This was recommended to me as a quick read, perfect for holiday time when we're all super busy.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night Time by Mark Haddon
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Read the book before you see the film
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This highly original first novel won the largest advance San
Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well
spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by
dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates
nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De
Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in
Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He
disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly,
usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit,
at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one
of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire,
an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a
lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts
back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves
forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But
such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the
determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament
[...] that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has
a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father [...] to
Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. [...]
It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book
leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness
rather than of easy thrills.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
From Publishers Weekly
This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is
at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically
penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive. It is in effect two,
or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part
ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered
around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an
upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935.
Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older
sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie
Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family,
points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the
grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed. The
second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie,
now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and
eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the
early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that
bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a
kind of victory. In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid
wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she
doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with
what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now
together as lovers. In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de
the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting
her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the
sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination.
This highly original first novel won the largest advance San
Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well
spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by
dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates
nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De
Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in
Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He
disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly,
usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit,
at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one
of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire,
an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a
lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts
back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves
forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But
such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the
determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament
[...] that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has
a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father [...] to
Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. [...]
It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book
leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness
rather than of easy thrills.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
From Publishers Weekly
This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is
at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically
penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive. It is in effect two,
or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part
ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered
around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an
upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935.
Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older
sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie
Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family,
points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the
grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed. The
second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie,
now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and
eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the
early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that
bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a
kind of victory. In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid
wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she
doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with
what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now
together as lovers. In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de
the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting
her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the
sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
More Books:
The Resort by Sol Stein is a novel that is frightening and hard to put down.
Cliffhaven--Magnificent new resort near Big Sur. Surrounded by redwoods. Guarded by Oceanside cliffs. Protected from prying eyes. By reservation only. Cliffhaven--Founded by a man with very special interests, catering to a very special clientele. Margaret and Henry Brown, vacationing New Yorkers innocently driving down the sea-washed coast of California, are just the right sort of people. Cliffhaven--It has a spectacular entrance, a three-star restaurant, lavish accommodations--and no exit! "This novel should do for California vacation retreats what jaws did for swimming in the Atlantic."--"Los Angeles Times" Book Review "A thrilling nightmare...A Dante's "Inferno..".more than fulfills the remark "I read it all in one nail-biting session."--Eli Wallach "Not only a thriller...a parable and a warning to all who say 'It can't happen here.'"--"Jewish Post and Opinion"
Doc Susie by Virginia Cornell.
Diane Donovan, The Bookwatch
Doctor Susan Anderson was a rare women, indeed: a female frontier doctor who searched for health, success and romance in the wild western lands of the Colorado Rockies. Her true experiences are recounted by Cornell, who met the elderly Doc Susie when Cornell was a young girl. Three years of research have contributed to a biography which reads like an adventure novel.
Carolyn See's memoir called Dreaming.
She is the mother of Lisa See who wrote Snow Flower and Secret Fan, On Gold Mountain and most recently, Peony in Love.
From Publishers Weekly
Award-winning novelist (Golden Days; Making History) and book critic See has a pungent, earthily feminine style that has never been put to better use than in this saga of her clamorous, perpetually inebriated family. Daughter of a hard-drinking, charming show-business hanger-on and an equally hard-drinking hellion of a mother, See also went through two chaotic marriages, countless gallons of tequila and white wine and enough mind-altering substances to knock her sideways for most of a decade before settling down, with two miraculously surviving and equable daughters and her elderly English professor companion, to become the quirkily admirable writer she is today. Her sister Rose, enmeshed for years in a life of petty crime, drug-dealing and appalling men, was not so lucky. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, all seemed somehow to be disappointed at what American (mostly Californian) life had to offer, and retreated into bottles, needles and pills. It all makes for wonderfully liv ely reading, but See's thesis that this is life for much of America's aspiring underclass doesn't quite ring true (perhaps it's simply that a preponderance of these goofily hope-addicted people wind up in California). And in the midst of all See's hard-headed, courageous and humorous observation, it is jarring to come across a paean to some of the more banal and outre of New Age gurus. What is lacking in the book, despite its many anecdotal pleasures and galloping readability, is any sense of a cultural context to Americans beyond a search for ways to feel better about themselves.
Frank Delaney's non-fiction book, Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea.
A real page-turner - sounds like a very exciting and compelling story.
From Publishers Weekly
Crippled by two monstrous waves during a 1951 North Atlantic hurricane, the freighter Flying Enterprise was left wallowing on its side and looking as if it would sink at any minute. The subsequent rescue, in mountainous seas, of 10 passengers and 40 crew by lifeboats from responding ships was indeed harrowing—and it's over by page 92 of this overblown maritime-distress yarn. The rest of the book is about the Enterprise's captain, Kurt Carlsen, who insisted on staying aboard to await a tugboat to tow the floundering ship to harbor. Carlsen certainly went beyond the call of duty, but heroism is measured by the stakes involved, which in this case were neither lives nor justice but merely the ship owner's investment. Delaney embellishes the tale with glances at Carlsen's family's anxiety, soggy reminiscences of his own family following the story on the radio and fulsome tributes to the Danish skipper's flinty Nordic resolve (which are rather undercut by the knowledge that Carlsen could have transferred at any time to one of the ships babysitting the hulk). Carlsen's story generated a lot of breathless press hoopla at the time, and it still has the feel of a trumped-up media sensation. Photos not seen by PW.
Cliffhaven--Magnificent new resort near Big Sur. Surrounded by redwoods. Guarded by Oceanside cliffs. Protected from prying eyes. By reservation only. Cliffhaven--Founded by a man with very special interests, catering to a very special clientele. Margaret and Henry Brown, vacationing New Yorkers innocently driving down the sea-washed coast of California, are just the right sort of people. Cliffhaven--It has a spectacular entrance, a three-star restaurant, lavish accommodations--and no exit! "This novel should do for California vacation retreats what jaws did for swimming in the Atlantic."--"Los Angeles Times" Book Review "A thrilling nightmare...A Dante's "Inferno..".more than fulfills the remark "I read it all in one nail-biting session."--Eli Wallach "Not only a thriller...a parable and a warning to all who say 'It can't happen here.'"--"Jewish Post and Opinion"
Doc Susie by Virginia Cornell.
Diane Donovan, The Bookwatch
Doctor Susan Anderson was a rare women, indeed: a female frontier doctor who searched for health, success and romance in the wild western lands of the Colorado Rockies. Her true experiences are recounted by Cornell, who met the elderly Doc Susie when Cornell was a young girl. Three years of research have contributed to a biography which reads like an adventure novel.
Carolyn See's memoir called Dreaming.
She is the mother of Lisa See who wrote Snow Flower and Secret Fan, On Gold Mountain and most recently, Peony in Love.
From Publishers Weekly
Award-winning novelist (Golden Days; Making History) and book critic See has a pungent, earthily feminine style that has never been put to better use than in this saga of her clamorous, perpetually inebriated family. Daughter of a hard-drinking, charming show-business hanger-on and an equally hard-drinking hellion of a mother, See also went through two chaotic marriages, countless gallons of tequila and white wine and enough mind-altering substances to knock her sideways for most of a decade before settling down, with two miraculously surviving and equable daughters and her elderly English professor companion, to become the quirkily admirable writer she is today. Her sister Rose, enmeshed for years in a life of petty crime, drug-dealing and appalling men, was not so lucky. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, all seemed somehow to be disappointed at what American (mostly Californian) life had to offer, and retreated into bottles, needles and pills. It all makes for wonderfully liv ely reading, but See's thesis that this is life for much of America's aspiring underclass doesn't quite ring true (perhaps it's simply that a preponderance of these goofily hope-addicted people wind up in California). And in the midst of all See's hard-headed, courageous and humorous observation, it is jarring to come across a paean to some of the more banal and outre of New Age gurus. What is lacking in the book, despite its many anecdotal pleasures and galloping readability, is any sense of a cultural context to Americans beyond a search for ways to feel better about themselves.
Frank Delaney's non-fiction book, Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea.
A real page-turner - sounds like a very exciting and compelling story.
From Publishers Weekly
Crippled by two monstrous waves during a 1951 North Atlantic hurricane, the freighter Flying Enterprise was left wallowing on its side and looking as if it would sink at any minute. The subsequent rescue, in mountainous seas, of 10 passengers and 40 crew by lifeboats from responding ships was indeed harrowing—and it's over by page 92 of this overblown maritime-distress yarn. The rest of the book is about the Enterprise's captain, Kurt Carlsen, who insisted on staying aboard to await a tugboat to tow the floundering ship to harbor. Carlsen certainly went beyond the call of duty, but heroism is measured by the stakes involved, which in this case were neither lives nor justice but merely the ship owner's investment. Delaney embellishes the tale with glances at Carlsen's family's anxiety, soggy reminiscences of his own family following the story on the radio and fulsome tributes to the Danish skipper's flinty Nordic resolve (which are rather undercut by the knowledge that Carlsen could have transferred at any time to one of the ships babysitting the hulk). Carlsen's story generated a lot of breathless press hoopla at the time, and it still has the feel of a trumped-up media sensation. Photos not seen by PW.
Book: The World Without Us
Thought I'd start things off. This books sounds interesting to me: "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. It is non-fiction and just came out in July so it's only available in hardcover. I'll keep watch to see when it comes out in paperback. Here's a review from the New York Times.
Welcome!
I'm excited we've started a book club. I've set up a team blog for us to try. I don't think this will replace our emails but everyone has been sending in great ideas for books and I don't want to lose them. Why not cut-and-paste the descriptions from your emails of the last week and post them here?
We are currently reading "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen.
Our next meeting is the evening of Tuesday October 9th at a place/time to be determined.
We are currently reading "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen.
Our next meeting is the evening of Tuesday October 9th at a place/time to be determined.
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