Dear
Reader Comprehensive Book List
1-September 10, 1992
West with the Night Beryl
The memoirs of a woman who worked as an airplane pilot in
2-October 8, 1992
My Son's Story Nadine Gordimer
We get a different view of
3-November 11, 1992
The Sweet Hereafter Russell Banks
The driver of a school bus for a small
4-December 9, 1992
A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley
The novel that won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize. A farmer divides his prosperous farm between
his three daughters, an action that has dire consequences. Sound familiar? Jane Smiley, a unique Midwestern voice, has
updated King Lear to a farm in
5-January 13, 1993
The Rebel Angels Robertson Davies
At his best Robertson Davies resembles a lean, modern Dickens with
a ribald sense of humor. The setting for the novel is a Canadian university,
6-February 10, 1993
Emma Jane Austen
Many consider this to be Austen's best novel. Emma Woodhouse is handsome and clever but she
misreads the situations and the people that surround her, leading to very funny
misunderstandings.
7-March 10, 1993
Where I'm Calling From
Raymond
Carver
Carver, until his recent death from cancer, was the leading
minimalist, a literary style which held sway in the early eighties and has been
blamed for everything from insipid, superficial fiction to the rise in teenage
pregnancies. So what is minimalist
fiction and why do people say such terrible things about it? Read Carver and choose your side. "Carver is arguably the most important
American short story writer since Ernest Hemingway..." (Library
Journal).
8-April 14, 1993
Daughters Paule
Ursa has just had an abortion and her long-term
relationship with her lover is about to end.
Her mother calls her back to the Caribbean
9-May 12 1993
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
Every year or so, some magazine prints an article about overlooked
writers and books; Richard Yates usually gets at least one mention. This novel shows all of the obstacles,
external and internal, that come between people and their dreams.
10-June 9, 1993
Jazz Toni Morrison
The latest novel from the Pulitzer-prize winning writer of
"Beloved" depicts
11-August 4, 1993
Bastard Out of
A story about a young woman who dreams of escaping her family's
hopeless, impoverished life in
12- September 1, 1993
The Mambo Kings Play
Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos
Pulitzer-Prize winning novel that details the lives and
loves of two young Cuban musicians in
13-October 6, 1993
Wait Until Spring, Bandini John Fante
The first of four autobiographical books chronicling the
life of Arturo Bandini, the son of immigrant Italian
parents who settle in
14-November 10, 1993
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
15-December 1, 1993
Geek Love Katherine Dunn
A recent National Book Award nominee, this story traces the life
of a carnival family who save their traveling "Carnival Fabulon" from bankruptcy by giving birth to a family
of freaks. A profoundly moving story,
Dunn endows her unusual characters with a dignity and emotion seldom found in
more conventional characters.
16-January 5, 1994
Lady Chatterly's Lover D. H. Lawrence
Probably the best depiction of a woman's sexual awakening written
by man or woman in any language. Gets better with every read.
17-February 2, 1994
Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor
The first novel of Flannery O'Connor, whose literary
reputation continues to grow. Her
fiction is marked by grotesques and black humor. Wise Blood has Hazel Motes, a preacher for
the Church without Christ. This is a hard
novel to summarize or explain, even harder to forget.
18-March 2, 1994
The Carpathians Janet Frame
By the author of An Angel
at My Table, A novel about an American woman who comes to live in a town in
New Zealand to study local Maori myth about a Memory Flower.
19-April 6, 1994
The Selected Poetry of
Rainer Maria Rilke trans. by Stephen Mitchell
"Perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this
century has produced" (The
20-May 4, 1994
All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy
Set in 1949, this is the story of 16-year-old boy who leaves his
home in southern
21-June 1, 1994
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
Winner of the Booker Prize. In the final moments
of WW II, four people left in a
22-August 7, 1994
The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx
A journalist those wife has been killed
with her lover in a car accident moves back to the
23-October 12, 1994
Midnight's Children Salman
Rushdie
All the children born in
24-November 17, 1994
The Crying of
Pynchon's most accessible novel is about the darkness at the heart
of the American Dream. I read it a long
time ago and remember being very disturbed by it. (jm)
25-December 15, 1994
Gate to Women's
Country
Sheri S. Tepper
Science fiction, but not hard science. A look at a post-nuclear
world where a society in the process of rebuilding. I had to reread it immediately to make sure
that she played fair. (lc)
26-January 9, 1995
Paddy Clarke, Ha-Ha-Ha Roddy
Doyle
Winner of the 1993 Booker Prize. Written by the author of
the "The Commitments."
Doyle is truly a master of dialogue.
"Superb creation of a childhood and by far the best thing Roddy Doyle has done" (The Sunday Independent). "Like all great comic writers, Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of
the heart, of love and pain and loss" (The Irish Times). (bb) *Jan’s first meeting
27-Febraury 7, 1995
The
This book consists of three separate, short novels that echo each other's
themes--coincidence and synchronicity, the nature of human identity and memory,
the search for and flight from the dark truths lurking behind our lives, and
the act of writing. I loved this book
and am curious about what others might make of it. (jm)
28-March 8, 1995
Eva Luna Isabel Allende
Allende (yes, she's related to the late President Allende) is a wonderful author who combines magical realism
with political awareness. Eva Luna
follows its title character from the jungle to the city. She is a sort of Scherezade,
and much of the book is made up of her stories.
I would recommend anything by this author. (vc)
29-April 12, 1995
Imagining
Set during
30-May 10, 1995
Angels in
I have read these--the two of them together are not that
long. Yes, they're plays. They raise truly interesting questions about
our society, pain, forgiveness, healing, politics and Roy Cohn. What more could you ask for? (lc)
31-June 14, 1995
The Coming Triumph of
the Free World Rick DeMarinis
Acerbic, funny and sometimes twisted stories by
32-August 17, 1995
The Map of the World Jane Hamilton
A critically acclaimed novel about how a woman's life becomes
turned upside down when a child dies in an accident on her property. (jm)
33-October 11, 1995
A Shot to the Heart Mikal Gilmore
Gary Gilmore's brother writes about how Gary Gilmore's crime and
notoriety affected his life and his family.
(jm)
34-November 8, 1995
One Hundred Years of
Solitude Gabrial Garcia Marquez
One of the most influential works of the 20th century, the
granddaddy of magic realism. (vc)
35-January 10, 1996
Affliction
Russell Banks
A perfect companion piece to the non-fictional Shot to the
Heart. A brother recreates the steps that led to his brother's
crime. One critic has written that
reading Russell Banks gave him insights into
36-February 15, 1996
Justine Lawrence Durell
The first novel of the Alexandria Quartet. Each successive novel enlarges the context of
the events described in the first,
completely changing our perceptions of those events. "Here is a remarkable novel: deeper in thought,
more intricate in design, more distinguished than most."
37-March 14, 1996
Shame Salman Rushdie
No one could get through it the first time, so let's take another
crack at it. Set in a country that is not
quite
38-April 15, 1996
The Stone Diaries Carol Shields
Poignant story of a twenty-century pilgrim in search of
herself. "Deliciously unclassiable, blatantly intelligent and subtly subversive" (San Francisco
Chronicle). Winner of
the 1995 Pulitzer and National Book
39-May 16, 1996
Moo Jane Smiley
A humorous look at the people attending and teaching at a
Midwestern Unversity. (lc)
40-June 6, 1996
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Just in time for summer.
See if it still makes you want to light out for parts west. (vc)
41-September 12, 1996
Poor Things Alasdair Gray
Winner of the 1992 Whitbread Award and the Guardian
Fiction Prize. Set in the eighteenth
century, this novel deals with the loves of two Scottish doctors and a
twenty-five year woman who has been created by one of them from human
remains. I haven't read this book, but
the reviews were glowing. "You
become aware that this odd book has been a great deal more than entertaining
only on finishing it. Then your
strongest desire is to start reading it again" (Spectator). The author also draws his own
illustrations. (ag)
Gail’s first meeting
42-October 10, 1996
The
Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov,
translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan
O'Connor
This is an early Soviet classic, recently made available in a new
and much-praised translation (already in paperback!). This book is both
complicated and entertaining, and Bulgakov is often a
very funny writer. The Master in this book is the devil, so if you're ready for
the combined forces of the evil empire and evil incarnate, this is the book for
you. I think this is a book that will
offer good discussion. (vc)
43-November 14, 1996
Persuasion Jane Austen (lc)
44-December 12, 1996
Because It Is Bitter,
and Because It Is My Heart Joyce Carol Oates
According to PW, this book is about "racial disharmony from
the mid-'50s to mid-60's propels this tale of the love that binds a black man
and a white woman in an upstate
45-January 16, 1997
Neuromancer
William
Gibson
The book that started the cyperpunk
genre, which celebrates the outlaw computer hacker. It has an honored reputation among avant garde writers such as Kathy
Acker. (ag)
46-February 20, 1997
Galatea 2.2 Richard
Powers
After a failed relationship and several years in the Netherlands,
a novelist named Richard Powers returns to his college town of U. [Urbana] to
take an appointment at "the Center for the Study of Advanced
Sciences" and becomes involved in a project in which he teaches a
"neural network" (a highly advanced artificial intelligence) English
literature. It was nominated for the
National Book Critics Circle Award, was ranked in Time Magazine's Top Five
Fiction Books of 1995, and was among the New York Times's
list of "Notable Books" of 1995.
(jm)
47-March 13, 1997
The Good Soldier Ford Maddox Ford.
The novel is about a small group of people in the early part of
the century. The narrator is one of the principles, who has
his own reasons, generally hidden from himself as well as from the reader, for
telling his story the way he does. That
story is a tangle of infidelity, death, and melodramatic flights into madness,
and as it progresses the readers perceptions of events
and the characters continually shift. It
is, however, all miraculously controlled by the author. Against all odds, he
dosen't make ONE wrong move. (GI)
48-April 10, 1997
Ship
Fever and Other Stories Andrea Barrett
Stories are about "the love of science and the science of
love." Scientists
classic (e.g. Linnaeus) and contemporary are characters in most of the
stories. I thought that the stories were
interesting taken individually and considered as a collection. Winner of the 1996 National Book Award for
Fiction; stories were chosen for Best
American Short Stories for 1994 and 1995.
(JD)
49-June 12, 1997
The
Robber Bride Margaret Atwood.
Three middle-aged
50-August 10, 1997
Things
Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
This is a historical novel about people in a village in
51-September 18, 1997
Group Portrait
With Lady Heinrich Boll
I read this some fifteen years ago and remember being blown
away. I'm very curious about how it
would strike me now. It is a fictional
biography of a woman who would not normally be the subject of a biography; she
has done nothing to bring her to the notice of the public. However a very earnest researcher has
interviewed those who know her and ferreted out the details of her life. Supposed to be the book that most motivated the Nobel committee to
give Boll the prize. (GI)
52-October 9, 1997
The Ambassadors Henry James
The new movie of Portrait of a Lady has reminded me of how long
it's been since I read anything by James and how I have meant for years now to read
The Ambassadors. This one is late James,
about the wealthy widow Newsome who sends the dutiful Strether,
her fiance(I
think?), to
53-November 13, 1997
Lolita Vladimir
Nabokov.
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My
sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta...'' I'm ashamed to have to admit that I've never
read this book (although I did see the great Kubrick film). There's supposed to
be a new film version coming out, with Jeremy Irons as Humbert
Humbert, and I'd like to have read the book before
seeing the movie. (JM)
54-December 17, 1997
Morality Play Barry Unsworth
Part mystery, part medieval historical novel, this is about a
group of traveling players who find themselves endangered by what they learn
about a murder. I haven't read any of
his books, but Sacred Hunger won the Booker Prize a few years ago. Morality Play was named a "Best
Book" by Publishers Weekly. (jd)
55-January 15, 1998
This is a novel based on the ugly incident in
56-February 12, 1998
White Man's
Grave by Richard Dooling
Michael Killigan, a Peace Corps worker
in
57-March 19, 1998
Libra by Don Delillo (jm)
58-April 16, 1998
Accordian Crimes Annie E. Prouix (Prew)
I haven't read this one, but loved The Shipping News. The novel follows an accordian
and all the adventures
that occur to its owners.
(ag)
59-May 14, 1998
The
Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
I thought this would be an interesting non-fiction book for us
because I liked her Gnostic Gospels book.
Not everyone cares about gnosticism,
but the idea of evil and how (and why) religion and culture personifies it
might have some appeal. Pagels has an easy style which partially explains why she's
published by Random House and not by UCP. (jd)
60-June 11, 1998
Crossing
the River by Caryl Phillips
This novel was short-listed for the Booker a few years ago
(1994?). Phillips is a West Indian-born author who is getting a lot of attention
lately. I haven't read this novel yet, but from what I gather, it starts with a
poor family in the 1730's that sells its children into bondage (something that
still goes in a lot of developing countries today). The book tells their story
in several times and
places and in several voices, starting in the 1730's, into the
nineteenth century and (I think) ending with WWII. (vc)
61-July 16, 1998
The Symposium Plato
The famous dinner party where the discussion turns to the
topic of love. A big
hole in my liberal education. (ag)
62-August 1998
Vanity Fair William Makepeace
Thackeray
63-September 10, 1998
Hard Times Charles Dickens
Never read this, but rumor has it that it is
"distilled"--as opposed to "lite"--Dickens
at half the length of David Copperfield and Bleak House (personal favs of mine). As
you'd guess, this is not cheery book, but that's not why we read Dickens. We read Dickens for his memorably-named
characters and to find out just how they will go to the bad, with the
consolation of a few laughs to be had along the way. In the Gradgrinds
we meet a notably disfunctional family--dead mom, dad
is the embodiment of utilitarianism--in the northern industrial city of "Coketown," plus their lovely housekeeper Mrs. Sparsit. (jd)
64-November 12, 1998
The Green Knight Iris Murdoch
A promotional synopsis says: "When an attempt by the sharp,
feral, uncommonly intelligent Lucas to murder his brother, Clement, backfires
and Lucas kills a stranger, the stranger reappears with specific demands for
reparation." Actually--this is only
a fragment of the plot. It concerns a
whole constellation of people--all of them individually interesting--and
somehow both iconic and solidly human.
Mythic themes-biblical, medieval, and classical, infuse the
action-without erasing the (again) very human dimensions of the character's
lives. I think that this book is a
meditation about the different species of love possible between and among
people. Its a
serious book--in that it has philosophical weight--but it is also lighthearted
and warm. I really liked it-and would love
to read it in company. (gi)
65-December 10, 1998
The New Confessions William Boyd
"My first act upon entering this world was to kill my
mother." So begins this novel in
the form of an autobiography. The narrator John James Todd is a silent film
director much like the director of "Napoleon." This novel takes us
through the trenches of World War I,
66-January 14, 1999
Germinal Emile Zola
Zola's 1885 masterpiece of everyday relationships and working life
exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern
67-February 11, 1999
The Metamorphosis Ovid
Always meant to read this to find out just what parts of which
stories were stolen by Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton, not tomention such later worthies as Swift, Shelley, Swinburne,
and Shaw. I know that you can find Orpheus and Euridice
in there along with Baucis and Philemon and a version
of Pygmalion. We wouldn't have to read the Golding translation of 1565 unless
one of you hardliners insists. (jd)
68-April 8, 1999
The Fifth Business Robertson Davies
69-May 17, 1999
The Manticore
and World of Wonders Robertson Davies
70-June 9, 1999
Continental Drift Russell Banks
71-July 14, 1999
The Trees in My
72-September 13, 1999
The Reader B Schlink
73-October 13, 1999
The Blue
Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
(1997 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction)
This is the story of Friedrich Hardenberg--Fritz, to his
intimates--a young man of the late 18th century who is destined to become one
of
74-November 10, 1999
A
Blessing on the Moon Joseph Skibell
Chaim Skibelski, covered
by the dead bodies of townspeople killed by the Nazis, struggles to return home
but finds his house now inhabited by interlopers. He stays there for a while,
to the dismay of at least some of the family, but then must move on. For my part, the book made me laugh out loud
in the midst of its inevitable grimness, and I found Skibell's
strategy for dealing with the holocaust and its aftermath to be both appealing
and touching. (JD)
75-December 8, 1999
Corregidora by Gayl Jones.
Ms. Jones was featured in the NYT not long ago due to her dramatic
life-story -- her husband barricaded her and himself before killing himself in a
confrontation with the police. "Corregidora"
seems to be not unrelated; it's a sort of monologue told by a blues singer who
has been treated badly by the men she's loved. This book got a lot of critical
praise and is described as offering important insights into male/female
relationships in the African-American community. (VC)
76-January 20, 2000
The
Stories of John Cheever
Wondrous things happen in these pages. On a fine fall morning a man decides to swim
home across the river of swimming pools that stretch across his suburban county
and travels through more than backyards; a radio picks up not radio waves, but
the secret lives and discord of neighbors. In general
77-February 28, 2000
Another World Pat Barker
78-March 22, 2000
Black Dogs Ian Mc Ewan
79-June 14, 2000
No Mercy Red O’Hanlon
80-July 12, 2000
Auto Da Fe Elias Canetti
81-August 9, 2000
Birthday Letters Ted Hughes
82-September 25, 2000
Under The Volcano Malcolm Lowry
83-October 30, 2000
Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter Mario Vargas Llosa
84-December 21, 2000
So I Am Glad A.L. Kennedy
85-January 22, 2001
Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
86-February 26, 2001
Disgrace J. M. Coetzee
87-March 29, 2001
A Fairly Honorable
Defeat
Iris Murdoch
88-April 26, 2001
Madame Bovary Gustave
Flaubert
Oh, that Emma!
89-May 21, 2001
Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes
At the first sight this book is a story of an elderly English
doctor Geoffrey
Braithwaite who tries to reconstruct the life of the great
French writer Gustave Flaubert in order to understand
him.
Those who love Flaubert will find in this wonderful novel a lot of interesting
and amazing facts and details that could help them in better comprehension of
their favorite writer's oeuvre. But this is only a top layer of the narrative.
Dr Braithwaite really wants to solve the mystery of his beloved but unfaithful
wife's suicide, using Flaubert's life as his own
image in the psychological mirror of humanity (Gustave
Fraubert, c'est moi?).
90-June 14, 2001
Headlong Michael Frayn
A wild caper of deception, obsession, and the discovery of
a lost masterpiece that could turn the art world upside down. Or
not.
91-July 16, 2001
Waiting Ha Jin
"Every summer Lin Kong returned to
92-September 13, 2001
Immortality
The author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
follows the lives of four contemporary characters as well as the love of Goethe
and Bettina von Arnim. "`Immortality' swings easily, almost
imperceptibly, from narrative to rumination and back again, collapsing the
distinction between action and concepts... In its inventiveness and its
dazzling display of what written words can convey, `Immortality' gives fiction
back its good name."
93-October 15, 2001
Pilgrim Timothy Findley
The story of a man who can't die even though he tries over
and over to kill himself. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, in 1912 he's
placed in a
94-November 19, 2001
The Moviegoer Walker Percy
This elegantly written account of a young man's search for signs
of purpose in the universe is one of the great existential texts of the postwar
era and is really funny besides. Binx Bolling, inveterate cinemaphile,
contemplative rake and man of the periphery, tries hedonism and tries doing the
right thing, but ultimately finds redemption (or at least the prospect of it)
by taking a leap of faith and quite literally embracing what only seems
irrational.
95-December 13, 2001
The Hide Barry Unsworth
96-January 14, 2002
White Teeth Zadie Smith
97-February 20, 2002
Beowulf translated by Seamus
Heaney
In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that
Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its
mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, Thanks to the Irish poet's
marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch,
this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun. (jd)
98-March 11, 2002
Underground Haruki Murakami,
With great sensitivity, insight, and respect, Murakami coaxed a
remarkable group of people into describing their harrowing experiences aboard
the five morning rush-hour
99-April 15, 2002
The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies
under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this
death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a
tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire
novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game
of hide-and-seek can be. (jd)
100-May 20, 2002
Ravelstein Saul Bellow (233
pages)
Bellow's thinly fictionalized memoir of Alan Bloom. I confess that
I want to read this for purely selfish reasons. It is about my stomping grounds
and my father was from the same cohort as Bellows and Bloom. We haven't read
Bellow. (gi)
101-June 25, 2002
Ironweed William Kennedy
Mr. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winner follows
Francis Phelan as he returns home after a long time on the road after the accidental
death of his infant son Gerald. The opening pages are some of the most
remarkable passages I’ve ever read. Francis works in
the cemetery where his parents are buried. His mother watches
him as she weaves the roots of weeds then eats them with "an insatiable
revulsion." The capper of Kennedy’s Albany trilogy. (ag)
102-August 19, 2002
The White Boy Shuffle:
A Novel
Paul Beatty (240 pages)
From Booklist: Gunnar Kaufmann, is one of the few black children
in a predominantly white suburb, then spends his
teenage years in all black-Latino-Asian west
103-September 16, 2002
Contempt Alberto Moravia (276
pages)
This book was #46 on the French list of the 50 best 20th century
books. I don't know if that's a recommendation. Molteni,
the narrator, aspires to be a man of letters, but has taken a job as a
screenwriter in order to support his beautiful wife, Emilia. Frustrated by his
work, he becomes convinced that she no longer loves him--that in fact she
despises him--and a s he relentlessly interrogates her
about the true nature of her feelings, he makes h is deepest fear (or secret
desire) come true. (gi)
104-October 28, 2002
The Memoirs of Barry
Lyndon, Esq. William Makepeace Thackeray
Some critics like this better than Vanity Fair. The novel concerns
the life and times of the title character and narrator, a roguish Irishman. The
fast-flowing satirical narrative reveals a man dedicated to success and good
fortune. (ag)
105-December 9, 2002
When We Were
Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro (at Al’s House)
The narrator's parents disappear from their
106-January 23, 2003 The
Body Artist Don deLillo
If you're ready for another deLillo, I
can recommend this one for its shortness and its weirdness. It's part
ghost story, part examination of the nature of art, and where it intersects
with life. Is the main character merely going off the deep end in the
isolation of her grief? It's a tiny book, beautifully written. (jd)
107- February 28, 2003
In 1983, Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with
lung cancer and faced imminent death. But six weeks later, a second examination
revealed there was no cancer – he had won "a second reprieve
from death." Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat
of a spell in a prison farm, Gao
fled
108-March 24, 2003 The Three Stigmata of
Palmer Eldrich Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction for people who hate science fiction. Philip K. Dick is the
science fiction master whose novels and short stories have been the inspiration
for the movies Bladerunner and Total
Recall. In this novel, the earth has experienced an environmental
catastrophe and is trying to colonize Mars. The few people unfortunate enough
to be drafted to live on Mars relax with the recreational drug Can-D, which
allows people to "translate" into layouts based on a Barbie-like doll called Perky Pat and enjoy the illusion of being back
on earth. What happens when a cheaper, stronger drug enters the market with one
nasty side effect: the trip doesn’t seem to end? A funny, mind-bending,
brilliant novel. (ag)
109-April 2003 The Killer Angels Michael Shaara
A Pulitzer prize winner, and highly recommended by several friends.. It is a recreation of the battle of
110-May 2003 The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order Samuel
P. Huntington
This book came out six years ago, and remains controversial, so I
would love to read it in company.
111-July 14, 2003 The Fateful
Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk, Book 1 Jaroslav
Hasek
Considered one of the 100 Best Books from the 20th Centry literature, this Czech classic has a new translation
by Zdenek Sadlon and Emmett
Joyce. In
“Hasek lays bare the
ridiculousness of the old Habsburg monarchy: the ethnic rivalries, the endless
bureaucracies, religions of convenience, the military hierarchy, as seen
through the eyes of the not-as-simple-as-he-seems Czech reservist, Svjek.” (ag)
112-September 15, 2003 The Duke of Deception Geoffrey Wolff ; A Boy’s Life Tobias Wolff
Most of you probably have read Tobias’s excellent book about his life with his mother after her divorce, but a
lesser known work is brother Geoffrey’s story about life with his father, a
con
artist and pathological liar. Together these books are a fascinating study of
family life gone bad. Duke is out of print but can easily be found in libraries or online
or at used bookstores. (ag)
113-October 9, 2003 The Sun
Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
I know that we are all (long) out of high school--but I HAVE NEVER
READ THIS BOOK. In fact I have never read any of Hemingway's novels. Maybe you
all want to revisit it and force me to fill this gap in my education? A plus: its short and composed of those famous terse sentences. (gi)
114-November 20, 2003 The Cave Jose Saramago
Cipriano Algor, an elderly
potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Mar‡al in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of
shops, apartment blocks, offices, and sensation zones. Mar‡al works there as a security guard, and Cipriano
drives him to work each day before delivering his own humble pots and jugs. On
one such visit, he is told not to make any more deliveries until further
notice. People prefer plastic, he is told; it lasts longer and doesn't break.
Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his
hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for
hundreds of figurines, and Cipriano and Marta set to
work. In the meantime, Cipriano meets a young widow
at the graves of their recently departed spouses, and a hesitant romance
begins.
When Marta learns that she is pregnant and Mar‡al receives a promotion, they all move into an apartment in The Center. Soon
they hear a mysterious sound of digging, and one night Mar‡al and Cipriano investigate. Horrified
by the discovery, the family, which now includes the widow and a dog, sets off
in a truck, heading for the great unknown. Suffused with the depth, humor, and
above all the extraordinary sense f humanity that marks each of his novels, The
Cave is sure to become an essential book of our time. (pw)
115- December 18, 2003 Atonement Ian McEwen
McEwen is a master at conveying obsessions in relationships.
I haven't read this yet, by the way, so can't give it a "wrenching"
rating. The NYTimes said "The idyllic
situation of an English family in 1935 disintegrates, starting with a crime;
World War II is no help either." I should think not. (jd)
116- January 15, 2004 A House
and Its Head Ivy Compton-Burnett
Yet another candidate that I haven't read. Ivy
Compton-Burnett's books are like those by Henry James except that she uses
60-70% fewer words. Her seemingly cryptic dialogues reveal love, assumptions,
disappointment, and betrayal in the briefest of sentences. During her
lifetime she was considered part of the avant-garde, perhaps because the dearth
of description in her books. You can't know what people and things look
like because the real action is taking place inside the characters'
heads. I think Compton-Burnett is an amazing writer, but most of her
novels are out of print. Her own comment on her work was, "My novels
are hard not to put down," but I get hooked every time I remember to get
one out of the library. (jd)
117-February 19, 2004 Life of Pi Yann Martel
Won the Booker Prize, yadda, yadda, yadda, which may or may
not attract the rest of you. It's okay if you fail to share my obsession
with all things Booker. But what's not to like? There's perilous travel
undertaken by the family of a
118-March 15, 2004 In Praise of the Stepmother Mario Vargas Llosa
(Al's house)
The story, by the author of Aunt
Julia and the Scriptwriter, covers
the relationship between a middle-aged woman, her husband, and her precocious
stepson, Stepmother “engages both the reader's carnal and intellectual mind. Vargas Llosa both shocks and seduces the reader with his sensuous
detail and psychological insights…A delight for lovers of erotica, classic visual art,
and great literature.” Amazon Review (ag)
119-April 19, 2004 The Green Man--Kingsley Amis
A page turner and a ghost story. I write
from recollection (which makes me --like the protagonist--an unreliable
narrator)--so bear with me. The alcoholic proprietor of an
historic pub/hostelry called the Green Man experiences unnatural phenomona. His alcoholism, however, as well as his narcissitic delusions and his childish fantasies, make the
meaning and origin of his experiences very uncertain. A book as much
about the trials and pitfalls of middle age as about ghosts--I remember this as
being both funny, genuinely spooky, and thought
provoking. I had some difficulties with the end--but I think that could
be a good topic for discussion. (gi)
120-May 10, 2004 Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
Probably everyone knows the general idea of the plot:
A young girl is murdered and "observes" her family and the police as
they try to find her killer. It got widely varying reviews from
customers; some very high praise, others were disappointed. Editorial
reviews seemed very positive. I'm curious. (pw)
121- June 2004 State of Siege Juan Goytisolo
This is a very strange book, both wrenching and confusing. I read
it last fall, can't forget it, and would love the chance to discuss it with all
of you. From Booklist: "Set during the siege of Sarajevo (with serpentine
side trips to a Paris neighborhood also under siege), the book displays all the
earmarks of magic realism--unexplained disappearances, people discovering they
may be fictional characters, reincarnated saints, and dizzying shifts in
narrative perspective that somehow manage to retain a similar authorial voice.
But midway through, Goytisolo provides plausible
explanations for all that has transpired--only to begin playing tricks with
reality anew”(Frank Sennett). jd
122- July 2004
It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels
123 - September 2004
The
Easter Parade Richard Yates I reread this book
again last spring and found it as piercing and heartrending as I remembered
it. It follows the lives of sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes over four
decades, as they try to find happiness in marriage, lovers, careers and family.
Yates is one of my favorite writers. I find myself rereading chapters after I
finished the novel trying to figure out how his taut, seemingly simple style
gets me so involved with his characters. "Yates writes powerfully and
enters completely and effortlessly into the lives of his characters . . . A
spare yet wrenching tale."The New York Times
Book Review (ag)
124- October 2004 The Darts of Cupid and Other Stories Edith Templeton
(National Book
From Publishers Weekly
Rain dripping on cobblestones, the strains of violins in cafes,
sexual games concealed beneath sophisticated conversation this is the European
atmosphere of these seven exquisite stories by Prague-born Templeton, still
active at 85. Though her characterizations are as sharp as her vision, she is a
tantalizingly enigmatic storyteller, and the delicate tales on display in this
first collection of her work gracefully evade categorization. (lt)
125 - November 2004 Old School Tobias Wolf
From Publishers Weekly
“A scholarship boy at a
hosts a number of visiting writers, and the boys in
the top form are allowed to compete for a private audience by composing a poem
or story. Wolff offers a delicate, pointed meditation on the treacherous charms
of art.” (pw)
126 - January 6, 2005 The Good Apprentice
Iris Murdoch (Al's House)
From Amazon: “Edward Baltram is
overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone
horribly wrong: He has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a
hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window to his death.
Edward searches for redemption through a reunion with his famous father, the
reclusive painter Jesse Baltram. Funny and
compelling, The Good Apprentice is at
once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual
crises that afflict the modern world.” (ag)
127 - February 17, 2005 (
Reading Lolita
in
Since we have
read Lolita, and Jane Austen, and other works taken up by the Iranian ladies
depicted-I think that it might be interesting to see their responses, and discuss
the role given to reading in this book. “In 1995, after resigning from her job as a
professor at a university in
Persepolis,
Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi Yet
another I've been meaning to read and since it's only about 150 pages and,
literally, a comic book, (From Publisher's Weekly) “Satrapi's
autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life
under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the
Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their
community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of
totalitarianism is taking over.”
(jd)
128 - March 22, 2005 By Night in
A deathbed
confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in
129 - May 2, 2005 Heir
to the Glimmering World Cynthia Ozick (Lisa's
House)
Donna Seaman in
Booklist
Ozick
draws on sacred and literary traditions to create a tale at once compassionate
and brightly satirical, otherworldly and down to earth. It's 1933 and the Mitwissers, a prominent Jewish German family, have escaped
the Nazis and found a dubious yet irresistible champion in peripatetic and
dissolute James Philip A'Bair, who is intrigued by
Professor Rudolph Mitwisser's obsession with Karaism, a renegade eighth-century Baghdad-based Jewish
doctrine rejecting rabbinical interpretations in favor of a strict focus on
scripture… As her
captivating characters struggle to come to terms with their raided past, Ozick brilliantly dramatizes the conflict between theology
and science, various modes of mythmaking and survival, and "the hot drive
to dissent, to subvert, to fly from what all men accept!" (pw)
130 - June 6, 2005 Jack
Maggs Peter Carey
(Lisa's House)
I haven’t read this one, but
it was picked in a list of terrific historical fiction in a recent Wall Street Journal article. (The list
included Regeneration and Sacred Hunger so it has I’m willing to give it some
credence.) The novel takes place in
131 - August 1, 2005 Winner of the National Book Award : A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really
Bad Weather Jincy
Willett (336 pages)
Ok-couldn't
resist the title. From Publisher's Weekly: brilliant black comedy
starring twins with antithetical dispositions and a handsome stranger with
designs on both of them. Zaftig Abigail has turned promiscuity into an art
form, while the literary, virginal Dorcas finds
pleasure in the library-in its books, but also in the graffiti scrawled on its
façade. (gi)
132 - September 26, 2005 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage
Contemporaries)
by
Mark Haddon 240 pages (Al's house)
Another book
that intrigued me when I was shopping around Amazon.Description:
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes,
this dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary
coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of
processing emotions.
Reviews:
"Moving. . . Think of The Sound and
the Fury crossed with The Catcher in
the Rye and one of Oliver Sacks's real-life
stories." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
133 - October 10, 2005 Pere Goriot by
Balzac
Yes, it's time to
read a classic, this time Balzac, a famous French author in whose oeuvre I
haven't made even a dent. I've actually started this already and would love to
have folks reading it with me. I haven't got much past the introductory
scenes where we meet everyone in the boarding house from the point of view of a
somewhat know-it-all and cynical narrator. The characters are Dickensian,
and rumor has it that the name of the main character--Rastignac--is
a watchword in
134 - November 17, 2005 Sentimental Education by
Gustave Flaubert (Lisa's House)
Never as acclaimed as Madame Bovary, but
nonetheless an enthralling read. From Amazon: "It follows the amorous
adventures of Frederic Moreau, a law student who, returning home to Normandy
from Paris, notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman
several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that
will last a lifetime….Blending love story,
historical authenticity, and satire, Sentimental Education is one of the great
French novels of the nineteenth century." (ag)
135 - January 19, 2006 Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens (Al's house)
Our Mutual
Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is, arguably, his
darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up
for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host
of unforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing the author's
heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, and the story as a whole
more harrowing and less sentimental. (lt)
136-
March 13, 2006 The Man with the Golden Arm,
Nelson Algren (Lisa's house)
I’ve never read this—and as a lifetime Chicagoan I always thought that
I should. It's set in
137 - April 6, 2006 The
Persistence of Memory, Tony Eprile
(al's house)
from NYT Book
Review: "Part fable, part coming-of-age story, Eprile's
first novel concerns Paul Sweetbread, a South African Jew who becomes a foot
soldier in one of the cold war's less remembered conflicts: the apartheid
regimes' bloody campaign in Angola and Namibia. Paul is torn between his
agitated liberal conscience and the desire to prove himself a loyal South
African." (jd)
138 - May 4, 2006 Two Lives, William Trevor
(Lisa's House)
I think that
I've read most of Trevor's amazing short stories (though its hard to say--since
in his eighties -I think?- he's still cranking them out).
I've never read one of his novels though--it may be that I haven't wanted to
see his rather unflinching view of human weakness and wickedness played out in
full. Two Lives, which is a pair of somewhat related novellas seems a good
compromise. They are both about women in their fifties (a group I find myself
naturally interested in). From Amazon: The two lives of the title are
brilliantly illuminated in a pair of short novels, Reading Turgenev and My
House in Umbria, that exemplify the biting, tragicomic work of this Anglo-Irish
master. The first novel is a sorrowful love story, the second a sort of
thriller. Each of Trevor's two heroines is trapped in her life, one in
139 - June 12, 2006 A Dictionary of
Maqiao, Han Shaogong (Julia Lovell, Translator) Al's house
This masterful
and quite heady novel tackles the history of a fictitious town buried deep in
140 - August 3, 2006 Any Human Heart,
William Boyd (Lisa's House)
Like The New Confessions,
this novel is an ersatz autobiography of a man whose career rambles over many
of the key movements or events of the 20th century. The writer Logan Gonzago Mountstuart's journey
takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, 1930s
Americans in
141- August 31, 2006 Mr. Palomar,
Italo Calvino Al's House
Italo
Calvino's book, "Mr. Palomar," is a superbly crafted novel about an
intellectual quest for order and reason in a chaotic and unreasonable world.
Mr. Palomar's mistake is in thinking that things
would be better (or, at least he'd be less anxious) if he could just figure out
how to get everything to calmly step over to the "ordered" side of
the line. He is the twentieth century's Don Quixote, not on a romantic quest
but an intellectual one. (pw)
142-
October 9, 2006 Ingenious Pain, Andrew
Miller (Lisa's house)
From Amazon:
"Set during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, this novel follows
James Dyer, an English freak of nature who, since birth, has been impervious to
physical pain. By turns a shill for a quack pain- reliever at county fairs, an
object of study by a wealthy collector of human oddities, and, eventually, a
surgeon, James Dyer--and through him the reader-- gains exposure to a panoply of 18th-century philosophical thought, medical
practice, historic events, and larger-than-life rogues and heroes, both
fictional and real. Intelligent, deeply pleasurable
reading." (ag)
143 - November 20, 2006 The Plot against
(From Amazon)
"What if" scenarios are often suspect. They
are sometimes thinly veiled tales of the gospel according to the author, taking
on the claustrophobic air of a personal fantasia that can't be shared. Such is
not the case with Philip Roth's tour de force, The Plot Against
America. It is a credible, fully-realized picture of what could happen
anywhere, at any time, if the right people and circumstances come together. The
book explores a wholly imagined thesis and sees it through to the end: Charles
A. Lindbergh defeats FDR for the Presidency in 1940. He was a true American
hero: brave, modest, handsome, a patriot. According to some reliable sources,
he was also a rabid isolationist, Nazi sympathizer, and a crypto-fascist. It is
these latter attributes of Lindbergh that informthe
novel. (jd)
144 -
January 8, 2007 The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession
Paulo Coelho
From Booklist:
This tale is the philosophical and spiritual chronicle of one man's quest for
self-discovery. Stunned by his wife's inexplicable disappearance from their
145- February 19, 2007 Beware of God,
Shalom Auslander
(Al's house)
These are short, elegant stories, often allegorical,
filled with whimsical moments (e.g. hamsters
discussing their owner's taste in paperbacks) as well as
fresh, irreverent perspectives on religious worship
and the existence of God. It was a brisk, easy read. (hk)
146-March 19, 2007
Ghostwritten David Mitchell (448 pages) Lisa's House
A weird book that really intrigues me. From Publishers Weekly: Nine disparate
but interconnected tales (and a short coda) in Mitchell's impressive debut
examine 21st-century notions of community, coincidence, causality, catastrophe
and fate. Each episode in this mammoth sociocultural
tapestry is related in the first person, and set in a different international locale.
Already a sensation on its publication in England, Mitchell's wildly variegated
story can be abstruse and elusive in its larger themes, but the gorgeous prose
and vibrant, original construction make this an accomplishment not to be
missed. (gi)
147-May 21, 2007 Touching
the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, John M. Hull
(218 pages) (Al's House)
From Library Journal: In 1983, Hull, a university lecturer who had lived with
sight problems from the age of 13, found that the dark discs he had fought for
36 years had finally overwhelmed his sight. The spiritual and emotional
reactions to his vision loss form the basis of this poignant memoir, and the
many questions he asks contribute to his eventual acceptance of his fate. A
richly textured dream life adds to his exploration of the "other
world" of blindness, and the understanding and meaning he finds coalesce
into a powerful work. (hk)
148-June 18, 2007 On
Beauty, Zadie Smith (464
pages)--Al's House
From Publishers Weekly: This is a superb novel, a many-cultured
Middlemarch…The parade of characters swirl around two antagonistic
Rembrandt scholars in a Massachusetts college town. Howard Belsey
is a self-absorbed, working-class British white man married to African-American
Kiki and father to three cafe-au-lait children. Monty
Kipps is a West Indian stuffed-shirt married to the
generous Carlene, with a gorgeous daughter, Veronica. The book is funny and
infuriating, crammed with multiple shades of love and lust, midlife and teenlife crises. (lt)
149-July 23,
2007 The Line of
Beauty Alan Holinghurst (437 pages) Al's House
The book is primarily about a group of well educated, well heeled, gay men in Thatcherite England. According to reviews, however, the
plot is not as notable as the beauty of the writing, the richness of
characterization, and the way that the author details the particularities of
class and time, revealing the significance of small things. Evidently, the
title is taken from Hogarth’s attempt to codify aesthetics “The
Analysis of Beauty”. Reportedly the novel draws from both Hogarth’s
vision of aesthetics, and perhaps something of the vision of society expressed
in his drawings. (gi)
150-October 8, 2007 Seven
Types of Ambiguity, Elliot Perlman (640 pages) Al's
House
New Yorker: "Cheekily swiping the title of William Empson's
seminal work of literary criticism, this second novel by Perlman, an Australian
writer, presents seven first-person narrators-whose lives are all nudged off
course by a man's abduction of his ex-girlfriend's young son-in a compulsively
readable tangle. (jd)
151-November 19, 2007 The
Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks (336 pages) Lisa'a house
From Amazon: Drawn to the Micronesian island of Pingelap
by reports of a community of people born totally colorblind, Dr. Sacks set up a
clinic in a one-room dispensary. There he listened to patients describe their
colorless world in terms rich with pattern and tone, luminance and shadow.
Then, in Guam, he investigated a puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis, making housecalls amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the
remains of a colonial culture. The experience affords Sacks an opportunity to
elaborate on such personal passions as botany and history and to explore the
meaning of islands, the dissemination of species, the birth of disease, and the
nature of deep geologic time (pw)
152-January 7, 2008 The
Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams (560 pages)
Lisa's House
His grandfather and great-grandfather were presidents, his father was a
congressman. Henry Adams always felt like an underachiever. His account of his
life and efforts to come to terms with his family history is one of the most
highly regarded of the 20th Century American literature. From Amazon:
"Among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. It
contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture,
and transatlantic relations" (ag)
153-February 11, 2008 The
Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
(240 pages)
I’ve been wanting to read this for quite a while—but need
encouragement to pick it up. Recently, Didion’s
husband of 40 years died suddenly after visiting their daughter, who was dying
more slowly in a hospital. According to reviews, Didion
recounts the events, and their attendant psychological states, with the cool
precision and the beautiful prose that she is known for. I would like the
opportunity to investigate an aspect of the human condition that many of us are
likely to experience to some degree, in the company of such an unflinching
intellect. (gi)
154-March 10 Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte
(336 pages) Lisa's House
As an Amazon customer put it: GARBAGE LAND is Elizabeth Royte's
plucky voyage of discovery down the various waste streams to their ends -
burying, burning, composting, recycling - of the assorted components - glass,
plastic, e-waste, metals, sewage, food scraps, paper, plant debris - comprising
the 210 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in the U.S. per
annum. Royte really gets into it; she spends a year
separating, weighing and categorizing her own household throwaways, goes along
with her neighborhood's sanitation men to pick-up the detritus of others, and
travels near and far outside her home in New York City to discern and share
what ultimately happens to the discarded stuff that languishes even now in your
waste bin. (gi)
155-April 7, 2008 The Ruby in Her Navel, Barry Unsworth Al's House
"Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman
kings. Thurstan is dispatched to uncover the
conspiracies brewing against his king. During his journeys, he encounters the
woman he loved as a youth; and the renewed promise of her love, as well as the
mysterious presence of an itinerant dancing girl, sends him on a spiritual
odyssey that forces him to question the nature of his ambition and the folly of
uncritical reverence for authority. With the exquisite prose and masterful narrative
drive that have earned him widespread acclaim, Barry Unsworth
transports the reader to a distant past filled with deception and mystery, and
whose racial, tribal, and religious tensions are still with us today." (lt)
156-May 5, 2008 Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides Lisa's House
From Time Magazine's 10 Best Books: "With the fur trapper and wilderness
scout Kit Carson as his focus, Sides has constructed a heartbreaking history of
three cultures in the Southwest--American Indians, Mexicans and Americans--during
and after the Mexican-American war, an age of bloody confrontations in which
the Navajo would be all but swept away." (jd)
157-June 2, 2008 Elizabeth Costello, J. M. Coetzee Al's House
Elizabeth Costello is a philosophical novel that would make for a great
discussion. Or is it really a novel at all? I was intrigued because
along with the philosophical issues accompanying the topics addressed in the
book, there is the larger question of how discourse can take place when the
participants cannot accept a common ground for discussion. (jd)
158-July 7, 2008 The Omnivore's
Dilemma, Michael Pollan
Just as Garbageland traced where all our
garbage goes, this book examines how we get our food. Pollan
pulls together information from myriad sources and fields to shed light on how
a process so basic became something so politicized and complicated. His section
on how corn became king is particularly pertinent because of the recent reports
that the environmental cost in producing ethanol negates any gains—and drives up food costs. (ag)
159-September 15, 2008 Quartet in
Autumn, Barbara Pym
Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize. I always enjoy her books, and hope the
Booker prize gives the nomination weight. (lt)
160-November 3, 2008 An Equal
Music, Vikram
Seth
From Publishers Weekly: "Seth finds his true voice in this lyrical,
ravishing tale of star-crossed lovers, an English violinist and the pianist he
desperately pursues... This novel is tightly controlled, original in design,
awash in the music and spirit of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms and
Bach." (pw)
161-December 8, 2008 March, Geraldine Brooks (Lisa's House)
From Publishers Weekly: "Brooks's luminous
second novel, after 2001's acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the
Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women... Brooks, who based the character of March on Alcott's
transcendentalist father, Bronson, relies heavily on primary sources for both
the Concord and wartime scenes; her characters speak with a convincing
19th-century formality, yet the narrative is always accessible." Won the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006. (jd)
162-January 5, 2009 The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron (460 pages)
I've never read this. I like Styron. Winner of the Pulitzer in
1967, it's considered an American Masterpiece. Its about Nat Turner, the leader
of a bloody slave rebellion, and is framed as a
memoir, narrated by Turner in the night before his execution. (gi)
163-February 9, 2009 Imperial Life
in the
A heartbreaking account of the
naiveté, arrogance and pure boneheadedness that
defines the
164-March 16, 2009 Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie
"When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the
independent nation of Biafra , a bloody, crippling three-year
civil war followed....Adichie tells her profoundly
gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu,
a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna
and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and
well-connected family... It's a searing history lesson in fictional form,
intensely evocative and immensely absorbing" (Publishers Weekly)
165-April 21, 2009 A Landing on the Sun, Michael
Frayn (Lisa's house)
Frayn has created a tender civil service comedy of
the kind that only an Englishman could bring off. The almost anonymous
narrator, a basically dry-as- dust denizen of
166-May 26, 2009 Musicophilia,
Oliver Sacks
Sacks examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of
patients, musicians, and everyday people--from a man who is struck by lightning
and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire
group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical
from birth; from people with "amusia," to
whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose
memory spans only seven seconds--for everything but music. (lt)
167-July 13, 2009 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
According to a reviewer on amazon.com, "the titular Oscar is a
300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for
Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes
of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien." His family sounds just as
appealing. 352 pages. (jd)
168-August 24, 2009 Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, Doris Lessig (449
pages). Lisa's house
From Library Journal:"What is better than a
really good biography? Not many novels," says Lessing in her first chapter
of what is destined to be one of the best autobiographies of our time.... From
her childhood in the wilds of what was then Southern Rhodesia (now
169-September 21, 2009 Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel
Garicia Marquez Al's House
A ninety-year old man reflects on his sexual life in
this novella (130 pages). “A strange and luminous
novel” (NY Times Book Review). (ag)
170-October 26, 2009 Indian Summer,
William D. Howells (Lisa's House)
Indian Summer is the first book examined in Noel Perrin's delightful
and quirky collection of essays about unjustly neglected
books, A Reader's Delight. I gave
171-November 23, 2009 Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Amazon.com "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo
says when he describes the cities visited
on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to
the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other
messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo
Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan
about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it
seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses
should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the
spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is
creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details
of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting
some of the myriad possible forms a city might take. (pw)
172-December 14, 2009 Quarantine: A Novel, Jim Crace (256 pages)
Short listed for the Booker, the novel recounts Jesus' 40 days in the desert—but here he is only one of 5 pilgrims—all
facing their own temptations in the wilderness. In particular, I gather, it
focuses on a woman who is waiting for her abusive husband to complete his
lingering death—only to have him healed by Christ.
(Is he Lazarus?) This was another book on the summer “buttonhole” list.
There was a long excerpt posted (about the woman and her husband) that sucked
me in right away. Crace is celebrated for his
ability to create a sense of place in the natural world—and
I gather that he excels at this here. (gi)
173-January 11, 2010 Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World, David Bodanis
David Bodanis weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through a lucid account of the invisible force that permeates our universe. In these pages the virtuoso scientists who plumbed the secrets of electricity come vividly to life, Thomas Edison; the visionary Michael Faraday, Samuel Morse, and Alan Turing. (pw)
174-February 15, 2010 Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips
And you thought Zeus, Apollo, Eros, et al were
meddlesome back in the day. (jd)
175-March 15, 2010 The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and
Odysseus, Margaret Atwood
“A fascinating and rather attractive version of this old, old story, a creation tale about the founding of our civilization meant to be heard over and over and over.”–Chicago Tribune (pw)
176-April 6, 2010 The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenidies
The first novel of the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex. I thought the movie made from Suicides was an atmospheric puzzler. The whole mystery of death, sex, love and desire all wrapped up and examined by the communal voice of adolescent boys. I am curious to see how this is conveyed in print. (243 pages) ag
177-May 10, 2010 The Lazarus Project, Alexander Hemon
I adore Hemon's writing anyway, but I've read this and keep
thinking about it. Besides what's said in the review below, the book features
an obsession with an incident from
178-June 7, 2010 The Yiddish Policemen's
I would love to hear the discussion on this one. I found it entertaining in a very unnerving way.
From Publisher’s
Weekly:"They are the "frozen Chosen," two million people
living, dying and kvetching in Sitka, Alaska, the temporary homeland
established for displaced World War II Jews. Chabon's ambitious and
entertaining new novel is a murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity
noir chess thriller. The novel begins with a fascinating historical footnote:
what if, as Franklin Roosevelt proposed on the eve of World War II, a temporary
Jewish settlement had been established on the
179-July 5, 2010 The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David
Grann
From Publisher’s Weekly: “In 1925, renowned
British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized
search to find the city of
180-August 2, 2010 The Accordionist's Son,
Bernardo Atxaga (Al's house)
I haven't read this yet but it's on my list. Axtago is a Basque writer, and
this book is framed by the Basque diaspora as well as the tenacious hold of the
language, culture, and history on this tiny ethnicity and on the rest of
181-September 13, 2010 The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry (lisa'a house)
"The main character is a one-hundred year old woman,
Roseanne McNulty, who now resides in the
182-October 18, 2010 The Zero, Jess Walter (336 pages) at Ikosium Kafe 5200 N Clark St.
The story involves a cop who witnessed the attacks on 9/11
and how it affects his life afterwards. The reviews all stressed how this grim
topic is handled with humor and irreverence which gets to the heart of the
matter more effectively than a more somber treatment would. From the Wall Street Journal: "'The Zero'
could end up as the 'Catch 22' of 9/11 (with) its brilliant ironies, its
deadpan truths, its insider smarts and its everyguy hero ... (Walter) elevates
'The Zero' above mere satire to Kafkaesque parable." (ag)
183-December 13, 2010 The
Age of Grief, Jane Smiley (224 pages)
This is a book of short works: all of them very good-all first person
meditations-by private and singular people-on being alone and being with
others—and being alone while being with others. It is the novella at the end of the book,
though, that really packs a punch. It is
the narrative of a man who believes that his wife, with whom he has three
daughters, has become disaffected with her life with him, and is having an
affair. We can only touch the
wife’s experience through the observations of her husband, which are
loving, detailed, grounded in deep domestic familiarity, and the sharp fear of
substantiating what he sees. Even though
the narrator is an odd person, whose reactions are very unlike what mine would
be, I felt like I was looking out of his eyes, and that his experience became
part of my personal history. I think all of the stories form a cohesive whole,
with the final novella as the centerpiece. (gi)
184-January 3, 2011 The Little Disturbances of Man,
Grace Paley (189 pages)
When I was writing short stories and totally turned off by the Ann Beatty school of affectless literature, I came across the short stories of Grace Paley. Here were gorgeously written stories about people with personalities and the voices to convey them. They lived in places that weren’t a collection of Walmarts and fast food places. And they had real problems instead of unspecified ennui. A short but amazing collection. (ag)
185-February 14, 2011 An Arsonist's Guide to Writers'
Homes in New England, Brock Clarke (Al's House)
Opening lines: “I, Sam
Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in
Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I
spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature
tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the
not-so-sweet hereafter. This story is locally well known, and so I won't go
into it here. It's probably enough to say that in the Massachusetts Mt.
Rushmore of big, gruesome tragedy, there are the Kennedys, and Lizzie Borden
and her ax, and the burning witches at Salem, and then there's me.” (jd)
186-March 17, 2011 Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith (256 pages) Lisa's House
From Amazon: In Deep Water, set in the small town of Little Wesley, Vic and Melinda Meller's loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Eventually, Vic tries to win her back by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder—one that soon comes true (gi).
187-April 13, 2011 Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (200 pages) Al's House
This is my nomination in the “classics of world literature I never got around to reading” division. Here’s a testimony by Gary Shteyngart from the NPR website:
"
My favorite novel is Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, a 200-page ravishing knockout of a book that explains just about everything you need to know about families, love, heartache, religion, duels and the institution of serfdom in 19th-century Russia, not to mention advice on how to seduce your housekeeper's young daughter. In short, it's a Russian masterpiece, one written so beautifully and with such economy, that when you finish reading it you feel a little shaken and a little stirred. A vodka martini on the front porch might be in order.” (jd)
188-May 16, 20011 Little Bee, Chris Cleave (276 pages) Lisa's House
From Booklist: Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. (pw)
189-June 13, 2011 Black Hole, Charles Burns (Al's house)
"Set in mid-1970s Seattle, this graphic novel tells the story of adolescents struck by a mysterious, sexually-transmitted disease that changes them in unpredictable ways. Some break out in boils or bumps; one grows a second mouth on his chest; another sheds her skin, like a snake….Burns' art is tremendous, in individual panels but especially through the page layouts and motifs that present themselves throughout the work” (Jonathan Lasser of About.com). Weeks after I read the book, images and bits of narrative kept coming back to me, until I had to sit down to read it again. This is a creepy book and that creepiness perfectly captures the self revulsion that can be a part of adolescence. (ag)
190-July 12, 2011 The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (528 pages)
From Bookmarks Magazine: "At its core, The Little Stranger is an old-fashioned ghost story, complete with spooky house, eccentric inhabitants, an air of general madness and malcontent, and a narrator who may not be as mild-mannered as he seems. What elevates this novel from the crowded genre is Waters’s ability to evoke the subtleties of the past as she skillfully weaves tension and dread into each paragraph. The reviewer from Newsday likened this tale to the psychological classic The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. (lt)
191-August 22, 2011 Blame, Michele Huneven (304 pages) lisa's house
From
“When college professor Patsy MacLemoore comes to in the drunk tank of the Altadena sheriff’s department, she can’t remember what she’s done. All she knows is that she has been there before and vowed she’d never return. This time it turns out that Patsy has killed two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and daughter, while driving on a suspended license.” I’m guessing that the rest of the book is about the turns her life takes after being sentenced to four years in prison. (jd)
192-September 21, 2011 Dreams of Distant Lives, Lee K. Abbott Lisa's House
From Publishers Weekly: "Warmth lifts and fills these tales by an accomplished storyteller--they are also infused with humor, a bittersweet sorrow and deep affection for the follies and foibles of people who love. ...Abbott delivers a wry and respectful vision of human nature unsullied by sentimentality or falseness." (pw)
193-October 10, 2011 The Electric Michelangelo, Sarah Hall (368 pages)
From Publishers Weekly: "Hall's mellifluous coming-of-age story about an apprentice tattoo artist from the north coast of England who reinvents himself in Coney Island, N.Y ... follows Cyril Parks from his youth in the 1910s ... through his hard-won apprenticeship to the seedy rogue Eliot Riley, under whose exacting tutelage he becomes a skilled tattoo artist. Hall's writing is pure joy, especially when describing the childhood seaside shenanigans of Cy and his boy pals." (lt)
194-November 27, 2011 The Big Short, Michael Lewis (320 pages)
From The New York Times: “No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker,” that now classic portrait of 1980s Wall Street. His entertaining new book does not attempt a macro view of the financial crisis, but instead proposes to open a small window on the calamities by recounting the stories of some savvy renegades who cashed in on their conviction that the system was rotten.” (ag)
195-January 9, 2012 Dreaming in Chinese, Deborah Fallows (200 pages) Lisa's House
From Booklist: "Fallows manages to take the relatively dry subject of translation and create a warm and witty memoir. Dwelling less on her own feelings then on the intricacies of language mastery, she shares experiences after she and her husband moved to China that taught her just how complex Mandarin can be. Such as the fact that there are 400 syllables in Mandarin as opposed to 10 times that number in English, making tone crucial in conversation. Fallows makes all this fascinating by writing in a thoroughly engaging manner that not only invites readers into her experiences, but also delights them with her discoveries." (gi)
196-February 2012 Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey (400 pages)
Here’s a quote from the starred review in Publishers Weekly: “The eminently talented Carey (Theft) has the gift of engaging ventriloquism, and having already channeled the voices of Dickens's Jack Maggs and the Australian folk hero/master thief Ned Kelly, he now inhabits Olivier-Jean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur, a fictionalized version of Alexis de Tocqueville, whose noble parents are aghast at his involvement in the events surrounding Napoleon's return and the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X. To remove him from danger, they send him to America, where priggish snob Olivier inspires Carey's humor during his self-centered adventures in New York, New England, and Philadelphia. . . . this wonderful novel is picaresque and Dickensian, with humor and insight injected into an accurately rendered period of French and American history.” (jd)
197-March 2012 Await your Reply, Dan Chaon (368 pages)
The book opens with a Northwestern University dropout named Ryan — one of three alienated main characters — shivering in the passenger seat of a car, his severed hand sitting next to him in a Styrofoam cooler. This is one of three taut narratives that Chaon has intermingled. This novel earned Mr. Chaon a National Book Award nomination, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letter." (ag)
198-April 2012 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot (400 pages)
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley
199-May 2012 Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie: a Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss
I got really curious about this when it first came out and am very intrigued by the decision to make it a graphic novel. From the San Francisco Chronicle: "Radioactive is an imaginative mix of drawings, photo collages and text; the result is a tender and haunting tribute to the scientists who fell in love while conducting research that led to their discovery of radium and polonium...Most powerful, however, are the seemingly glowing images (the glow-in-the-dark cover is admittedly cool, too) that Redniss has created using cyanotype printing. (pw)
200-June 2012 The Children's Book, A. S. Byatt (896 page, 1.1 lbs)
From Publishers Weekly: "Byatt's overstuffed latest wanders from Victorian 1895 through the end of WWI, alighting on subjects as diverse as puppetry, socialism, women's suffrage and the Boer War, and suffers from an unaccountably large cast. The narrative centers on two deeply troubled families of the British artistic intelligentsia: the Fludds and the Wellwoods. Olive Wellwood, the matriarch, is an author of children's books, and their darkness hints at hidden family miseries. (lt)
January 1, 2012