Want a tip on what to read next? We've listed a few along with a brief recommendation that we hope will pique your interest. Enjoy your book adventures!
Few authors do dread as well as Waters ("The Night Watch"). Her latest novel is a ghost story with elements of both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Brideshead Revisited". In post-World War II Britain, the financially struggling Dr. Faraday is called to Hundreds Hall, home of the upper-class Ayreses, now fallen on hard times. Ostensibly there to treat Roderick Ayres for a war injury, Faraday soon sees signs of mental declinefirst in Roderick and later in his mother, Mrs. Ayres. Waters builds the suspense slowly, with the skeptical Faraday refusing to accept the explanations of Roderick or of the maid Betty, who believe that there is a supernatural presence in the house. Meanwhile, Faraday becomes enamored of Roderick's sister Caroline and begins to dream of building a family within the confines of the ruined Hundreds Hall. This spooky, satisfying read has the added pleasure of effectively detailing postwar village life, with its rationing, social strictures, and gossip, all on the edge of Britain's massive change to a social state. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/08.]Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
I couldn't wait to get my hands on Waters new novel, "The Little Stranger". Fingersmith was so popular at our store and it became a favorite among so many of my friends that when I saw Waters new book had been nominated for the Booker Man, I expected a winner and was not disapppointed. I admit, I love a good scary read and especially if it's dripping with atmosphere. The Little Stranger did not disappoint. All of the cozy expected elements are there....the crumbling manor, the upper class family fallen onto hard times. Waters conjures the dread and fear that one would expect if one were being "haunted". This book continues to haunt me days after reading it. ~ Mary
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name . . . .
It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer." Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
- Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
n the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, THE TENDER BAR is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.
This book is the best book to recommend to friends - both male and female. It is about family and how losely families are built by a child when the traditional 2 parent household is missing.... but it's also about breaking away...and building your own destiny.
Hands down, everyone I've recommended this to has loved it- loved it -loved it.
You know, this is a good example of the publisher's write up being completely off about a book. If I had read the blurb before the book I probably wouldn't have read the book. So what I did find was a splendid example of fine American writing. Willa Cather is that comfortable place where one can go, when you want to be surrounded by the familiar. Of course it's never that simple with a Cather novel. Underneath the facade of everyday living her characters live with the rumblings of old pain, hurt, love and ennui. This was a very enjoyable read and it makes me quite put out trying to pick another book that will live up to the experience.
I just stumbled across this book and the others in this series by Miroslav Sasek. With a joyous simplicity, he welcomes you to New York. But this is just one of 4 books where he introduces cities of the world (Paris, Rome, New York and London) are represented all in a lush but transparent water color pallet. The paper stock is wonderful, the colors and illustrations bright but with a retro feel. I had to look up whether this was a newly published book or one from some time ago. I think that's a good test for a book if it stands up to our contemporary sensibilities.
For anyone taking a little one on a trip this would be the perfect book to give them a feel for New York. The history of NY is introduced very playfully and the pages are just alive with New York and some of it's icons.
A BIG Four Star.
Sophie Edgar barely recognizes her husband, Thomas, an amateur naturalist, when he returns from the Amazon, where he had hoped to find his long-dreamed-of mythical butterfly, "Papilio sophia." The optimistic young Edwardian gentleman is gone, replaced by a weak, nearly mute shadow of the man she married. Unable to break through his heartbreaking silence, Sophie must glean what she can from his diaries and boxes of exquisite butterflies in order to discover what happened to Thomas in the lush and perilous jungles of Brazil. In the process, she learns as much about herself and her marriage as she does about the secrets harbored by a haunted soul.
A magnificent debut, written in rich and sensuous prose, Rachael King's "The Sound of Butterflies" is an unforgettable journey from the demure gentility of turn-of-the-twentieth-century England into the heart of darkness.
Such good writing, exotic location, deep and sound characters and a theme that
sounded complex and true through the novel....I highly recommend it.
~ Mary
My dog book pick of the year. Handkerchief required~ I liked the dogs struggle to let his owner know he understood everything. It reminded me to talk to "Scout" more. She appreciates it so when she knows what is going on. I also liked the dog's in the books almost wistful longing for the end of pain and ultimately, his desire to leave this life behind. Very interesting.
"This is the shocking, profoundly moving and morally challenging story... It will haunt you, it will help to complete you... nothing short of miraculous." -Augusten Burroughs "Just when you thought you might have read about every horror of the Holocaust, a book will come along and shine a fierce light upon yet another haunting wrong. SARAH'S KEY is such a novel. In remarkably unsparing, unsentimental prose... through a lens so personal and intimate, it will make you cry--and remember." -Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us
One of the best books that I have read this year is Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski: it was a National Book Award Finalist in 2007. It's a dense book with many layers, but it also has engaging storytelling. It takes place in Thailand and Southeast Asia and includes overlapping stories of anthropologists, a multi-generational family of missionaries, and a writer, and there's a lot of history and culture to learn along the way. It’s an amazing debut novel.
You know, this is a good example of the publisher's write up being completely off about a book. If I had read the blurb before the book I probably wouldn't have read the book. So what I did find was a splendid example of fine American writing. Willa Cather is that comfortable place where one can go, when you want to be surrounded by the familiar. Of course it's never that simple with a Cather novel. Underneath the facade of everyday living her characters live with the rumblings of old pain, hurt, love and ennui. This was a very enjoyable read
and it makes me quite put out trying to pick another book that will live up to the experience.
“Andrew Davidson’s debut novel The Gargoyle, is the kind of book that gives me nextbookaphobia.
This is a condition marked by great fear of starting a new book because there is no way that it can possibly live up to the last book you read, because that last book was really good. I’ve experienced this condition exactly twice this year. First with Ethan Canin’s America America and then again with Elizabeth McCracken’s An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination. It’s a little hard to write (or talk) about The Gargoyle without sounding like a cross between a really excited four-year-old or a complete stoner. ...
After I read this book I quickly dubbed it the new Time-Traveler’s Wife (which is a high compliment).
Like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Gargoyle is a big, beautiful, goobery romance wrapped up in a wonderful, engaging concept.
This has become the new book that I am trying to push off on anyone who will listen, because it was that much fun and I can’t imagine a single literate person who would dislike the journey that Davidson takes the reader on.”
We are fascinated by home. It is the place we lay our heads when we sleep, the place we hang our pictures and prepare our meals; we raise our children there, watch them leave and strike out to build their own places; we love there, are comfortable; we breathe its familiar air and feel our home-earth under our feet. It is a place that is ours, and the claim is strong, not a contract declaring ownership but a deep vein that cuts through the strata of our selves...
For a full staff review of Wildwood, see our blog: http://blog.boonebridgebooks.com
This was an interesting read, one that caught me a little off guard at first. The prose is very spare and simple, which was a of a stumbling block for me; but as I settled into the story, the characters and landscape, it started to make more sense. Oregon's far Southeastern corner is a forbidding place--stark and seemingly uninhabitable. I should have realized that this was the only sort of prose that could accurately reflect the place and the life that McVicker's and Scot are describing.
The stories are of a life that, to my knowledge, no longer exists--even as they were struggling to scrape an existence out of that hard place, it was dying. As I reflect on the time I've spent in those quiet, abandoned places, I remember feeling the echoes of the homesteaders and shepards, the miners and the children raised as much by work and the elements as by their parents.
For those interested in Oregon history, this is a great read.
This is one of those books that follows you, that doesn't allow you to file it away, to forget it. It begins so casually--the narrator is sad but an adult, and life goes on--which belies the pain and love that is his story.
It took me weeks to be able to talk about this book; after reading it I was nonplussed. I had to take some time to digest it, to shake off the pall that it cast over me.
Bottom line: The language is beautiful, as is the story.
There are moments of recognition, when I turned a page in "The Glister" and had the sense of reading this in a book or seeing this on the big screen before. I felt that "ah ha" moment when a murder scene had elements of "Blair Witch Project" or when a pack of children went all "Lord of the Flies" in the black and poisoned forest of Innertown. I may not be a big fan of this sort of novel but "The Glister" pulled me in with the surprise of great dialogue, a strong central character and depth of story. For all of the surface ugliness of the setting and unsettling plot about disappearing boys, there were fleshed out characters of worth that I rooted for and ultimately made me rush to the very end.
I just finished "In the Woods" by Tana French. it's her first novel and has gotten amazing press and an Edgar Award. The cover is stunning so when I saw it was a mystery set in the UK it was just the ticket for me. It is a page turner...and I liked the story (it is creepy) and I wasn't disappointed. Final note: the book stands up to the cover if you know what I mean
Be a part of Oregon’s sesquicentennial anniversary in 2009 by participating in Oregon Reads! From January – April 2009, the Oregon Library Association is sponsoring a statewide community reading project focused around Lauren Kessler’s Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. This nonfiction narrative follows the Yasui family’s quest for the American Dream from establishing one of the largest and most productive apple orchards in Hood River, Oregon to their sudden, tragic internment during World War II, and closing with how the family dealt with the social injustice of internment while finishing their education, rebuilding their business and reestablishing themselves as an American family.
"Walter Wangerin's profound fantasy concerns a time when the sun turned around the earth and the animals could speak, when Chauntecleer the Rooster ruled over a more or less peaceful kingdom. What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth ... and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free." This book is for the faithful, for the believers in hope, in the possibility of good in us all. Yet there is something almost painfully sweet about the depth this story goes and how it will sound in your heart.....all contained in a barnyard, on the shoulder of animals.
I cannot recommend The American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld highly enough. I love it. I love it so much I feel like the top of my head is going to blow off. I don't know how I missed reading Prep. Anyway, I wanted to mention because I haven't felt this strongly about a book in forever. She's a wonderful writer--actually, I think this is a book that will stand the test of time--you know what I mean. I say she is a great writer because the story is told so expertly through the scenes. Just one great scene after another and they all work to propel the story forward. Nothing extraneous and not a lot of separate musings on life/love/family/politics etc.--it all just flows seamlessly together. I feel like novels too often have a scene, then a bunch of ponderings, another scene and none of it hangs together tightly. I finished the book an hour ago and I'm kind of just sitting here in awe. I actually don't think I can read another novel for awhile (well, I am going to read Prep today)
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
I couldn't wait to get my hands on Waters new novel, "The Little Stranger". Fingersmith was so popular at our store and it became a favorite among so many of my friends that when I saw Waters new book had been nominated for the Booker Man, I expected a winner and was not disapppointed. I admit, I love a good scary read and especially if it's dripping with atmosphere. The Little Stranger did not disappoint. All of the cozy expected elements are there....the crumbling manor, the upper class family fallen onto hard times. Waters conjures the dread and fear that one would expect if one were being "haunted". This book continues to haunt me days after reading it. ~ Mary
