What I'm Reading

I like to maintain a balance between scholarly and "fun" reading. At any given time, I have at least two books going and keep a running list of what I'll read next.

 I'm always looking for books to use in class, fiction or non. If you have suggestions, pass them along!

Current Reads:

• Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation
  
• Penelope Lively, Where it All Began

On My List:

• Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
  
• Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello

Below, in no particular order, are some of my all-time favorites. Some of these are "old" but none feel dated.



"Top Ten" Fiction 
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye 
Jim Carroll, The Baseketball Diaries
Lori Lansens, The Girls
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted 
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street 
David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Courderoy and Denim 
T.C. Boyle, Tortilla Curtain 
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Cormac McCarthy, The Road

"Top Ten" Non-Fiction 
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
Annette Gordon Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Violence in Early America
Cathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working-Class Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-     
      Cenutry  New York
Daniel Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs
Sarah Deutsch, Women in the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston 1870-1940
Antoinette Burton and Tony Ballantyne, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters  
      in World History
Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits
Elaine Tyler May, American Families in the Cold-War Era