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Thursday, August 15, 2013
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DOWNTOWN BEAVERTON
9
nightstand
?
What’s on your
What Beaverton’s bibliophiles and bookworms are reading right now. . .
BOOKS
DOWNTOWN BEAVERTON
Crossing
by Stacey Wallace Benefiel
As the producing artistic director of the Beaverton
Civic Theatre and a mother of Isabelle (3 years old) and
Jasper (6 months old), I find that I
don’t have time to curl up with a
nice long novel without frequent
interruption that leads me to won-
der if I will ever finish reading it
or if it will continue to collect dust
on my nightstand.
I enjoyed reading Stacey Wal-
lace Benefiel’s Zellie Wells Trilogy
a couple of years ago, so I picked
up her latest book Crossing. It is
a short book with 168 pages and
was a quick read because I couldn’t put it down! It ap-
pears to be a girl meets boy romance, but the characters
get you hooked as they learn to
open up to one another, share
their secrets and trust that they
will be accepted.
At the University of Oregon,
Dani struggles with self esteem
and knows that she is not a
beauty queen. In acting class,
she meets Liam, the seemingly
perfect prince charming! I won’t
give away the plot twists, but
this passionate book will make you
think about honesty, compassion and love. Due
to heavy subject matter, Crossing is recommended for
readers 17+.
Reviewed by Melissa Riley
Founder and Producing Artistic Director
Beaverton Civic Theatre
The World is Flat – A Brief History
of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L.
Friedman
This celebrated best-seller by New York Times col-
umnist Thomas Friedman offers one of the most clear
and understandable journeys into
the development modern world
economy. While not with critics,
Friedman’s book is frequently
cited in academic works as a valid
portrayal of many of the different
forces that are playing out in the
globalization phenomenon.
Friedman’s book describes ten
forces or “flatteners” that he sees
as playing significant roles in the
development of the global econ-
omy beginning with the collapse of the Berlin wall and
ending with the rapid pace of technological development.
Technological interconnectivity
plays one of the biggest roles in
Friedman’s flatteners. One limi-
tation of the book may be the
timing of the latest edition given
the economic recession of the
past few years, and the double-
edged sword of the global
economy, namely the need for
reflection on the potentially
uneven geographic development
found around the globe as developed
and less developed economies interact.
However, even with the limitations mentioned above,
this is a great read that comes highly recommended.
Reviewed by Ian King
Beaverton City Council
The Story Teller
by Jodi Picoult
The Story Teller is about the Holocaust. Sage has been
asked to forgive a recent friend for his past as a Nazi SS
guard and he wants her to kill him.
The plot of the story has many
twists and turns. Of the choices
made by the characters, one asks
why? Could this could be me?
You think, not I, however, at any
given moment are we capable of
doing what we least expect? As
the reader, I continually placed
myself in the characters’ shoes
and wondered what I would have
done?
As the survivors and victims
of the Holocaust approach death and disappear, many
questions are still out there and must be asked. Bearing
witness is part of this book, and
how we must never forget. How
do we stay vigilant so that we
don’t create conditions that allow
this kind of inhumanity to repeat
itself? When does a moral choice
become a moral imperative? How
does one draw the line between
punishment, justice, revenge, for-
giveness, mercy and understand-
ing? Can people be forgiven for
extremely gruesome acts? In this book
Jodi Picoult explores the lengths we will go in order to
protect our families and to keep the past from dictat-
ing the future. This book truly was hard to put down,
“just one more page”ended up being a book I finished in
a weekend.
Reviewed by Evelyn Orr
Beaverton Area Chamber of Commerce
Melissa Riley
Ian King
Evelyn Orr
Continued on Page 10 >>
Everyone likes a good book recommendation. If you’ve read a book you enjoyed recently, share it with our readers!
Send your name and address, contact phone number (for our use, not for publication) and the name of the book,
author and what you enjoyed about it to cmoore@commnewspapers.com.