Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2008, 403 pgs
Read : 8/2008
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters. Fourth in the series that I’ve read.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Kristi Bentz, having recovered from her last encounter with a sadistic monster in bestseller Jackson's Absolute Fear, faces an equally terrifying ordeal in this frantic paranormal thriller. Four female students associated with a vampire cult have gone missing at Baton Rouge's All Saints College, where Kristi is pursuing a journalism degree and plans to write about true crime. Kristi by chance rents an apartment once tenanted by one of the missing girls and begins investigating the case, thinking it might make a great first book. Kristi's old college sweetheart, Jay McKnight, provides an unexpected surprise (and protection) when he shows up as the fill-in for one of Kristi's professors. Not too surprisingly, Vlad, the mysterious serial killer, sets his sights on Kristi. Adding hot sauce to the blood bath is Kristi's new supernatural ability to detect anyone marked for a life-or-death struggle when she sees a person go from living color to deadly gray or black-and-white. Jackson peppers the action with insights into the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies trying to solve crimes in post-Katrina Louisiana.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Absolute Fear
Absolute Fear by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2008, 480 pgs
Read : 7/08
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works.
Mystery, 2008, 480 pgs
Read : 7/08
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works.
One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel
One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel by Jim Fergus
Fiction, 1998, 302 pgs
Read : 9/08
Book Club : B&N Women’s Book Club
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Although this is fiction, I enjoyed the story and learning about the ways of the Cheyenne, and how the white women, “the brides” were able to become a part of their “tribe”. It was sad that the peace and harmony which the WOMEN were able to bring between the “whites” and the Indians was destroyed by the MEN of both cultures. I would recommend this book.
Summary : From Kirkus Reviews
Long, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutionsoffering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill with their husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Favorite Passages:
There is beauty and brutality in the novel from both the Indians and the “White man”. As Brother Anthony concludes the journals of May Dodd, he relates the horrors of what happened to the Cheyenne community of Chief Little Wolfe after the village is destroyed and most are killed by the US Army. It is tragic what happened as he contemplates these tragedies.
Pg 293….Perhaps some scholars of religion might be tempted to find here a lesson in the vengeful hand of God. But God is not vengeful, my children. God is full of Grace, Light and infinite Mercy. God did not kill the Shoshone babies. Nor did he punish the Cheyennes in retribution by killing their babies. Misguided men on both sides slaughtered the infants. And God took the souls of His children to His Kingdom.
Fiction, 1998, 302 pgs
Read : 9/08
Book Club : B&N Women’s Book Club
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Although this is fiction, I enjoyed the story and learning about the ways of the Cheyenne, and how the white women, “the brides” were able to become a part of their “tribe”. It was sad that the peace and harmony which the WOMEN were able to bring between the “whites” and the Indians was destroyed by the MEN of both cultures. I would recommend this book.
Summary : From Kirkus Reviews
Long, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutionsoffering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill with their husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Favorite Passages:
There is beauty and brutality in the novel from both the Indians and the “White man”. As Brother Anthony concludes the journals of May Dodd, he relates the horrors of what happened to the Cheyenne community of Chief Little Wolfe after the village is destroyed and most are killed by the US Army. It is tragic what happened as he contemplates these tragedies.
Pg 293….Perhaps some scholars of religion might be tempted to find here a lesson in the vengeful hand of God. But God is not vengeful, my children. God is full of Grace, Light and infinite Mercy. God did not kill the Shoshone babies. Nor did he punish the Cheyennes in retribution by killing their babies. Misguided men on both sides slaughtered the infants. And God took the souls of His children to His Kingdom.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Atmospheric Disturbances
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Fiction, 2008, 240 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Entertainment Weekly
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 1.0 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I did not finish the book…read 58 pages. I didn’t enjoy the story…it was too far out….to abstract. If it had been part of a book club I might have finished it to take part in the discussion.
Summary : Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good
Fiction, 2008, 240 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Entertainment Weekly
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 1.0 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I did not finish the book…read 58 pages. I didn’t enjoy the story…it was too far out….to abstract. If it had been part of a book club I might have finished it to take part in the discussion.
Summary : Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good
The Prestige
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Fiction, 1995, 360 pgs
Read: 8/08
Recommended by : Page-a-Day Book Calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Enjoyable book which kept me reading….an interesting twist at the end.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Favorite Passages:
Pg 101…..The general rule of magic always holds good—what is seen is not what is actually being done.
Fiction, 1995, 360 pgs
Read: 8/08
Recommended by : Page-a-Day Book Calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Enjoyable book which kept me reading….an interesting twist at the end.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Favorite Passages:
Pg 101…..The general rule of magic always holds good—what is seen is not what is actually being done.
A Feather on the Breath of God
A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez
Fiction, 1995, 180 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Page-of-Day Books calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.5 / 4.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: This was a sad book about the loneliness and longing of immigrants, and the effect on the children. It was an insightful and haunting story told by a nameless narrator. I would recommend it to others.
Summary :
From Kirkus Reviews With a subtle blend of fierceness and evanescence, Nunez's debut comments profoundly on the lasting effects of the immigrant experience and the haunting powers of family. The unnamed female narrator tells a four-part story that begins with her father, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant who moved to Brooklyn at the age of 12 or 13. She understands little about this workaholic who spent most of his time away from home until cancer felled him. Why didn't he ever learn to speak English? Why, in his 30s, did he switch his name from Chang to the Hispanic surname of his mother? Why did he refuse to discuss anything at all with his children? She can't answer these questions. She can merely collect what she does know and accept that it's too late to understand him. Her German-born mother, Christa, was her father's opposite: Full of rage, grace, beauty, laughter, and sorrow, Christa clung to her German heritage and spoke constantly of her past. The book's second section, which deals with her, is about love and nostalgia, about seeing with all her flaws the one individual who most shaped the narrator's life (``I seem to remember my mother as though she were a landscape rather than a person''). The third part is devoted to the narrator's dream of becoming a ballerina, which, as she poignantly states, ``begins with the dream of being beautiful.'' Here she makes some caustic connections between foot binding and toe shoes; she also recognizes that in ballet she sought escape and discipline. The final section revolves around an ill-advised love affair. The narrator examines the theory that no matter how far you go in life ``you must stick with your own class'' and sees in herself the intense desire to please, charm, and provoke desire. A rich, intelligent tapestry of the connections between language, love, beauty, and forgiveness.
Fiction, 1995, 180 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Page-of-Day Books calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.5 / 4.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: This was a sad book about the loneliness and longing of immigrants, and the effect on the children. It was an insightful and haunting story told by a nameless narrator. I would recommend it to others.
Summary :
From Kirkus Reviews With a subtle blend of fierceness and evanescence, Nunez's debut comments profoundly on the lasting effects of the immigrant experience and the haunting powers of family. The unnamed female narrator tells a four-part story that begins with her father, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant who moved to Brooklyn at the age of 12 or 13. She understands little about this workaholic who spent most of his time away from home until cancer felled him. Why didn't he ever learn to speak English? Why, in his 30s, did he switch his name from Chang to the Hispanic surname of his mother? Why did he refuse to discuss anything at all with his children? She can't answer these questions. She can merely collect what she does know and accept that it's too late to understand him. Her German-born mother, Christa, was her father's opposite: Full of rage, grace, beauty, laughter, and sorrow, Christa clung to her German heritage and spoke constantly of her past. The book's second section, which deals with her, is about love and nostalgia, about seeing with all her flaws the one individual who most shaped the narrator's life (``I seem to remember my mother as though she were a landscape rather than a person''). The third part is devoted to the narrator's dream of becoming a ballerina, which, as she poignantly states, ``begins with the dream of being beautiful.'' Here she makes some caustic connections between foot binding and toe shoes; she also recognizes that in ballet she sought escape and discipline. The final section revolves around an ill-advised love affair. The narrator examines the theory that no matter how far you go in life ``you must stick with your own class'' and sees in herself the intense desire to please, charm, and provoke desire. A rich, intelligent tapestry of the connections between language, love, beauty, and forgiveness.
Shiver
Shiver by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2007, 512 pgs
Read : 6/08
Book Club : FL-Mystery BC (5/08)
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson's mysteries and would recommend this book to others.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, the new romantic thriller by bestseller Jackson, her first to be published in hardcover, fits all the usual pieces into all the usual holes. A psycho sexual serial killer stalks victims connected to an insane asylum, shut down 20 years earlier but still standing in all its creepy abandonment. Abby Chastain, a portrait photographer on the rebound from a bad divorce, is trying to wean herself off men. Det. Reuben Montoya, the virile, not-by-the-book cop (last seen in 2002's Cold Blooded), is assigned to track down the serial killer. Along the way, Montoya develops—against his better judgment—a soft spot for the libido-tingling Chastain, now in peril because her mother was either murdered or committed suicide at the old asylum just before it closed. Fans of the prolific Jackson (Fatal Burn) should be pleased, but those unfamiliar with the conventions of romance fiction should be prepared for characters who "growl" rather than simply "say" and descriptions of physical beauty along the lines of a "body that wouldn't quit."
Mystery, 2007, 512 pgs
Read : 6/08
Book Club : FL-Mystery BC (5/08)
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson's mysteries and would recommend this book to others.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, the new romantic thriller by bestseller Jackson, her first to be published in hardcover, fits all the usual pieces into all the usual holes. A psycho sexual serial killer stalks victims connected to an insane asylum, shut down 20 years earlier but still standing in all its creepy abandonment. Abby Chastain, a portrait photographer on the rebound from a bad divorce, is trying to wean herself off men. Det. Reuben Montoya, the virile, not-by-the-book cop (last seen in 2002's Cold Blooded), is assigned to track down the serial killer. Along the way, Montoya develops—against his better judgment—a soft spot for the libido-tingling Chastain, now in peril because her mother was either murdered or committed suicide at the old asylum just before it closed. Fans of the prolific Jackson (Fatal Burn) should be pleased, but those unfamiliar with the conventions of romance fiction should be prepared for characters who "growl" rather than simply "say" and descriptions of physical beauty along the lines of a "body that wouldn't quit."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
People of the Book
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Fiction, 2008, 372 pages
Ratings: 4.0 (Amazon 4.0)
Recommended by: Book Reviews - Book Pages
Summary :
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008.
Favorite Passages :
This book weaved a story around the history of the book, the "Sarajevo Haggadah", an illustrated manuscript dating back to the middle ages (origin @1350 in Barcelona) and the life of the fictional person sent to restore it the spring of 1996.
The first passage is from a conversation between the priest in charge of "removing the corrupting influence of the Jews" at the time the the Inquisition and a Rabbi. The priest wanted the rabbi to have the Jewish publishing houses to censor themselves, to which the priest replies:......(page 156) ....And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you."
Second passage is after the protagonist, Hanna, in a conversation with her mother after she learns, at the age of 30, that her father is a famous author. Growing up, she knew nothing of her father and had a very sterile, strained relationship with her mother. She continued to try to maintain contact until she learned her mother, a famous neurosurgeon, had let her father die of a "bleeder" after surgery for a tumor, because he would have been blind and the mother thought he would not have wanted to live if he were blind. After the discussion where when she learned this......(page 345) I don't see her anymore. We don't even go through the motions. Orzen had been right about one thing: some stories just don't have happy ending." The passage really made me ponder this idea ! ! !
Fiction, 2008, 372 pages
Ratings: 4.0 (Amazon 4.0)
Recommended by: Book Reviews - Book Pages
Summary :
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008.
Favorite Passages :
This book weaved a story around the history of the book, the "Sarajevo Haggadah", an illustrated manuscript dating back to the middle ages (origin @1350 in Barcelona) and the life of the fictional person sent to restore it the spring of 1996.
The first passage is from a conversation between the priest in charge of "removing the corrupting influence of the Jews" at the time the the Inquisition and a Rabbi. The priest wanted the rabbi to have the Jewish publishing houses to censor themselves, to which the priest replies:......(page 156) ....And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you."
Second passage is after the protagonist, Hanna, in a conversation with her mother after she learns, at the age of 30, that her father is a famous author. Growing up, she knew nothing of her father and had a very sterile, strained relationship with her mother. She continued to try to maintain contact until she learned her mother, a famous neurosurgeon, had let her father die of a "bleeder" after surgery for a tumor, because he would have been blind and the mother thought he would not have wanted to live if he were blind. After the discussion where when she learned this......(page 345) I don't see her anymore. We don't even go through the motions. Orzen had been right about one thing: some stories just don't have happy ending." The passage really made me ponder this idea ! ! !
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Divisadero
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Fiction, 2007, 273 pages
Rating: 4.0 (4.0 Amazon)
Book Club: Naples Critics Choice - February, 2008
Summary: From Publishers Weekly
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.
Fiction, 2007, 273 pages
Rating: 4.0 (4.0 Amazon)
Book Club: Naples Critics Choice - February, 2008
Summary: From Publishers Weekly
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Winter of our Discontent
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Fiction, 1961, 276 pages.
Rating: 4.0 (4.5 Amazon)
Book Club: FL Novel Night - February, 2008
Summary:
Google Books: A New Englander learns the bitter lesson that it is not possible to be a little dishonest
Atlantic on-line: In The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck turns for the first time in his versatile career to the East Coast for his setting and character. Bay Hampton, where on Good Friday morning his new story begins, could be any small seaport on Long Island or on the coast between New York and Boston. It is a village once famous for its Yankee skippers and sea-plucked fortunes, now being run by the new blood from Ireland and Italy. Ethan Allen Hawley, whose name echoes the past, is a gay, unaggressive spirit working as a clerk for Alfio Marullo; like his father before him, Eth has lost the acquisitiveness of his forebears, and with it what remained of family fortune. At the age of thirty-six all he has left is the old Hawley place, a couple of frankly envious children, and the nest egg of $6500 which his patient, pretty Irish wife, Mary, inherited from her brother.
The meaning of Good Friday was burned into Ethan as a boy, and it is ironic that on this day a series of small provocations -- a bribe offered and rejected, a fortuneteller at her cards, a remark of Mary's that prodded under the skin -- should startle him from his rut and even launch him on a new career. Eth lends himself to the conspiracy of events in such a human, doubting-Thomas way that before he knows it he is in up to his knees. He has two charming accomplices in Margie and Mary, the one tempting, the other pushing, and the gradual debasement of his honesty is absorbing and rather shocking to watch. It all happens to so effortlessly.
That his years at Harvard and his prowess in World War II should have left Ethan so feckless and so incompetent must be taken on faith; these phases of his career are touched so lightly as to be superficial, but what is genuine, familiar, and identifiable is the way Americans beat the game: the land-taking before the airport is built, the quick bucks, the plagiarism, the abuse of trust, the near theft, which, if it succeeds, can be glossed over -- these are the guilts with which Ethan will have to live in his coming prosperity, and one wonders how happily. John Steinbeck was born to write of the sea coast, and he does so with savor and love. His dialogue is full of life, the entrapment of Ethan is ingenious, and the morality in this novel marks Mr. Steinbeck's return to the mood and the concern with which he wrote The Grapes of Wrath.
Favorite Passages:
Steinbeck has a way with words. There are several passages which I marked as I was reading this book.
pg 51....(Ethan Hawley about Mary) When she had gone up to the bathroom, I put my note to her in my pocket. And I still didn't know. Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of an other? What are you like in there? Mary -- do you hear? Who are you in there?
pg 61.....(Ethan about Margie Young-Hunt) I had never seen her before. I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. It's scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people. Maybe that means ---hell, it's complicated. I agreed with myself to think about such things at night when I couldn't sleep. Forgetting to open on time scared me. ......
pg 70....(Ethan) I remember thinking how wise a man was H.C. Anderson. The king told his secrets down a well, and his secrets were safe. A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has a many version s as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure......
pg 257.....(Mr. Baker looking at Ethan after learning Ethan owned Danny's property) When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn't known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.
pg 276...(Ethan after deciding not to commit suicide..about Ellen) I had to get back -- had to return the talisman to its new owner. Else another light might go out.
Fiction, 1961, 276 pages.
Rating: 4.0 (4.5 Amazon)
Book Club: FL Novel Night - February, 2008
Summary:
Google Books: A New Englander learns the bitter lesson that it is not possible to be a little dishonest
Atlantic on-line: In The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck turns for the first time in his versatile career to the East Coast for his setting and character. Bay Hampton, where on Good Friday morning his new story begins, could be any small seaport on Long Island or on the coast between New York and Boston. It is a village once famous for its Yankee skippers and sea-plucked fortunes, now being run by the new blood from Ireland and Italy. Ethan Allen Hawley, whose name echoes the past, is a gay, unaggressive spirit working as a clerk for Alfio Marullo; like his father before him, Eth has lost the acquisitiveness of his forebears, and with it what remained of family fortune. At the age of thirty-six all he has left is the old Hawley place, a couple of frankly envious children, and the nest egg of $6500 which his patient, pretty Irish wife, Mary, inherited from her brother.
The meaning of Good Friday was burned into Ethan as a boy, and it is ironic that on this day a series of small provocations -- a bribe offered and rejected, a fortuneteller at her cards, a remark of Mary's that prodded under the skin -- should startle him from his rut and even launch him on a new career. Eth lends himself to the conspiracy of events in such a human, doubting-Thomas way that before he knows it he is in up to his knees. He has two charming accomplices in Margie and Mary, the one tempting, the other pushing, and the gradual debasement of his honesty is absorbing and rather shocking to watch. It all happens to so effortlessly.
That his years at Harvard and his prowess in World War II should have left Ethan so feckless and so incompetent must be taken on faith; these phases of his career are touched so lightly as to be superficial, but what is genuine, familiar, and identifiable is the way Americans beat the game: the land-taking before the airport is built, the quick bucks, the plagiarism, the abuse of trust, the near theft, which, if it succeeds, can be glossed over -- these are the guilts with which Ethan will have to live in his coming prosperity, and one wonders how happily. John Steinbeck was born to write of the sea coast, and he does so with savor and love. His dialogue is full of life, the entrapment of Ethan is ingenious, and the morality in this novel marks Mr. Steinbeck's return to the mood and the concern with which he wrote The Grapes of Wrath.
Favorite Passages:
Steinbeck has a way with words. There are several passages which I marked as I was reading this book.
pg 51....(Ethan Hawley about Mary) When she had gone up to the bathroom, I put my note to her in my pocket. And I still didn't know. Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of an other? What are you like in there? Mary -- do you hear? Who are you in there?
pg 61.....(Ethan about Margie Young-Hunt) I had never seen her before. I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. It's scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people. Maybe that means ---hell, it's complicated. I agreed with myself to think about such things at night when I couldn't sleep. Forgetting to open on time scared me. ......
pg 70....(Ethan) I remember thinking how wise a man was H.C. Anderson. The king told his secrets down a well, and his secrets were safe. A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has a many version s as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure......
pg 257.....(Mr. Baker looking at Ethan after learning Ethan owned Danny's property) When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn't known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.
pg 276...(Ethan after deciding not to commit suicide..about Ellen) I had to get back -- had to return the talisman to its new owner. Else another light might go out.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home by Nando Parrado
Memoir, 2006, pg 284
Rating: 5.0 (5.0 Amazon)
Book Club: FL - Lakes Library - February, 2008
Recommendation: I enjoyed the book. Once started, it pulled you in, even though you knew what was going to happen. For me, the questions about God--- Why did God let this happen?.....Why did some die and others live? How does God answer prayers? Why are some "not" answered? ----are questions I've asked at times in my life, just recently with my nephew Jonathan's death from leukemia. This book, in Nando's discussion of how he dealt with this tradegy, raised many of the same questions....and Nando discussed them from his view and others.
I read the book in 2 days, and then went back and re-read some of the passages that dealt with "Why did this happen?" and as important...."How do you go on after you return to the 'world'"?
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes. Not immediately rescued, the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive and after 72 days were saved. Rugby team member Parrado has written a beautiful story of friendship, tragedy and perseverance. High in the Andes, with a fractured skull, eating the flesh of his teammates and friends, Parrado calmly ponders the cruelties of fate, the power of the natural world and the possibility of continued existence. "I would live from moment to moment and from breath to breath, until I had used up all the life I had." Parrado, who for the past 10 years has been giving inspirational talks based on his experiences, lost his mother and sister in the crash. Struggling to stay alive, his guide becomes his beloved father: "each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death." More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love.
From School Library Journal: Adult/High School–In 1972, Parrado and his rugby teammates from Uruguay were flying to Chile to play a match against the national team. Crossing the Andes, the aircraft crashed on a remote, high-altitude, glaciated slope. This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal. The many forms of courage exhibited and the sustaining power of love of family are the basis of the narrative as the group supported one another in a collective refusal to surrender to the mountain. Parrado credits their physical conditioning and the rigorous team ethic inherent in the sport as the foundation for the trust and allegiance that enabled the men to battle the odds. Reduced to the most elemental human needs and learning from a radio transmission that rescue efforts had been abandoned, they reluctantly realized that their only food source was the bodies of the victims. Parrado was respectful of the spiritual faith of those who clung to a belief in rescue, but put his energy into engineering a plan and acted as a leader of the expeditionaries who hiked through the perilous mountains to find help. A detailed chronicle of these events was presented in Piers Paul Read's Alive (Avon, 1975), but Parrado's memoir offers a reflective expansion of that work. Dramatic photographs are included
Favorite Passages:
pg 84....Nando talking with Arturo Nogueira, who suffered multiple painful fractures of both legs......"What good is God to us?" I replied.(Nando) "Why would he let my mother and sister die so senselessly? If he loves us so much, why does he leave is here to suffer?"
"You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child," Arturo answered. "The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answered your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehensions. We can't understand His will; He can't be explained in a book. He didn't abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to so with our being here. God does not change, He simply is. I don't pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be closer to Him, and when I pray I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don't need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already."......
Memoir, 2006, pg 284
Rating: 5.0 (5.0 Amazon)
Book Club: FL - Lakes Library - February, 2008
Recommendation: I enjoyed the book. Once started, it pulled you in, even though you knew what was going to happen. For me, the questions about God--- Why did God let this happen?.....Why did some die and others live? How does God answer prayers? Why are some "not" answered? ----are questions I've asked at times in my life, just recently with my nephew Jonathan's death from leukemia. This book, in Nando's discussion of how he dealt with this tradegy, raised many of the same questions....and Nando discussed them from his view and others.
I read the book in 2 days, and then went back and re-read some of the passages that dealt with "Why did this happen?" and as important...."How do you go on after you return to the 'world'"?
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes. Not immediately rescued, the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive and after 72 days were saved. Rugby team member Parrado has written a beautiful story of friendship, tragedy and perseverance. High in the Andes, with a fractured skull, eating the flesh of his teammates and friends, Parrado calmly ponders the cruelties of fate, the power of the natural world and the possibility of continued existence. "I would live from moment to moment and from breath to breath, until I had used up all the life I had." Parrado, who for the past 10 years has been giving inspirational talks based on his experiences, lost his mother and sister in the crash. Struggling to stay alive, his guide becomes his beloved father: "each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death." More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love.
From School Library Journal: Adult/High School–In 1972, Parrado and his rugby teammates from Uruguay were flying to Chile to play a match against the national team. Crossing the Andes, the aircraft crashed on a remote, high-altitude, glaciated slope. This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal. The many forms of courage exhibited and the sustaining power of love of family are the basis of the narrative as the group supported one another in a collective refusal to surrender to the mountain. Parrado credits their physical conditioning and the rigorous team ethic inherent in the sport as the foundation for the trust and allegiance that enabled the men to battle the odds. Reduced to the most elemental human needs and learning from a radio transmission that rescue efforts had been abandoned, they reluctantly realized that their only food source was the bodies of the victims. Parrado was respectful of the spiritual faith of those who clung to a belief in rescue, but put his energy into engineering a plan and acted as a leader of the expeditionaries who hiked through the perilous mountains to find help. A detailed chronicle of these events was presented in Piers Paul Read's Alive (Avon, 1975), but Parrado's memoir offers a reflective expansion of that work. Dramatic photographs are included
Favorite Passages:
pg 84....Nando talking with Arturo Nogueira, who suffered multiple painful fractures of both legs......"What good is God to us?" I replied.(Nando) "Why would he let my mother and sister die so senselessly? If he loves us so much, why does he leave is here to suffer?"
"You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child," Arturo answered. "The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answered your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehensions. We can't understand His will; He can't be explained in a book. He didn't abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to so with our being here. God does not change, He simply is. I don't pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be closer to Him, and when I pray I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don't need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already."......
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Uncommon Reader
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Fiction, 2007, 120 pages
Rating: 4 (Amazon 4.5)
Recommended by: Dr. Elaine Newton (Phil's Critics Choice leader)
Recommendation: An interesting book, quick read, with insight into the power of literature.
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: Briskly original and subversively funny, this novella from popular British writer Bennett (Untold Stories; Tony-winning play The History Boys) sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity. With the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility, plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous. There are lessons packed in here, but Bennett doesn't wallop readers with them. It's a fun little book.
From Bookmarks Magazine: .....A political and literary satire, it pokes fun at the British monarchy while revealing the lasting power of literature. Reviews suggest that "The Uncommon Reader" should be enjoyed like the sort of reading it espouses: casually, but with a sensitivity to serious things as well.
Favorite Passages:
pg 29:....'I can understand,' he said. 'Your Majesty's need to pass the time.'
'Pass the time?' said the Queen. 'Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it......'
Fiction, 2007, 120 pages
Rating: 4 (Amazon 4.5)
Recommended by: Dr. Elaine Newton (Phil's Critics Choice leader)
Recommendation: An interesting book, quick read, with insight into the power of literature.
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly: Briskly original and subversively funny, this novella from popular British writer Bennett (Untold Stories; Tony-winning play The History Boys) sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity. With the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility, plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous. There are lessons packed in here, but Bennett doesn't wallop readers with them. It's a fun little book.
From Bookmarks Magazine: .....A political and literary satire, it pokes fun at the British monarchy while revealing the lasting power of literature. Reviews suggest that "The Uncommon Reader" should be enjoyed like the sort of reading it espouses: casually, but with a sensitivity to serious things as well.
Favorite Passages:
pg 29:....'I can understand,' he said. 'Your Majesty's need to pass the time.'
'Pass the time?' said the Queen. 'Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it......'
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