Week 8!

Assignment 3

This was a hard assignment, and I also thought, a little confusing. I don't often read nonfiction but when I do, I sometimes like it to be narrative nonfiction, but sometimes I read it because the subject matter interests me.  Even so, it doesn't have to be only in narrative form for me to enjoy it, and
I do find that customers approach nonfiction the same way. 
For example, I often recommend Malcolm Gladwell's books on audio for folks who are taking a trip who like something a little different but also like nonfiction.  He's got a great reading voice and has a great way of telling a story.  His books, The Tipping Point and Outliers,  are part narrative nonfiction and traditional nonfiction wrapped up in a single package. 
So with that in mind, it was a little hard for me just to pick only pick narrative nonfiction for this part of the assignment...so I picked what I liked to recommend.
Here goes.

Crime: Columbine by David Cullen 371.58C

Memoir (but could also go under Overcoming Adversity):  A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion  Biography

History: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson  943.086L

Travel:  Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Gelman  910.4G

Assignment 4

Columbine reads as well as any crime novel.  Cullen draws the reader in with an in depth history of the two boys who masterminded the Columbine High School tragedy.  Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were seeming two average teenagers when the planned to blow up their school and kill their classmates.  There is suspense and drama as Cullen weaves a tale escalates to the final day where although you know the tragic end, you hope you are wrong. Cullen uses the suburban setting to emphasize the ordinariness of the crime: it could happen in any town USA.  Cullen draws his characters carefully, so much so that the reader wants to scream to all the adults in this community to wake up and pay attention! 


A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion  is a heartbreaking story of love and perseverance. Told in diary format Didion relays her journey through heart ache in the year after her husband passed away suddenly and her daughter fell into a coma.  Through the tone, pacing and language, she conveys the slowness and the sadness that prevail after her husbands death.  Didion has led a somewhat glamorous life, writing movies and plays, traveling and living in exotic, lovely places bu this has not exempt her from the harsh realities of life; death and tragedy, as her husband succinctly explained, all evens out, everyone gets there turn.  A love story, to be sure, but also a story of grace and resilience in the face of great sadness.