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Below is another reflection on the life of a publicist from Michelle Rafferty. Rafferty has been a Publicity Assistant at Oxford University Press since September 2008. Prior to Oxford she interned at Norton Publishing for a summer and taught 9th & 10th grade Literature. She is chronicling her adventures in publishing every Friday so be sure to visit again next week.

Earlier this week the Paper Cuts blog posed the question: Can reading work as a group activity? This quickly brought back memories of a book club my college friends and I forged nearly 3 years ago. It was one of those rare summers where time kindly stood still for us as we approached our last year together at school. We had finally let go of the “this is going to be the best summer ever” mantra of years past and welcomed the reprieve of just being. My friends and I landed banal campus jobs, watched Entourage, and for the first time didn’t try to save up for the giant trampoline we had always dreamed of—the thrill of spending half our summer hours in flight suddenly seemed trite. It seemed that our best nights that summer were those we spent happily discussing the highlights of our dormitory canon: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Ishmael, and American Psycho. Perhaps I’m romanticizing, but I can honestly say that reading did work as a group activity for us, but only because the context and chemistry were exactly right.

Paper Cuts questions this idea of “reading as a group activity” by posing the highly commercial “One Book, One Community” paradigm, in which an entire community is encouraged to read the same book and then participate in a hoopla of author events and discussions. In New York City this type of behavior is simply unacceptable; it is not cool to read what everyone else is reading. There are a few rules that any New Yorker who is worried about their intellectual reputation should consider before picking up a book: Vintage and obscure is in. Movie tie-ins, and celebrity biographies are out. It is only okay to read Chelsea Handler in the comfort of your apartment, and The New York Times bestsellers need to have been off the list for at least six months, or at least on the extended list. But while reading is an expression of individuality in the city, we still like to share it. This is why a month ago a friend of mine called to ask, “What the heck happened?” at the end of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, sparking a two hour long conversation. Or why when I finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I walked (actually took one large skip) over to my co-worker’s cubicle to have a mini celebration for Oscar (if you’ve read the last 10 pages, you know why). We need an outlet for the thoughts and emotions a book inspires, a few people with whom we can share our reactions, but not too many, not more than ten.

And when we can’t share in our experience, we recommend books to each other; I partake in these exchanges daily with friends, co-workers, and strangers alike, constantly adding books to my “mental back burner,” casting the more disingenuous ones aside (Note: Don’t trust anyone who gushes over Nietzsche, or says they couldn’t put War and Peace down.) Sometimes these recommendations end up stewing for great lengths of time. I can still remember two years ago when my roommate Lisa wandered into my room to tell me about a scene she just read in Angels in America, in which two complete strangers meet in the same dream. A couple weeks ago when I read this scene for the first time, I understood why Lisa had to tell me about it. Despite dire circumstances playwright Tony Kushner finds an incredibly beautiful way to bring two lonely and uncharacteristically destined souls together—Prior who is dying of AIDS and Harper, a Valium addict whose husband is finding his way out of the closet. When Harper first meets Prior in their mutual dream, she says, “Deep inside you, there’s a part of you, the most inner part, entirely free of disease. I can see that.” When I was reading Angels in America on the subway, a passenger looked over at me before getting off saying, “I saw that play opening night—incredible.” I opened my mouth to speak, and then he was gone.

Like the magic in the stories they tell, books span space and time to bridge people’s lives and thoughts, the way Angels in America threaded me, my college roommate, and a stranger on the subway. Facebook, Twitter, and blogs have now made this threading virtual. So what does this all mean? A recent post on The Millions pondered the “formative novel,” or the books that contributed to the person you are today. Taking this notion a step further we can ask: What are the books that contributed to the relationships you have today? What books brought you to someone, keep you close to someone, drove you away, or sparked a conversation that has remained indelible in your mind?

I can think of a few of mine (in no particular order): The Awakening, Discipline & Punish, You Shall Know our Velocity!, On Beauty and later The Autograph Man, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and later Lighthousekeeping, When You are Engulfed in Flames, and of course both the Baby-sitters Club and Goosebumps series.

What are some of yours?

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The winds that howled through yesterday's poem never did stop blowing. Even now, dawn, they're out there scuttling, overturning, knocking down the limbs of a favorite front-yard tree (I cradled its carnage yesterday, thought of the leaves that will now never green and singe, the birds that will not roost).

The weather made for mood. I couldn't put my head into the heat and dust of a cortijo outside Seville, because every time I began to dream sun, I'd hear a gutter banging. I sought to distract myself with client work, but the clients seemed to have been displaced by the wind. I moved onto another project, but was temporarily foiled by technical difficulties. I started to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz's latest, and got caught up studying the sentence structures of the first purposely dense page, and that page was a wall, and I couldn't get past it. (Today I will.) And then I went to the dance studio to dance, and everyone, it seemed, had been affected by the wind. Everyone, and also the dancing.

Later I remembered what a friend had said, a few days before: "It's easier to be in a good mood than a bad one." Easier, I thought, and I tried the theory out—spent what was left of the day and night inside a swell of happy. After five minutes of trying I tried no more. Happiness breeds happiness. It breeds calm, inside of storm.

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The honorable Colleen Mondor (Chasing Ray) runs a great little awards process each February for a category of books that is broader than, say, Middle Grade fiction, or Young Adult fiction, or Graphic Novels. Last year, for example, Colleen called for the best in coming-of-age novels. This year, Colleen seeks to honor books "published for adults that work perfectly for teens."

I gave a lot of thought to my choice this year, mostly because this topic has been on my mind: I have a 12 year old who is venturing out into the world of adult books while still reading MG (fantasy) and YA fiction. William Boyd's Restless was one of her favorite books this year, and she also loved Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. So while I wanted to nominate either one of those titles, a book I read recently kept whispering in my ear, "pick me."

It's not like Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has been ignored by critics and readers. I think it's been on every top-10 list this year. It's one of those books that was reviewed twice in the New York Times (once by Michiko Kakutani, and once by A.O. Scott). Diaz has been interviewed everywhere about his "work of startling originality and distinction," most recently by Edward Marriott in the Guardian.

I'm not going to review The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao here, because I agree with almost every word of Kakutani's review. What I am going to do is give you five reasons why I think every teen over the age of 15 should read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

1. I found Diaz's presentation first-generation U.S. citizens in the late 20th century more accurate than anything else I've read recently. Oscar and his coevals were born in the States, but can travel back to their parents' country--in this case, the Dominican Republic. They're ambivalent about the U.S., sometimes romanticize the land of their parents' birth, but are ultimately more comfortable in the States. Their identity is more complex than that of their parents. As Kakutani writes at the end of her review,

• "This is, almost in spite of itself, a novel of assimilation, a fractured chronicle of the ambivalent, inexorable movement of the children of immigrants toward the American middle class, where the terrible, incredible stories of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country have become a genre in their own right."

Yes, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao does tell the tale of the first generation. But it also shows what's different for many immigrants and their children today--the fluidity between two cultures, two countries, and two languages. Even the parents in this story return to the Dominican Republic. They choose to stay in the United States, but still call one another Dominicans.*

2. Respect for "genre." Diaz's semi-heroic hero, Oscar, wants to be the Dominican (note how this designation relates to #1) Tolkien. He reads and writes Fantasy and SciFi. He grew up on comic books. The fantasy world is there for him when times are tough.

3. The young adult heroes of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are intelligent, flawed, and ambitious. Oscar is a smart kid, his mother's golden boy. He follows his amazing older sister--Lola--to Rutgers and studies writing. The book's most frequent narrator--Yunior--is also a writer, Oscar's roommate, and a ladies' man. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior strive to overcome their flaws and make it in this world as adults. If this premise doesn't appeal to Young Adult readers, I don't know what else will.

4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has at its heart Oscar's attempt to score. (Hence, the arbitrary 15 and up age designation. Use your own judgment here.) Is this not a central theme of much of Young Adult literature? A coming-of-age story in its most literal sense.

5. The maturation of Oscar, Lola, and Yunior is grounded in the history of the Dominican Republic in the 20th century. They are part of a larger story--the "terrible, incredible stories of what parents and grandparents endured in the old country"--despite the fact they live in 21st- century New York and New Jersey. Diaz's contextualization of the personal in the historical and the political makes The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a novel every teen should read.

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*I do realize that not all first-generation Americans have the opportunity to travel back to the home country of their parents due to political, religious, or economic reasons. However, this global fluidity seems to be much more common than it was, say, in the World War II era.

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1. I'm 5'1" if I stretch.
2. My hair is 2 inches shy of 3 feet long.
3. I met my husband on matchmaker.com.
4. I'm a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
5. I drive a pick-up truck.
6. I collect salt and pepper shakers.
7. I drink obscene quantities of hot tea.
8. I used to teach roller skating.

Since I'm the last one to go this week, I pass the 8 things tag challenge on to the Picture Bookies.

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1) I once parachuted.
2) I love the ocean.
3) I'm a huge fan of college basketball. I love it so much that it should count for two things on my list. ha!
4) I read every night.
5) Pumpkin is my favorite flavor. Pies, empanadas, ravioli, yum.
6) I enjoy refinishing furniture. I'm beginning work on my grandfather's roll top desk this summer.
7) I'm 5' 8" (Okay I lied, I'm only 5' 2") but in my imagination, I'm 6' 3" and I can slam dunk.
8) I spend a lot of my time barefooted.

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8 more things that you didn't know about me...

1. I'm a hermit by nature.
2. Like, Laura, I never imagined myself with children. Three kids later, I'm so glad that I was wrong.
3. It has been a year since my laser corrective eye surgery and I'm thrilled with the results.
4. My dream is to have a cottage in Devon, England.
5. I would also like a convertable vw bug.
6. Cheesecake is my favorite dessert.
7. I have a bad habit of leaving half full soda cans and cups all over the house.
8. I enjoy LIST making. Can you tell?

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1) I love children, but never thought I’d have one. I’m so glad I did.
2) I have an unnatural fear of snakes. I can’t even look at them in books or on t.v.
3) I’m really private, which makes a tag like this hard for me to think of things to list! I don’t even like to talk on the phone.
4) I absolutely love Texas, but hate the heat. AND the snakes. Go figure.
5) Licorice is the worst taste in the world to me.
6) I’d rather be swimming than doing anything else.
7) I love to draw/paint animals so much more than people.
8) My dream is to live in the country, I love being able to hear the birds sing. And the quiet, and the stars...

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