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Inside Iowa State
June 30, 2000

Hot reading tips

Summer conjures up an image of sitting in the shade on the patio, sipping lemonade and reading a good book. Who better to make suggestions on what to read than our own English faculty? Here's what four of them, all published themselves, had to suggest (the lemonade you have to furnish yourself):






Fern Kupfer, associate professor
I'm reading a wonderful book right now. I was just in New York and a friend gave me the book for the plane. It's very compelling. It's called The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park. It's a historical novel about the Renaissance with a Jewish heroine much like Scarlet O'Hara. I read 100 pages of it on the plane.









Joseph Geha, professor
I have a new and old book. The new one is Deus lo Volt! A Chronicle of the Crusades by Evan S. Connell. It's a historical novel compiling the entire period of the Crusades, as told by someone who was a descendant of the Crusaders. It's a very ironic view of history. The Crusader blithely tells stories of atrocities but his attitude is, it's God's will. The older book is a knockout -- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, written in 1961. It's a modern version of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, set in the suburbs in the 1950s. It's all about marriage, dreams and how people B.S. themselves. It's just a wonderful book.








Debra Marquart, assistant professor
I'm reading a couple of books this summer. One is My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. It's about a woman documentary film maker who is traveling around interviewing people about meat. It's a spoof but I'm not quite sure what it's about yet. The other is Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel by Louis Dee Bernieres. It's set in Greece, on the island of Cethalonia during WWII. My husband and I are visiting this island this summer. That's why I'm reading the book.










Loring Silet, professor
I'd recommend Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. It has that steamy, summer feel to it. It's a crime novel with a reluctant hero. It was made into a movie starring Denzel Washington, but I want people to read the book. It lends itself to sitting on the porch on a hot summer evening. Or, if you want to get away from all that, I'd suggest the series of books by Patrick O'Brian. The first novel in the series is Master and Commander. The two central characters are Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. It's all about the sea and navy during the Napoleanic Wars, so if you don't like naval adventures, you won't want to pick these up.

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