it turns out I got a first edition.

I enjoyed Freakonomics. More than anything, the book pushes the reader to think about how different things can be related. At least, that is the driving curiosity that propels the reader - who doesn't want to know the correlation between Sumo wrestlers and school teachers? The book explains lots of different correlations, and some of them are pretty unpalatable (like the correlation to Roe v. Wade and the drop in NYC crime in the 1990's). The purpose of the book is to get the reader to consider the world differently; to differentiate between correlations, causes, and indicators; and to interpret measurements and quantifications from a curious perspective.

One of the handy things about this book is the annotations that can be made on different topics. There is lots of research represented in this text.

I'm starting this today. I did a research paper on Flannery O'Connor for my history B.A. thesis. Somehow, this text flew under my radar as a valuable source of info on the author's perspective on herself and her God. This journal was kept during the time that she was in grad school in Iowa and writing parts of what would become Wise Blood.

Interestingly, Freakonomics predicts that in 2015 the name "Flannery" will become popular for baby girls.

Kristin and I went to her house on our honeymoon.

The Prayer Journal is excellent. It reads simply and quick. She writes as a student trying to be a writer, but she writes in a way to express her desire for more candid prayer. Not to replace her recited prayers, but to supplement them. She really tries to separate her "writer's language" and make her prayer writing very frank and colloquial. The book is great because it has a facsimile of the original writing journal in the back half.

I picked this book up for one of my Comedy entries. David Sedaris is regularly on This American Life on NPR. I'm 20 pages in, and the text is funny and brash so far.

David Sedaris' made me laugh out loud a few times while reading. Unfortunately the content of this book makes it horribly inappropriate for a classroom library. His writing is funny, witty, hyperbolic, and very very gay. I knew that he was a gay author and very popular, but I did not expect the work to descend from being brash to being crude.

The tone of the book is sarcastic, snappy, and judgmental. It's really a funny read in parts. Overall, though, the text pointed me back to 'Connor's prayer journal when she asks God to "give me grace, dear God, to see the bareness and the misery of the places where You are not adored."

I finished reading and flopped the book into the trash can. It was bad enough that I don't want it on my home bookshelves.

A friend recommended reading some of Neruda's poetry. This book of sonnets is dedicated to his wife. The text has the original Spanish on the left side and the English translation on the right. My Spanish is dusty, but I the side by side translation is really valuable for seeing the language in action.

Started reading this in January. I aim to finish during this week.

This is a second read for me. The book gets better with a re-read. There are amazing audiobook versions of her works on iTunes that really bring out there comic nature of her writing.


I was interrupted while reading Wise Blood by some students one day that I subbed in WCS. I've taken to asking students what they read, and one student that I've had several times at one of the local schools has started following up with me and wants to know my recommendations and keeps recommending books to me. She walked into class and handed me this graphic novel. I read it during the day that I subbed. It was my first graphic novel to read, and I didn't really enjoy it. It was much darker and more sinister than Batman from cartoons when I was a kid. It was edgy, mysterious, and not necessarily easy to follow frame-by-frame. It was often grotesque. I didn't really like it in the end.

Robin was a 13 year old girl and Bruce Wayne was a 60 year old man, retired. Batman was almost an alter-ego for Bruce Wayne that consumed him. At the end of the work, Batman becomes such a vigilante that you dislike him. Superman shows up. The plot is just a mangled mess based on hysteria and cultish fellowship (both for the "good guys" and bad guys.


This graphic novel is completely different. It is part of the Batman 75 Editions that are Marvel's "reset" on the series. The previous plots had gotten too intertwined and twisted over the 75 years of being written, so Marvel "started over." This story takes less for granted and introduces villains, characters, and Gotham's problems. Backstory is changed slightly. Compared to The Dark Knight Rises, this graphic novel has cleaner depictions, easier to follow frames, and generally a less distracted ADD kind of plot.

My Antonia is amazing. I enjoyed every bit of it.


My Sunshine Away is in many ways is similar to My Antonia, but is modernized and translated into todays depravity. Like My Antonia, the narrator distantly views the girl and struggles to understand the other character. But there's lots of teen drinking, smoking dope, sexual proclivity and even a phone sex scene.

It's about a boy whose friend gets raped when she is 15. The book is his reflection on his crusade to solve the crime. He forgets to empathize with the girl, named Lindy, and is so wrapped up in his personal desire for her that he neglects to consider her feelings. The text becomes a cautionary tale written to the narrator's son about what it can be like to be a young man.

I wish I could recommend this book for a classroom library, but I can't. The unnecessary sexual realism (it gets pretty graphic, the dialogue can be crude, phone sex, porn, implied masturbation) takes it out. I may have inferred on the text regret or at least shame from the narrator (and in some cases the shame is explicit), but I'm not sure.

...But I enjoyed the book. The narrator is about my age and events from history unfold and are formative moments in the characters' lives (Challenger explosion, Hurricane Andrew and Katrina, and a couple of others).