YWA Teacher Ed Casper Shares Some of His Favorite Books and More

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Ed Casper has taught at YWA for 15 years and is a much loved teacher. Ed loves movies, music, and books. He is knowledgeable about these things and so much more. For 20 years Ed was in two book clubs, so he is a great person to chat with about book recommendations. This week on the YWA Blog Ed shares a list of some of his favorite books. Learn more about Ed and see his book picks below.

How long have you been teaching at Yellow Wood Academy?

I’ve been teaching at YWA for about 15 years.

You are an avid reader and you were a member of two different book clubs for around 20 years. Can you tell us about some of your favorite books?

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed being in the book clubs is that I like the people. But I also like talking about books. Another reason I like book clubs is that I get exposed to books I otherwise would not read. Some of them have become my favorites. For instance, I loved The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge (about the tragic British expedition to the South Pole), The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (the first book to make me cry), and The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (this woman can write)!

Some of Ed’s Favorite Books:

◦ House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski — post-modern suspense (awesome typography).

◦ The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky — love this novel. Starts out boring but ends up moving.

◦ Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell — all kinds of genres. Pure, well-written escapism. It is like nothing you’ve ever read, I guarantee it!

◦ The Quincunx by Charles Palliser — wonderful, clever faux Victorian novel. The name refers to a family crest design.

◦ Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust — for me, like a warm bath to revisit. It's sometimes boring but there are lovely moments and intense insights about jealousy and art and snobbishness and inspiration and a bajillion other things. Serious psychological realism.

◦ Beloved by Toni Morrison — postmodern feminist horror with slavery. My favorite book of the last 50 years (not for everyone, but great nevertheless).

◦ Fathers and Crows by William T Vollmann — difficult novel about Jesuit Missionaries among the Iroquois.

◦ A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace — a book of funny, well-constructed essays.

◦ Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco — postmodern suspense novel about conspiracies.

Get to know Ed Casper:

Before Yellow Wood I was a technical writer/editor, then an English teacher in the Czech Republic for three years.

I love Yellow Wood because I love the idea that I can help give kids the education they need rather than what they typically get. I would have loved to go to someplace like Yellow Wood when I was a kid.

Outside of work I am energized by movies (I love Dune right now, but all kinds of movies, new or old) and reading. I love reading! When I was a kid I used to read cereal boxes at breakfast just to have something to read.

My favorite childhood memory is traveling with my family as we drove across the country. I saw some really cool things and that’s when I first read Frankenstein, my favorite novel.

Other fun facts: I made some corny stop motion movies with potato heads that were on public access TV in the 90s. (I’m old.) I taught English at the Elvis Language School in Prague where the teacher’s lounge was decorated with pictures of Jimi Hendrix. The building was hundreds of years old. It was surreal and cool.

Guest UserDecember 2, 2021