| O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, 309 pages Kristin Schrock 19 May 2003 My favorite book with an exclamation point in the title. What I learned: visionary people live lonely lives; and the combination of passionate love and youth=violent death. | Observing America (2007) by Robert Frankel, 324 pages James Donahue 07 June 2007 A history of books by Brits on the U.S. from 1900 to 1945. Frankel focuses on four very different writers: H. G. Wells, W. T. Stead (one of the more prominent Moody allies in Chicago), Harold Laski, and G. K. Chesterton (who spent a few semesters teaching at Notre Dame). Very good, though what intrigues is more the comment of the Brits than Frankel's analysis. (Read in Calgary and Banff on family vacation) |
Occidentalism by Ian Buruma, 148 pages James Donahue 08 June 2004 Buruma finds the roots of current Islamic anti-Westernism in European Romanticism. As always ,Buruma is morally and literarily inspiring, but without any actual links or "smoking guns" he is forced to rely on arguments from resemblence. Like another of my favorites, Buruma misses the point when he deals with the cynics of the Enlightenment, engaging in some crude reductionism himself. |
Ocean of Words by Ha Jin, 205 pages Jaqi Ross 26 July 2004 Set on China's bleak northern border in the 1970s, when Russia and China were close to war, these short stories describe the life of soldiers, professional officers, and raw recruits, living in constant proximity. In this hierarchical and politically charged world, there is even less privacy than normal in China, highlighting a fundamental difference between Chinese and Western societies. The book provides an unusually brilliant insight into the Chinese psyche, with its preoccupations with food, family, and political standing, and its ambivalent attitudes toward women and animals. |
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, 107 pages Jeff Gadd 11 May 2002 Another Great Short Story. |
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (2006) by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, 426 pages Jonathan Misirian 04 July 2007 Professor Venkatesh lived on the near south side of Chicago for a few years, documenting the underground economy. An in-depth look at shopkeepers, pastors, gang leaders and regular people who work underneath the system, in order to make ends meet. |
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millett, 506 pages Micaela Larkin 01 February 2006 "What if Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, the primary physicists from the Manhattan Project, returned to contemporary America to survey their atomic legacy?" -- Amazing!!!! |
Old English and Its Closest Relatives by Orrin W. Robinson, 290 pages Steven Krise 27 July 2002 Survey of the 7 earliest Germanic languages. What drew me to it is first that it covers the whole spectrum of Germanic languages with an eye toward their genetic relationships and second that it gives readings for each of the languages, forcing the reader to grapple with the language on its own terms. Highlights include the discussion of Germanic alliterative verse in the Old Saxon chapter and the evolution of governing/word order among the Germanic languages in the Old English chapter. |
Old English Literature, Twenty-two Analytical Essays by Martin Stevens & Jerome Mandel (Eds.), 330 pages Steven Krise 08 September 2002 The title seems a bit overbearing but it's accurate for this in-depth and comprehensive set of essays. Detailed analysis of numerous Old English poems which probably gives a good overview of the consensus in the field at the time when the book was published (1968). |
On Basilisk Station by David Weber, 432 pages Julie Gephart 08 June 2002 I'm not a big fan of futuristic sci-fi novels set in space, but this one turned out pretty well after I slogged through the first seven or so chapters. |
On Beauty by Zadie Smith, 442 pages Jonathan Misirian 21 November 2005 Why do authors of modern novels feel the need to end the story w/o resolution? Smith writes a compelling story of the lives of the Besley family, set in a fictional uppity East-Coast university town. Smith’s writing talent is evident, the dialogue is natural, but the resolution leaves me empty. |
On Chesil Beach (2007) by Ian McEwan, 203 pages James Donahue 10 September 2007 MeEwan relates a honeymoon gone extremely wrong (think: premature excitement, bride running and screaming from the room) in the prelapsarian early 1960s when people (gasp!) waited for marriage and lacked any fundamental sex education. The tone is nostalgic for such lost innocence, yet plainly those days could only have failed. The bride and groom here are remnants of a lost culture, fit for novelistic elegy but not for the real modern world. |
On Fortune's Wheel by Cynthia Voigt, 289 pages Julie Gephart 27 January 2002 The Wheel goes up, the Wheel comes down, but nothing really bad ever happens if you're a girl. |
On fortune's wheel by cynthia voigt, 289 pages nicole 13 February 2009 |
On Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, 607 pages James Donahue 20 November 2005 A old-fashioned Bildungsroman, for the WWI generation. An orphan raised in the bourgeouis, public-school circles of his British uncle, a vicar, Philip Carey studies philosophy in Heidelberg, art in Paris, love in Soho, and medicine at the Royal College before discovering that no abstract system can make you life meaningful and that simple (British) pleasures are the most satisfying. (This latter lesson also applies to marriages.) |
On Suicide Bombing (2007) by Talal Asad, 96 pages James Donahue 24 July 2007 Asad, a Muslim scholar at NYU, fails to see much difference between suicide bombing and the state-sanctioned violence of the West. (He condemns both equally.) So in this series of lectures he roots out the Western/Christian sources of the horror held especially for the suicide bomber, a path that leads through the modern need to secular redemption, the just war theory, the story of Sampson, and the "suicide that defined the term": Christ's Passion. |
On the Move (2006) by Bono, 64 pages Brad Snyder 04 April 2007 This little book contains the full text of the sermon/speech/homily Bono gave at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast accompanied by pictures he took while visiting a refugee camp in Ethiopia in 1986. |
On the Natural History of Destruction by W.G. Sebald, 191 pages Tony Pisarenkov 31 August 2008 A collection of Sebald's essays and lectures dealing with the conspicuous absence of treatment of the allied firebombing of German cities during WWII from post-war German literature, what might have contributed to that absence, and the dangers of not rectifying it. |
On The Road by Jack Kerouac, 307 pages Erik Bauer 17 October 2001 This book was a going away gift when I finished my job in LA. I moved to San Francisco for a 6 week TEFL course before driving back across the US to Ohio. It was the perfect book for the time. I quit my job, changed my life plans and drove across the country. I didn't have the kind of adventures in Denver and SF as Sal Paradise, but I was in both of those cities having my own adventures, what a time. |
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 181 pages James Donahue 15 February 2004 Preparing to teach this on Weds to a group of Notre Dame students. We've been going over the purges and the gulag in class for a few weeks, and I am stunned at their unwillingness to accept the suffering as real. They believe it exaggerated or propaganidistic. (This while they accept economic and diplomatic reports by the Soviet government at face value.) Hopefully this will knock the spoon out of their mouth, or at least dislodge it enough so that they can start eating some real food. |
One Day My Sister Disappeared : A Memoir by Christine Orban, 128 pages Jaqi Ross 01 October 2004 Moroccan-born Orban has published 10 novels in French; here she offers a memoir of her friendship with her sister, Maco, who died pregnant with her third child when she was only 35. In brief, elegiac chapters studded with old photographs of the two sisters, Orban revisits their childhood days in the early 1960s. Not what I expected - what reviewers call a "heartfelt account of personal loss," I found dry and uninspired. |
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, 383 pages Steve Gadd 31 October 2005 I remembered this as one of my favorite novels, but this time through it seemed like a century since I started reading early this summer. The tone is that of a grandfather relating the story of a family, going back in forth in time and adding some fanciful touches. I still love the opening chapters, as the patriarch recapitulates the history of scientific progress with tools provided by a band of roving gypsies. |
One Hundred Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading by Regina Janes, 132 pages Steve Gadd 27 July 1998 Very accessable lit-crit on my favorite novel. |
One Step Closer: Why U2 matters to those seeking God by Christian Scharen, 208 pages Jonathan Misirian 07 June 2006 In the growing field of books exploring U2’s religious convictions, One Step Closer, stands above the rest. Scharen’s take is unique, in that each chapter is about evenly divided between a biblical overview of a particular theme such as Love (not power), Prophecy as Judgment and Hope, Psalms as Thanksgiving and Lament, and Singing the Cross; and then a detailed exploration of the songs as well as quotes from the massive U2 discography. Scharen’s cogent overview reveals the heart that beats U2’s soul. |
Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation by Eric Nisenson, 213 pages Tony Pisarenkov 29 January 2003 For those that like Rollins's music but don't know much about his life and career, this is not a bad place to start, but ultimately the book disappoints. It suffers from the same problems as Nisenson's other work: a tone of extreme adoration and insufficient criticism of the subject, too much basic jazz history aimed at neophytes, an ineffective attempt to discuss race relations, and, above all, the fact that Nisenson is simply not a very good writer. |
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lammott, 272 pages Jaqi Ross 29 June 2004 Magazine columnist and novelist Lamott ( All New People ) captures both the poignancy and comedy of her first year as a single mother in this wonderfully candid diary. Her quirky humor steadily draws the reader into her unconventional world as she describes her friends and neighbors in northern California, her participation in a local church, her experiences as a recovering alcoholic and--best of all--her infant son, Sam, born in 1989. She covers maternal emotions from rapturous bliss to bare fury ("In the middle of the colic death marches, I end up looking at the baby with those hooded eyes that were in the old ads for The Boston Strangler "). Throughout, she airs her strong political and religious beliefs. And when her best friend, Pammy, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Lamott conveys her anguish with the same depth of feeling and sense of the absurd that characterize her observations about her son, God, recovery, writing, Republicans, men and life as usual. Even non-parents will enjoy this glowing work. |
Ops Center Line of Control by Tom Clancy, 372 pages Jeff Gadd 10 December 2002 Terrorist from Pakistan bomb a building in India, but the terrorists are blamed for two other explosions they didn't do,by India. But countries want to go to war with each other. Striker compony is call in from USA to stop this war. Can they do it in time? |
Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens by Neil Cole, 237 pages Jonathan Misirian 21 August 2006 Cole presents a series of principles collected from his experience as a non-traditional church planter. Cole looks at the church as a collection of individuals, not brick and mortar; and starts churches in parking lots, coffee houses and on the beach. Well written while avoiding popular models for church growth. |
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 345 pages Steven Krise 23 August 2009 If you regularly read Scientific American there's probably not much new here (I don't so there was). Regardless, though, NDT is good at telling the story of science: in this instance the story of the origin of the universe and its evolution, culminating in the origin of life on Earth. |
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood, 374 pages Kristin Schrock 21 July 2003 This is Atwood in sci-fi mode. It's the end of the world, as we know it (and I feel fine). Snowman (our main character) thinks he's the last human on earth. Oryx and Crake (the love of his life and his best friend, respectively) are dead. He's the caretaker of Crake's newly created humanoid beings. He spends a lot of time lost in the past before and after things went terribly, terribly wrong. This one may go to the top of the list of books with frustrating (dare I say, infuriating) endings. What am I supposed to make of the last line: "Zero hour. Time to go." Go where? Do what? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Is this hopeful? Is Snowman about to talk a walk out into the ocean? I have no idea. So, although the writing is quite good (Mags never lets me down, there), I can't really recommend this one. |
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, 349 pages James Donahue 30 December 2004 When I was a kid I always fantasized about being the last man on earth. Leave it to Atwood to turn those dreams into nightmares. Here the ever-outspoken Atwood opines her way through a Mad Max landscape of genetic horror, pollution, and class wars gone horribly awry. |
Othello by William Shakespeare, 45 pages Julie Gephart 30 November 2003 Just a quick refresher after watching the movie _O_. Thank you to this play for giving us “the beast with two backs.” |
Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith, 447 pages Micaela Larkin 03 February 2007 Goldsmith offers an engaging account of early suffragists, spiritualism, and the infamous Beecher family. |
Others by James Herbert, 470 pages Mike Gadd 08 December 2004 One of the more unique main characters. This one was born malformed and got worse as he got older. He doesn't let his physical limitations keep him from getting his detective work done. This story turned pretty dark before it wrapped up. |
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume, 138 pages Brad Snyder 20 November 2006 The one book of the "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" series that deals with the precocious, know-it-all Sheila Tubman. Actually rather boring, but my youngest daughter appreciated it. |
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (2008) by Melody Petersen, 430 pages Jonathan Misirian 08 April 2008 As an investigative reporter for The Times, Petersen presents a scathing indictment of an industry loosely regulated and focused on profits. Petersen digs deeply into the marketing of all sorts of medications and shows that the worst thing that could happen is that a disease could be cured! So to prevent a dramatic loss in profits, many companies are turning towards quality of life issues, turning them into previously unheard-of medical conditions and treating them with medication. Witness the recent ads for ‘restless leg syndrome’ or ‘overactive bladder.’ The strength of this book lies in the evidence of the dramatic increase in medication consumption, especially in children. Maybe ‘psycho’ Tom Cruise isn’t all that crazy? |
Our Gang by Philip Roth, 201 pages Tony Pisarenkov 27 May 2005 One long send-up of Richard Nixon. Dated, but in places still hilarious. |
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene, 0 pages Steve Gadd 04 September 2008 Mediocre comedy, audio version. After Lolita, the mediocrity was especially telling. Glad to be done with it. |
Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene, 220 pages Steven Krise 11 November 2009 http://www.google.com/#q=synopsis+"graham+greene"+"our+man+in+havana" |
Our Simple Gifts: Civil War Christmas Tales by Owen Parry, 150 pages Mike Gadd 24 December 2002 Four delightful Christmas tales from my favorite author. Heartwarming and inspirational, the first story is the best of the four. |
Outside is America: U2 in the U.S. by Carter Alan, 248 pages Jonathan Misirian 09 August 2005 Alan chronicles the rise of U2 within the U.S., from 1980-1992. Numerous first person interviews are combined with many published stories on the band -all of which provide insight into the earliest days when U2 moved threw 80 seat bars and clubs to selling out 20,000 seat arenas. |
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper, 243 pages Julie Gephart 31 March 2002 First in a fantasy series that had better get better. Ordinary people who encounter ancient evil forces should really be deeply affected in some way. I'm just saying. |
Over Tumbled Graves by Jess Walter, 401 pages Mike Gadd 05 April 2002 |