O's 2012 Summer Reading List
No matter your mood, there's a great book to suit it. Don't forget to
print the full list here!
45 of 47
An Uncommon Education
By Elizabeth Percer
352 pages;
Harper
With a clinically depressed mother at home,
isolated young Naomi Feinstein and her father often escape to 83 Beals, in
Brookline, Massachusetts, otherwise known as the John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site, where the glamorous former president and his parents once lived
as a family. Now a museum, the house features preserved rooms with a red button
that makes "Rose's smoothly nasal voice emerge from speakers on the ceiling"
as well as antique rocking horses, oriental carpets and a piano—all
of which become the furnishings of a dream home for Naomi, inspiring hopes of
upper-class glamour and advancement. Fifteen years later, when she enrolls in
Wellesley on a scholarship, she decides, "I would win, all the time, at
everything." The loneliness she felt as child, however, isn't so easy to
cure at an ultra-competitive women's college, and she takes refuge in the
on-campus Shakespeare Society. In the eyes of her fellow type-A students, her
move is akin to joining to the Animal House, complete with parties and
members-only secrets. But in bonding with her fellow "Shakes," she
begins to understand "how we all lived so full of fear" and how to
make the kinds of choices that eventually lead to an uncommon but joy-filled
life.
— Leigh Newman
Published 06/20/2012