August 2025 “Leisure Reads”
“This month’s “Leisure Reads” post explores a variety of coming-of-age (bildungsroman) experiences in literature. While many novels on this theme are intended for a juvenile or young adult audience, they allow the older adult reader to reminiscence and reflect on their own experiences growing up—both good and bad—in order to make sense of them. Featured authors include Truman Capote, Toni Morrison, Chaim Potok, & more!” Joshua Zeller
Print books:
“In Palmer LaRue's hometown of Waymer, turning ten is the biggest event of a boy's life. But for Palmer, his tenth birthday is not something to look forward to but something to dread. Then one day, a visitor appears on his windowsill, and Palmer knows that this, more than anything else, is a sign that his time is up. Somehow, he must learn how to stop being afraid and stand up for what he believes in. Wringer is an unforgettable tour de force from Newbery Medal winner Jerry Spinelli.” – Publisher’s Summary
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
“Truman Capote’s first novel is a story of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the Deep South. At the age of twelve, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully’s Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face—and heart—of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
“In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is ‘so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry’ (The New York Times).” – Publisher’s Summary
“It’s the spring of 1944 and fifteen-year-olds Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders have lived five blocks apart all their lives. But they’ve never met, not until the day an accident at a softball game sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon these two boys—one expected to become a Hasidic rebbe, the other at ease with secular America—are drawn into one another’s worlds despite a father’s strong opposition. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the creation of the state of Israel, The Chosen is a poignant novel about transformation and tradition, growing up and growing wise, and finding yourself—even if it might mean disappointing those you love.” – Publisher’s Summary
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
“It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud’s got a few things going for him:
1. He has his own suitcase full of special things.
2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself
3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: flyers advertising Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!
Bud’s got an idea that those flyers will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road to find this mystery man, nothing can stop him—not hunger, not fear, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.” – Publisher’s Summary
Ebooks:
“It's the summer of 1941, and all ten-year-old Nilda wants to do is enjoy the cool water with her friends. But the policemen's curses end their fun, and their animosity is played out repeatedly in Nilda's life. She is constantly treated with contempt by adults in positions of authority: teachers, nurses and social workers. At home she is surrounded by a large and loving family that supports her artistic abilities as they experience financial hardship, the onset of World War II and the death of loved ones. Named an "Outstanding Book of the Year" by The New York Times and one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the American Library Association in 1973 when it was first published, Nicholasa Mohr's classic novel about life as an immigrant in New York City offers a poignant look at one young girl's experiences. Issues of race, religion and machismo are realistically depicted in this groundbreaking novel that was one of the first by a Latina author to be hailed by the mainstream media.” – Publisher’s Summary
Ten is the Age of Darkness: The Black Bildungsroman by Geta LeSeur
“In Ten Is the Age of Darkness, Geta LeSeur explores how black authors of the United States and English-speaking Caribbean have taken a European literary tradition and adapted it to fit their own needs for self-expression. LeSeur begins by defining the structure and models of the European genre of the bildungsroman, then proceeds to show how the circumstances of colonialism, oppression, race, class, and gender make the maturing experiences of selected young black protagonists different from those of their white counterparts.... LeSeur's readings of African American novels provide new insights into the work of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, and Richard Wright, among others. When read as examples of the bildungsroman rather than simply as chronicles of black experiences, these works reveal an even deeper significance and have a more powerful impact....” – Publisher’s Summary
The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington by Booth Tarkington
“A familiar midwestern novel in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis, The Turmoil was the best-selling novel of 1915. It is set in a small, quiet city—never named but closely resembling the author’s hometown of Indianapolis—that is quickly being transformed into a bustling, money-making nest of competitors more or less overrun by ‘the worshippers of Bigness.’ ‘There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke,’ begins The Turmoil, the first volume of Pulitzer Prize-winner Booth Tarkington’s Growth trilogy. A narrative of loss and change, a love story, and a warning about the potential evils of materialism, the book chronicles two midwestern families trying to cope with the onset of industrialization. The Turmoil, the first great success of [Tarkington’s] career, tells the intertwined stories of two families: the Sheridans, whose integrity wanes as their wealth increases, and the Vertrees, who remain noble but impoverished. Linked by the romance between a Sheridan son and a Vertrees daughter, the story of the two families provides a dramatic view of what America was like on the verge of a new order.” – Publisher’s Summary
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
“Set in English Society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new step-sister enters Molly's quiet life—loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford. Wives and Daughters is far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life; it offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society.” – Publisher’s Summary