More Great Midwestern Authors

The Great Books theme for March is Midwestern Authors.


The authors chosen for this list were either born in or reside in one of the following states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, or Ohio. Their stories and books open our eyes to the uniqueness of each of these states, but also help us realize that we are all part of that larger, special place called the Midwest.

Try some more authors from the "heartland":

Mama Dearest by E. Lynn Harris
Diva supreme Yancey Barrington Braxton is back after suffering a few setbacks in her acting career. Born in Flint, Michigan, the author was considered one of the most successful African-American or gay authors of his era.  Sadly he died in March of 2009 at the age of 54.

Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler
As a young woman searches for the truth about her dead father, she is drawn into a mystery. Fowler was born in Bloomington, Indiana and is an author of science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction.

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
A plain-spoken Ohio school teacher finds herself in the company of historic luminaries during the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference.  This is the Big Read selection! Russell is a multiple award winning writer and she lives outside of Cleveland, Ohio.

Try more great Midwestern Authors!

Big Read 2010

My husband and I have an ongoing debate about what to read: he's a strictly non-fiction kind of guy (barring the occasional dare to read fiction) and I'm largely a fiction gal. He says that if he's going to read, he wants to learn something from it. While I don't dislike non-fiction, and do read it, I tend to like the entertainment value of novels that is often (though certainly not always) absent in non-fiction and, depending on the book, I can still learn something from the novels I read. On occasion, my husband will wonder how I have a piece of trivia, knowledge of a different culture, or an understanding of a historical event that I never studied. The answer, I tell him, is fiction. When fiction -- especially historical fiction -- is done well, I leave the book not only satisfied by a good story, but also enriched by new information.

The Big Read selection for 2010 has been made and I, along with thousands of others in our community will be reading Dreamers of the Day , a historical fiction by Mary Doria Russell, an Ohio author. This story is about a teacher who comes into an inheritance that allows her to take her dream trip to Egypt and the Holy Lands just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes (it's been so long since I took my History of the Middle East class that I had forgotten there even was such a conference -- see, I'm learning things just from the summary of a novel!). While there she meets notable figures including Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill, as they piece together the boundaries of the modern Middle East, an event that, not to put too fine a point on it, has implications for the entire world every day. I'm eager to test out the knowledge I gain from this book on my husband, who teaches and researches Middle East politics. Maybe, just maybe, I can even get him to read this piece of fiction and be a part of the community discussion that the Big Read was intended to foster -- even if I have to dare him to do it.

This is not a post about non-fiction

Here at Fine Print, we stick to fiction. Occasionally, you might see someone veer off into the non-fiction realm, but I'm new here and am not quite bold enough to do so. As such, I will not write about Shakespeare Wrote for Money, Nick Hornby's brilliant new, incredibly funny collection of "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns chronicling...well, the stuff he reads. I will not mention that this is the third such collection, following The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. The Dirt , all three of which you should, if you like reading at all, reserve right now. (Just click on the title of the book and then click "request." No, really. Now. I'll wait...)

Instead, I'll mention that keeping a book diary can be a really great way to track not only what you've read, but also how reading one book can lead you to three others that may or may not be related, and which you otherwise might never have thought of reading ("reading begets reading" is the Hornby quote I would use if I were discussing his non-fiction books, which I clearly am not).

Book diaries are also really great for seeing how the books you read influence your life. Case in point: I was recently trying to figure out why I had such a case of the blahs. When I looked at my reading history on the WCPL website (I promise I'm not being paid extra to promote that -- it just really is that cool that if you opt in, it automatically keeps track of what you've checked out and lets you rate each item), I got a hint about why I might've been feeling a little more down than usual. In the past month, among the books I've read were: More Than It Hurts You by Darrin Strauss (subject: Munchausen by Proxy syndrome), We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (subject: a school shooting),the Big Read selection Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (subject: a school shooting), Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (subject: a dying man ruminates on his life in a letter to his 7-year-old son who will grow up without him), and Inferno by Dante Alighieri (subject: Hell). All of these were very good and I would highly recommend reading them, but they aren't really light-hearted. So, I've decided that the next few books I read need to be light, interesting, and humorous. I hear there are some funny columns that were just published in a new book...

2009 Big Read Title Announced

The next Big Read title is Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. In this novel, Peter Houghton is an alienated & bullied teen who opens fire at his high school and kills ten people. The judge assigned to the case tries to maintain her objectivity as she struggles to understand her daughter, who was once Peter's best friend and who is now a surviving witness.
The Big Read will take place in Spring, 2009. "Friends, co-workers, neighbors, and strangers will all read the same book, then join together for lively discussion and events. The Big Read is a community wide, six-week-long event during which people gather in all sorts of combinations at all sorts of locations to talk about the myriad issues raised by any good piece of writing."

Meanwhile,try something else by Jodi Picoult.