I have started three drafts of a blog entry on the current political environment vis-a-vis education.

I gave up three times.

The conversation right now is too close to me. It is too disheartening. It is even shocking.

As the granddaughter, niece and daughter of teachers, as an educator myself who has always valued education and the myriad opportunities it brings, I guess I’ve been a little sheltered from the vitriol of the anti-school crowd. Not completely, of course.

My mother often brought home horror stories about angry parents, aloof administrators, and indifferent students. My aunt teaches second grade at a public school in Terre Haute, the methamphetamine capital of the world. She always talks about her 7-year-old students whose parents could care less if their kids come to school. Hell, my grandfather actually had Charles Manson in class for a brief spell before he got kicked out for ditching. Even before I went to college, I knew that many people had low opinions of a formal education.

And the further I went into my own academic career, the more first-hand experience I collected myself. The summer after I graduated with my bachelor degree, I went to a party with some old high school pals and made the mistake of enthusiastically admitting I was now a college grad. One of the guys I was talking to actually rolled his eyes, snorted and walked away. When I questioned his girlfriend about his behavior, she shrugged. “We’re not big on college snobs,” she replied. I was speechless.

By the time I got to grad school, I realized that, sadly, there were some circles in which I needed to keep my education to myself. When certain people asked me what I was up to, I would just talk about the two jobs I was working and leave out the classes I was taking.

Nowadays, when people ask me what I do, I try to gauge the situation, anticipate their reaction. If I’m not sure their reaction will be positive, I just say I’m a teacher. Sometimes, though, they’ll ask further, and I have to admit I teach English at a university. And then I get the “Ooooh, well, I’ll try to watch my grammar” comment. Like I’m going to correct their usage. I rarely correct even my own children; I don’t correct friends. Ever.

Despite all these experiences, the current discussions about education and teachers and their unions still leave me speechless. What can I say? Can I even be remotely objective?

Of course not.

Obviously, education is important to me. And it should be important to all Americans. It’s part of what makes the American dream possible. We must have a baseline of education to succeed in life. We have to learn how to read. We have to learn how to do basic math. We have to learn enough history to understand what’s come before, so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. We have to learn the scientific method.

At a minimum, everyone should learn these things. The U.S. has to have a literate population to maintain its democracy. Thomas Jefferson understood that: “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

We have to have a literate population to innovate and boost our economy. Even the most creative people will not get anywhere if they cannot articulate their great ideas.

We have to a have a literate population to protect our nation. Our military needs soldiers and officers who know their history, know multiple languages, know good communication skills.

Education is important to the success and stability of our nation.

So when people want to cut funding of our schools, when people want to bash public school teachers as lazy, glorified babysitters, when people want to privatize our schools because they’re not performing as they think they should, I am flabbergasted.

Our government needs to get its priorities straight. Get back to basics: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For me, “life” means “health” and “safety.” I want my government to provide a bottom-line, safety-net type of health system, and I want my government to keep us safe from our enemies within and without.

“Liberty” is more complicated, but for me, its about getting to choose our leaders and those leaders’ supporting the Bill of Rights.

And then there’s “pursuit of happiness.” Now, I know that education does not make everybody happy. My kindergartner told me just today that she hates school. I know that higher education is not for everyone. I certainly do not look down my nose at people who choose or cannot afford college. My husband left school at age 16; he’s one of the most brilliant people I know, and he also appreciates the value of a good education. You don’t need a degree to be educated, but not appreciating education makes you stupid.

Education allows us to succeed in business. It allows us to get better jobs and make more money. Education helps us to pursue property, which is, of course, the original source of the phrase from which Jefferson co-opted his famous Declaration (John Locke).

And the current education system, while certainly not perfect, its not in such bad shape that it needs to be completely abandoned. Are there bad schools? Oh yes. Do I know how to fix them? No, but taking away their money and marginalizing the teachers is definitely not the answer! Are there bad teachers? You bet. But I can count on one hand, the number of bad teachers I’ve had in seventeen years of education. In fact, I can think of just two. Two!

On the other hand, I can think of a hundred really good teachers I have had the privilege to know, either as their student or as a friend. My mom won student-voted awards almost every year of her 30-year career. Even today, people who had her as a teacher come up to me and sing her praises. She worked her tail off for three decades. All those “vacations” and “breaks” people complain about teachers’ enjoying. Yeah, my mom spent most of those “days off,” locked in her room, grading endless piles of essays. I remember Thanksgivings, Easter Sundays, and Mother’s Days, when we would visit family in Terre Haute, my mom spent the two hours in the car grading and doing lesson plans.

One of my favorite teachers of all time was a lady named Karen. She taught three preps - sophomore AP literature, junior composition, and an awesome class called humanities. I was fortunate to have her twice as a teacher. She was amazing in the classroom. But she was also one of my mom’s best friends, so I got to see behind the scenes. I saw her in tears my senior year, her first year teaching the brand-new humanities course. She was crying on my mom’s shoulder because she was working so hard, prepping all her classes, developing this new curriculum, grading and dealing with all the usual administrative crap. She felt like she was missing her sons’ childhoods. If I hadn’t walked into my mom’s classroom after school that day, I’d have had no idea she was under such stress. She was flawless in front of her students.

And then there were my band directors. The first two years I was in band, I didn’t give much thought to how much time these three men put into their music program. My senior year, though, I was a drum major, and I spent a lot of time with them. In the summer. On Monday evenings. On Thursday evenings. On Friday evenings when we had football games. Every Saturday from August to November when we had contests. They chose the marching drill, the musical selections, the uniforms, the flags, the staff. They coordinated 350 teenagers, teaching us music, marching routines and dealing with our teenage angst. They dealt with stage parents and vengeful judges. I cannot imagine how many hours they put into that program. And, oh, yeah, they also had to teach music classes, grade papers, and all that stuff too. They earned every dollar they got paid, and I know it wasn’t as much as it could’ve been if they’d taken their degrees and put all those hours into a private business. I know for a fact that band was the only reason many kids stayed in school at all.

Teachers are alright.

The cuts in funding, the swipes at teachers’ unions, the pushes for privatization (vouchers and charter schools) reveal some seriously screwed-up priorities in our country.

We’d better get our heads on straight and start investing in our future. Education is key. If we forget that, we sacrifice our future because part of our electorate has a chip on its shoulder and another part is senior voters who would rather protect their assets than educate our nation’s children.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property if you swing that way) is the bottom line. Education is the path.

For me, the holiday season started this morning. Until 1am of December 21^st, I was buried under statistical reports, department meetings, esssays to be graded and a textbook manuscript to be edited. I finished the last of it in the wee hours of this morning, so I can finally turn my attention, undivided, to the Big Day.

Not that I haven’t been thinking about Christmas or doing things here and there. My parents treated my family to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Yuletide Celebration a couple weeks ago, which was lovely. I went to Metamora, a little town in eastern Indiana that does a “Christmas Walk” along its historic canal every year. I attended my old neighborhood’s annual Progressive Dinner and a couple of children’s parties. I have done snatches of shopping, wrapping and baking when I could fit them in.

My friends and family often reminded me that time was running short. And I even got some reminders from unlikely sources. Such as one friend, a Muslim PhD candidate from Indonesia, who comforted me when I learned we were expecting ANOTHER snowstorm: “But Jennifer, now you will get to play your Christmas sports,” he said with a sincere smile. I guess I looked confused because he explained, “You know, your skiing, your sledding, your snowball fighting.” So cute.

And during Hannukah, I tutored an exchange student from Israel. I was reading his paper, when I suddenly heard him humming “Jingle Bells.” Puzzled, I looked at him and asked, “Boaz, aren’t you Jewish?” He grinned and nodded. “Yeah, but your Christmas music is everywhere! It gets stuck in my head.” HA! (So much for the “war on Christmas” Fox News is always screaming about to all the retired W.A.S.P.s who actually believe it. If Jewish exchange students are singing Christmas music, I think the holiday’s safe, Bill O..)

Anyway, now I can finally concentrate on getting into some Christmas spirit. So the following lists are really just me brainstorming for my own benefit unless you, too, are trying to cram all your favorite Christmas traditions into three or four days!

Below are some of my favorite things about the season that I’m trying to get in before it’s over.

Songs:

(Remember, I’m a child of the 80’s.)

• ·         White Christmas – Bing Crosby
• ·         Little Drummer Boy – Bing Crosby and David Bowie
• ·         Do They Know It’s Christmas – Duran Duran and some other people
• ·         The Christmas Song – Nat King Cole
• ·         Joy to the World – Julie Andrews
• ·         Santa Claus Is Comin to Town – Bruce Springsteen
• ·         I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus – John Mellencamp
• ·         Rudolph – Gene Autry
• ·         Mary’s Boy Child – Boney M
• ·         Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
• ·         I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
• ·         Happy Christmas – John Lennon
• ·         Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer – Elmo and Patsy
• ·         Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
• ·         All I Want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey

Movies:

• ·         It’s a Wonderful Life
• ·         The Grinch
• ·         Rudolph
• ·         White Christmas
• ·         A Christmas Story
• ·         Mickey’s Christmas Carol
• ·         Scrooged
• ·         National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• ·         Holiday Inn
• ·         Die Hard
• ·         Love Actually

Books/Stories:

• A Christmas Carol - Dickens
• A Visit from St. Nicholas - Moore
• Gospel of Luke

Cookies:

• ·         Sugar cookie cutouts
• ·         Oatmeal craisin
• ·         Snickerdoodles
• ·         Jam thumbprints
• ·         Chocolate chip
• ·         Gingerbread

Other Holiday Food/Drinks:

• ·         Egg nog
• ·         Mulled wine
• ·         Cranberry “grog”
• ·         Spinach dip with Hawaiian bread
• ·         Honey ham
• ·         Green bean casserole
• ·         Jesus’ birthday cake

If I spend the next five days doing nothing but cooking, eating, reading, listening to music and watching movies, I think I can get it all in. The race is on! Merry Christmas!

Do you remember 1988?

I do. I was a junior in high school and, well, kind of the belle of the ball. I was cute. I was skinny (was I ever really a size 4?!). I was the teachers’ pet, and I was popular. It was one of the best years of my life, so it’s imprinted on my memory very clearly.

Ronald Reagan was on his way out as the presidential campaign between George HW Bush and Michael Dukakis was in full swing. (I was rooting for Bush!?) The Soviet Union was still a constant threat.  My beloved Duran Duran, now down to three members, released their “Big Thing” album. Bruce Willis starred in the first “Die Hard” film that year.

We wore pegged jeans, Coca-Cola brand clothes, and high-top Converse. Our hair was BIG! Our eyeshadow was blue. And all the way up to our eyebrows.

My mom was an English teacher at my high school, but I was lucky: she was way cool. My mom might’ve been more popular than I was! But I had a driver’s license, a car, and a reputation for being a non-judgemental goody-two-shoes, so I was everyone’s favorite designated driver. It was in that role that I experienced one of the “game-changing” moments of my life.

It was December (I think. I know that it was VERY cold.), and I was leaving a basketball game at my school. I was in the pep band (at my school, band was actually cool!), so I had had to stay for the entire game, then go back to the band room, put away my clarinet, and socialize for a bit with my fellow band geeks before actually leaving.

As I was walking out, one of my friends asked if he could have a ride. This friend, Ryan, would become my senior year boyfriend, but as juniors, we were just friends. I said sure, and we headed out into the cold, dark parking lot together, gossiping about this and that.

We were almost to my car when Ryan stopped short and grabbed my arm. “What was that?”

I’d heard it too. A terrible sound. I can hear it now. Whimpering. But almost-adult whimpering. A desperate, defeated sound that sent an instant zing up our spines and stopped us in our tracks.

We followed the noise to the edge of the lot. Between the darkened parking lot and the even darker football stadium was a figure in the brittle grass. A human form, lying on the frozen ground.

Ryan and I were 16 years old. We were frightened, fascinated and concerned at once. I remember the bizarrely inappropriate thrill of realizing that he was holding my hand as we approached this dark, moaning shape in the grass.

And then we saw, in the dim light of a distant street light, that this was a fellow band geek. He was lying, face-down, on the icy ground, moaning pitifully. We knew him well. He was a fellow clarinet player, and I had been to Europe with him on a school-sponsored trip.

I approached him cautiously and said his name. He moved a little. He recognized my voice and responded. “Price?”

Ryan and I helped him to a sitting position. Ryan put his jacket around him. We learned that he had been “jumped,” attacked by a bunch (maybe 3 or 4 or 5?) of guys in the parking lot. They had called him a “f-ing faggot” and beat him brutally.

Our friend was a mess, but he refused to go to an emergency room. He didn’t want anyone to know, especially his parents.

I was confused. At a very sheltered 16, I had a limited understanding of “gay.” I didn’t even yet realize that my dear friend Ryan was gay. I didn’t see why our bruised and battered friend was so anxious about people finding out he’d been beaten up. In fact, I chalked it up to a male-pride thing: he didn’t want anyone to know he’d lost a fight.

Ryan understood better. He ran back inside the school to use the pay phone. He told us later that he’d called his mom and our friend’s parents to ask if he could spend the night. While he was inside, he also scoped out the band hallway and determined almost everyone was gone. He came back to us, huffing and puffing. “We can use the restroom. Everybody’s gone.”  Ryan and I helped our friend back into the school where they went into the boys’ restroom. I waited in the hallway.

While I was waiting, our band teacher saw me as he was leaving. “Jenni, what are you still doing here?”

“Oh, I’m taking Ryan home, and he needed to use the restroom. I’m just waiting on him,” I replied.

The band director trusted me.”Okay,” he said, “well, I’ve gotta get going, so I’m just gonna lock these doors. You can get out, but make sure you have everything because you won’t be able to get back in, alright?”

“Yes, sir!” I nodded, absolutely panicked that Ryan might exit the boys’ room with our friend any moment.

“See you Monday!” the band director said, and he disappeared into the darkness.

Ryan and our friend appeared several minutes later. Our friend was no longer bloody, but he had a very swollen lip and a black eye. From the way he was limping gingerly out to my car, I’m sure he had bruises elsewhere too.

The boys didn’t talk much as I drove them to Ryan’s home. Of course, I filled the silence with useless prattle, making assumptions to justify my perspective. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of: “Stupid teenage boys - always looking for a reason to fight. Just because Center Grove High School lost the game, they have to beat up on one of our guys.”

I never learned if it was kids from the rival school or kids from our own school who beat up our friend. He never said. But even then, I understood just enough to know it didn’t really have anything to do with a basketball game.

Our friend was beaten because he was gay.

I didn’t become a liberal right then. No, it took about 15 more years for that lesson to sink in completely. I voted Republican in the first two elections in which I participated. Then I began to split my ticket. Gradually it became more and more liberal as I recognized that the rhetoric of the G.O.P. helped inflame and justify the hate crime I had witnessed first-hand.

Both Ryan and our friend are gone now. One died of AIDS years ago; one died of stomach cancer in 2008. Otherwise, I would not be blogging about that night. You see, I promised them both that I wouldn’t tell anyone. It was too complicated, too painful, too fraught with consequences for parents, friends and loved ones.

But the suicides of Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas and others have made me re-think my promise.

The perpetrators of hate crimes WANT to keep their acts in the dark. They want their victims to remain silent.

It certainly was easy for me to stay quiet. I finished my junior year in the top 10 of my class. I became a drum major in the marching band. I was a homecoming princess. Life was good. I didn’t want to complicate things by telling the story of having witnessed a crime on school grounds. My promise made my life easier. So I could happily justify my silence; I was just being a good friend.

Now I’m not so sure.

Those guys, whoever they were, got away with assault and battery on a kid they wanted to beat on because he was different. And I helped them get away with it by being quiet, passive, sweet, and loyal. What if they raise their kids to do the same thing?

My mom loves to say that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” That night, I did nothing. And I’m sorry for that.

If you know an LGBT person, especially a kid, do NOT do what I did. Do something. Even if it is just to say, “Hey, I’m your friend, and if you need me, I’ll listen.”

Change starts just one person at a time.

Last month, my husband, my father, my sister and I hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim.Starting from the North Rim, we took the North Kaibab Trail down and across the canyon floor, 14 miles to Phantom Ranch. We camped at the ranch, then took Bright Angel up the South Rim.

Over the past 15 years, my husband and I have hiked all over North America. We’ve hiked in Lake Louise, Canada; Yosemite, California; Yellowstone, Wyoming; Zion, Utah; Badlands, South Dakota; Smoky Mountains, Tennessee; and Nueva Vallarta, Mexico. We’ve hiked a lot, but we knew the Grand Canyon hike was going to be a big deal. I’m not sure we realized, however, how much we would learn from the experience.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from the trails:

Weather - We were all concerned about the weather. Hiking in August can be deadly with temperatures at the bottom sometimes reaching 115 degrees. We lucked out. On the way down, we had good cloud cover. The hottest we saw was 98, and that was brief. On the way up, we ran into Arizona’s monsoon season. It rained about 2/3 of our trip up Bright Angel, and the temperatures stayed in the 70’s. The weather saved us because I’m pretty sure my sister would not have made it out of the canyon if it had been in the 90’s. Which brings me to the next lesson I learned…

Training is everything - I started training in January. Minimum of 20 minutes daily on our elliptical machine. By July, I doing 30-35 minutes on an incline. I was frustrated because I didn’t lose much weight, but when we started coming out of that canyon, I realized what a difference that training had made. I had little problem coming up Bright Angel. My knees got wobbly toward the end, and I was very sore for about 24 hours, but everyone is. My poor sister somehow underestimated the Grand Canyon, however, and she did not train adequately. My husband, my dad and I spent the hike up berating, cajoling, comforting and bribing her up the trail. Thank God for the cool weather or we would have left her down there.

Trail conditions - My husband and I have been on dozens of trails. Some have been rough, some steep, some long, some treacherous. The Grand Canyon trails are all of the above and then some. We had never seen trails that were alternately wet mud, slippery rock, deep sand, high drop-offs, awkward steps the whole way. Twenty-two miles of every conceivable trail condition. Oh, and did I mention the mule poop?

Mules are the poopiest creatures in the animal kingdom - We saw them a couple of times. I was actually surprised at first sight because they look like horses, not burros or donkeys like you see on TV or in movie depictions of the Grand Canyon. They’re lovely to look at, but they poop all over the trails. And it was raining. Need I say more?

Shoes - I will never hike again in anything but Salomon hiking shoes. One of the tutors in the University Writing Center has hiked the Appalachian Trail, and when she learned I was hiking the canyon, she brought in her Salomons for me to try. I worked out in them for a few days and liked them. After hiking the canyon with them, I love them. Light, strong and waterproof, the shoes ensured my feet never gave me a problem. My poor husband wore trail-runners, and the soles were not thick enough to protect the bottoms of his feet from the rocky parts of the trail. My dad wore hiking boots; the wide ankle openings caught rain and sand the whole way up. My sister wore Reeboks which did not give her enough cushion for her knees. Salomons, forever!

Shorts - I may have gotten the shoes right, but I screwed up royally with the shorts. I wore my silky Reebox athletic shorts that I always work out in. I didn’t consider that I would be sweating, rained-on, and walking for hours and hours. My poor thighs were raw by the time we got out. Next time - long cargo shorts like my husband wore!

Wilderness still exists - There are still a few places on this planet where you can’t get a cell phone signal or an internet service provider; the Grand Canyon is one of them. In fact, snail mail is delivered by mule. We sent our kids a postcard from Phantom Ranch. Pretty cool.

Pacing is crucial - Forgetting to eat when you’re hiking in 90-degree heat is a very bad thing. We ate lunch and then didn’t eat until we reached Phantom Ranch. We kept thinking it was right around the corner, and we had dinner reservations, so it seemed stupid to eat. But by the time we got there, my blood sugar had bottomed out. I felt drunk. Not the happy drunk, but the room-is-spinning-I’m-gonna-throw-up drunk. Snacks are good.

The Canyon skews people’s sense of distance - When you’re going up at a 20-degree grade, and the trail is rough and doing long switchbacks, it is very hard to get a sense of distance. Throw in the fact that there are very few mile markers in the Grand Canyon, especially on North Kaibab, and it becomes problematic. Pacing yourself is difficult when you’re not sure if you have 2 miles or 4 miles to go. My sister and my dad ran out of water on the way down because of this. My husband and I neglected to eat. My sister became half-delirious on the way up. Some mile markers would be nice down there. I know the National Park Service has had their budget slashed, but how much would a couple signs cost?

Remarkable individuals - Speaking of the National Park Service, at the Pumping Station on North Kaibab, we met a young ranger named Silas Aiken. He was a remarkable person for several reasons. First, he was raised at the Pumping Station house. His father was an artist and had a contract with NPS. Silas grew up in the canyon; his parents would carry him up and down until he was three years old. Then he had to hike it himself. Second, he had actually met my father 13 years ago, the second time Dad hiked the canyon. My dad remembered his father, who is a well-known painter; Dad also remembered Silas because he had been handing out Gatorade to hikers back then. Now a ranger, Silas has a Facebook page even though he doesn’t have internet access most of the time.

Light pollution sucks - We see so few stars in the city. We camped at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. The night was clear, so we didn’t put our rain fly up. We fell asleep looking up at the entire Milky Way.

Phantom Ranch has great food - Of course, any food tastes fantastic when you’ve just finished hiking 14 miles in a desert canyon, but the salad was fresh and had every vegetable you can imagine. The beef stew was hearty and perfectly seasoned, and the chocolate cake was sinful. And for the first time since I was a little girl, I did not feel guilty about eating every bite of that dessert!

It’s a small world after all - At Phantom Ranch, we met a man from the east side of Indianapolis. His daughter still lives in Fishers, a suburb to the north of Indy. We also met a very nice couple from Chicago, and we talked with them about the Bears/Colts rivalry. We also told them about the White Sox/Yankees game we would be attending later that month. They were happy to hear we were Yankees fans rather than Sox fans. (They loved the Cubbies.)

Colorado River - The little green line you see at the bottom of the canyon when you’re standing on the rim? Yeah, that’s one big, bad river. It is wide, and it is wild.

My dad is my hero - My father is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. This was my father’s fourth time hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. You would never know it unless you asked him or one of his very proud daughters or wife told you. He has done some remarkable things. Quietly. He’ll be happy to tell you about it if you ask, but you could say, “Hey, we’re going to the Grand Canyon next week,” and my father would not take the opportunity to bring up his accomplishment. This was very likely his last time to do it, and he got even quieter than usual on the way up. I asked up if he was okay, and he admitted to being a little sad. “Probably the last time I’ll get to see this,” he said. He turned 70 about a week after he got home from Arizona, and he’d promised my mother he wouldn’t try it again because she worries too much. But the canyon is in his heart, and I couldn’t be prouder to be his daughter.

Still, I don’t know if I will hike the canyon rim-to-rim again. Doing it once is something I’ll never forget, but it was hard. And yet, it seems a shame to waste all these good lessons… 

My husband chastised me the other day because my blog’s been idle for a while. I admit, I’ve been lax, but I do have some really good excuses if you’re interested! First, I’ve been in summer school hell. Like an idiot, I accepted a double assignment which means I’m teaching two classes covering 15 weeks’ material in 6 weeks. I’m a lesson planning-student-email-responding-paper-grading automaton! Second, the novel that has been gestating in my brain for the past 8 years has decided it’s time to be born. So in between my manic teaching work, I’ve been spending most of my writing time writing that. And finally, well, most of my blog stuff’s been focused on current events, and the oil spill in the Gulf has been dominating that spectrum for a while. The whole fiasco simply paralyzes me with disappointment and anxiety. I am so angry with BP, disappointed in our government’s response, devastated about the environmental impact, and grief-stricken for the people of that region, I don’t want to write more than these few lines about it. Soooooooo…

My guilt-ridden conscience thus temporarily cleared, I can move on to something kinda fun.

As an English teacher with a couple of degrees in literature, I am often asked for summer reading recommendations. Now if you were talking to me in person, I’d ask you several questions about your personal tastes before I would presume to recommend anything because the possibilities are really endless. Plus, I have some rather particular tastes in reading materials, especially the stuff I read in my free time.

Since you’re just reading this blog, though, I’ll list my personal favorites. Please bear in mind that I read some rather heavy stuff for my professional work, so in the summer, I tend to read fun, low-impact books. I love Dante, Shakespeare and Henry James, but I’m not going to recommend them for light reading on the beach. Please don’t hold the fluff in this list against me!

In no particular order:

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher: A memoir of Princess Leia’s life, growing up in a celebrity family. Painfully funny, it is particularly fascinating if you are remotely interested in Hollywood history. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it wasn’t three times as long.

Fool by Christopher Moore: A retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear from the fool’s perspective. I’ve been a Christopher Moore fan for years, but I was leery of his taking on my beloved bard, especially Lear, which is my favorite Shakespearean tragedy. Moore is irreverent, hilarious and dirty, so I had my doubts. I needn’t have worried; it is hilarious, and his love for this magnificent play is obvious just behind all the four-letter words and naughty bits.

Angels and Demons/ Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: Imaginative novels about Catholic conspiracies. If you’re one of the few Americans left who haven’t read these, pick ‘em up at your local library or used book store. They’re fun, fast-paced, and intriguing, especially Angels and Demons, which moves at a near-breakneck pace that keeps your nose in the book right until the rather farfetched end. I can’t recommend the third one because I haven’t read it yet. I refuse to shell out $30 for a hardback, so I’ll wait until it’s available at the library.

Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich: Series of mysteries about an unlikely bounty hunter in New Jersey. These are pure fluff, but I was hooked when my sister lent me the 9^th book in the series, and I read the line: “Punky Balog had an ass like Winnie the Pooh…big and fat and furry.” That was the first page, and it just got funnier from there. They’re all filled with wild characters and improbable fumbles – the kind of stories I have to stop and read pieces aloud to my husband now and then.

Sex with Kings/Sex with the Queen by Eleanor Herman: A whirlwind tour of European history via royal bedrooms. I’m a sucker for European history, so I love Herman’s books. They’re not your high school history textbooks, for sure. All the juicy particulars of romance, passion, sex, and political intrigue are woven into real history to make it come alive in lurid detail - everything from tsarist Russia to Prince Charles and Princess Di.

Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: Murder mystery with a twist before twists were cool. My mom has read every Christie novel. I’ve read about a dozen or so, and the Hercule Poirot stories are my favorites. This one is a classic. Think M. Night Shyamalan before his father was even a twinkle in his grandfather’s eye.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: The monster classic. I taught this to freshmen a few years back, and I was worried. The course was designed for non-majors, and I feared the 18^th-century language and sensibilities might turn them off. I warned them to forget about watching any of the film adaptations and faking their way through discussions; this is nothing like what you think you know about Frankenstein. They loved it. It’s actually an easy read despite its age, and it is still fascinating and disturbing and thought-provoking.

Dracula by Bram Stoker: The other monster classic. Again, forget what you think you know. Even more so than Frankenstein, Dracula has been done some terrible disservice by Hollywood. Stoker’s novel is far richer in characters, plot and paranoia than any of the film adaptations. This novel is what I started to write my Master’s thesis on, so it’s a personal favorite. I’ve read it about 20 times. A couple scenes still give me chills!

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: An adventure tale about an OCD British gentleman who makes an outrageous wager. If you ever watched “Frasier” with Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde-Pierce, you’ll recognize Phileas Fogg’s type – fastidious, exacting, particular, and over-educated. But you can’t help but fall in love with him as he battles his way around the 19^th-century globe. I read this to my 8-year-old son, and we had a blast following Fogg’s travels.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold : Historical fiction about a magician in 1920’s San Francisco. I love historical fiction done well. This novel is full of surprises and keeps you guessing until the end. Supposedly, it was just picked up by Warner Brothers for a film adaptation. That’s been a rumor for a while, though, so don’t wait for the movie.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr: Historical fiction about a profiler in turn-of-the-century New York City. Sherlock Holmes does Jack the Ripper in the United States. Sort of. This book is dark and twisty with cameos by great historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt.

Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: Classic children’s fantasies. Most people (including myself, obviously) label these as children’s books, but they are so deep and full of tricks and word plays children would never catch, I think it’s a shame to dismiss them or relegate them to a genre where adults who never read them as kids will feel foolish picking them up. They are amazing, and I find myself quoting them all the time: “If you do such a thing again, I’ll have you buttered!”

So there you go. I wish I hadn’t read any of these so I could read them all this summer for the first time. They are such fun to discover. If you’re fortunate enough not to have read some of them, I envy you.

Meanwhile, I shall trudge off into the unknown bookshelves, mining for gems. Happy reading!