Two Book Recommendations

I haven't been doing as much reading as usual this summer, but I've worked my way through a few books, and these picks were two of my faves.  They were both long (700+ pages in the case of the second one), but very readable.  Without further ado, here they are:

The Interestings is a fiction book about six friends who meet at an artsy summer camp and ironically name themselves "The Interestings".  The book follows these friends through four decades of life.  Some of them successfully pursue an artistic career, while others pursue practical jobs; some strike it rich, others struggle to pay the bills; some stay friends, others drift apart from the group.  The book deals with class issues, envy, and how friendships can be tricky when friends are differently situated as far as money and power.  This book will not change your life, but it's a fun and smart commentary on modern American culture.
----------------------------------------------------------

Far From the Tree is a non-fiction book that explores families with children that are "exceptional" (meaning, in this book, different from their parent and from mainstream society in a really significant way).  It describes how parents deal with having an exceptional child and how children handle being exceptional.  It also explores and challenges perceptions of identity and illness (and whether something can be both).

Solomon writes chapters on these 10 categories:  deaf, dwarfism, Down's Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, prodigies, children who commit crime, children conceived in rape, and transgender.  In each chapter, he gives a brief description of the identity or illness, then interviews families who fit in this category.  It is fascinating to see how much overlap there is in the experience of the parents across the categories, since the identities / disabilities themselves are pretty different from each other.  In most cases, the parents feel like they've gotten stronger and become a better person for having parented a special needs child, they love their child fiercely, but they are exhausted from the constant effort to meet the special needs of their child in a world that's designed for mainstream kids.

I think this book would be most interesting to 1.  People with an Input strength  - if
you like to learn information just because it's interesting, then this book is totally for you; and 2.  people with a special needs child, because you will identify with many of the experiences and feelings described.  I fit in both of these categories, so I loved reading about the stuff I know absolutely nothing about (such as limb lengthening surgery for dwarfs and the debate over whether cochlear inplants are causing a cultural genocide), and the stuff I know quite a bit about (such as feeding tubes and Early Intervention).

-------------------------------

I'm always looking for more book recommendations, so let me know what you've enjoyed reading recently.