October 2009
1 post
Review: Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount Jr.
Virgin Mary on a piece of toast (never, you notice, on a bagel), weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Blount dubs himself a “shade-tree lexicographer,” which calls to mind Sunday afternoons tinkering with a dictionary instead of a timing belt or carburetor. Once she even pronounced steak to rhyme with leak. Despite some pretty fancy etymologizing, Blount still comes across as a...
September 2009
5 posts
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time...
Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork.. Wellington’s owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. He takes everything that he sees gat face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case...
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances. A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family’s struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young...
Women Are Crazy, Men Are Stupid by Howard J Morris
Since the dawn of time, when the first smitten caveboy tried to woo the object of his affections by shoving her into the mud, men have demonstrated that when it comes to women, they are profoundly stupid. And when it comes to men, women — no matter how intelligent or mature — are completely crazy.
Based on this simple yet groundbreaking insight, comedy writers and real-life couple...
Review: THE SHADOW PARTY by David Horowitz and...
America is under attack. But the principal culprits are not foreign terrorists. They are influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party. New York Times best-selling authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe (both former radicals) weave together riveting history, investigative reporting, and cutting political analysis to...
HOPE RISING by Kim Meeder
A girl, mute since the loss of her parents, speaks her first words-to an abused and emaciated horse. This moment was really the birth of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in Oregon, writes Kim Meeder, the founder and operator of the ranch that rescues abused horses and gives disadvantaged children a chance to care for them. Readers will need an entire box of tissues handy for this collection of real-life...
August 2009
9 posts
PUSH by Sapphire
Brutalized Harlem teenager, Sapphire (American Dreams), a writer affiliated with the Nuyorican poets, charts the psychic damage of the most ghettoized of inner-city inhabitants. Obese, dark-skinned, HIV-positive, bullied by her sexually abusive mother, Clareece, Precious Jones is, at the novel’s outset, pregnant for the second time with her father’s child. (Precious had her first...
A GATE AT THE STAIRS by Lorrie Moore Review
Lorrie Moore knits together the shadow of 9/11 and a young girl’s bumpy coming-of-age in this luminous, heart-wrenchingly wry novel—the author’s first in 15 years. Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown girl weathering a clumsy college year in the Athens of the Midwest, is taken on as prospective nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a...
TRUE COMPASS: A MEMOIR by Edward M. Kennedy Review
The youngest of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, he came of age among siblings from whom much was expected. As a young man, he played a key role in the presidential campaign of his brother John F. Kennedy, recounted here in loving detail. In 1962 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he began a fascinating political education and became a legislator. In this...
THE HEALING OF AMERICA by T.R. Reid Review
In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany,...
THE FORGOTTEN MAN by Amity Shlaes Review
The Forgotten Man comes from the pen of a veteran journalist and economics reporter. Rather than telling a new story, she tells an old one (scarcely lacking for historians) in a fresh way. Shlaes brings to the tale an emphasis on economic realities and consequences, especially when seen from the perspective of monetarist theory, and a focus on particular individuals and events, both celebrated and...
THE END OF FAITH by Sam Harris Review
In The End Of Faith Sam Harris cranks out blunt, hard-hitting chapters to make his case for why faith itself is the most dangerous element of modern life. And if the devil’s in the details, then you’ll find Satan waiting at the back of the book in the very substantial notes section where Harris saves his more esoteric discussions to avoid sidetracking the urgency of his message.
...
GOAT SONG by Brad Kessler Review
Brad Kessler’s Goat Song - an account of tending a small herd of milking goats in Vermont captures both the lush, poetic paradise of rural life and the raw, unrelenting drama of dairying. Kessler, a Saab-driving ex-Manhattanite, purchases two Nubian goats, breeds them and helps his wife, Dona, a trained doula, attend to the birth of four goat kids the following spring. The amusing zoomorphic...
ELEVENTH VICTIM by Nancy Grace Review
As a young psychology student, Hailey Dean’s world explodes when Will, her fiancé, is murdered just weeks before their wedding. Reeling, she fights back the only way she knows how: In court, prosecuting violent crime…putting away the bad guys one rapist, doper, and killer at a time. But dedicating her life to justice takes a toll after years of courtroom battles and the endless tide of...
THE VORTEX by Esther & Jerry Hicks Review
This Leading Edge work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, who present The Teachings of Abraham, will help you understand every relationship you are currently involved in as well as every relationship you have ever experienced. The Vortex uncovers a myriad of false premises that are at the heart of every uncomfortable relationship issue, and guides you to a clear understanding of the powerful creative...
July 2009
1 post
THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Angel’s Game is a strange creature, a literary centaur in which a meditation on the craft of writing is combined with a thriller about David Martín, a master of pulp and Grand Guignol.
The Los Angeles Times
June 2009
1 post
THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK by Chimamanda Ngozi
While she writes of Nigeria with affection, Adichie never sees it through rose-tinted spectacles. … The stories are compelling and diverse but make up a mere 218 pages – leaving the reader wanting more from this major African talent.
-Daily Expres
May 2009
4 posts
SHANGHAI GIRLS by Lisa See
“See’s kaleidoscopic saga transits from the barbaric horrors of Japanese occupation to the sobering indignities suffered by foreigners in 1930s Hollywood while offering a buoyant and lustrous paean to the bonds of sisterhood.
-Booklist
THE WALKING PEOPLE by Mary Beth Keane
Mary Beth Keane has produced a compelling drama of transatlantic Irish life, told with a truthfulness that is felt not only in the sweep and charm of the story but in its very sentences. The Walking People is an irresistible blend of narrative and syntactic authenticity.
- Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureat
BROOKLYN by Colm Tóibín
The scene is eerie, falsely naïve. We may accept what a village girl from Ireland,which remained neutral during the war, may not have known, but Tóibín’s delivery of the racial and ethnic discoveries of a clueless young woman are disconcerting.
- Publishers Weekly
WATER, STONE, HEART by Will North
The love story has some great moments, but these aren’t enough to overpower the flood of treacle and lethargic storytelling.
Publishers Weekly
April 2009
5 posts
A VISIBLE DARKNESS by Michael Gregorio
While some readers will anticipate the solution, the pitch-perfect evocation of the period and the compelling, gloomy atmosphere more than compensate for any lack of surprise.
-Publishers Weekly
CARPENTARIA by Alexis Wright
Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It’s brutal and confronting and it’s sad and funny at the same time. Like the Gulf Country itself, this is big enough to lose yourself in. Once in, you may never want to be found.
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HONOLULU by Alan Brennert
Veteran Hollywood writer Alan Brennert scored a book-club hit with Moloka’i and has apparently one-upped himself with his freestanding follow-up about early-twentieth-century Hawaii, which was our readers’ clear favorite… a lovely novel.
-Elle Magazine
EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED by Wells...
Every one of the stories … is polished and distinctive. … His range is wide and his language impeccable, never strained or fussy. His grasp of human psychology is fresh and un-Freudianizing.
-New York Times
A QUIET FLAME by Philip Kerr
Fans of the earlier series titles will love the extended sections that re-create the grimly decadent atmosphere of the last days of the Weimar Republic. Highly recommended.
-Libary Journal