One Great Read: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt

I just took 30 seconds out of my day to look at the Kardashian holiday card.

Really.

And earlier, when I saw a poster about the casting call for “America’s Got Talent” happening in Denver on Saturday, I took another 30 seconds to think about it.

For the Dynamic Duo have many talents.

And then I snapped out of it. My interest in trashy television is going to get my parenting license revoked. So I am just saying no to the “America’s Got Talent” casting call.

America will simply have to watch some other elementary schoolers burp “America The Beautiful”. My two will be busy reading this weekend, in an attempt to enrich their brains and offset the negatives of having a pop culture fiend for a mother.

This prescription works great for me. Whenever I go on a trash t.v. binge, I simply follow it up with a literary fiction binge.

So I just finished The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It was excellent and multi-layered and 1,200 pages long! It was also chock full of symbolism and meaning and thoughtful messages about our life and times, but mostly it was just a really good read.

The book’s about Theo, a 12 year old who lives in New York City and has the misfortune to be visiting an art museum the day some terrorists blow it up.

Theo survives, and The Goldfinch is the story of Theo’s next 18 years as he cobbles together both a makeshift family and a sense of himself. He’s survived the unthinkable, which is good. But then he starts to make choices himself that are unthinkable, which is bad. And Theo’s friends and neighbors aren’t exactly paragons either.

But just as you start despairing for our society and wishing you’d just watched another Kardashian marathon instead, Tartt brings it around to a conclusion that feels honest for the characters and – huzzah! – inspiring to the reader.

I love books that keep you thinking days after you’ve finished them. That’s staying power. And, in a world that churns through ideas and new, reality stars every week, there’s something to be said for a book that not only talks about legacy but makes a bid to become one. (Click this link to learn more about "The Goldfinch", available at amazon.com, for around $15.)