Reviews for The Integrated Curriculum: Books for Reluctant Readers, Grades 25

The average rating for The Integrated Curriculum: Books for Reluctant Readers, Grades 25 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-27 00:00:00 Robert Grimsley "My mother's voice and my father's fists are the two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art." I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Pat Conroy at a book signing in Marin County, California. It was during his Beach Music tour back in 1995. He oozed Southern charm and flashed his razor honed wit. He kept the large crowd that was there to see him laughing and smiling throughout his whole presentation. His cheeks were rosy, and his stark white hair formed a nimbus around his head. Prince of Tides had been a huge hit for him in 1986. He was by 1995 assured a place on the bestseller list with any book he wanted to publish, but it was easy to see, by the way he interacted with his fans, that he was not taking anything for granted. He truly appreciated his readers. I can say that I met Conroy in 1995, but I really met him in 1986 when I read Prince of Tides. It is impossible to separate the man/boy from the writing. He has mined his life for those touch points that resonate with readers because the pain is real, and the joy is genuine. Whenever you read a Conroy book, you are going to cry until you laugh and laugh until you cry. Life tends to be bittersweet, and the highs and lows of Conroy's life have been mountainous and cavernous. Even this book, My Reading Life, had me tearing up at several points. To read his words is to see his soul. When he lived in Atlanta, he started hanging out at this bookstore called The Old New York Book Shop, and for the first time in his life, he became a collector of books. The gentle madness that has plagued many of us never did let go of him, and for the rest of his life, he continued to add books to his personal library. He was a fan of other writers, but admits that sometimes being friends with them can be treacherous. Professional jealousy is a green eyed monster with fangs and protruding spikes that can punch holes in the most substantial of friendships. He talks in this book about his reverence for Thomas Wolfe and freely admits that some of his weaknesses as a writer come from maybe loving Wolfe too much. There is certainly something beyond most of us in the writings of Thomas Wolfe. He tries to write as truthfully as he can about how he perceives things. Unfortunately, he leaves many readers in a cloud of dust on a country road with no idea which way is the best path back to their reality. Fortunately, the gifted editor Maxwell Perkins was able to take the trunk full of words that Wolfe would dump in his office and mold it into some semblance of a story. Wolfe is epic and flawed, but for me he is similar to William Faulkner and requires some patience. If you free your mind, eventually you'll start to catch the cadence of his voice. Conroy's dad was a Marine Corp pilot and, when angered, frequently resorted to his fists. Pat wrote a terrific novel about him called The Great Santini that was so accurate that his mother used it as part of her defense in her divorce trial. "My youth filled up with the ancient shame of a son who cannot protect his mother." Conroy has been estranged from many members of his family over the publication of his books. He broke the code, speaking about what had happened to him, his mother, and his siblings. As it turns out, he has also lost touch with his daughter, and with the hope that she still reads his books, he put this dedication in the front of My Reading Life: "This book is dedicated to my lost daughter, Susannah Ansley Conroy. Know this: I love you with my heart and always will. Your return to my life would be one of the happiest moments I could imagine." I don't know if she ever responded to her father's plea, but given the amount of pain that Pat Conroy has stacked in his lifetime, I hope that sometime before he died they found a way to make peace with one another. Books were so important to Conroy. The Marine Corp moved them every year so friends were as temporary as tissues, but every new place he landed, there was a different library to be explored. He could make "new friends" or spend time with "old friends." Books were always available when he needed them. He could fall into the pages of a book to escape the angry fists of his father or the wretched tears of his mother. He discusses Tolkien,Thucydides, Milton, Whitman, Philip Roth, and relates a rather unfortunate, embarrassing encounter with Adrienne Rich. He spends an entire chapter rapturously discussing the truly epic contribution of Leo Tolstoy to literature. Be prepared; he will have you pulling that dusty tome of War and Peace off the shelf by the end of the chapter. My favorite, though, was in the final pages, when he shares his meeting with Jonathan Carroll, whom I feel is one of those under the radar writers whom too few know about. I also had the chance to meet Carroll in Austin, Texas. I loaded up the wife and two small children, and we drove 10 hours one way just to get a chance to meet him. He was at the end of a long road trip and was obviously tired, but he soon perked up for the crowd, who many like us had travelled some distance to see him. Conroy's description of his experience with Carroll's books had me pulling Jonathan's first book Land of Laughs off the shelf. Just like the first time I read it, I could not put it down. As you can see, I was a lot more thrilled to meet Jonathan Carroll than he was to meet me. He told me he was near the end of a brutally long book tour, but he still put on a grand performance for his fans. Reading a book like this always makes me reflective about my own life. My own Reading Life. I've devoted most of my life to the pursuit of books, the reading of books, the collecting of books. I certainly found a kindred soul in the pages of this book. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit I also have a Facebook blogger page at:

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-29 00:00:00 Hubertus Peter Five glorious, sentimental stars for Pat Conroy's memoir about books and reading. Mr. Conroy died last month, and I picked up My Reading Life as a tribute to him. When I chose it from his list of works, I didn't realize how much I would love this gem of a book, how I would linger over the chapters, taking weeks to read it because I didn't want to return it to the library yet. Keeping this lovely book in my possession was a way of keeping Mr. Conroy around, for just a little bit longer. The only Conroy book I had previously read was The Prince of Tides, which is a doozy of a novel and one I highly recommend if you like rich stories of southern family drama. But after reading this memoir, I want to read all of his works, especially The Great Santinti and Beach Music, two novels that meant so much to him he had nervous breakdowns while writing them. My Reading Life has beautiful stories and descriptions of books, people and places that have meant a lot to him. My favorite chapters were about his mother and Gone With the Wind; a high school English teacher who changed his life; a bookstore owner who begrudgingly became his friend; his stories about being a military brat; his love letters to Thomas Wolfe and James Dickey; his tribute to Tolstoy; and an explanation of why he writes. One section that was particularly moving was a conversation he had with a grouchy book rep, named Norman Berg. Conroy had just published his memoir The Water is Wide, and Berg thought Conroy could do better: "Don't you want to matter?" Norman Berg asked me ... "Don't you want to be part of the literary discussion? Don't you think about your place in literature?" "No, I haven't thought about any of that, Mr. Berg." "Then what do you want?" he asked me. "Why are you doing this?" "Because I want to to be remembered." Reading that weeks after Conroy's death gave me pause, to be sure. This is a memoir made for readers, especially if you appreciate thoughtful passages and ornate descriptions, and I just adored it. Cheers to you, Mr. Conroy. I will remember you. Favorite Quotes "[My mother] read so many books that she was famous among the librarians in every town she entered. Since she did not attend college, she looked to librarians as her magic carpet into a serious intellectual life. Books contained powerful amulets that could lead to paths of certain wisdom. Novels taught her everything she needed to know about the mysteries and uncertainties of being human. She was sure that if she could find the right book, it would reveal what was necessary for her to become a woman of substance and parts." "From the beginning I've searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their most indestructible yearnings, and their most soul-killing doubts. I trust the great novelists to teach me how to live, how to feel, how to love and hate. I trust them to show me the dangers I will encounter on the road as I stagger on my own troubled passage through a complicated life of books that try to reach me how to die." "If there is more important work than teaching, I hope to learn about it before I die." "When I pick up a book, the prayer that rises out of me is that it changes me utterly and that I am not the man who first selected that book from a well-stocked shelf." "Wolfe writes like a man on fire who does not have a clue how not to be on fire. Yes, I see the flaws of Thomas Wolfe and I could not care less. His art is overdone and yet I find it incomparably beautiful." [Similarly, I can see the flaws of Conroy, but it doesn't bother me. I appreciate the beauty in his work.] "Tolstoy performs that rarest and most valuable of tasks, one that has all but disappeared from modern fiction. He wrestles with the philosophical issues of how people like you and me can manage to live praiseworthy and constructive lives. Reading Tolstoy makes us strive to be better people: better husbands and wives, children, and friends. He tries to teach us how to live by letting us participate in the brimming, stories experiences of his fictional world. Reading Leo Tolstoy, you will encounter a novelist who fell in love with his world and everything he saw and felt in it." "Some American writers are meaner than serial killers, but far more articulate, and this is always the great surprise awaiting the young men and women who swarm to the universities, their heads buzzing with all the dazzle and freshness and humbuggery of the language itself." "My mother's voice and my father's fists are the two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art." "My hunt will always be for my mother. She could not give me herself, but she gave me literature as a replacement. I have no idea who she was, and I write my books as a way of finding out." "I have tried to read two hundred pages every day of my life since I was a freshman in high school, because I knew that I would come to the writing of books without the weight of culture and learning that a well-established, confidently placed family could offer its children. I collected those long, melancholy lists of the great books that high school English teachers passed out to college-bound students, and I relied on having consumed those serious litanies of books as a way to ease my way into the literary life. Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book in which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch. Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the necessary discipline for a novelist who burns with the ambition to get better." "Here is all I ask of a book ' give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word."