The Bookworm
a reader’s guide by the faculty of falmouth academy 28th edition
2017-2018
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An Independent Day School Grade 7-12 falmouthacadmy.org • 508.457.9696
Dear Friends, Every fall Falmouth Academy students and faculty travel to Marconi Beach at the Cape Cod National Seashore to participate in a sand sculpture competition. This year’s first prize went to a sculpture with a literary theme. This team, comprised of students from across the grades and faculty, was led by a trio of seniors who decided to build a memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in celebration of its 80th anniversary. The group used found objects, ingenuity, and teamwork to craft a hobbit hole with a small garden and a stone walkway. Little footprints were deliberately left in the sand in front of the small bench built next to the hut to show that Bilbo Baggins had been there. I was fortunate to find myself on this team and delighted that the students chose to commemorate a book for the competition. It was their collective literary imagination, collaboration, and good humor that brought The Hobbit to life. I knew I was coming to a special place before I officially started as the new Director of Library and Media Services this fall. It was clear to me from my visit and interviews last spring that Falmouth Academy values and teaches close reading, clear writing, and the ability to appreciate and analyze literature. The Bookworm, now in its 28th year, is added proof that this value is a life-habit for faculty and students. Please enjoy the faculty-penned literary reviews of their summer reading throughout this publication and be sure to check out a selection of what the students read this summer on the back page. Falmouth Academy creates and nurtures an extraordinary community of readers and writers. I hope the reviews and recommendations in this edition of The Bookworm spark your interest and ignite new thoughts and conversations among friends and family. Sincerely yours,
Britta Santamauro Director of Library and Media Services
Nick Kania ’18, Lily McCall ’18, Charlie Fenske ’18
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Alison Ament
Biology
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill Candice Millard When I think of Winston Churchill, I think first of his role in bringing America to the aid of the British in World War II. But how did he arrive in this position of power? Millard’s book takes us way back to Churchill’s youth. At age twenty-four Churchill was a brash young man absolutely brimming with ambition, already scheming to become Prime Minister of England. To advance his career on the way to this goal, Churchill went off in 1899 to fight in the second Boer War. The discussion of the way the British fought this war would be humorous if it were not so devastating — Millard’s descriptions are fully engaging. Reading even more like a novel is the rest of the story. Churchill was captured and imprisoned, but with recognition of his privileged status (also humorous). Soon he escaped and went on an adventure, which, while seeming totally unbelievable, is actually the way he got out of Africa and indeed secured his political future. Churchill’s egotistical personality comes though clearly. The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Hero Who Became an American Hero Timothy Egan Through the life story of Irish immigrant Thomas Frances Meagher, the reader is taken on a highly improbable journey from Ireland to Tasmania to America. Each phase of Meagher’s story holds a remarkable tale of historical times. In 1840s Ireland, Meagher was a renowned orator and rebellion leader against cruel British governance. Having gotten into trouble with the British, he was sent to a penal colony in Tasmania. Via a bizarre escape plan, Meagher traveled to New York City, and joined the Irish immigrant community. During the American Civil War, Meagher went on to lead the famed Irish Brigade. As if all of this were not a full enough life of adventure, Meagher finally moved to the U.S. territory of Montana. As governor there, he attempted to tame the wild out of the West, allowing the reader glimpses of this rough time in American history. This is a very readable history, enlivened with a view into Meagher’s personality and personal life.
Pusit Atthaoraek
Buildings and Grounds
Global Girlfriends Stacey Edgar Stacey Edgar started Global Girlfriends in 2003. She created a sustainable market for poor women around the world from Guatemala to Nepal, Haiti to Uganda. This book inspires me to do my part to eliminate poverty, especially for women around the world. This book details how the project, Global Girlfriends, creates jobs for women in impoverished areas through organization, collaboration, and education. Women are taught how to make regional crafts as well as how to manage money and start businesses, allowing them to provide for themselves and end the cycle of poverty.
Jana Becker
Foreign Language
Krabat Otfried Preussler Krabat is a fourteen-year-old orphan who tries to make a living as a beggar. One night, he hears a voice in his dreams, telling him to go to the black mill, seek the black miller and become his apprentice. He “will prosper” there, the voice points out emphatically. Eventually, he follows the call and enters into a world where reality and magic merge and overlap. Krabat prospers, indeed. The challenges of hard work and a tough master, as well as questions of friendship and loyalty with his fellow apprentices, make him grow mature and strong. But he also realizes that the miller and the mill have a very dark secret. Who is the black coachman who never shows his face and comes at midnight every full moon? What are they milling for him? Where does his master go when he disappears for days? Why do the villagers in the area never come to grind their corn there? Krabat sets out to unveil the dark truth of the mill and is faced with a struggle for life or death. Krabat, first published in 1971, is a young-adult classic in Germany. In recent years, it has been put on the curriculum in German high schools, which led to a great push in popularity. I had read other books by the author and decided to give Krabat a go over the summer. I’m so glad I did. It’s one of the best books I have ever read. Set sometime during the Thirty Years War, it draws you into a different world, where magic is (still) part of life, contrasting immensely with our reason-driven world today. Krabat has so much depth and provides so much insight into human nature, but never lectures you. It just involves you in the big 3
questions of life in a deeply poetic and thrilling way. I am still haunted. We are reading Krabat in German V. - Petra Ehrenbrink
Martha Borden
Director of Technology
This book hit all the right notes for me: funny, nerdy, mysterious, with quirky characters, and a devotion to the underdog. And the book cover is really cool too. Why? That is the mystery I will leave you to discover on your own.
Marite Burns
Arts
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore Robin Sloan
The Lilac Girls Martha Hall Kelly
Clay Jannon is unemployed. A casualty of the Silicon Valley recession, he needs a job and he is starting to get desperate. A fateful turn of the corner finds him standing in front of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. “What do you seek in these shelves?” the store’s owner asks. Perhaps it is the question, the threestory high shelves and required ladder acrobatics, his dwindling bank account, or a combination of all three, but soon our hero finds himself working the midnight shift. The job is simple: be punctual, but never look at the books, and write down a detailed account of each transaction. In a bookstore that sells more $1 postcards than books and has an eccentric clientele, it doesn’t take Clay long to figure out this is not an ordinary bookstore. The mystery unfolds.
The Lilac Girls is essentially about a socialite and extraordinary woman, Caroline Ferriday and her compassion for Hitler’s victims. The book is about love and the resistance against man’s inhumanity to man. Two other major characters in the book are Kasia, a Polish Catholic girl who was a courier in Lublin for the Resistance, and Herta, a young German doctor in need of a job. Martha Kelly has all three women speak from their different points of view in the book. Kasia is caught working for the underground and is sent by train to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Germany, where some women were injected with lethal drugs and some were chosen to be guinea pigs, in testing sulfa drugs. (Ravensbruck was the only all-women’s concentration camp.) Herta has just graduated medical school, is happy to have a job at Ravensbruck, and has a hard time adjusting to hurting these women for the sake of scientific research. But in the end, she overcomes her reluctance. She slices open their legs and inserts foreign matter, including glass, into them. Sulfa is administered in different doses to test its efficacy. The book could have been named “The Rabbits” because that is what these girls were called due to their painful hopping. They could no longer walk after the research was performed. After the war, Caroline Ferriday brought these girls to the United States. Several of them lived at her home in Connecticut. Her favorite flower, the lilac, was planted all around this home and the book takes its name from these lilacs. Caroline herself was given the French Legion of Honor for her work. As it turns out, this family had several remarkable women. Caroline’s mother Eliza did her part in helping people from WWI and her grandmother helped those in the Civil War. I found the book very disturbing and fraught
Bringing together the brainpower and talents of a Google data visualization programmer, dark web hackers, code breakers, a special effects artist, a middle-school dungeon-master friend (now CEO) along with some breaking and entering and oldfashion gumshoe detective work, this novel invites the reader on a coast-to-coast adventure. However, through it all the love of the printed word and friendship propels the quest. In the beginning, it was Clay’s passion for programming, technology, and all things “geek” that appealed to my inner nerd. Soon I was desperate to learn the answer to the message left in the codex vitae of a fifteenth century Venetian printer and typographer. Would our protagonist uncover the mystery before Mr. Penumbra loses his beloved bookstore to the leader of the secret book society searching for the same answers? In the end, it is Clay’s devotion to his employer that captures the heart.
“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this: A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.” — Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore 4
“Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.” — Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
with questions of morality and responsibility. It is well written, but not easy to read.
Barbara Campbell
Director of Alumni and Parent Relations
Map of the Heart Susan Wiggs I read a lot of fun stuff over the summer, but these first two books struck me as well-done and couldn’tput-them-down stories. Susan Wiggs always tells a good story, and Map of the Heart was slightly different territory for her. The tale wove together the skill of developing old film with the ability to provide historical context, which brought two people, who had suffered deep loss, to work on a mystery that affected both of their families. I think it was one of Wiggs’s best books. Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt Feeding an urge to read Angela’s Ashes, which I knew had been reviewed here several times, I picked it up and then couldn’t put it down. Told from the viewpoint of young Frank McCourt, the story covers the travails of an immigrant Irish family as they move from Brooklyn, New York and then back to Ireland, where survival includes being “on the Dole.” The book follows Frank from the time he was a young boy, and oldest child, to when he returns to New York as a young adult. It shows how deeply religion guided the family, and how the events of the world trickled down to affect the poorest of the poor. Frank learns different skills that keep him moving along through school to a variety of jobs that help his family. The book left a lasting impression on me as well. Even though it has been a couple of years since I read it, I can still see some of the book’s scenes vividly in mind, such as the father’s habit of waking his sons up in the middle of the night to sing Irish Freedom Fighter songs. Great Irish memoir! - Britta Santamauro Teacher Man Frank McCourt I am currently reading Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, which chronicles his life as an English and
writing teacher at five New York high schools and a community college. We are right by his side as he grows professionally and awakens his students to the possibilities of the world. He is humble and yet thinks he’s on to something with this teaching thing. Although he is instructed to teach to the curriculum, McCourt generally sidesteps convention and lo and behold his students pass their Regents tests. This is a great read, especially for teachers.
Christine Carter
Foreign Language
Beneath a Scarlet Sky Mark Sullivan Beneath a Scarlet Sky is not your typical war novel. It tells the story of Pino, a young Milanese boy from a well-off family whose world is turned upside down when World War II comes to Italy. Pino leaves Milan for safety in a boys’ home in the Alps, but this home has a secret purpose. Pino later returns to Milan to work for the Resistance, as a high-ranking German general’s personal driver. The “twist”? This novel is a true story, written as an engaging work of historical fiction. For fans of books like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, this novel is fast-paced and addictive, so make sure to read when you have a significant chunk of time!
Eleanor Clark
English
A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki Saying that I grew fond of this book might sound like weak praise, but I did indeed find myself wondering and worrying about the characters in their absence, thinking about their lives and hoping they would make it through okay. (They are all very likeable.) The premise of Ozeki’s story sounds far-fetched: no sooner do we meet Nao, a precocious teenager narrating from a French maid café in modern-day Tokyo (an establishment that is as suspect as it sounds), than we meet a writer named Ruth, who, while walking along the beach of her Whaletown home, stumbles upon a washed-up Ziploc bag that, we realize later, belonged to Nao. The package is full of intriguing items—a Hello Kitty lunchbox, a stack of letters written in faded Japanese, a journal tucked into the cover of Proust’s À la Recherche du 5
“Sometimes you simply need someone kind to sit with you while you deal with things.” —Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Temps Perdu, and a wristwatch owned by a kamikaze pilot—and as Ozeki leads us back and forth between their stories, through their tales of love and despair and loyalty, the objects take on increasing meaning. The novel, with its tangled time frame and reliance on what might appear to be magical coincidences, requires a suspension of disbelief. I was fine with that. At one point Ruth’s husband Oliver refers to a Rivka Galchen article on quantum computing from The New Yorker, an article that does in fact exist and that holds within it much to complement the novel, including the short line, “Physics advances by accepting absurdities.” So too does Ozeki’s novel, and they are absurdities I am happily still contemplating. With a cat named Schrödinger and a Buddhist nun, Jiko, who teaches her great-granddaughter, Nao, how to choose life in a world of suffering, the novel quietly invites a rereading.
Mike Deasy
Humanities
Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafisi An English teacher’s dream, this “memoir in books” centers around a group formed by Nafisi after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Hiding from the authoritarian government’s control, Nafisi leaves the university where she had been a popular professor of English. But, before leaving for good, she handpicks a group of female students to meet secretly at her house to discuss Western literature. In the memoir, Nafisi uses her deft analysis of four authors (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen) to reduce authoritarianism to its horrifying parts and show how it threatens the human spirit by stifling individualism. In the girls’ discussions of these texts, however, hope simmers. We see the drama of the revolution as the girls shed their veils, enter Nafisi’s living room, and seek the differences among themselves — if only to reaffirm these distinctions and maintain a sense of authentic self. A timeless and important book. - Ruth Slocum I agree! Little bits come flashing back years later. - Eleanor Clark
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Draft No. 4 John McPhee Amid the hectic and exhausting bus ride back from Marconi Beach this fall, a ninth grader handed me his phone with a recent New York Times Magazine profile on John McPhee. I learned that John McPhee is a writer who obsesses over structure— so, naturally, I was drawn to him. Within hours I had booked it back up Route 6 to Barnes and Nobles to get my copy of his recent book, Draft No. 4, in which the longtime essayist and nonfiction writer for The New Yorker and Time compiles his thoughts on the writing process. I consumed the book in less than twenty-four hours. McPhee moves through the most crucial questions for nonfiction writers, from picking a topic to structure, style, voice, drafting, dealing with editors and publishers, and fact-checking, all while showing off his mastery of each of these tools. I loved most, however, how McPhee left the warts on the process. Throughout the book he returns to his mantra: “Writing is selection.” Some of this selection is unconscious— when we interview we cannot hear and observe every single moment entirely— but, the important aspects of our selection are conscious. We can choose a structure, we can choose and develop a voice, and most importantly, we must choose a topic. Making the right choices, however, requires work. Here, McPhee shows his hand most, displaying his self-doubt and the expansive and meticulous process through which he conquers it. McPhee banishes the trope of mystical wordsmith and replaces it with the tireless crafter. Anything by John McPhee is worth the time. He is one of my favorite authors, as he writes nonfiction with the elegance of a poet. - Eleanor Clark
Carol DiFalco
School Counselor, Math
The Woman at the Light Joanna Brady Set in Key West and New Orleans in the mid 1800s, The Woman at the Light tells the engrossing story of Emily Lowry. Intelligent, passionate, and undeniably resilient, Emily is left to maintain the lighthouse on a tiny island off the coast of Key West after her husband’s sudden disappearance. The reader is witness to Emily’s unfolding endeavor: raising three young children while fulfilling the duty of lighthouse
keeper. Personally what I enjoyed most of all was the honesty of the human experience. Setting her novel during a time marked by slavery and a lack of women’s civil rights, Joanna Brady held nothing back when exploring the complexities of interracial relationships and gives us a woman trying to live a life with dignity and on her own terms. Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood Lisa Damour, Ph.D. We live in a time where bookstore shelves are filled with parenting advice books. In my opinion, Untangled is one of the gems. Dr. Damour offers a reassuring, tangible, and sound perspective to parents regarding a young woman’s transitional period from early adolescence to adulthood. The two overarching aspects of this book I found truly resonated with me and distinguished this text from others are the healthy normalizing of teenage girl development and the explanation of concrete and helpful ways parents can discuss these developmental passages with their daughters. Written with empathy, humor and intelligence, Untangled is a valuable resource for parents and daughters.
Mike Earley
Assistant Head of School
Mischling Affinity Konar I seem to recommend many really dark books when it comes Bookworm time. When I saw on the jacket that this book is about two twin sisters who are sent to Auschwitz where they are quickly delivered to Josef Mengele for his horrible experiments, I wasn’t too eager to read it. But the jacket went on to say that the book still manages hope and redemption. If you’re feeling extremely dubious that this is possible, I was, too. But, it is true, mostly thanks to how strongly the author presents the bond between the twins. The News of the World Paulette Jiles My recent favorite. Just after the Civil War, an old man is traveling across the West earning a living reading the news. A young girl who had been taken captive by
the Kiowa years earlier has been freed. He is sent to get her and accompany her on the long trip home. Mike keeps an incredible lending library in his office. I borrowed this and loved it. - Monica Hough I was the lucky recipient of this book as a gift from Mike on my first visit to FA! I also loved the story. What most stood out to me was how the relationship between the traveling old man, who is set in his ways and wishes not to be bothered, and the young orphan, who only remembers the lifestyle of the Kiowa, slowly develops into a deeply caring and trusting relationship. - Britta Santamauro Neuro Teach: Brain Science and the Future of Education Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher This book should interest teachers but also many parents. A lot of educational research can read as extremely out of touch with the realities of living, breathing adolescents. Perhaps because the authors are working teachers and not career academics, much of what they have to say struck me as practical thinking about teaching. Highlights for me were the advice they give on things teachers should (and absolutely should not) do if they believe in the latest science of the brain, and the authors’ suggestion that teachers and schools engage in their own research consistently.
Gundhild Eder
Foreign Language
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Elizabeth Strout consists of a collection of short stories that revolve around the main character Olive Kitteridge, a retired seventh grade math teacher from the little coastal town of Crosby, Maine, where she is known as an honest, direct, albeit often irritable woman who doesn’t care much for pleasantries. Through her stories, Strout paints a fascinating portrait of Olive’s hometown. She introduces many interesting, often complex characters, by shining a light on their
“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph. — Elie Wiesel from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code” — Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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frequently difficult relationships, and in some cases their struggle with getting older. While the little stories in themselves are very captivating, the absence of a real plot and the fact that many characters only appear once throughout the book, made its pace a little uneven. Nevertheless, I found it to be a mesmerizing and beautifully written novel. Since its publication in 2008, this book has also been made into an HBO mini-series. Loved it! - Ruth Slocum Nobody understands the Maine psyche better. - Ben Parsons Reading this review reminds me how much I loved this book! Human relationships in honest complexity. - Carol DiFalco
Petra Ehrenbrink
Academic Dean
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman One of the protagonists that thoroughly entertained me this summer was Ms. Oliphant in Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. At first glance, thirty-year-old Eleanor Oliphant is not a very likeable character. She lives a carefully curated life and tells everyone who dares to ask that she is fine, thank you, just fine. But is she? Stuck in rigid routines, Eleanor is a lonesome figure her colleagues mainly notice because of her quirks and inflexibility. She is socially awkward, takes language literally, and comments on seemingly normal social conventions by telling people exactly what she thinks – which can be laugh-out-loud funny. This is designed in beautiful contrast to the subsequent revelation of Eleanor’s traumatic past, a past that continues to severely affect the protagonist’s adult life. But one coincidental simple act of kindness starts to shatter the walls she has built around herself and to reveal an unharmed capacity for connection and courage that may lead to a future where she might “have a life, not just an existence.” Funny, touching, and unpredictable, Eleanor Oliphant is an original creation that, for me, wasn’t just fine, but completely wonderful. A charming offbeat story that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. - Amy Galvam
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Amy Galvam
Director of Communications
The Bartender’s Tale Ivan Doig The Bartender’s Tale is a sweet, slow-paced, nostalgic story about a boy’s relationship with his father, supported by a small cast of characters that come in and out of their lives in the small town of Gros Ventre, Montana during the summer of 1960. Told from the point of view of twelve-year old Rusty looking back on the most memorable time of his childhood, the story centers on Tom Harry, the venerable bartender of the Medicine Lodge, one of the last vestiges of its kind. The bar is the true home of Rusty and his father Tom and the story unfolds from there. From this vantage point, Rusty, on the cusp of adulthood, learns about the myriad contradictions of adult life and is schooled in friendship, love, kindness, and the art of understated steadfastness. It is a very human story.
Pam Hinkle
Director of Development
Holding the Net: Caring for My Mother on the Tightrope of Aging Melanie P. Merriman Melanie Merriman thought she was prepared for the challenges of caring for an aging parent. A cell biologist by training (who did her postdoc work locally at the MBL) and a hospice consultant, she was well versed in end-of-life issues and care. But even with her experience, the best of intentions and welllaid plans, she and her sister found themselves in foreign territory almost daily as their roles gradually shifted from children to caregivers for their elderly mother. This heartfelt and hopeful memoir is both a family love story and a guide for all—aging parents and their children alike—who will inevitably find themselves navigating this emotionally fraught, often perplexing, time of life.
Monica Hough
Middle School Coordinator
Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward “Haunting” defines Ward’s harsh and beautiful new novel, for I am still visited by images and passages long after finishing the book itself. Ostensibly a road trip novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing takes its readers on journeys through vistas of family and race and history and ghosts both real and metaphorical. Set in fictional Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, the same setting of Ward’s astounding novel Salvage the Bones, the novel
is narrated in turns by thirteen-year-old Jojo and his drug-abusing mother, Leonie. The plot begins as Leonie drags Jojo and his three-year-old sister away from the loving comfort of their grandparents on a journey to pick up their father after his stint in the penitentiary, but the journeys that the reader will take are far more complex and profound. Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire Julia Baird I simply could not put this book down. Baird writes page-turning history, pulling the shrouds of myth away from Victoria the queen and Victoria the woman. So much of Victoria’s legacy suffers from the well-intentioned editing of her papers and journals by her daughter Beatrice, who bowdlerized Victoria’s originals and then destroyed them. Even when researching her biography, Baird says the Royal Archives made it as difficult as possible for her. Among the many myths Baird shatters are the ones casting Victoria as, well, positively Victorian. The real Victoria, when a doctor suggests she refrain from having another child after baby number nine, replies, “Can I have no more fun in bed?” Baird also puts to rest the idea that Victoria gave up ruling after Albert’s death, overcome by deep mourning. Just writing this makes me want to go back and read it all over again! If I Could, I Would: An Inspiring Story of a Girl Who Lived Life to the Fullest H. Russel Lemcke Falmouth Academy trustee Russ Lemcke has written a heartwrenching and heartwarming account of his daughter Stephanie’s life. The inclusion of Stephanie’s diary entries and excerpts of letters from friends paint a picture of an impressive young woman who tried her best not to let her diagnosis define her before her death at age nineteen. The book has been described as “a love letter of sorts,” and Russ ends the book with a dozen lessons learned as a way to help others with cancer and their families—just one more gift from Stephanie.
Doug Jones
Math Department Chair
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari for the past four months since it was recommended to me by former Falmouth Academy math and physics teacher Peter Conzett. I have deliberately been taking my time reading this book, savoring and reconsidering every three or four pages at a time. Harari looks at Homo sapiens evolution throughout the ages using the lens of a biologist, historian, sociologist, and theologian. This book would make for a fantastic textbook for a college seminar, provided that the necessary background primary readings were assigned. I highly recommend this book to sit on your bedside table to be enjoyed and contemplated before falling asleep. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania and The Devil in the White City; Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America Erik Larson For a little bit lighter reading (but only a little bit lighter), I also have recently enjoyed two books by Erik Larson. The first is a retelling of the sinking of the Lusitania both from the perspective of some of the passengers and the crew of the German U-boat, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Having enjoyed this book so much, I also picked Larson’s earlier book, The Devil in the White City; Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, the story of the Chicago World’s Fair and the serial murders that occurred in Chicago at the same time. A truly gripping story that Martin Scorcese is currently considering for his next movie. I really enjoyed both of these books. Fact being as fascinating as fiction. - Ruth Slocum
Liz Klein
Science
And the Mountains Echoed Khaled Hosseini This story, the third book from author Khaled Hosseini, differs from his previous two books, but
“We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.” —Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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I found the tale just as riveting. I had read The Kite Runner previously, and found that the character development pulled me and made me feel as if I knew Amir and Hassan intimately. In this story, however, Hosseini switches the point of view around frequently and focuses less on any single character. The story is all tied into the relationship of Abdullah and his younger sister, Pari. Pari is sold to a wealthy couple in Kabul at a young age, devastating ten-year-old Abdullah. Hosseini goes on to present chapters from the point of view of Abdullah’s stepmother, the butler in the house Pari moves to, an aid worker, and others; the chapters span a period of over fifty years. The connections between the characters and the stories presented kept me mesmerized. I kept reading to find out if Pari and Abdullah would ever meet again, but I got to know so many others along the way. The final chapter can be best described as bittersweet, and I thought about the book long after I was done reading.
Sarah Knowles
Assistant Director of Admission
Hold Fast to Dreams Beth Zasloff and Joshua Steckel I am currently taking graduate classes for a Master’s of Education degree and was recently assigned to read Hold Fast to Dreams by Beth Zasloff and Joshua Steckel. This nonfiction story is a sociological examination of a group of ten low-income students at a Brooklyn public high school and their educational path from high school through college. Author Joshua Steckel was previously a college guidance counselor at a New York City private school before taking a college guidance position at an inner-city public school in Brooklyn. While Steckel is the author of the book, the students are the focus; Steckel is purely the link that runs through all of their stories. This book provides an analysis of all the different factors that hinder lower socioeconomic and racially diverse students on their quest to go to college, from preparation, access, information, and finances. Reading the educational, professional, personal, and spiritual choices of the students as they seek advice and guidance on their way to and through college shows how important it is to have an educational support system in place. This book was truly engaging and brought me back to my own experiences of applying to college and my work in admissions. I recommend this book to all educators
and anyone interested in understanding how students from all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds experience the college process. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot Falmouth Academy’s Geology and Environmental Science teacher Liz Klein suggested reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to a group of FA faculty, and I finally finished the book this summer. I first heard about Henrietta Lacks and the discovery of the HeLa cell a few years back on an episode of WNYC’s Radiolab. Since then, I have been interested in learning more about the woman behind the cells that have greatly impacted modern medicine since the 1950s. Henrietta’s cells (known as HeLa cells) have been used in a wide range of medical research, including vaccine development, cancer research, and gene mapping, all without the knowledge of Henrietta’s family. The book is actually two stories, the story of Henrietta and her family and the story and science behind Henrietta’s cells. One of the biggest takeaways for me was how the author discusses the interplay of race, poverty, science, and ethics. An HBO movie came out this spring based upon the book, starring Oprah Winfrey. I watched the film and felt that the storyline was rushed and missed some of the important moments of the book. I highly recommend reading the book over watching the movie. Fascinating story, both in terms of the science and the personal stories associated with it. - Pam Hinkle I thought this book was great. I have recommended it to science students and an inner-city educator. - Alison Ament
Joy Lapseritis
Science, Math
Boxers & Saints Gene Luen Yang Boxers & Saints is a two-book graphic novel that tells the same story from two different points of view. The story follows two teenagers as conflict erupts at the turn of the nineteenth century in China between Christian missionaries and nationalist Boxer rebels. As in real life, the difference between right and
“The love between humans is the thing that nails us to this earth.” —Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage 10
“It’s already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence.” — Ian McEwan, Nutshell
wrong is blurred, nuanced, and influenced by many factors and choices in each character’s life. This is a great read for middle and high school students looking to engage with really big questions about purpose, conflict, and entering the adult world. I found this to be a smart and emotional story, with a bit of violent content (expect images of death and war), essential to communicate the powerful experiences of passionate individuals. I read Boxers and Saints last summer. I agree, fantastic graphic novel. I really like the author in general. All his books are insightful and portray the Asian-American experience in a fresh and sensible perspective. - Britta Santamauro
Elisabeth Ledwell
English Department Chair
The Wonder Emma Donoghue Set in Ireland in the middle of the nineteenth century, The Wonder tells the story of an English nurse hired by a tiny village to observe what may be a miracle or a hoax—a young girl who has survived without food for several months. On her website, Donoghue explains her fascination with real-life cases, cases that inspire her fictional one: “[the many stories] seemed to say a lot about what it’s meant to be a girl - in many Western countries… that these girls became celebrities by not eating.” Donoghue sets the tale in her native Ireland because she believes that “ever since the Great Famine of the 1840’s [the Irish] have defined [themselves] as people intimate with hunger.” Like the author, I found the possibilities in this tale fascinating. The stubborn insistence by some characters that the child is surviving on faith alone made for a fascinating theme. The skeptical nurse, eager to prove her charge a cheat, soon became emotionally embroiled with the girl and her family. Without giving too much away, I can say that the denouement is both satisfying and disappointing, not because of the way the story is structured but because I, too, became attached to the child, and I wanted her future to be brighter than her past.
Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade William Goldman The author of many novels and film scripts, Goldman’s understanding of the business and the art of movies is surpassed by no one. For years, Goldman’s articles in the trades were must-reads. (I still miss his annual “Ten Best Screenplays Not Produced” and his thoughts on upcoming Oscar races, which used to appear routinely in film magazine.) This book focuses on his later films such as The Princess Bride and Misery. The backstage tales he tells are equally funny and instructive. One particular chapter stands out for aspiring screenwriters attempting to adapt material, for he goes into such depth about selection and changes that must be made to serve the film, not just the source material, that I found myself totally agreeing with his choices. Books about the inner workings of filmmaking are not everyone’s cup of tea, but Goldman writes for the layman and the professional and his books are always worth the price of admission.
Allyson Manchester
English
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Truth and Beauty Ann Patchett This summer, I found a kindred spirit in Ann Patchett. I first discovered this author when she made a guest appearance on my favorite podcast, Dear Sugar. On this particular episode, entitled “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” she spoke so eloquently about the questions and tensions that arise when we get involved in our friends’ lives. After listening to the podcast, I couldn’t wait to make a foray into her writing. Several of my colleagues, including Mike Earley, love Ann Patchett for her bestselling fiction (State of Wonder, Bel Canto). This summer, I decided to read two of her works of non-fiction: This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and also Truth and Beauty. The first title is a collection of autobiographical essays in which Patchett candidly relates her experiences as a waitress at TGI Friday’s, a student in the LA Police Academy, and a young woman of divorce. Her writing career and literary imagination rise to the surface of all of these experiences in stunning, unexpected ways. I would 11
“During the last few years of her life Mrs. Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill. It was as if she had said, yawning a delicate cat’s yawn, “I think I will go to my grave now,” and had left the room.” — Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes
recommend this book to anyone who has dreams of writing or is interested in the writing process. Truth and Beauty is a memoir about Patchett’s friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy. The two women live together at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop and develop a friendship that generates tragedy and comedy in equal parts. In addition to Patchett’s writing, the book also includes a collection of Lucy Grealy’s tender and graceful letters. At the end of the summer, I had the pleasure of hearing Ann Patchett speak at the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival in Chilmark (many thanks to Leah Littlefield’s mom, Lisa Epstein, for the ride to this remote area of the island!). One of my favorite moments from her talk was when she addressed the link between fiction and empathy. When she writes fiction, she says, she is involved in the constant process of imagining herself as someone else. This type of art requires careful attention and empathy. A bit of advice: Ann Patchett is the owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville. She is a fierce advocate of independent booksellers—if you decide to read one of her books, consider buying it from Eight Cousins, Bunches of Grapes, or another local literary haven!
Susan Moffat
Arts
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance A Yale law graduate, Vance tells his tale of growing up in Appalachia in the white underclass. The book has raised a lot of discussion and controversy over the author’s insider, pessimistic opinion. Many have commented that it may not represent the lives of all people of that culture. Vance describes a culture that encourages social decay and a group that has switched from being Democratic to Republican in one generation. While this may not speak for all Appalachians, I’m fascinated by seeing through Vance’s eyes the portion that it does represent. This memoir exposes an Appalachia that struggles with addiction, poverty, and helplessness, while painting a strong sense of family throughout. I was intrigued to get a glimpse into the hillbilly culture. 12
I actually listened to this as an audiobook. Hearing Vance read his own work was wonderful. - Eleanor Clark The Nest Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney I picked this up at the airport and found it to be a page-turner. The main family is the polar opposite of the hillbilly families in my last review. Mixed with humor, the story reveals the lives of four siblings with various levels of drama stemming from having too much or too little money. They run the gamut from greedy and addicted to compassionate and loving. This novel about an extremely dysfunctional family held my attention until the bittersweet end.
Lucy Nelson
Arts
The Brilliant History of Color in Art Victoria Finlay A few years ago, I wrote a review of Victoria Finlay’s 2002 book Color: A Natural History of the Palette. I loved that book, and it read equally well as a travel journal around the world and as a history of color. This newer book from 2014, written in conjunction with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is a feast for the eyes with its beautiful design and photography. With chapters organized by color, it is specifically about the paints artists have used to make art, beginning with the Lascaux Caves in France, nearly 40,000 years ago, and ending with the digital “paintings” of David Hockney done on his iPad with the Brushes app. I am a sucker for a good story, and I love reading about why we include indigo as a color in the color wheel even though it is a blue (hint: it involves Isaac Newton and the Bubonic Plague), or the nomenclature of mummy brown (yes, it is made from mummies. Rudyard Kipling and his uncle Sir Edward Burne-Jones had a burial for a tube of paint when they realized it had the remains of a human inside), or the accidental discovery of the color mauve when William Henry Perkin’s failed attempt at curing malaria led to a beautiful residue in a flask. In addition to the rich art historical and cultural context of each color, Finlay frequently explains the chemistry of the pigment as well as the etymology
of its name. For example, ultramarine, a blue made from ground lapis lazuli, comes from the Latin words for “beyond the sea,” and thus is named for the great distance it traveled from the famed lapis lazuli mines of Afghanistan. She wraps up the book with a cautionary word, “If we can feast on anything we like, we can sometimes fail to appreciate what we have in front of us. And if colors no longer mean wealth or rarity or sacredness or decay, or power or health or danger as they once used to, then perhaps, with our multiple layers of luminous 3D effects and electrically colored computer lights, we will lose some critical layers of experience as well.”
Ben Parsons
Foreign Language, English
Nutshell Ian McEwan Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie Narcopolis Jeet Thayil This summer, on a bike ride along the Kennebec River Trail in Hallowell, Maine, I stopped into a used bookstore to pick up a title to fill some lazy Maine summer days with adventure and intrigue. The second floor space (presumably picked decades ago to prevent any risk of soggy tomes at high water) presents the first-time visitor with incongruous stacks, rows, and piles of the owner’s life-long love affair with the written word. Seated behind a small Kennebec highland of yet-to-be sorted volumes, the owner welcomed me in and steered me toward the fiction zone, as it were. There, amidst the extraordinarily tight rows of shelving, the riverside mustiness, and an organizational strategy that favored the architecture of the owner’s mind over any alphabetized, numbered, or otherwise logical approach, I selected three titles. After reading all three, I am convinced that we are influenced by our “environment” in subliminal and sublime ways. The three books I picked were Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, and Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis. Nutshell, whose first-person narrator is none other than an
in utero fetus, is maybe a quarter “who done it,” a quarter diatribe on all that ails the world, and half experimental fiction that tries—kind of—to combine Hamlet with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. Unlike the vast majority of McEwan’s other fiction, I liked it but didn’t love it. A mostly omniscient narrator who knows his Claret from his Beaujolais while still inside the womb is just a bit too farcical for me. My other two selections brought me to India - first to the opium dens of Bombay in the 1980s and then to two villages in the Kashmiri foothills of the Himalayas before and after violence erupts with Pakistan. In both of these “Indian” novels, chaos reigns. In Narcopolis, violence, love, history, and the perverse horrors of addiction collide in a city caught in a perpetual cycle of destruction and reincarnation. Thayil’s poetic prose—like opium, I suppose—is both hypnotic and terribly disorienting; story threads often unravel, characters come and go, and terrible things happen to those in opium’s grip. Yet, despite my better intentions, I couldn’t put the book down until its unsatisfactory ending. Lastly, as is the case with other Rushdie works such as Midnight’s Children and Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown is a cautionary tale of extremism told under the guise of mesmerizing prose and enthralling storytelling. In the novel, Rushdie’s favorite trope — the Hindu-Muslim troubles—is cast into two villages of an Edenic valley in Kashmir whose mutual love and tolerance for one another slowly devolves into distrust and violence as a result of outside incursions (including a particularly discomfiting American one). Rushdie’s writing requires a lot of work for me—there’s the stilted vocabulary, the complex plot lines, the ungainly cast of foreign-named characters, and the weight of it all. Nevertheless, I am a sucker for allegorical fiction, and I learn something about the Indian subcontinent, about the infinite powers of the English language, and about the human experience, every time I give him a try. I adore McEwan; Nutshell was excrutiatingly wonderful. - Ruth Slocum
“But wouldn’t it be nice if we all smuggled a few childlike instincts across the border into adulthood? We’d spend more time saying what we mean and asking questions we care about.” — Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak 13
“One side charges, ‘You are decadent.’ The other side retorts, ‘We are free.’ These are not opposing contentions; they’re non sequiturs.” —Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes
Helen Reuter
Learning Resource Specialist
Think Like a Freak Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Upon hearing the title of The Museum of Fine Arts’ new summer exhibit, “Seeking Silence,” I realized that I had been seeking rationality when I picked up Think Like a Freak, the latest release by Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and Stephen J. Dubner, a former New York Times journalist. As in their weekly podcasts and first two publications, Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, the authors use economic theory to explain a range of offbeat phenomena, such as how Nigerian email scammers practice economic efficiency and how a strong disincentive drives soccer players to make statistically poor choices. Although most of the cases in this latest book draw on research done by others, the cases are equally thought-provoking and Dubner’s knack for storytelling continues strong. And while fellow economists have criticized Levitt for promoting “cuteo-nomics” and the “how to” sections of this edition are somewhat off-putting, I still highly recommend Think Like a Freak and the authors’ earlier books; they are at once entertaining escapes and serious investigations into the logic of seemingly irrational human behaviors.
Jill Reves
Science Department Chair
My Life on the Road Gloria Steinem My sister, who came of age in the 70s and 80s, gave me this book. When science classes were over, I sat on a deserted beach and started reading. In three days, I realized I had devoured the entire book, a fascinating story of an organizer, an activist, and a feminist who directed much of my youthful thinking. Steinem seemed to be the reluctant leader in fights for equality that intertwined all aspects of American life. The fight for women’s rights could not be decoupled from the fight for Native American rights, or gay rights, or African American rights, or disabled rights. Her journey is humanized with anecdotes from her childhood and humorous and moving experiences as she goes closer to the heart of suffering and joy, to people, and to the Earth. 14
Britta Santamauro
Director of Library and Media Sciences
The Horse: The Epic History Of Our Noble Companion Wendy Williams My daughter, an avid horseback rider, received this book as a gift two years ago. I did not feel the particular need to read it until I knew that we were going to move to Massachusetts this past summer and learned that the book was not only shortlisted for the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction but that the author lives in the exact town that we were about to move to: right here in Mashpee. More than intrigued, I picked up the book, started reading and finished it within a few days. Even if you have never been around horses, or you are not really that interested in the animal, this book may still be a fascinating read. The author meticulously researched the book while traveling all over the world, from Germany to Mongolia to remote parts of Wyoming, to name just a few countries she visited while working on the book. Williams intersperses the highly readable scientific narrative with personal anecdotes. Who would have thought that the study of horse fossils is so closely interconnected to understanding Earth’s evolution. Paleontologists use the abundance of or lack of dawn horse fossils as a “paleontological page marker.” When they find these fossils, they know that they are at Earth’s layer called the Eocene—the dawn of time, over 50 million years ago. When you read this book, you will not only learn fascinating facts about the incredible adaptability of the horse to any type of climate and landform, but you will ultimately take a walk through Earth’s history and discover surprising biological connections between humans and horses. Not only do humans share a similar skeleton, but the horse is also the only animal that sweats like a human to cool down its body and it has the most facial expressions of all animals. Once you finish reading the book, you will most likely have a new or renewed respect for this wonderful animal and for the importance of the relationship between humans and horses that brought us to where we are today.
Born a Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood Trevor Noah Trevor Noah has led an extraordinary life. After reading this book, you will not be able to look at him the same way. I keep thinking back to passages of his book and can’t help but feel inspired and in awe. Nothing was ever given to him. Noah is a poster child for the character traits of showing resilience, working hard, seizing opportunities, taking chances and solving problems creatively: All traits that we often wish to inspire in our students. These traits ultimately brought Noah great success. Born to a white father and an African mother at a time when interracial relationships were illegal, hence the title of the book “Born a Crime,” Noah’s narrative of growing up in South Africa is not only entertaining and insightful but shows the reader an accurate and, at times, extremely painful picture of what it means to grow up poor in a country that is deeply divided by racial and economic realities. You will not regret reading this book, but I am actually also going to recommend listening to the audio book version, recorded by Trevor Noah himself, which I was listening to while traveling by car this summer. Listening to Trevor Noah recall his childhood adds even more authenticity to the incredible memories. You will hear the tongue-in-cheek intonations and the fluency of African languages that are interspersed throughout the text. It is a fantastic book with incredible insights into South African society and a life well-lived.
Michael Sheridan
Buildings and Grounds
Blackwater Michael McDowell Described to me as as “Faulkner with river monsters,” Blackwater was written by Michael McDowell, who is best known for his work on Beetlejuice and A Nightmare Before Christmas, and originally published as six volumes. Recently republished as a single omnibus volume, Blackwater is not a quick read, coming in at 800 pages, but it is a worthwhile one. The story opens with the rescue of Elinor Dammert from “Never underestimate the passion of a lonely mind.”
the floodwaters overwhelming Perdido, Alabama, and from there we are thrust into the world of the wealthy Caskey family with all their flaws. The southern gothic family saga that follows weaves the supernatural in and out of the lives of the characters leaving us asking who are the real monsters? The controlling, petty, and manipulative matriarch of the Caskey family MaryLove (to name just one)? Or the literal monster Elinor Dammert, who is an unrepentant killer but doesn’t hide what she is?
Ruth Slocum
Director of College Counseling
Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman Sylvia Townsend Warner In a village in England before the Great War, Lolly Willowes leads a quiet life, taking care of her aging father and running his house. With his death, she is transferred “as if she were a piece of family property forgotten in the will” to the well-appointed house of her brother, his wife, and their two daughters. And there she remains for many years as helpful aunt and companion, living the dutiful and innocuous life of a Victorian spinster. She passes the war years in London, doing up parcels for the Red Cross, “until the eleventh day of November 1918.” With the conclusion of the war, as she approaches late middle age, she changes; or rather, she ceases to live as others expect her to live. This change comes in response to the end of the war and to her growing sense of anxiety and melancholy: “Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience, a something that was shadowy and menacing, and yet in some way congenial; a something that lurked in waste places, that was hinted at by the sound of water gurgling through deep channels and by the voices of birds of ill-omen.” One foggy London evening, slightly later than she usually goes out, she happens upon a small greengrocer’s stall and there, amongst the “apples, and rough-skinned cooking pears and trays of walnuts, chestnuts, and filberts,” she connects to the shadowy world she has imagined. Learning from the shop owner that his beautiful flowers and fruits come from his sister in the countryside of Buckinghamshire, she next goes to a bookstore and buys a guidebook and map to this place, Great Mop. Then off she goes, shocking all the relatives, as she becomes something
— Rachel Kadish, The Weight of Ink 15
“There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the veil that separates mortals and immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear their breathings and feel the pulsations of the heart of the infinite. —James A. Garfield” — Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
entirely different than they imagined she was. The something she becomes is hard to describe, but it is more than a bit supernatural.
seventh grader, and his mother would certainly liven up Back-to-School night, perhaps by ending up in the koi pond.
I first learned of this book through The Guardian list of the 100 best novels. (It came in at number 52.) I had never heard of it before, and when I located a copy at the library, I had no expectations. I loved it immediately because Warner’s style and substance much remind me of Virginia Woolf. Townsend Warner describes the interior world of a people and a class that were deeply bound by custom and class but also so free of mind. There are many quotations that I would love to include in this review because of the humor and acuteness and sensuality of them. It is probably not for everyone, but if you like Woolf, I think you will love it.
Tessa Steinert Evoy
Today Will Be Different Amy Semple I liked Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? a lot, so I thought I would like her latest, and I did. Eleanor Flood, the slightly wacky but very smart late-life mother, and her even smarter, wildly cute eight-yearold son Timby are the main characters. Eleanor begins the novel with the mantra: “Today will be different. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. I will buy local. I will be my best self. Today will be different.” Eleanor has had a pretty impressive past, having created a groundbreaking animated television show that remains a cult favorite, but she is now essentially a wealthy stay-at-home mother to Timby and wife to Joe, a world-class sports surgeon. She studies poetry (and her mark-up of Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” would likely pass muster with Eleanor Clark) and tries to embrace the lucky life she has been given. Mostly, however, she critically analyzes herself and her failures in a way that, at least to me, seems modern, familiar, and hilarious. Semple excels at the foil and Eleanor’s perfect foil is Timby, who has some of the best lines in the book. This is a very funny book, but I also found it wise. The sensibility of children, the need to mend families and to nurture marriages are some of Semple’s touchstones. I also loved keeping company with all these characters: Timby Flood would be a great FA 16
English, History
The Weight of Ink Rachel Kadish After reading The Weight of Ink I had the opportunity to meet Rachel Kadish and hear about her process in writing her new book. Kadish told me she never knew where the book was going. Instead, she let it lead her on the journey, and what a journey it is. The Weight of Ink pushes and pulls the reader back and forth from late seventeenth century to early 2000s London. We follow the aging Professor Helen Watts as she seeks her last great find under a former student’s staircase, the papers of a renowned blind Portuguese rabbi, a refugee of the Inquisition. This discovery forces her to face her own dark past. Through these papers, she realizes she may have even more of a find in the identity of the scribe, who we know is the Jewish Esther Velasquez, a refugee in her own way. While it did take a bit of time to get into the story, The Weight of Ink has one of the greatest twists I’ve read recently, leaving me bringing the book everywhere in the hopes that I would have an opportunity to turn its pages. An intellectual journey through and through, Kadish weaves the philosophical minds of the seventeenth century, think Hobbes and Spinoza, in with incredibly beautiful prose that left me reading entire passages over and over again in marvel. One of my absolute recent favorites!
Carla Surette
Executive Assistant to the Head of School The Poisoner’s Handbook Deborah Blum Since I have always found forensic science fascinating, this book sparked my interest. Contrary to what the title may imply, it is not a “How To” manual. Rather it is a well-written non-fiction book about the beginning of modern forensic medicine and the New York City Coroner’s office. It takes place during the Jazz Age. Prohibition is creating a new set of problems as people are poisoned by homemade booze. Lamp gas and patent medicines are also posing a risk. The coroner’s
office and the forensic chemists must find a way to prove that hazards exist not only to the legal system, but also to the population. This is not light reading, but it is intriguing from both a historical and forensic aspect. Tuf Voyaging George R.R. Martin Having read the Game of Thrones series, I wanted to see what else this author had to offer. This book was originally a series of short stories that was published in 1986. It was recently re-released, probably due to the success of Game of Thrones. The story revolves around Haviland Tuf, an honest space trader and his cats. Through a quirky series of events, he becomes the sole owner of the last Earth Ecological Engineering Corps. Seed Ship. This ship has the genetic material from all the known worlds. Tuf uses the ship and his growing knowledge of its abilities to change the destiny of more than one planet as he journeys on to pay for his ship’s repairs. This is a fun read with some Biblical undertones and CATS!
Don Swanbeck
History Department Chair
Destiny Disrupted A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes Tamim Ansary Mr. Ansary delivers a detailed, and sometimes entertaining, history of the Islamic World from its explosive inception in the seventh century to its internecine troubles today. The author places the civilization of the “Middle World” in the geographic context between the Mediterranean World and China, taking a broad view of civilizational contact before getting down to the detailed evolution of Muslim history. Mr. Ansary entitles the next-to-last chapter, “The Crisis of Modernity,” and that seems an appropriate characterization of the struggles within the Muslim world today. The author leaves us with the question of how Islam as a religion, socioeconomic system, and civilization meets the challenges of other civilizations with which it interacts. Right now, the relationships seem awkward and even violent, but this is only one chapter in a much longer story. (Thank you to Lalise Melillo for the gift of this book.) A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini I picked this book up at a used book sale for $1. What a value! This author of The Kite Runner takes the
reader on an emotional roller coaster ride through the intimate details of two women’s lives in late twentieth century Afghanistan. This was a serendipitous purchase; I did not intend for it to act as the perfect complement to Destiny Disrupted, but it did. Where the former took a very broad view of Islamic history, this work provides an insight into everyday relations between men and women in a society very different from that in the West. Set against the backdrop of almost incessant upheaval in Afghanistan, during a thirty-year period, the characters are often driven to extreme answers for what are extreme challenges in their lives. I was left poignantly apprehensive at the thought of western officials departing the country. I read this book a few years back. I was as much glued to the pages as I felt emotionally drained. The constraints and circumstances in which these women have to live their lives are hard to swallow. An important book that deserves many readers. - Britta Santamauro
Julie Swanbeck
History, Math
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President Candace Millard I found this to be a gripping history as Candace Millard deftly weaves the personal and political story of President James A. Garfield with that of his assassin, Charles Guiteau, and acquaints her readers with the scientific milieu of the early 1880s. Millard’s rendition of Garfield as a family man and reformminded politician creates an appealing figure with whom I empathized as events beyond his control altered the course of his life. Emerging from the contentious 1880 Republican Convention as the party’s “dark horse” candidate, Garfield reluctantly accepted the nomination and then won the presidency by one of the slimmest margins in history. Within four months, he was shot by a crazed office seeker, paralyzed but not killed by the bullet. His slow death came at the hands of doctors whose torturous treatment, poking and prodding the wound with unsterilized instruments, introduced infections that sapped his strength. Millard’s rich depictions—not just of Garfield, but of the unhinged, deluded Guiteau, and of the selfassured and strangely named Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss—draw the reader into this tragic and true story. Cameos by the famous surgeon Joseph Lister, explorer and geologist John Wesley Powell, and 17
inventor Alexander Graham Bell add perspective on the scientific and technological world of the 1880s. (Fun facts: Garfield taught Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, philosophy, and rhetoric. He also wrote an original proof for the Pythagorean theorem which I use with my students!)
Crissy Torruella
Annual Fund Director
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors Dan Jones When visiting Cairo, I was taken to a very old holy building that had been a Mosque, a Jewish Temple and, by 2009, a Coptic Christian Church. As I explored its dark corners and long halls, I ran across a crusading knight’s graffiti. Needless to say, I was blown away. This set me on a path that I am still pursuing today to learn about the crusades and, specifically, the Templar Knights. For the 2013-2014 Bookworm I recommended a very comprehensive, if a little dense book by Michael Haag, The Templars, History and Myth. Today, I am happy to recommend another book that my husband found for me on the Knights Templar. The author, Dan Jones, is a historian and journalist by training, and he turns an enormous amount of information into a very well-organized and readable book. The book is full of facts and offers the reader an insight into the many historical characters that played a key role in the creation, life, and destruction of the Templar order. It is so well-written and put together that it almost reads like a historical novel. I highly recommend it.
Clyde Tyndale
Technical Director for the Arts
The BAB Ballads W.S. Gilbert, Edited by James Ellis Gilbert and Sullivan, a renowned Victorian-era creative partnership between W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, had a profound effect on what is now modern musical theater as well as political discourse, literature, and film. Their collaboration brought the world the Savoy Operas, fourteen comic operas which include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Gilbert wrote the words and signature farcical plot lines and Sullivan composed the music and melodies. As with many creative endeavors, there are hints and shades of future characters and storylines in Gilbert’s earlier work. Prior to his 18
partnership with Sullivan, Gilbert was a prolific writer of stories, plays, and poems and a well-known humorist and illustrator writing comic verse under the pseudonym “Bab,” his childhood nickname. Gilbert was a frequent contributor to magazines of the late nineteenth century such as FUN. The BAB Ballads is the unabridged collection of these poems and original illustrations edited by James Ellis. For any avid Gilbert and Sullivan fan, this is a wonderful coffee-table reference. While I doggedly read it straight through this summer after finding it at the Falmouth Library book sale, I would recommend taking one’s time to appreciate its historical significance, comic wit, and amusing commentary added by James Ellis.
J. Robinson Wells
Head of School
Underworld Don Delillo This celebrated work first came to my attention courtesy of Jen Murphy as a recommendation for fiction that offered insight on the second half of the twentieth century. I am chagrined to admit that I was unfamiliar with the New York raised Delillo, who many think should receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Underworld is a sprawling novel that is more manifestly a work of art than perhaps any I have read. Reflecting its postmodernist style, the novel moves back and forth in time and place and features seemingly unconnected storylines, yet the common theme of living with the specter of the Cold War is clear, present, and powerfully moving. Ostensibly, Delillo offers an intentionally disjointed narrative of the lives of Nick Shay and Klara Sax, who once knew each other sexually in New York, and all of the more than eighty characters are in some way, though often very tangentially, connected with the lives of either Nick or Klara. The novel, however, is really about how the history of an era, its zeitgeist, lives within individuals rather than in history books or politics. Delillo creates a true masterpiece on a sprawling canvas, one that ultimately celebrates humanity in its intimate and beautifully rendered moments that are real, messy, painful, and joyous. Underworld is a magnificent achievement and a delightful read; I now understand all the fuss in literary circles over Don Delillo. He is a great American talent. Delillo’s White Noise is also excellent. - Eleanor Clark
What Our Students Are Reading 12th Grade
Still Alice • Lisa Genova Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story • Kurt Eichenwald Between the World and Me • Ta-Nehisi Coates All the Light We Cannot See • Anthony Doerr The Martian • Andy Weir Wild Swans • Jung Chang Unbroken • Laura Hillenbrand The Blazing World • Siri Hustvedt A Constellation of Vital Phenomena • Anthony Marra
11th Grade
10th Grade
Rose Under Fire • Elizabeth Wein Boys in a Boat • Daniel James Brown Chemistry • Weike Wang The Hate U Give • Angie Thomas All the Bright Places • Jennifer Niven
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children • Ransom Riggs Sun is Also a Star • Nicola Yoon Turtles All the Way Down • John Green The Rest of Us Just Live Here • Patrick Ness The Inexplicable Logic of My Life • Benjamin Alire Saenz
9th Grade
Ashfall • Mike Mullin Ready Player One • Ernest Cline Every Day • David Levithan I’ll Give You the Sun • Jandy Nelson The Beginning of Everything • Robyn Schneider
7th Grade
Summer of the Gypsy Moth • Sara Pennypacker Absolutely Truly • Heather Vogel Frederick Booked • Kwame Alexander Travel Team • Mike Lupica The Hobbit • J.R.R. Tolkien
8th Grade
Counting by 7s • Holly Goldberg Sloan Thirteen Chairs • Dave Shelton The Novice • Taran Matharu A Night Divided • Jennifer A. Nielsen Iron Trial • Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
FALMOUTH ACADEMY An independent, college-preparatory day school, grades 7-12 Falmouth Academy has been educating Cape, Coast, and Islands students in grades 7-12 since 1977. Remarkable teachers lead an innovative academic program that is deep in English, history, science, mathematics, and foreign languages, and enhanced by signature offerings including Arts-Across-the-Curriculum, Science in the Real World, and 40-plus electives. Class sizes are intentionally small, ensuring personalized attention and “no back rows.” FA students become confident, active learners who read closely, listen carefully, and think critically. They are scholars and musicians, athletes and artists, budding scientists and aspiring authors who go on to thrive at many of America’s finest colleges and universities. Learn more at falmouthacademy.org. MISSION STATEMENT Harnessing the power of inspired learning in a world-renowned scientific and vibrant artistic community. Falmouth Academy emboldens each student to take creative and intellectual risks to confidently engage the challenges of our times. 19
Falmouth Academy 7 highfield drive falmouth, ma 02540
NON PROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE PAID BROCKTON, MA PERMIT NO. 402
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
Community Events at Falmouth Academy Film Falmouth 10/14/17 7 PM 11/18/17 7 PM 12/9/17 7 PM 1/6/18 7 PM 2/10/18 7 PM 3/3/18 7 PM 4/8/18 7 PM 5/19/18 7 PM
Kedi Stumped The Trip to Spain Walking Out I Dream in Another Language Blur Circle Deej Seat 25
Skylark Vocal Ensemble 1/31/18 7 PM “American Voices” National Theatre / WH Public Library 9/15/17 7 PM Twelfth Night 10/20/17 7 PM Angels in America, part 1 10/21/17 7 PM Angels in America, part 2 11/10/17 7 PM Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1/12/18 7 PM Salome 2/16/18 7 PM Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead 3/9/18 7 PM Yerma 4/13/18 7 PM MacBeth Falmouth Chorale 3/10/18 4 PM 3/11/18 3 PM
“In Paradisum”
Printed on recycled paper, containing 10% post-consumer waste, that was harvested from responsibly managed forests. Printed with Soy based inks.
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Falmouth Chamber Players 3/24/18 4 PM Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9 in D minor” 3/25/18 3 PM FA Community Series supported in part by Woods Hole Foundation 10/17/17 7 PM William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life & Times 11/30/17 6 PM An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power screening and expert panel with Dr. Philip Duffy, President and Executive Director, Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC); Dr. Robert Max Holmes, Deputy Director and Senior Scientist WHRC; and Dr. Heather Goldstone, WGBH Science Editor 12/14/17 7 PM Rosie Gray ’08, Staff Writer for Atlantic Monthly 04/03/18 7 PM Jung-Ho Pak, Artistic Director & Conductor, Cape Symphony Falmouth Academy Event Calendar 10/28/17 2 PM Fall Admission Open House 11/3 & 11/4/17 7 PM Fall Play: Sherlock Holmes 11/17/2017 6:30 PM Fall Choral Concert 12/15/18 TBA Alumni Day 1/20/18 9 AM Scholarship Exam Open House 2/2 & 2/3/18 7 PM Middle School Play: Student work 2/9/18 6:30 PM Mid-winter concert 4/7/18 TBA All That Jazz Auction 4/14/18 1-3 PM Spring Admission Open House 5/11 & 5/12/18 7 PM Spring Play 5/18/18 5-7:30 PM Spring Arts Evening
Falmouth Academy
7 highfield drive • falmouth, ma 02540 508-457-9696 • falmouthacademy.org