Freedom

by Jonathan Franzen
p 562

Alright I'll admit Jonathan Franzen is an acquired taste. Anyone who had the stamina to weather his novel The Corrections will know that reading his fiction is much like a marathon. The point being not always the best time, but only to finish and survive.
In Freedom he puts the marriage of Walter and Patty Bergland under his adept microscope of human nature and examines the nuances of marriage and raising a family.
Franzen takes middle class hopes and dreams and places them in the blender of life, only to see his characters deconstruct. Some survive, like Walter and Patty, but only after detours that neither could ever have imagined. Adapting and compromising in today's culture is what Franzen does best. His observations are dead-on, yet can be painful and revealing to us all. This novel is not for the squeamish, but I'm glad that I read it and survived.
It deserves the full Rock Chalk Jay Hawk, if for no other reason than Franzen is one of today's best writers!

The pleasure of my company : a novel

By: Steve Martin, 163 pp

Yes, this is by the actor/comedian, Steve Martin!

Daniel Pecan Cambridge is a man living in California by himself in an apartment complex not far from the beach. He has huge phobias (such as he is not able to walk across the street in crosswalks for they are not symmetry aligned like two driveways might be) that keep in pretty much in his home. Daniel is OCD as well. He seems a bit autistic to me (although it is not said so in the book) and he is very smart. He has a young lady by the name of Clarissa that comes to visit him and asks him a lot of questions - sort of like a professional counselor/social worker. Also there is Phillipa. She lives upstairs from Daniel and she comes for an occassional juice mix that Daniel makes for her (she does not know that he is putting drugs in her drinks). Then there is Zandy. She works at the Rite Aid eight blocks from Daniel's apartment. He goes in there for ear plugs and anything else needed for him to live on. And then there is Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth is just a realtor for the apartments across the street from Daniel. He watches her as she talks to her clients outside the apartment building there. He has an obsession for her.

The way Daniel describes people and things going on in his life is very strange. It is funny at times, but mostly I just wanted to find out what is really to become of Daniel. Because you see, he has been a suspect for murder.... He is innocent, but there is a TV crew that wants to do a show on him regarding this murder. Is this such a good idea for Daniel? Or does he just want to be on TV?

Mockingbird

by Kathryn Erskine 235 p. This novel is from the first person point of view of a fifth grader named Caitlin. She is dealing with a lot in her life. Her family has gone through a horrible tragedy and lost her brother. She is also learning how to deal with life itself through the challenge of Asperger's Syndrome. This makes the first person point of view interesting and different.