The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald Page A

but I did once work in a dining hall in a school, so I know how to do the dishes. And I’ve been behind the till in the bookstore for years.’
    â€˜I’m sure,’ he said. ‘But it’s not really the same thing, offering a beer or a cup of tea to a guest, and that guest offering to do the dishes in return.’
    He could see that she was struggling to come up with an objection.
    â€˜Maybe not,’ she said eventually. ‘But they would have been doing me a favour. I need something to do. I’ve got to be able to pay my way at some point.’
    â€˜Are you bored here already?’
    â€˜It feels like I’ve had nothing to do for so long. How am I going to cope with two months of not doing anything other than reading and being bought coffees?’
    Tom glanced at his watch. He was late for work. ‘But you knew what kind of town Broken Wheel was before you came, didn’t you?’
    â€˜Yeah …’ she said hesitantly. Her expression revealed that she hadn’t. ‘But it’s not the town so much as not working. I’ve never really had a long holiday before.’
    She turned away from him and leaned against the shop window. He glanced at his watch again. He really should get going soon.
    Sara had almost forgotten that Tom was standing there next to her. It seemed stupid that the shop should be standing empty, she thought, even though she wasn’t quite sure why this particular shop should be any different to the others, or why it deserved its fate any less. She tried to picture a shop selling computer games or something similarly modern. Not computer games, she thought decisively. A bakery would work. Everyone likes fresh bread. Though maybe there wasn’t enough of a customer base in Broken Wheel to support an entire shop.
    For a while, she amused herself by imagining it as a Starbucks. She could just see the stressed-out teenagers in green aprons behind the dirty grey counter while George tried to work out what a decaf non-fat mocha latte extra-shot espresso was, and whether he wanted one. She glanced at Tom. For some reason, she didn’t think he would be particularly impressed by a Starbucks. He looked back at her with an amused wry half-smile. Sara wasn’t sure if he was laughing at her or at some private joke he had no intention of sharing.
    And it was there, outside Amy’s empty shop, that the shadow of an idea started to form. Still much too vague to tell anyone about it, or barely even admit to herself, but it was an idea, definitely an idea.
    â€˜Tom,’ she said, ‘could you drive me home?’

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    Broken Wheel, Iowa
    May 11, 2010
    Sara Lindqvist
    Kornvägen 7, 1 tr
    136 38 Haninge
    Sweden
    My dear Sara,
    I really can’t say which of the American classics you should read. In actual fact, I think about as much of the notion of ‘classic’ as you do, but at least the literary critics who compile those lists have a good sense of humor. How else can you explain them adding Mark Twain’s wonderful books to their lists, given his view that ‘a classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read’? Unless it’s some kind of disguised jibe, but they surely can’t be that petty?
    Though I don’t think that justice is the main argument against classics lists. Or rather, in a way it’s clearly a question of justice, but not against those who don’t make it. No, the books I feel sorry for are the ones they add to these lists. Take Mark Twain again. Once, when Tom was young, he came to me complaining that he had to read
Huckleberry Finn
for junior high.
Huckleberry Finn
! Our critics and educators have got a lot to answer for when they manage to make young boys see stories about rebellion and adventure and ballsiness as a chore. Do you understand what I mean? The real crime of these lists isn’t that they leave deserving books off them, but