Shelley's Suggestions

Laddie, A True Blue Story
by Gene Stratton-Porter
408 pages

Synopsis: Loosely based on the author's childhood, Laddie is a double tale--the classic poor-boy, rich-girl romance and the story of a child of nature and her idyllic childhood. The narrator, Little Sister, is a girl who lives on a farm with her older siblings. Laddie, the oldest, is a strong influence on her life. As Little Sister grows, she realizes the value of experience in learning about nature. Although schooling and books teach her the names of plants and animals, it is only by being outside and observing her environment that she truly learns. Like Gene Stratton-Porter, Little Sister was not meant for a life indoors. Her joy in life is being with nature, not living and working in indoor confinement. This novel is a good one to read to understand Stratton-Porter's childhood and how it later affected her life and work.



The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
224 pages

Synopsis: "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.


The Good Soldiers
by David Finkel
304 pages

Synopsis: Several meticulously researched and insightful books have explored why the United States went to war in Iraq. Works like Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco and Barton Gellman's Angler have thoroughly examined the hubris, confused thinking, and ever-changing rationales for the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, but no one volume has fully captured the day-to-day grind and lethal reality faced by American troops on the ground in Iraq. Until now.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel, a Washington Post staff writer, spent over a year with an American infantry battalion, known as the 2-16 (whose average age is 19), as they deployed from Fort Riley in Kansas to one of the most dangerous, war-ravaged areas of Baghdad. Carefully detailing the experiences of the 2-16 and its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, Finkel has crafted a wartime account so visceral and so emotionally wrenching that it will leave many readers stunned.