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| March's Featured Books by: Eve Solomon These days, there are so many good movies out that it’s hard to find the time to sit down and read. However, with Spring Break and Easter Holidays coming up in a month or two, it’s a good time to start looking for beach books. There are two books that stick out as fun but intellectually engaging this year: Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl; and The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. These two books are written by young women authors, fresh out of college, and they are both told from the perspective of a teenage protagonist. Athena Magazine for Girls readers will appreciate these books for their intelligence, and the adventure that they will take you on. |
| Of the two, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is the greater adventure. It is a mystery, and the reader is taken on a ride as Blue Van de Meer discovers the secret lives of both the teacher she esteems most and her own father. Blue herself makes the book fun with her top shelf intelligence and limitless wit. Special Topics is based in a high school setting: Blue finds herself popular for the first time at the wealthy private school in her new town. However, popularity comes with a price: the truth about the young, beautiful teacher around-whom her new friends seem to congregate begins to reveal itself, as well as her relationship to Blue’s father. Blue discovers that her life of constant moving |
from town to town has always had a darker motive than she believed. The
combination of mystery and a high school setting makes Special Topics an
adventure that I personally was unable to put down for three days, so I
highly recommend it to Athena readers.
Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love is a mystery of subtler form, and
while less exciting than Special Topics in Calamity Physics, it is a
meditation on the endurance of love in the world through the eyes of a
young girl, her mother, and an old man. In The History of Love, a book
written in Polish, published in Spanish, and translated into English
connects Alma, a fourteen year old girl to an old man who was once in love
with a woman named Alma. Krauss’s book is about love’s ability to
persevere unrequited across generations and decades, even at the cost of
loneliness and solitude. Sounds depressing right? But Krauss manages to
make her novel uplifting with her insights about love, and the importance
of personal connections. Plus, the characters all make you laugh,
especially Alma’s younger brother, Bird, who believes that he is a Jewish
messiah. This is a great book, both uplifting and sad at the same time.
combination of mystery and a high school setting makes Special Topics an
adventure that I personally was unable to put down for three days, so I
highly recommend it to Athena readers.
Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love is a mystery of subtler form, and
while less exciting than Special Topics in Calamity Physics, it is a
meditation on the endurance of love in the world through the eyes of a
young girl, her mother, and an old man. In The History of Love, a book
written in Polish, published in Spanish, and translated into English
connects Alma, a fourteen year old girl to an old man who was once in love
with a woman named Alma. Krauss’s book is about love’s ability to
persevere unrequited across generations and decades, even at the cost of
loneliness and solitude. Sounds depressing right? But Krauss manages to
make her novel uplifting with her insights about love, and the importance
of personal connections. Plus, the characters all make you laugh,
especially Alma’s younger brother, Bird, who believes that he is a Jewish
messiah. This is a great book, both uplifting and sad at the same time.
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