Junot Diaz: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

As an English major and a cultured person, I found it hard at first to like this book. It is violent. It is written in a mixture of English and street Spanish. In other words, it is vulgar and full of slang. Yet it is so good at narrating the stories of the people in the Dominican Republic and later, Dominicans here in America, that it won me over and I had to say, "Wow!" This book won the Pulitzer Prize.

Here Is New York by E.B.White

Even though it is decades old, this little book is a gem of wisdom about New York City. For example, E.B. White says New York gives us two gifts: the gift of privacy and the gift of loneliness. He has certainly hit the nail right on the head!

Spencer Quinn: The Chet and Bernie Mysteries

Chet is a dog and Bernie is a private detective. I am really enjoying these stories and I think they would be good for ESL students, too. For example, Bernie might say, "This is a wild goose chase." That is an idiomatic expression Chet, the dog, cannot understand. He might look around and think, "I don't see any geese." But Chet never lets little things like not understanding English get him down. Also, this book is not about gun violence and drugs. It is about the intelligence of humans and the loyalty of dogs. 

Some titles: Dog On It and Thereby Hangs a Tail. These books were New York Times Bestsellers.

Bill Bryson: Dictionary of Troublesome Words

I laughed out loud quite often reading this book. Written for word enthusiasts and writers, it is perhaps best used as a short review of the subject of correct English usage and not a true reference book, since it is only about 230 pages long. The book covers not only mistakes with words and phrases, but also common spelling errors and punctuation bloopers.

The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford

This novel shows you America through the eyes of a realtor, a man who buys, sells, and rents houses. He is a decent, honest man, 55 years of age, who is comfortable living in the suburbs of New Jersey.

The author plays with language. The book is highly slang-y and you will need to look up many words in a good dictionary. Why should you bother? Because you will gain insight into the social classes of natives and immigrants in America from the angle of the houses people buy, the cars they drive, and the sorts of communities they live in.  

The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron

I don't usually read crime novels, but this one is exceptionally good. It is very well-written and would be excellent for Intermediate ESL students.

I also recommend Trespasser by the same author.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy, the narrator, is a clone. She was created to die being a donor of her own internal organs to those who wish to live longer lives. A whole class of such clones is posited by this novel, as Kathy reminisces about her childhood growing up in a boarding school in the British countryside. Ordinary people recoil from the clones, yet everything about Kathy’s narration shows her to be intelligent and extraordinarily kind. 

In this book, the clones have souls and fall in love just as the rest of humanity does. Kathy and her lover Tommy wish to defer for three or four years the onset of the medical operations that will eventually kill them, but there is nary one shout or one tear when they learn this is not possible. This, I think, is the author’s point. The docile victims do not seem to be aware that the whole system is unethical and horrific, and so they make no protest. 

Kazuo Ishiguro is perhaps best known for Remains of the Day, another work that takes as its subject social inequality.