Madeleine's Book & Photo Blog

THE MASTER ORPHAN'S SON by Adam Johnson

2012-01-28T10:19:00.001-05:00

5 out of 5

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 2401 KB
Print Length: 465 pages

Synopsis:

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.

Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master’s Sonushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today’s greatest writers.

My view:

Rather than trying to explain this great novel I will let the author explain in his own words what drew him to write it, this novel is a MUST READ:

Adam Johnson on The Orphan Master's Son

When I arrived at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport a few years ago, my head was still spinning from a landing on a runway lined with cattle, electric fences and the fuselages of other jets whose landings hadn't gone so well. Even though I'd spent three years writing and researching The Orphan Master's Son, I was unprepared for what I was about to encounter in “the most glorious nation in the world.”

I'd started writing about North Korea because of a fascination with propaganda and the way it prescribes an official narrative to an entire people. In Pyongyang, that narrative begins with the founding of a glorious nation under the fatherly guidance of Kim Il Sung, is followed by years of industry and sacrifice among its citizenry, so that when Kim Jong Il comes to power, all is strength, happiness and prosperity. It didn't matter that the story was a complete fiction--every citizen was forced to become a character whose motivations, desires and fears were dictated by this script. The labor camps were filled with those who hadn't played their parts, who'd spoken of deprivation instead of plenitude and the purest democracy.

When I visited places like Pyongyang, Kaesong City, Panmunjom and Myohyangsan, I understood that a genuine interaction with a North Korean citizen was unlikely, since contact with foreigners was illegal. As I walked the streets, not one person would risk a glance, a smile, even a pause in their daily routine. In the Puhung Metro Station, I wondered what happened to personal desires when they came into conflict with a national story. Was it possible to retain a personal identity in such conditions, and under what circumstances would a person reveal his or her true nature? These mysteries--of subsumed selves, of hidden lives, of rewritten longings--are the fuel of novels, and I felt a powerful desire to help reveal what a dynastic dictatorship had forced these people to conceal.

Of course, I could only speculate on those lives, filling the voids with research and imagination. Back home, I continued to read books and seek out personal accounts. Testimonies of gulag survivors like Kang Chol Hwan proved invaluable. But I found that most scholarship on the DPRK was dedicated to military, political and economic theory. Fewer were the books that focused directly on the people who daily endured such circumstances. Rarer were the narratives that tallied the personal cost of hidden emotions, abandoned relationships, forgotten identities. These stories I felt a personal duty to tell. Traveling to North Korea filled me with a sense that every person there, from the lowliest laborer to military leaders, had to surrender a rich private life in order to enact one pre-written by the Party. To capture this on the page, I created characters across all levels of society, from the orphan soldier to the Party leaders. And since Kim Jong Il had written the script for all of North Korea, my novel didn't make sense without writing his role as well.

"THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ" by Anne Enright

2012-01-17T10:52:00.001-05:00

4 out of 5

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 465 KB
Print Length: 264 pages

Synopsis:

Anne Enright chronicles an affair between 32-year-old Gina Moynihan, and Seán Vallely, a rich, dutiful husband and a devoted if somewhat inept father to the otherworldly, epileptic Evie, not yet 13. Set against a backdrop of easy money, second homes, and gratuitous spending, the dissolution of Gina's and Sean's marriages is both an antidote to and a symptom of the economic prosperity that gripped the country until its sudden and devastating fall from grace in 2008: "In Ireland, if you leave the house and there is a divorce, then you lose the house.... You have to sleep there to keep your claim.... You think it is about sex, and then you remember the money." There are, as with any affair, casualties, but what weighs most heavily on Gina is not what will become of her husband, Conor, but rather Evie, who sees Gina kissing her father, and innocently asks if she might be kissed too, oblivious to the fact that this moment heralds the end of her family. She eventually becomes all too aware that her father is gone and that she's stuck with her sad, neurotic mother. And so the question that remains at the end of this masterful and deeply satisfying novel is not just what will happen to Ireland, but what will happen to Evie?

My view:

"I met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time. There he is, where the end of my of my sister's garden becomes uncertain. He is about to turn around - but he doesn't know this yet. He is looking at the view and I am looking at him......."

I truly enjoyed this novel, especially Anne Enright's prose. The characters came to life vividly. As affairs are concerned, can it ever be the right thing to do? This is in my opinion what drives the story...as in any such situation 'the couple' is never alone, always close by are family members who continue to live life often unaware...if not uneasy about their spouses.

Is there ever an excuse so blatant which can excuse an affair? This Anne Enright tries to find out while taking us along into this forbidden territory.

I am looking forward to reading her previous novel which won the Booker Prize "THE GATHERING"

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

2011-12-25T09:50:00.002-05:00

ROOM by Emma Donoghue

2011-12-11T18:08:00.003-05:00

5 out of 5

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Publication date: 9/13/2010
Format: eBook

Synopsis:

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

My view:

Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. “Was I minus numbers?” – opening paragraph.

This novel stays with me, I finished reading it last night...I know this has happened in real life and it really shook me hard. It is a novel to read, a must read.
It is perhaps a look into this horrible situation, which in real life has happened.Due to privacy issues, court sealed documentation we do not truly know what becomes of a young woman, abducted and kept prisoner in some deranged persons idea of life...it is chilling. The author walks us through using this fictional character in ways we start to understand the psychological ramifications this takes on a human being, once released.......

The author:

Emma Donoghue is an award-winning Irish writer who lives in Canada. At 34, she has published six books of fiction, two works of literary history, two anthologies, and two plays.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on 24 October 1969, Emma is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours B.A. in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a Ph.D. (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Since the age of 23, Donoghue has earned her living as a full-time writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her lover and their son.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

2011-11-19T11:55:00.000-05:00

4 out of 5

Kindle Edition
939 pages
Publisher: Knopf (October 25, 2011)
Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.

Synopsis:

The year is 1984, but not for long. Aomame bolts from the cab, walks onto the elevated Tokyo expressway, descends an emergency ladder to the street below, and enters a strange new world. In parallel, a math teacher and aspiring novelist named Tengo gets an interesting offer to rewrite a mysterious 17-year-old's story for the final round of a young writer's literary prize. So begins Haruki Murakami'smagnum opus, an epic of staggering proportions that folds in a deliciously intriguing cast of characters and central motifs--the moon, Janáček's Sinfonietta, George Orwell's 1984--that acquire powerful resonance as Aomame and Tengo's paths take on a conjoined life of their own, dancing with a protracted elegance that requires nearly 1,000 pages to reach its crowning denouement. 1Q84 was a runaway bestseller in its native Japan, but more importantly, it's easily the grandest work of world literature since Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and represents a monstrous literary event.

My view:

I just finished this wonderful novel and will need a little time to absorb it's effect on me to give it a reasonable review, which is not going to be easy. Anyway here is a tidbit: I read 939 pages without any boredom setting in, and the ending was satisfactory to me even if I wanted to know more about many characters inhabiting this novel, for each where allowed to become full bodied throughout this novel, a great feat for such a long book and a compliment to Haruki Murakami as an author. Not an easy feat. The ending is satisfactory and happy yet each of us will have to come to this conclusion on our own...delicious is all I can say....is it happy????

The Author:

Haruki Murakami web site

Legend has it that on a warm day in Spring 1974 while watching a baseball game Murakami-san had the inspiration to write his first novel, later called Hear the Wind sing.

It won him his first Literary award and is part of The Trilogy of the Rat together with Pinball 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase .

His career as an writer took off fast and a steady flow of Novels, Short Stories, Articles and Documentaries followed.

The fact that he spent a good part of his life outside Japan, mainly in the US and southern Europe, is maybe the key factor of his growing worldwide success.

The stories and settings are familiar to Westerners and yet there is a distinctive Japanese touch.

2011-10-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight Midnight this long awaited new novel by one of my favorite authors Haruki Murakami will be downloaded onto my Kindle. I am excited to begin reading all 900+ pages, savoring them.

THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern

2011-10-14T11:15:00.001-04:00

5 out of 5

Pub. Date: September 2011
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Sold By: Random House
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 384pp

First paragraph:

"The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl."

My view:

If you like classic literature and contemporary literary fiction you will love this book. This literary novel is full of twists and turns, reality and magic, even so it is often difficult to know which is illusion and which is reality.

For those who like fantasy, you are in for a real treat...This will definitely be one of my favorite reads of 2011.

"Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart..."

Synopsis:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazement. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Author:

ERIN MORGENSTERN is a writer and multimedia artist who describes all her work as being “fairy tales in one way or another.” She lives in Massachusetts with her husband.

RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles

2011-10-04T19:40:00.000-04:00

5 out of 5

Pub. Date: July 2011
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Sold By: Penguin Group
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 352pp

Synopsis:

Manhattan in the late 1930s is the setting for this saga of a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club are never the same after an auto accident.

Towles' buzzed-about first novel is an affectionate return to the post–Jazz Age years, and the literary style that grew out of it (though seasoned with expletives). Brooklyn girl Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse mate, Midwestern beauty Eve Ross, are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. After a milk truck mauls his roadster with the women in it, permanently scarring Eve, the guilt-ridden Tinker devotes himself to her, though he and she both know he has stronger feelings for Katey. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher's assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. Eve and Tinker grow apart, and then Kate, belatedly seeing Tinker for what he is, sadly gives up on him. Named after George Washington's book of moral and social codes,this novel documents with breezy intelligence and impeccable reserve the machinations of wealth and power at an historical moment that in some ways seems not so different from the current one. Tinker, echoing Gatsby, is permanently adrift. The novel is a bit light on plot, relying perhaps too much on description. But the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles avoids the period nostalgia and sentimentality to which a lesser writer might succumb.

An elegant, pithy performance by a first-time novelist who couldn't seem more familiar with his characters or territory.

I absolutely loved this novel....

Author:

Amor Towles was born and raised just outside Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University, where he was a Scowcroft Fellow. He is a Principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

THE FOREMOST GOOD FORTUNE by Susan Conley

2011-09-25T13:27:00.001-04:00

5 out of 5

Pub. Date: February 2011
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Sold By: Random House
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 304pp

Synopsis:

"China sat in the rooms of our house like a question," begins Conley in this luminous memoir of moving her family from Portland, Maine, to Beijing on the eve of the 2008 Olympics. Conley's husband had accepted a dream job in Beijing, and they had decided to say "yes to all the unknowns that will now rain down on us" including common difficulties faced by many families moving to a new city: a new school for her two young sons, finding new friends, and adjusting to a new apartment all compounded by the intensity of learning a difficult new language and adapting to a new culture. Conley's writing is at once spare and strong, and her description of having to present an unflappable front to her children while being hit "with a rolling wave of homesickness" pulls the reader into her world like a close friend. As Conley starts to hit her stride in her adopted city, she discovers lumps in her breast and finds herself on a different kind of journey, which she describes as "an essential aloneness that cancer has woven into my days." She explains in this engaging memoir that after her treatment in the U.S. was over, she returned to Beijing, where she searched for the perfect Chinese talisman to "ward off the leftover cancer juju" and hoping to help her boys move past their own fears of their mother's mortality.

Author:

Susan Conley lived in Beijing for more than two years, and returned to Portland, Maine, with her husband and two sons in December 2009. She is cofounder and executive director of the Telling Room, a writers’ workshop and literary hub for the region. She was an associate editor at Ploughshares and has led creative writing seminars at Emerson College in Boston. Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine as well as The Paris Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. She is currently working on a novel and settling back into life in the States.

ORANGES AREN'T THE ONLY FRUIT by Jeanette Winterson

2011-09-25T13:16:00.000-04:00

4 out of 5

Pub. Date: December 2007
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Sold By: Barnes & Noble
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 192pp

Synopsis:

If Flannery O'Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical first novel....Winterson's voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you've never heard before.

Raised by an oppressively evangelical mother, Jeanette grows up a good little Christian soldier, even going so far as to stitch samplers whose apocalyptic themes terrify her classmates. As she dryly notes, without self-pity or smugness, ``This tendency towards the exotic has brought me many problems, just as it did for William Blake.'' Jeanette would have remained in the fold but for her unconventional desires; though she can reconcile her love of women with her love of God, the church cannot. It could have been a grim tale, but this first novelwinner of England's Whitbread Prizeis in fact a wry and tender telling of a young girl's triumphantly coming into her own.

Author:

A novelist whose honours include England’s Whitbread Prize, and the American Academy’s E. M. Forster Award, as well as the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival, Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene as a very young woman in 1985 with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her subsequent novels, including Sexing the Cherry, The Passion,Written on the Body, and The PowerBook, have also gone on to receive great international acclaim. Her latest novel isLighthousekeeping, heralded as "a brilliant, glittering, piece of work". She lives in London and the Cotswolds.

BEAUTIFULLY UNBROKEN by Mary Jane Nealon

2011-09-25T12:59:00.001-04:00

Pub. Date: July 2011
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Sold By: ST MARTINS / MPS
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 224pp

Synopsis:

Poet and Bakeless Prize winner Nealon (Immaculate Fuel, 2004, etc.) poetically writes about her close-knit Irish-American family and her vocation for healing.

As a young girl, after enjoying a biography of Molly Pitcher, the author dreamed of accomplishing great deeds in the medical field. However, she writes, nursing school was actually a default option since her grades would not qualify her for a university scholarship. Tragically, her younger brother which whom she had an extremely close bond was diagnosed with a rare, difficult-to-treat cancer just after her graduation. Rather than seeking a job near her family home in New Jersey, she accepted a nursing job in Virginia because she couldn't face the possibility of her brother's death. Only a year later, when her brother was near death, did she return home. Oppressed by guilt at the carefree life she had been living, Nealon writes about her painful realization that she had failed her family and especially her brother: "I had been in the wrong hospital. I had been at the wrong bedside." Consequently, she took a job nursing young patients who had terminal cancers in the same hospital where her brother lay dying, and this was a turning point in her life. From then on, she was engaged in a search—for reconciliation with her parents and sister, who blamed her for leaving, for a lover who might take her brother's place, and for the spiritual sustenance she derived from nurturing cancer patients, caring for wave of early AIDS patients and treating the homeless.

Simultaneously an elegiac memoir and a sparkling prose-poem.

Author:

Mary Jane Nealon always wanted to be a nurse. 'WIn her close-knit Irish Catholic world, suffering went hand-in-hand with sainthood and one achieved worth only through service.

"You became a nurse, a cop or a firefighter," says Nealon. "There was this idea that you had to do service to have any value. ...

WEIGHT by Jeanette Winterson

2011-07-20T12:16:00.008-04:00

5 out of 5

Pub. Date: December 2007
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Sold By: Barnes & Noble
Format: NOOK Book (eBook)

Excerpt:

‘Tell me the time’ you say. And what you really say is ‘Tell me a story.’

Here’s one I haven’t been able to put down.

Weight of the World My father was Poseidon. My mother was the Earth.
My father loved the strong outlines of my mother’s body. He loved her demarcations and her boundaries. He knew where he stood with her. She was solid, certain, shaped and material.

My mother loved my father because he recognised no boundaries. His ambitions were tidal. He swept, he sank, he flooded, he re-formed. Poseidon was a deluge of a man. Power flowed off him. He was deep, sometimes calm, but never still.

My mother and father teemed with life. They were life. Creation depended on them and had done so before there was air or fire. They sustained so much. They were so much. To each other they were irresistible.

Both were volatile. My father obviously so, my mother more alarmingly. She was serene as a rock but volcano’d with anger. She was quiet as a desert but tectonically challenged. When my mother threw a plate across the room, the whole world felt the crash. My father could be whipped into a storm in moments. My mother grumbled and growled and shook for days or weeks or months until her rage fissured and crumpled entire cities or forced human kind into lava-like submission.

Humankind . . . They never could see it coming. Look at Pompeii. There they are in the bathouses, sitting in their chairs, wearing skeletal looks of charred surprise.

When my father wooed my mother she lapped it up. He was playful, he was warm, he waited for her in the bright blue shallows and came a little closer, then drew back, and his pull was to leave a little gift on her shore; a piece of coral, mother of pearl, a shell as spiralled as a dream.

Sometimes he was a long way out and she missed him and the beached fishes gasped for breath. Then he was all over her again, and they were mermaids together, because there was always something feminine about my father, for all his power. Earth and water are the same kind, just as fire and air are their opposites.

She loved him because he showed her to herself. He was her moving mirror. He took her round the world, the world that she was, and held it up for her to see, her beauty of forests and cliffs and coastlines and wild places. To him she was both paradise and fear and he loved both. Together they went where no human had ever been. Places only they could go, places only they could be. Wherever he went, she was there; a gentle restraint, a serious reminder; the earth and the waters that covered the earth. He knew though, that while he could not cover the whole of her, she underpinned the whole of him. For all his strength, she was strong.

Author:

A novelist whose honours include England’s Whitbread Prize, and the American Academy’s E. M. Forster Award, as well as the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival, Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene as a very young woman in 1985 with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her subsequent novels, including Sexing the Cherry, The Passion,Written on the Body, and The PowerBook, have also gone on to receive great international acclaim. Her latest novel is Lighthousekeeping, heralded as "a brilliant, glittering, piece of work" (The Independent). She lives in London and the Cotswolds.

STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett

2011-07-16T11:06:00.002-04:00

Pub. Date: June 2011
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Sold By: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: NOOK Book (eBook)

Ann Patchett raises the bar with State of Wonder, a provocative and ambitious novel set deep in the Amazon jungle.

Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past.

Once found, Dr. Swenson is as imperious and uncompromising as ever. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina.

State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss. It is a tale that leads the reader into the very heart of darkness, and then shows us what lies on the other side.

Author:

Since her auspicious debut, Ann Patchett has crafted a handful of elegant novels, garnering several accolades and awards along the way. But her real breakthrough occurred with 2001's Bel Canto, a taut, psychological thriller set in the claustrophobic confines of an embassy under siege in South America. Winning both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize, Bel Canto catapulted Patchett into the ranks of bestselling authors.

As if to prove her versatility, Patchett departed from fiction for 2004's Truth & Beauty, the heartbreaking account of her longstanding, difficult friendship with the late Lucy Grealy, a gifted writer whose disfigurement from cancer precipitated a tragic descent into addiction and death. This memoir won several literary awards and appeared on many end-of-year best books lists.

THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls

2011-06-30T12:53:00.001-04:00

5/5

Pub. Date: March 2005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Sold By: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 304pp

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor.

Author:

Jeannette Walls lives in Virginia and is married to the writer John Taylor. She is a regular contributor to MSNBC and has worked at several publications, including Esquire, USA Today, and New York.

THE GOOD DAUGHTER by Jasmin Darznik

2011-06-30T12:40:00.001-04:00

5/5

Pub. Date: January 2011
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Sold By: HACHETTE BOOK GROUP USA/LITTLE BROWN
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 336pp

We were a world of two, my mother and I, until I started turning into an American girl. That's when she began telling me about The Good Daughter. It became a taunt, a warning, an omen. Jasmin Darznik came to America from Iran when she was only three years old, and she grew up knowing very little about her family's history. When she was in her early twenties, on a day shortly following her father's death, Jasmin was helping her mother move; a photograph fell from a stack of old letters. The girl pictured was her mother. She was wearing a wedding veil, and at her side stood a man whom Jasmin had never seen before. At first, Jasmin's mother, Lili, refused to speak about the photograph, and Jasmin returned to her own home frustrated and confused. But a few months later, she received from her mother the first of ten cassette tapes that would bring to light the wrenching hidden story of her family's true origins in Iran: Lili's marriage at thirteen, her troubled history of abuse and neglect, and a daughter she was forced to abandon in order to escape that life. The final tape revealed that Jasmin's sister, Sara - The Good Daughter - was still living in Iran. In this sweeping, poignant, and beautifully written memoir, Jasmin weaves the stories of three generations of Iranian women into a unique tale of one family's struggle for freedom and understanding. The result is an enchanting and unforgettable story of secrets, betrayal, and the unbreakable..

Author:

Jasmin Darznik's first book The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life was a New York Times bestseller and will be published in thirteen countries. Jasmin was born in Tehran, Iran and received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Washington and Lee University and has also taught Iranian literature at the University of Virginia.

ON BLACK SISTER STREET by Chika Unigwe

2011-06-30T10:05:00.002-04:00

5/5

Pub. Date: April 2011
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Sold By: Random House
Format: NOOK Book (eBook)

On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.

Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true—if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else—they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week’s wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future.

Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe’s hidden photograph, Ama’s lifelong search for a father, Joyce’s true name, and Sisi’s deepest secrets—-and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a handsome, sinister stranger.

On Black Sisters Street marks the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors. Raw, vivid, unforgettable, and inspired by a powerful oral storytelling tradition, this novel illuminates the dream of the West—and that dream’s illusion and annihilation—as seen through African eyes. It is a story of courage, unity, and hope, of women’s friendships and of bonds that, once forged, cannot be broken.

Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children.

She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.

Chika Unigwe is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational material. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story "Borrowed Smile", a Commonwealth Short Story Award for "Weathered Smiles" and a Flemish literary prize for "De Smaak van Sneeuw", her first short story written in Dutch. "The Secret", another of her short pieces, was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize. She was the recipient of a 2007 Unesco-Aschberg fellowship for creative writing, and of a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation fellowship for creative writing.

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, by Jon Ronson

2011-06-30T09:47:00.002-04:00

5/5

Pub. Date: May 2011
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Sold By: Penguin Group
Format: NOOK Book (eBook) , 288pp

In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

Author:

Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary filmmaker. His books Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats were both international bestsellers. The Men Who Stare at Goats was released as a major motion picture in 2009, starring George Clooney. Ronson lives in London.

LITTLE PRINCES by Conor Grennan

2011-05-15T13:20:00.000-04:00

Please visit Conor Grennan's website where you can find information should you want to help.

Author Website : click here

5/5

Paperback: 304 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (February 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0007354177

Synopsis:

In search of adventure, 29-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.

Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war—for a huge fee—by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

"Dahulagiri" children, Conor's home for trafficked children

For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life’s work. HUMLA

Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.

Conor Grennan

PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM by Kyung-sook Shin

2011-05-15T13:11:00.004-04:00

US cover

KOREAN cover

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: Knopf (April 5, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780307593917

5/5

There is a simple, yet remarkable, scene in Kyung-sook Shin’s novel, Please Look After Mom, where the book’s title character visits her adult son in Seoul. He lives in a duty office in the building where he works, because he can't afford an apartment. At night, they sleep on the floor and she offers to lie next to the wall to shield him from a draft. “I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall,” she says. And with this gesture, we catch a glimpse of the depth of love she has for her first-born and the duty-bound sacrifices she’s made on behalf her family. Please Look After Mom is the story of a mother, and her family’s search for her after she goes missing in a crowded train station, told through four richly imagined voices: her daughter’s, her oldest son’s, her husband’s, and finally her own. Each chapter adds a layer to the story’s depth and complexity, until we are left with an indelible portrait of a woman whose entire identity, despite her secret desires, is tied up in her children and the heartbreaking loss that is felt when family bonds loosen over time. Kyung-sook Shin’s elegantly spare prose is a joy to read, but it is the quiet interstitial space between her words, where our own remembrances and regrets are allowed to seep in, that convicts each one of us to our core.

THE CONDITION by Jennifer Haigh

2011-04-24T18:09:00.001-04:00

Penn Hemingway Award Winning

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Number of Pages: 416
Published: 2009-06-30
ISBN-10: 0060755792

Synopsis:

In the summer of 1976, during their annual retreat on Cape Cod, the McKotch family came apart. Now, twenty years after daughter Gwen was diagnosed with Turner’s syndrome—a rare genetic condition that keeps her trapped forever in the body of a child—eminent scientist Frank McKotch is divorced from his pedigreed wife, Paulette. Eldest son Billy, a successful cardiologist, lives a life built on secrets and compromise. His brother Scott awakened from a pot-addled adolescence to a soul-killing job and a regrettable marriage. And Gwen—bright and accomplished but hermetic and emotionally aloof—spurns all social interaction until, well into her thirties, she falls in love for the first time. With compassion and almost painful astuteness, The Condition explores the power of family mythologies—the self-delusions, denials, and inescapable truths that forever bind fathers and mothers and siblings.

My view:

Still reading, half way and terrific

THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE by Somaly Mam

2011-04-15T18:56:00.001-04:00

Synopsis:

The horror and violence perpetrated on young girls to feed the sex trade industry in southeast Asia is personalized in this graphic story. Of mixed race, Khmer and Phnong, Mam is living on her own in the forest in northern Cambodia around 1980 when a 55-year-old stranger claims he will take her to her missing family. Grandfather beats and abuses the nine-year-old Mam and sells her virginity to a Chinese merchant to cover a gambling debt. She is subsequently sold into a brothel in Phnom Penh, and the daily suffering and humiliation she endures is almost impossible to imagine or absorb (I was dead. I had no affection for anyone). She recounts recalcitrant girls being tortured and killed, and police collusion and government involvement in the sex trade; she manages to break the cycle only when she discovers the advantages of ferengi (foreign) clients and eventually marries a Frenchman. She comes back to Cambodia from France, now unafraid, and with her husband, Pierre; sets up a charity, AFESIP, action for women in distressing circumstances; and fearlessly devotes herself to helping prostitutes and exploited children. The statistics are shocking: one in every 40 Cambodian girls (some as young as five) will be sold into sex slavery. Mam brings to the fore the AIDS crisis, the belief that sex with a virgin will cure the disease and the Khmer tradition of women's obedience and servitude. This moving, disturbing tale is not one of redemption but a cry for justice and support for women's plight everywhere.

To find out more and what you can do, go to:

http://www.somaly.org/

My view:

This is not a book I feel I can review, I prefere to send you to Somaly Mam's website where you can find out much more. It is so difficult for me to understand how a parent can sell a daughter into prostitution, girls as young as 4-5.........This wonderful human being is one of the strongest woman I have ever heard about.

GOLD BOY EMERALD GIRL by Yiyun Li

2011-02-08T12:28:00.003-05:00

Snopsis:

The nine brilliant stories in Li's collection (after The Vagrants) offer a frighteningly lucid vision of human fate. In the title story, motherless Siyu has long been in love with an older zoology professor, Dai, who suddenly wants Siyu, 38 and single, to marry Dai's gay 42-year-old son, Hanfeng. In "A Man Like Him," retired art teacher Fei embarks on a strange quest after reading a story about a Web site devoted to shaming a man who left his wife. Fei seeks out the man, needing to confide to him his own sordid brush with infamy. The collection's magnificent centerpiece is "Kindness," the novella-length reminiscence of a spiritually despondent math teacher named Moyan, whose bleak story begins with the emotional starvation she suffered from her adoptive parents and grimly continues over the years as two older women--an English teacher and Moyan's army superior--attempt, unsuccessfully, to reach out to her. Li's description of army life, and particularly her description of Moyan's regiment's march across Mount Dabi, is a bravura piece of writing, but it's Moyan's evolution from pitiable to borderline heroic (in her own way) that is Li's greatest achivement.

In these stories, Li Yiyun, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award-winner and acclaimed author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants, gives us exquisite fiction filled with suspense, depth, and beauty, in which history, politics, and folklore magnificently illuminate the human condition.

My view: Currently reading

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery

2011-02-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

3. 3/4

Synopsis:

In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand.

Muriel Barbery (born 28 May 1969 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a French novelist and professor of philosophy

My view:

I think a lot was lost in translation from French to English, rendering some of the philosophical texts awkward French humour came accross heavy footed.

However this is a delightful narrative, you will find the typical class division which exists in France and on which this book relies for it's tale of a deceptive "concierge".

I did enjoy the book, being French perhaps I noticed where the French version might have been a better choice. If you read in French, choose the French version.

This book was on the New York best selling list for 6 month.

DISPLACED PERSONS by Ghita Schwarz

2011-01-14T19:23:00.000-05:00

5/5

Synopsis:

Moving from the Allied zones of postwar Germany to New York City, an astonishing novel of grief and anger, memory and survival witnessed through the experiences of "displaced persons" struggling to remake their lives in the decades after World War II

In May 1945, Pavel Mandl, a Polish Jew recently liberated from a concentration camp, lands near a displaced persons camp in the British occupation zone of newly defeated Germany. Alone, possessing nothing but a map, a few tins of food, a toothbrush, and his identity papers, he must scrape together a new life in a chaotic community of refugees, civilians, and soldiers.
Gifted with a talent for black-market trading, Pavel soon procures clothing, false documents, and a modest house, where he installs himself and a pair of fellow refugees—Fela, a young widow who fled Poland for Russia at the outset of the war, and Chaim, a resourceful teenage boy whose smuggling skills have brought him to the Western zones. The trio soon form a makeshift family, searching for surviving relatives, railing against their circumscribed existence, and dreaming of visas to America.
Fifteen years later, haunted by decisions they made as "DPs," Pavel and Fela are married and living in Queens with their young son and daughter, and Chaim has recently emigrated from Israel with his wife, Sima. Pavel opens a small tailoring shop with his scheming brother-in-law while Fela struggles to establish peace in a loosely traditional household; Chaim and Sima adapt cheerfully to American life and its promise of freedom from a brutal past. Their lives are no longer dominated by the need to endure, fight, hide, or escape. Instead, they grapple with past trauma in everyday moments: taking the children to the municipal pool, shopping for liquor, arguing with landlords.
For decades, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim battle over memory and identity on the sly, within private groups of survivors. But as the Iron Curtain falls in the 1990s, American society starts to embrace the tragedy as a cultural commodity, and survivor politics go public. Clever and stubborn, tyrannical and generous, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim articulate the self-conscious strivings of an immigrant community determined to write its own history, on its own terms.
In Displaced Persons, Ghita Schwarz reveals the interior despairs and joys of immigrants shaped by war—ordinary men and women who have lived through cataclysmic times—and illuminates changing cultural understandings of trauma and remembrance.

My view:
I highly recomend this book, I loved how the author handled this delicate subject.

JUST KIDS by Patti Smith

2010-11-06T11:02:00.002-04:00

Pub. Date: April 2010

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Sold By: HARPERCOLLINS

Format: NOOKbook (eBook) , 304pp

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorp

Synopsis:

Starred Review. In 1967, 21-year-old singer–song writer Smith, determined to make art her life and dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Philadelphia to live this life, left her family behind for a new life in Brooklyn. When she discovered that the friends with whom she was to have lived had moved, she soon found herself homeless, jobless, and hungry. Through a series of events, she met a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe who changed her life—and in her typically lyrical and poignant manner Smith describes the start of a romance and lifelong friendship with this man: It was the summer Coltrane died. Flower children raised their arms... and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, and the summer of love.... This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work.

My view

I am half way through and can but recommend this book...Patti Smith knows how to write and bring words to life...it is a must read

INFIDEL by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2010-10-12T15:24:00.001-04:00

Somalia

ISBN-13: 9781416538592

Pub. Date: 02/06/2007
e-Book nook

Author: Ayaan Hirst Ali

Synopsis:

Biography

Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh's death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion.

My view: currentely reading

THE SECRET LIVES OF BABA SEGI'S WIFES by Lola Shoneyin

2010-09-26T14:38:00.009-04:00

Nigeria

5/5

AUTHOR:

“It’s funny; when you talk to women [they] understand my point of view immediately. My mother came from a polygamous home as well. Everyone knows a woman who’s been a wife in a polygamous household especially in Africa and they know how bitter they are. They’ve all seen this transformation – you have a beautiful, lovely young woman, they become a wife in a polygamous household and they change completely. Not because they want to but because [in] that small family set-up they have to become monsters to survive or else you will be beaten down or you could be killed as well, sometimes it’s that bad.

“So you’ve got to stick up for yourself, you’ve got to find ways to be a bigger bitch than the next one. And you’ve got to make your own kids really defensive. Sometimes these things are completely outside the ordinary personality of the person whose doing them which is very sad. And because you have all these children and just this one father and they’ve got to get this man’s attention they’ll do anything, they grow up being very competitive. So women understand immediately.

Synopsis:

When Baba Segi awoke with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife's childlessness.

Meet Baba Segi . . .

A plump, vain, and prosperous middle-aged man of robust appetites, Baba Segi is the patriarch of a large household that includes a quartet of wives and seven children. But his desire to possess more just might be his undoing.

And his wives . . .

Iya Segi—the bride of Baba Segi's youth, a powerful, vindictive woman who will stop at nothing to protect her favored position as ruler of her husband's home.

Iya Tope—Baba Segi's second wife, a shy, timid woman whose decency and lust for life are overshadowed by fear.

Iya Femi—the third wife, a scheming woman with crimson lips and expensive tastes who is determined to attain all that she desires, no matter what the cost.

Bolanle—Babi Segi's fourth and youngest wife, an educated woman wise to life's misfortunes who inspires jealousy in her fellow wives . . . and who harbors a secret that will expose shocking truths about them all.

My view: Wonderful read by a talented writer, this is her first novel, will definitely follow and read her next book

A TIME TO BETRAY by Reza Kahlili

2010-09-24T10:56:00.003-04:00

5/5

ISBN-13: 9781439189672

Pub. Date: 04/06/2010
Digital: nook

REZA KAHLILI is the pseudonym of a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member who worked undercover as a CIA agent for several years in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
He spent an idyllic childhood in Tehran, the capital of Iran, surrounded by a close-knit upper middle-class family and two spirited boyhood friends. The Iran of his youth allowed Reza to think and act freely, and even indulge a penchant for rebellious pranks in the face of the local mullahs.
His political and personal freedoms flourished while he continued his education in America during the ’70s. He returned to Iran shortly after the Revolution eager to help rebuild his country, honestly believing that freedom and democracy would prevail and lead his country into a glorious future.
Even though most Iranians had enjoyed varying degrees of success under the Shah, the ayatollah Khomeini’s message resonated with a population weary of oppression and desperate for the political choice denied them under the Shah. To this end, Reza joined the Revolutionary Guards, an elite force that served Khomeini.
Instead of finding a new beginning for his country, he discovered a tyrannical ayatollah bent on plunging Iran into a dark age of religious fundamentalism and causing his fellow countrymen to turn on each other. Shaken to his very core after witnessing the atrocities at Evin Prison, atrocities that hit very close to home, a shattered and disillusioned Reza embarked on a mission that would change his life forever. He returned to America and emerged as “Wally,” a spy for the CIA.
Counterintelligence, coded communications, escape tactics and evasion, dominated his new life. He risked exposure daily and after several close calls, he managed to leave Iran. His CIA activities continued in Europe for a few more years before he and his family finally moved to America.
After the 9/11 attack, Reza Kahlili activated a handful of sources within Iran and once again contacted the CIA. He continues as an active voice for a free Iran and works toward ending the thugocracy of the mullah’s regime. He has written several articles for various media expressing his opinions and hope for a free Iran.

My View:
This biography is a must read for anyone wanting to know more about the Iran of today...There is no doubt, the regime currently in Iran must GO...

HONOLULU by Alan Brennert

2010-05-26T09:42:00.003-04:00

5/5

Synopsis:

“In Korea in those days, newborn girls were not deemed important enough to be graced with formal names, but were instead given nicknames, which often reflected the parents’ feelings on the birth of a daughter: I knew a girl named Anger, and another called Pity. As for me, my parents named me Regret.”Honolulu is the rich, unforgettable story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai'i in 1914 in search of a better life.
Of the affluent young husband and chance at an education that she has been promised, she is quickly married off to a poor, embittered laborer who takes his frustrations out on his new wife. Renaming herself Jin, she makes her own way in this strange land, finding both opportunity and prejudice. With the help of three of her fellow picture brides, Jin prospers along with her adopted city, now growing from a small territorial capital into the great multicultural city it is today. But paradise has its dark side, whether it’s the daily struggle for survival in Honolulu’s tenements, or a crime that will become the most infamous in the islands’ history...
With its passionate knowledge of people and places in Hawai'i far off the tourist track,Honolulu is most of all the spellbinding tale of four women in a new world, united by dreams, disappointment, sacrifices, and friendship.

Author: Alan Brennert

Alan Brennert was born in Englewood, New Jersey, to Herbert E. Brennert (an aviation writer who contributed to such magazines as Skyways and American Helicopter) and Almyra E. Brennert. Since 1973 he has lived in Southern California. He holds a Bachelor's degree in English from California State University at Long Beach, and also did graduate work in screenwriting at UCLA.

In addition to novels, he has written short stories, teleplays, screenplays, and the libretto of a stage musical, Weird Romance, with music by Alan Men ken and lyrics by David Spencer. Produced in 1992 by the WPA Theatre in New York, it has since been licensed for more than a hundred regional, high school, and college productions, both in the United States and abroad. A cast album was released by Columbia Records in 1993.

My View:
I found this book both a great read and informative. From a fictional point of view it is strong enough to hold it's own. The protagonist 'Regret' draws us into a world populated by strong characters.
Within Regret's fictional life we meet real life characters, they are so well intertwined that I did not realize until I read the authors account at the end of the book (be sure to read it, it takes several pages but is certainty
interesting). There is the Massi murder case which at the time it took place had all of Hawaii and the States buzzing. There is also the story of Detective Chan, a real Hawaiian detective who inspired the fictional Charlie Chan.
I loved this novel and will read Alan Brennert's novel MOLOK'I soon

THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver

2010-05-18T11:42:00.006-04:00

5/5

Synopsis:

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.

Barbara Kingsolver has been the recipient of a number of awards and honours. In 2000, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Her 1998 bestseller,The Poisonwood Bible, won the National Book Prize of South Africa, and was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also been awarded the James Beard Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edward Abbey EcoFiction Award, the Physicians for Social Responsibility National Award, and the Arizona Civil Liberties Union Award, among others. Her latest novel, The Lacuna, has been nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

My View:
I loved Barbara Kingsolver's novel "THE POISONWOOD BIBLE" and hoped her first novel since would be as adventurous. It definitely is!
There are in my view two parts to this novel although intertwined with Harry Shepherd's tale which is a marvel. The life of protagonist Harry Shepherd and the political events of 1930-40 which take us from Trotsky's last days in Mexico to the Communist witch hunt in Washington with J. E. Hoover and the Un-American hearings, an ugly time in US history. I was surprised to read Nixon was part of those hearings and was later elected president...well he got what he deserved in the end.
It is a fascinating account of an era I was not very knowledgeable of, having been raised in Europe and being of a later generation. This is a must read book!
The first part or ongoing part throughout this novel is the life of Harry Shepherd. A kind, honest child whose mother is Mexican and father American, not a happy marriage, the mother takes her child to Mexico where Harry falls in love with the ocean and the wonders inhabited by those waters. As he grows he will become acquainted with the likes of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, historical personages which are intertwined within the fiction which this novel is. Barbara Kingsolver's research is impeccable and her maneuvering of the fictional characters and real life ones admirable. She touches on what seems to be in the US even today, controversial subjects, Harry's rejection by the Military to serve due to Harry's sexual preference, today "don't ask, don't tell" changed this for the better. I read a review where the reader felt that some Americans are going to hate this book, many truth are exposed, but really what country has a perfect past? We learn from our mistakes, one would hope.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has read this book.
But like I mentioned, Harry Shepherd takes us on a wonderful adventure throughout this book...the ending is a surprise to the very last sentence.

Oliver and his overnight guest Daisy

2010-05-01T13:20:00.001-04:00

BEATRICE AND VIRGIL by Yann Martel

2010-04-28T14:42:00.002-04:00

5/5

Biography

Yann Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, in 1963, of Canadian parents who were doing graduate studies. Later they both joined the Canadian foreign service and he grew up in Costa Rica, France, Spain and Mexico, in addition to Canada. He continued to travel widely as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey and India, but is now based mainly in Montreal. He obtained a degree in Philosophy from Trent University in Ontario, then worked variously as a tree planter, dishwasher and security guard before taking up writing full-time from the age of 27.

Synopsis:

Martel’s mesmerizing Man Booker Prize–winning Life of Pi (2002) has become a cult classic, its richness of depth and meaning belying the startling basic story line of a young Indian man stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. So it is with Martel’s latest novel, also a fable-type story with iceberg-deep dimensions reaching far below the surface of its general premise. Henry, a young author, has written a book that has been successfully received, but the idea underpinning his follow-up work—a combination of fiction and essays thematically linked by his concept that writers shy away from fictional depictions of the Holocaust in favor of strict documentation—results in a manuscript deemed unacceptable by his publisher. Henry and his wife then flee their home country of Canada to live in “one of those great cities of the world,” which is never specified. One day Henry receives a packet of materials obviously sent by someone familiar with his once-celebrated status, and in tracking down the source of the packet, Henry encounters what will turn out to be a life-threatening acquaintance with a taxidermist, whose personality is as enigmatic as his stuffed creatures are haunting. Ultimately, Henry finds redemption in terms of his fiction writing but not before facing a leviathan-size example of the human capacity for inflicting cruelty, assuaging guilt, and engaging in creative deception.

My view:
When I ordered BEATRICE AND VIRGIL I did not know what this novel was about, only that I was a fan of Yann Martel's THE LIFE OF PI.
Eventually i noticed this novel reviewed by a few fellow bloggers and realized I was being treated to a very serious subject. I took two days to read this very short novel, slowly reflecting upon the characters and their interaction with each other which was unusual beings it involves humans and animals.
The reviews are very mixed, it seems to be one of these books one loves or dislikes. By paying attention I became one of those who loves this book. The Holocaust is a tremendously difficult subject to write about in a novel and I believe Yann Martel did it justice.

"If history does not become story it dies to everyone except the historian"

Yann Martel

THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS by Paolo Giordano

2010-04-26T12:34:00.006-04:00

5/5+

Author:

"Paolo Giordano was born in Turin in 1982. He is a professional physicist and is currently working on a doctorate in particle physics. The Solitude of Prime Numbers, his first novel, took Italy by storm where it has sold over a million copies. It is being translated into thirty languages and has sold all over the world."

Synopsis:
Paolo Giordano narrates the childhood and young adult life of a boy, Mattia, and a girl, Alice, both of whom had exposure to traumatic situations very early in life. Alice bears the physical scars of a terrible skiing accident which nearly killed her. Mattia bears the emotional scars of having lost his disabled twin sister, after leaving her alone in a park in order to attend his first and only birthday party. These traumas manifest themselves again physically later in both of their lives, with Alice being anorexic, and Mattia cutting himself. At school, both are outsiders, much as prime numbers are outsiders from the other numbers. Both lonely, they befriending each other, forming a special relationship -- very close, but never romantic. (Metaphorically, the relationship is compared to the relation between prime pairs; always together, but never touching). When the gifted Mattia wins a mathematics posting that takes him thousands of miles away, their relationship appears to have run its course. But when Alice sights a woman who could be Mattia's sister, the two are brought back together again.
My View:
"THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS" will be on my list of "Best novels of 2010"
A terrifying sky lesson opens this novel, which will leave Alice with both physical and psychological scars, affecting her outlook on life and her body.
On his way to a birthday party Mattia accompanied by his twin sister makes a life changing decision, after all he is only 5 and can't yet formulate actions and consequences. Mattias will grow up distant with "cutting" his only relieve from anxiety and pressures of life.
Then they meet!

This is such an insightful novel, written with elegance and heart.

I noticed a few differences in how men are depicted in this novel. There is a lack of machismo, men have feelings, they are able to cry, they are at an equal level with women, I felt this so refreshing. I am of to Italy :)

The ending is a concluding marvel which wraps up the whole story so perfectly, I loved it!

Please read this book, it will open your minds and heart.

WHISTERIA

2010-04-24T13:15:00.001-04:00

THE CHILDREN'S BOOK by A S Byatt

2010-04-17T09:28:00.007-04:00

5/5

Synopsis:
Once upon a time there was a mother who wove stories for her children. And the stories grew and grew until the children were swallowed up in them, and only the bravest and fairest of them could break free. In The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt has created a world so dominated by stories that they threaten to consume their tellers. They are not the sanitary, lobotomised fairy tales with which we grew up; they are the angry, dark tales, harkening back to the Brothers Grimm, in which the ugly stepsisters cut off their toes and heels in an effort to fit the golden slipper, but are given away as the shoe brims with blood.

Children’s literature of the early 20th century painted the Victorian era as the Golden Age of childhood, a time of innocence and adventure, with sexuality only emerging after marriage. The rise of the middle class meant that, for the first time, a large proportion of children had the chance for an extended childhood, reaching into the teens, rather than going out to work or beginning a family of their own. That this myth of childhood concealed the young working classes, labouring down in mines or in factories, up chimneys or languishing in poor houses, was conveniently ignored. When poverty is depicted, it is the genteel adventure of The Railway Children, not the dirtier reality.

The Children’s Book settles into the cracks in that myth of English childhood. From the beginning, you are never allowed to relax into the idyll; instead, like the characters, you feel the unknown lurking in the bushes. You half want to learn what is there and half want to remain in blissful ignorance. The majority of the characters are the middle-class, educated children of professionals; their growth to adulthood mirrors the flourishing of the Fabian Society, the suffrage movement, and the Labour party. Byatt weaves political and personal history together. The personal stories explicate and illumine the political ones, so that, for example, the teenage son of a wealthy banker becomes a Marxist reactionary, moving seamlessly from Charles to Karl.
My view:
I still have 100 pages to read out of 600+ however the above synopsis is so great I can't do it justice.
I can tell you this is a must read book for anyone who likes adult fairy tales (nymeth at THING MEAN A LOT)
It isn't an easy read, but so rewarding. I was so interested, I referred to my laptop to get the full images of A S Byatt's narrative. I learned new things about the Fabian Society which surprised me and reminded me of the 1960-1970's free love movement, indeed, what is new is old!
If you are in need of a truly literary novel, intelligent, fun and full of interesting facts woven into a great story, please read "THE CHILDREN'S BOOK"

I am including a photo of my own family taken at the very time THE CHILDREN'S BOOK takes place, which helped me to visualize. So I will treat you to it: My grat great grandmother in the middle in mourning, around her her 3 daughters, my great aunts and with them her son, my beloved and so very loved by me Grandfather. I love this photo.

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann

2010-03-18T18:52:00.002-04:00

Synopsis

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intric

ate portrait of a city and its people.

My view
In August of 1974 Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New-York. This is a true fact.
Borrowing from this amazing feat, author Colum McCann spins a novel I absolutely loved. It is a story of New-York and it's people. The central characters of this story stand unfamiliar to one other within the crowd watching Philippe Petit walk his tightrope. As the novel advances a delightful pattern emerges, we see how those strangers connected to each other. I like this premise.
It is a must read.
I am looking to read "DANCERS" by Colum McCann, a novel who takes from Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev. ( when I was 17 a friend invited me to have lunch with this magnficent dancer, this was before he defected from Russia, Nureyev's friends were surrounded by somber company at the table...KGB. This is a true memory of my life, it took place in Monte-Carlo in 1963-64 he was dancing as a guest for the Monte-Carlo Ballet and defected. Monte-Carlo, a country where this encounter was not so extraordinary, still I cherish the memory)

UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN by Susan Jane Gilman

2010-02-25T09:58:00.002-05:00

Review Copy from Hachette Books, thank-you Miriam

*****

Synopsis:
In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman and a classmate embarked on a bold trek around the globe starting in the People's Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent backpackers for roughly ten minutes. Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche and Linda Goodman's Love Signs, the two friends plunged into the dusty streets of Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, they quickly found themselves in over their heads--hungry, disoriented, stripped of everything familiar, and under constant government surveillance. Soon, they began to unravel--one physically, the other psychologically. As their journey became increasingly harrowing, they found themselves facing crises that Susan didn't think they'd survive. But by summoning strengths she never knew she had--and with help from unexpected friends--the two travelers found their way out of a Chinese heart of darkness.

My View
I loved this nonfiction, having traveled far from home starting at the age of 18 I could identify with Susan and Clair's wish to travel the world by backpack. Their enthusiasm is typical to their young age, just out of college, wanting to see the world before settling down.
I do not want to give the story away, this is a story worth reading. It is also a cautionary tale.
The end was a real surprise and I cheered for Susan...you will have to read the book to know why, she deserves all my respect.
Do not miss reading UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

FRIDAY FILL~INS

2010-02-19T10:24:00.000-05:00

1. Johnny Weir is fashion style on skates
2. Skating is what I enjoy most at the 2010 Olympics.
3. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud wasn't living
4. Go with it if you get an urge
5. Having sweet dreams helps make the bumps (hills, mountains, summits *.*) of life easier to manage
6. What does it take for a problem I am facing to resolve itself ?
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to believe me...REST, tomorrow my plans include more rest and Sunday, I want to take my dogs for a long walk!

FRIDAY FILL~INS

2010-02-11T18:54:00.002-05:00

1. Pickles, ice cream and potato chips used to be a former boyfriend's favorite treat. I know *.*

2. After playing in the snow, I like to cuddle up with a book, blanket, and real hot chocolate at home.

3. The snow is wonderful and plentiful this year in Virginia.

4. Beauty and chaos exist in nature.

5. It's 5:16 PM; that means for me, time to relax with a book before taking Oliver and Dexter out for a walk .

6. Street vendors selling roasted chestnuts are hard to find in my town (used to love eating them in winter).

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to watching a dvd, tomorrow my plans include catching up on reading and Sunday, I want to enjoy the day eating chocolate!

THE SWAN THIEVES by Elizabeth Kostova

2009-12-28T14:35:00.003-05:00

Thank you Miriam for this Arc copy

Hardcover: 576 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (January 12, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0316065781

Synopsis:
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

My view
This is my first read by Elizabeth Kostova I have yet to read THE HISTORIAN. Her second novel reads like a mystery with a romantic twist which takes us from 1999 to 1879 France. Throughout the distance of a century, lives intertwine and a mystery unravels which will have you guess to the end. Although art is a predominant factor the characters come through strong and vibrant throughout the novel.

I liked this book a lot.

The ending had me intrigued,

Dexter's first photo with his big brother Oliver

2009-11-30T16:39:00.004-05:00

Say hi to Mr. Wiggles 4 month old Yorkie male a friend gave me today.

Oliver is being real good, teaches the little guy where to eat, the right steps to take to my place, it's so cute.

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF AMERICAN WOMEN FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT by Gail Collins

2009-11-20T12:06:00.004-05:00

Thank-you Valerie
Hachette Book Group

Hardcover: 480 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 14, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316059544

Synopsis:

"Gail Collins's When Everything Changed points out what the women on "Mad Men" know: that period in our history was less enjoyable for the ladies.... The early pages of Ms. Collins's book are peppered with accounts of incidents so outrageous they almost seem like jokes....but Ms. Collins underlines the serious consequences of such risible moments by including the stories of individual women-from overworked housewives to marginalized politicians-whose lives were cramped and deformed by the culture's low opinion of their capabilities.... Ms. Collins reminds us of how many aspects of our lives were affected by the battles these women fought. And even readers who lived through this era may be surprised to discover how much they never knew, or have forgotten...Among the impressive features of Ms. Collins's book is her genial, fair-minded sympathy, her refusal to smirk at the excesses of the most radical '70s feminists or at the stance of women, among them Phyllis Schlafly, who counseled their sisters to stay home where they belonged. This evenhandedness seems all the more admirable later in the book, when she considers the significance of Hillary Rodham Clinton's and Sarah Palin's roles in the 2008 presidential election."

My thoughts:

I arrived in the United States in August of 1966 in the middle of the worst airline strike (I was 7 month pregnant and needed to arrive in California before the deadline which forbid women to fly pregnant after 7 month). I was unaware or naive to many of women's limitations at my arrival. My husband, an American citizen changed this for me quickly. He became a man I did not know as soon as we landed at JFK by threatening me not to speak, lest I should embarrass him (I had a rather strong French accent), and a list of things "women do not do in my country... I remember this as being very hard on me. Basically, I had to obey my husband from now on after a life of freedom in my country as a woman. I eventually divorced this man in 1972.

Gail Collins, book "WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED..." was a real wake-up call to what had happened to me so long ago and finally made so much sense. I remember everything mentioned in this great book. I became a feminist and was liberated from some awful male abuse. Betty Friedan's book "THE FEMININE MYSTIC " mentions:

"The feminin mystic has succeeded in burying milions of American women alive. There is no way for these women to break out of their comfortable concentration camps except by finally put forth an effort that human effort which reaches beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of home , to help shape the future."

This statement by Betty Friedan might sound radical today, when women have so many more choices as mothers and in the workplace, even so, we women still have a ways to go. I remember being smothered into a life which was expected of me as a mother and woman and reinforced by men, be it a husband, boss, doctors etc...Personally I believe my 3 boys did not profit from this confinement their mother was expected to live in. I noticed how much happier they where when I broke those rules, dated, traveled et... and had a babysitter to watch them.

"WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED..." needs to be a must read by young women and men, learn their mother's history, understand that not so long ago life wasn't easy for those mothers, and women in general. Men should read it to learn from it and perhaps be surprised at the disrespect we women received. Yet for whatever reason there is a feeling in me that men still have a ways to go. If women do not stand up and continue to stand up for our rights we will stay where we are today. Throughout the book the disrespect women in the '60, '70, 80, '90 where subjected to is shocking...and I know it is still going on today, if more discretely, after all women have recourse to Sexual Harassment laws today, which in my days in 1966 did not exist at all.

I would like to see this book as a must read be it in High school or College level

OLIVER

2009-11-14T09:17:00.001-05:00

Oliver enjoying a walk

OLIVER'S NEWEST GIRLFRIEND "ASHLEY"

2009-11-14T09:10:00.001-05:00

My friend, Nicole's beautiful new baby girl "ASHLEY"

CHILDREN OF DUST by Ali Eteraz

2009-11-11T13:12:00.002-05:00

*****

Thank-you Julie Harabedian, FSB Associates

for this copy

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: HarperOne; 1st edition (October 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061567086
ISBN-13: 978-0061567087

THE WASHINGTON POST:

Ali Eteraz has been a devout Muslim, a disillusioned skeptic and everything in between. Throughout his meandering spiritual journey, his faith has given him great pride and contentedness but has also been a source of deep shame, anger and frustration. This emotional struggle is the backdrop for his memoir, "Children of Dust," which chronicles his childhood in Pakistan, his family's immigration to the United States and finally his return to Asia as an adult. Eteraz grew up attending a madrassa in rural Pakistan, where he spent his days memorizing the Koran and enduring harsh beatings for his mistakes. When his family relocated to Alabama during his adolescence, he struggled to fit in with his peers while adhering to the strict religious practices his family enforced. "I was too embarrassed to admit to non-Muslims that it was Islam -- archaic, anachronistic, exotic Islam -- that controlled me," Eteraz writes. "Admitting that would lead me to be viewed as an outsider -- and I wanted nothing more than to be American." From there, you might say Eteraz got religious whiplash: He describes periods of intense absorption in the dutiful practice of Islam, followed by phases of doubt and cynicism. In particular, he deeply questioned his faith after a harrowing trip to Pakistan, where he narrowly escaped being killed by fellow Muslims who suspected he was a U.S. agent. Finally, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed his worldview definitively. "I felt an unbridgeable distance from those militants across the globe that I'd long ago felt drawn to and then, more recently, had felt pity for," he writes. Amid all the soul-searching, Eteraz manages to amusingly describe his teenage antics and poke some fun at himself for all the superficial ways he tried to make friends envy him for his piety. These honest details make his story even more compelling.

My View:

Ali Eteraz takes us on a journey from his birth to today and what a journey it is! Ali's parents and relatives, Pakistani Muslim fundamentalists expect their son, "Abir ul Islam", translated Perfume of Islam to literally spread their fundamentalist faith across Islam.

To prepare their son for such an endeavor, they enroll Abir ul Islam into a school called "madrassa", where he learns to memorize the Koran by rote not understanding the meaning of the words. Each word pronounced is a breath of God, so meaning is not necessary. I was shocked by the brutality employed to keep students on the straight and narrow during classes.

Ali Eteraz ( the author will change names while progressing with his journey towards a peaceful Islam . Ali Eteraz is his name these days.) reveals Islamic traditions with which I was unaccustomed , some quite serious, others humorous.

I can imagine how difficult it must have been for Ali to fit into an American high school, dating, even holding hands with a girl being forbidden to him. We watch him struggle with this serious issue as a teen with hormones rampant as any teenager. Yet as the years go by all the many forbidden temptations ordered by Islam guide the author to reflect on a truth which leads to peace, which he still pursues.

I recommend this memoir to anyone who wishes to see peace in this world, for all countries, religions. Ali Eteraz is a unique voice searching for this precious peace and I wish him all the luck he will need.

I hope the end of this memoir will be as much a surprise to those who read "CHILDREN OF DUST" as it was to me.

SPOONER by Pete Dexter

2009-11-02T14:19:00.004-05:00

Thank-you to Hachette Book Group for this review copy

Thanks Miriam

THE WASHINGTON POST:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Carolyn See Full disclosure: I was on the judging committee when Pete Dexter won the National Book Award for his amazing novel of American racism and mayhem, "Paris Trout." That book is among this country's very best, I believe, and I remain one of his most devoted fans. His is a voice like no other, though James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard may be counted among his distant literary cousins. What Dexter does is to marry the use of the most frightening violence with the loftiest of artistic goals; we are forced to look at our country through a film of fresh blood. This is not a literary conceit on the part of the author; it has to do with his real life. In 1981, when he was a hard-boiled columnist for a Philadelphia newspaper, he wrote a piece that enraged members of a very tough neighborhood. He -- rather unwisely -- went to that neighborhood, either to confront or to explain, and was beaten within the proverbial inch of his life. He carries the scars and afflictions from that encounter to this day. His obsession with violence is honestly come by, and all his novels are stamped by it. In "Spooner," his autobiographical new novel, Dexter takes a look at himself, implicitly admitting that he's a little on the high-strung side, to put it mildly. He attempts -- if I read him correctly -- to answer the question: What makes a person turn out to be like Pete Dexter? It's a hard question for a person trained as a journalist who's used to looking outward, or for a man of action who prefers boxing to many other pastimes. How do you look inside and come up with an answer that makes sense? (The project must have been hard. The author writes that the book went 31/2 years beyond its publication deadline. "When you come across sentences you particularly don't like, keep in mind that I probably didn't like them either.") Nevertheless, here's a novel that's different from anything Dexter has written before. His namesake, Spooner, born in 1956, comes second in a cluster of four siblings. His mother is a martyr whose family lost its fortune in the Great Depression, and his father died too young for Spooner to know him. Most of the first 50 pages are given over to describing the back story of a paragon -- the saintly man who became Spooner's stepfather -- who makes a hardscrabble living for his new family as a teacher in the hardscrabble town of Milledgeville, Ga., all the while bearing ill-concealed dismay and sometimes contempt from Spooner's mother. (The town of Milledgeville is real; Dexter speaks in an interview of his first conscious memories being from that place, and also says that the African American section of that town served as the background for "Paris Trout.") The young Spooner is a nut case, pure and simple, getting into one crazy scrape after another, most notably breaking into the homes of neighbors, peeing into the shoes of the men of the house, then putting those shoes into the families' refrigerators. He engineers car wrecks, climbs on every roof, gets into all the trouble he possibly can -- in marked contrast to his three siblings, who succeed in every way. Flash forward to Spooner as a young adult, first in Florida, then in Pennsylvania. He works himself up from crashing poverty to a position as a noted newspaper columnist. Then comes the infamous "God's Pocket" episode (here the neighborhood is called Devil's Pocket, as is the actual Philadelphia area where that novel was set), where almost every bone in his body is twisted or broken by a gang of irate thugs. He is married by then, and just as tough -- and irrational? -- as they come, until he's felled by this attack. Spooner moves to Whidbey Island, off the Pacific Northwest coast, where he continues work as a novelist. (The story remains unnervingly autobiographical. There is a Dr. Ploof, for instance, who in real life is a dentist on that island.) Combative as ever, Spooner finds himself locked in battle with a next-door neighbor. Bulldozers are involved. And that wonderful stepfather, whose separate life the author has followed all along, takes sick and dies, honorably cared for by Spooner, who is still not sure about having lived up to his mentor's shining example of compassion, industry, learning and love. This is strange material for a man who wrote unsparingly of the grossness of smallpox in "Deadwood," the merciless rape and destruction of a little girl in "Paris Trout" and the eating of raw flamingos in "Train." It's new ground and a new tone. Jocose, ironic, even cheery. (The author's photo shows the man smiling!) Dexter seems to look at this life as something of a tall tale, and he's right -- there are sentences that don't seem to be exactly his. The book has a Mark Twain feel to it: Of journalists, Spooner remarks: "Some of them drank too much after work and threatened to write books," and the ghost of Hemingway creeps in during the Devil's Pocket debacle: "It was surprising to him how good it felt, knowing he was not about to be shot." There are other quite goofy surprises -- Spooner appears on the same dais with Margaret Truman, an event that must have happened to Dexter but, one hopes, without quite the chaos described here. That story is a lovely paean to crazy old ladies and their book clubs everywhere. So, this book is different! Not exactly what Pete Dexter usually writes, but madly interesting in what it sets out to do. I freely admit to a bias: As far as I'm concerned, Dexter can do no wrong.

My View:

I know...the synopsis above is a bit long, however I thought it important. SPOONER by Pete Dexter is a much different novel than some of you might expect of Pete Dexter. I love this novel/disguised memoir

I also need to mention: I absolutely love this book and wish there was more of "Spooner". I happened to live in Philadelphia in the '70 and do remember Pete Dexter as a columnist, I also remember an incident which took place in upscale Rittenhouse Square which the author mentions, and the incident in "Devil's Pocket" not that I hung out anywhere close to this place and of course the shooting of mobster Angelo Bruno. My boyfriend at the time and I had just finished savoring a great Italian dinner in south Philly when, on our way home we passed the scene of the crime with Angelo Bruno still in his car, slumped over the steering wheel. People gathered like at an exciting event, children rode their bikes, it was all very festive . In short, Pete Dexter took me back to my time in Philly and did it so well, through Part 4 I was in Philly!

Of course this is only one part of this great book which I assume is sort of a memoir. I am the mother of 3 boys, and aware what boys can get into, I had to laugh at some of Spooner's growing up antics, granted they where at times outrageous yet it showed great inventiveness. There is no time to become bored reading this novel/memoir, it kept my attention from beginning to end.

You will love Calmer Ottosson, Spooner's step dad, a great gentle character we meet for the first time before his court martial for an incident which held me in stitches.

This my first introduction to Pete Dexter the writer althoug I read his columns. I need to remedy this quickly. I am going to put "PARIS TROUT" and "PAPER TRAILS" on my reading list. I understand from reading the synopsis, his previous novels aren't humorous, still as a writer Pete Dexter intrigues me to read him.

Excerpt:

For the first time in his life Spooner found himself content to be where he was, also over time this would come at a price, the earliest sign being that sometimes he would catch some glimps of Mrs. Spooner and the baby together and find himself barely able to move, at the fear of losing what he had. The truth was Spooner wasn't wired much for getting what he wanted, and had never given a thought to protecting what he had, in fact had never considered that any of it could be protected or even that it was in his hands. Until the woman came along, and then the baby, he had always taken it for granted that anything that fell into his lap would also fall through his lap sooner or later"

OLIVER makes an appearance

2009-10-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

FALL PICTURES October 25th '09

2009-10-25T11:29:00.001-04:00

FRIDAY FLL~INS

2009-10-23T11:04:00.002-04:00

1. The crickets sing, it must be getting cold, I do not hear them chirping anymore, mating season must be over.

2. It is such a great pleasure to have reconnected with you, Nicole, my dear childhood friend. Wherever you are is never to far.

3. I want to get far away from ~~the~~ my ex and all this court drama .

4.My life was perfect, and the perfect man love me * . * : this was a dream.

5. But as for me I am happy in general.

6. Monaco ist truly a beautiful little country and even so I come from there, I am here to stay in te United States

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to watch a movie, tomorrow my plans include trying to participate in the "READ-A-THON, I do not know if I will make it all the way through, some friends are coming over, I'll try and Sunday, I want to SLEEP if I do succeed in participating, it is a great way to raise a little money towards a worthy cause.

A SUNDAY ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY VISITING FRIENDS

2009-10-18T11:32:00.002-04:00

A little pet goat "Blondie"

Part of the Chesapeake Bay

I wanted to hop in and swim, didn't bring my swimsuit :(

The begining of fall

SEX, DRUGS AND GEFILTE FISH edited by Shana Liebman

2009-10-16T10:50:00.005-04:00

*****

Reviewed for HACHETTE BOOK GROUP

Thank-you Brianna

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (October 26, 2009)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0446504629

This book is an ADULT read

Synopsis:

Liebman, arts editor of the hip Jewish lifestyle magazine Heeb, introduces a refreshing set of essays that reveal an array of both ordinary and extraordinary modern-day Jewish experiences. Arranged by theme (sex, drugs, work, youth, family, body and soul), these four dozen essays—the products of a Heeb storytelling performance series—explore the humorous, scandalous and often sentimental moments in life. Rebecca Addelman re-evaluates the college summer she spent in Israel getting naked with another kibbutz volunteer and a middle-aged Israeli. Andy Borowitz conveys the irony of a Jewish Harvard graduate (himself) writing a hip-hop sitcom for Will Smith: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Most outstanding is Eric Weingrad's account of spying his loathed Hebrew school teacher naked during a Sabbath night spent at her house. The contributors—musicians, actors, comedians and writers—will be familiar to many. Full of wit, irony, heartbreak and vindication, these essays will undoubtedly please those in search of an honest but creative look at Jewish life and its many trials.

My view:

My first thought was, please have a sense of humor : "Do not let the cover influence you in a negative way". I love the cover, but then again I have a sense of humor and understood I had to delve further to see what was to be found beyond and am I glad I did.

Understand : I am born a strict Catholic, you know: go to church under threat by parents ( usually, no dating the coming week if I did not go, if you know me, I went ). 12 years of education by nuns...slept in a convent 5 days a week and went home on week-ends...if I was good and made the marks, nothing under a B. Ok you get it, threats and tons of guilt.

So when I started to read this hillarious book of story telling I kept refering to the back pages labled "Contributors" to make sure this was as advertised "A brave new generation of Jewish story tellers", I was under the impression story after story to be back home with my parents, brothers and friends....Finally I came to a sentence which enlightened me :

From: Lesbians at Temple by Lisa Kron of Broadway fame:

(One time I asked my friend Moises why people talk about Catholic guilt and Jewish Guilt like they're the same thing. I said "It doesn't feel the same to me but I can't figure it out". And he said, "Okay, here's the difference: Jewish guilt is that you feel like it's your job to save the world and you just haven't done enough. And Catholic guilt is that you just shouldn't be here at all"

So this is why I was confused, Catholics and Jews share this awful responsibility, which seems to follow us through life "GUILT"

Like I mentionned above, the cover represents more of a rebellious picture than what you will find inside this story telling book. You do not have to be a Jew or a Catholic to laugh out loud, it might help a little but in the end those are true stories those many authors are just yearning to tell and if you are human they will have you muse over a time in your own life.It is a great feeling to know we can all identify with one another regardless what religion, believes we hold dear.

My advice? GO OUT AND BUY THIS BOOK! you will not regret it, and do get back to me and tell me which story you remember most or touched you most.
My favorites are many but those touched me:

BENZOS AND BREAST CANCER by Stephanie Green ( Her upcoming book is CANCER IS THE NEW BLACK" )

OUT OF THE BAG by Noah Tarnow
His story had me laughing so hard, if you love cats, it's a must read!

GRANMA BETTY by Liz Feldman
Sweet

The truth is, I liked them all, some touched me more than others but all where absolutely great.

A CHANGE IN ALTITUDE by Anita Shreve

2009-10-08T11:41:00.014-04:00

***3/4

Reviewed for Hachette Book Group

Thank-you Miriam

Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (September 22, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316020702

Synopsis

Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn't know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband.

A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever.

A Change in Altitude illuminates the inner landscape of a couple, the irrevocable impact of tragedy, and the elusive nature of forgiveness. With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, Anita Shreve transports us to the exotic panoramas of Africa and into the core of our most intimate relationships

My View:

Having read every book written by Anita Shreve, I have my favorite and not so favorite.
With A CHANGE IN ALTITUDE the author choses a different style than found in her previous novels. There are three parts to this novel. Part one had me hooked, it was what I expected of Anita Shreve. The short crisp sentences which bring us ever so gently to a climax, in this case a tragic accident.

Part two takes us away from her usual style. If you like a lush description of Africa, Kenya in this case you will like this novel. The human factor Anita Shreve is so well known for is still there, the complicated transition which takes us from an early marriage to a more settled life between a husband and wife, men and women who enter those lives, disturbing their idea of marriage is all there to be found. Except somewhat lost in a travel log type of narration for which I did not care much.

The protagonist Margaret, a photojournalist through who's eyes we vew this novel is a newly married American woman on her first trip to Africa, accompanied by her husband Patrick an equatorial physician.
Very quickly their lives will change, an accident for which there might or might not be blame.
I found Margaret a little anoying never quite figuring her out to be good wife to Patrick or not. Patrick on the other hand becomes quite an annoying individual as the novel progresses.

Part three takes us back to the style I like in her novels and we are in for a cliff hanger.....

I rate this novel a 3 3/4 only because of some lengthy passages in part two which might be interesting to some readers. I would rather read a shorter novel who's thread is not interrupted.

THE WOMAN WHO NAMED GOD

2009-10-02T12:30:00.008-04:00

*****
Thanks to Hachette Book Group

Hardcover: 400 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 28, 2009)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 031611474X

Charlotte Gordon offers a unique look at the Old Testament relationships between and among Abraham; his wife, Sarah; and his mistress, Hagar. Gordon approaches the biblical text as a literary study as opposed to a literal divine revelation. With no theological ax to grind, she draws upon the work of theologians, scholars, archaeologists, and historians to unpack a widely misunderstood and misinterpreted saga. Most interesting is her focus on the exiled, shamed, and shadowed Hagar, whom Gordon elevates to a mystic and prophet. Gordon ultimately shows that these biblical characters are complex and multilayered; they behave, in short, like human beings who wrestle with foibles, passions, and jealousies. Most important, the story speaks to the 21st century and its marital ambivalence, dysfunctional family systems, pervasive divorce, as well as to 9/11, the so-called "Axis of Evil," and West Bank unrest. The author's vision is that the retelling of this ancient tale might awaken the world to redemption. The sons of Hagar and Sarah, after all, came together in peace at their father Abraham's funeral. General readers with even a casual interest in religion and its impact on history, as well as on current events, will appreciate the lens through which the author peers.

I grew up in a strict Catholic family and was schooled by Dominicant nuns, so The New Testament was the Book I was raised on. Over the years I did learn more about the Bible.

In the Catholic Faith "The Crusades" is one of the first lessons we learn, in my case anyhow. I had a real problem with the nuns who held this war as a holy war with saints etc...the West went of to the Near East to kill nonbelievers, so they decided...

By reading Charlotte Gorden's dissertation about the birth of three nations I learned facts I did not know in such debth, which brings me to Abraham and his relationship with God. We are all Gods Children, fathered through Abraham and his wife Sarah and Hagar. The Bible is clear about this but the interpretation isn't always. Over the years be it Jews, Christians or Muslims, each added their interpretation of the original text, and have disagreed ever since...

"THE WOMAN WHO NAMED GOD" tries to make us understand whatever religion we happen to be born in we are through God and Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael all Gods children Muslims, Jews or Christians.

This is a well researched book, it is more a dissertation or thesis. You will find a bibliography and excellent research notes. It is not meant to be a Chrstian book as some reviewers thought and seemed insulted. The author makes this clear, she is adressing the world 4000 years ago and today. I think everyone who reads this book will retain something , which is good.

FRIDAY FILL~INS

2009-09-18T07:51:00.002-04:00

1. My car allows me to reach civilisation .

2. Fall is coming up next such a colorful season.

3. Lately, things seem to slow down a little, fall is upon us.

4. Inside a book is one of my favorite 'hiding' places :D.

5. What happened to all the heat, yea...cooler weather is upon us.

6. A trip up the coast in the near future is not impossible!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to relaxing, tomorrow my plans include do not know yet and Sunday, I want to read and relax!

INGENIOUS PAIN by Andrew Miller

2009-09-17T20:23:00.005-04:00

*****
" R.I.P. CHALLENGE "

"What does the world need most--a good, ordinary man, or one who is outstanding, albeit with a heart of ice?" This is the question at the heart of Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, a book set during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. The outstanding man in question is James Dyer, an English freak of nature who, since birth, has been impervious to physical pain. Not only does he feel no pain, but he recovers from all injuries in record time. 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. As a surgeon, James Dyer excels, and his inability to feel--whether physical pain himself or empathy for others--seems only to enhance his skill with a knife. James slices and dices and cures without a scintilla of compassion while his reputation grows, until at last he arrives in Russia and the mystery of his unusual quality is resolved. Miller navigates his complicated story and exotic locales with unswerving confidence, bolstered, no doubt, by thorough research. James Dyer is not a character who invites love, but his adventures make for intelligent, deeply pleasurable reading.

My View:
This novel had my attention from begining to end. It is a brilliant tale taking place in 18th century England. Part Gothic, history, psychology and magic.

We are taken from England to Paris, Norway and finaly Russia at it's most splendid.

However this story has a very dark side. We witness a rape, from which a child is born without the knowlege of pain, physical pain. Once grown the protagonist James Dyer becomes a cold blooded human being without physical or emotional pain, the question this novel seems to ask of us is, do we need pain in our life to feel empathy which makes us ultimatly human? Is to much empathy destructive to us? Towards the ending of the story, James Dyer, having gained the knowlege of pain, late in life, seems to answer this question.

This is a must read book, There is magic or maybe a better word for the 18th century would be sorcery through a character named Mary, brought back from a Russian forest to England. I have one small disappointment and this is; I would have liked to see Mary and James Dyer further developped, yet the author Andrew Miller left enough hints for us to know what happened and perhaps it is better left as is.

This is just an all around fantastic novel! A great writer.

A BUTTERFLY ENJOYING SOME NECTAR

2009-09-14T13:17:00.002-04:00

A BUMBLEBEE FEEDING OF NECTAR

2009-09-14T13:12:00.004-04:00

A gentle bumblebee

THE LIFE OF HUNGER by Amelie Nothomb

2009-09-13T13:15:00.006-04:00

*****

Synopsis: In a wistful, tough, funny, clever, and characteristically odd memoir-cum-novel, Amelie Nothomb casts herself as hunger: hunger for experience, hunger for life, hunger for sweetness and, in what is the book's nucleus, hunger for hunger (the period during which she was afflicted by acute anorexia). The daughter of a Belgian diplomat, Amelie had an itinerant childhood, ranging from Tokyo to Peking and Paris to New York by way of Bangladesh. Recounting these formative journeys right up to her return to Japan in 1989, and the Kobe earthquake, The Life of Hunger is an extraordinary examination of the self, and perhaps Amelie's most mature and moving work to date.

Excerpt:

...'In Vanuatu, there is food everywhere. We never had to produce it. We hold out our two hands and a coconut falls into one, into the other one bunch of bananas. We walk into the sea to cool ourselves down, and cannot help collecting excellent, shellfish, sea urchins, crabs and delicate fish. We go for a walk into the forest, where there are to many birds: we are forced to do them the favour of removing their surplus eggs from their nests, and sometimes wringing the neck of one of these feathered creatures, which don't even run away from us. Female warthogs have to much milk, for they to are overfed and beg us to milk them to ease their discomfort; they utter shrill cries that cease only when we yield to their plea.'

...For a few minutes he said nothing. Then after a while, he added:

'It's terrible'...You can't imagine what it's like!

My review:

This novel by Amelie Nothomb is indeed more mature and rather different from her usual creation. Also it does I believe addresses her life. If you read as many of her novels as I have, you begin to notice her childhood emerging, and staying faithful novel to novel.

I enjoyed THE LIFE OF HUNGER immensely. If you have never read her, do read this book.

The above excerpt addresses her believe that if you are satieded in all aspects of life you become unproductive. The 'hunger' for life is what drives us to search, in Amelie's case "sweets" which her mother forbids, at least at an early age. Her unique style makes this novel a serious and fun read.

SIMPLE RECIPES by Madeleine Thien

2009-09-13T09:40:00.017-04:00

*****

Dysfunction and despair are the themes of this graceful debut collection, in which the protagonists describe their struggles to overcome pain caused by family or poor circumstances. The young female narrator of the title story remembers the moment her immigrant family fell apart: when her older, better assimilated brother was savagely beaten by their father after a confrontation between the two. The girl realizes that this act of "violence will turn all my love to shame and grief." "Alchemy" is a chilling, suspenseful story of disloyalty between family and best friends, in which two teenage girls must confront a sickening truth. In "House," 10-year-old Lorraine and her older sister, Kathleen, loiter in front of their former home in hopes of reuniting with the alcoholic mother who abandoned them. Miriam, the narrator of "A Map of the City," is alternately frustrated and saddened by her immigrant father's inability to make a living and allows his hurt to become her own. As powerful as most of the stories are, they sometimes suffer from the obviousness of their metaphors: the title story invokes worn-out descriptions of rice preparation; "Alchemy" features caged rabbits that don't run away when freed. Still, the simplicity of Thien's narration belies the complexity of her themes. She is a writer to watch.

From "A MAP OF THE CITY"

...In the years after I left home, I used to glimpse my parents in unexpected places. I would see the two of them in the Safeway, my mother standing patiently by while my father weight oranges in his hands, feeling for signs of imperfection. I would see them on the opposite sidewalk, blurred and old, traffic streaming between us. During these sightings, I never felt the urge to join them, I only wanted to remain where I was and watch while they negotiated their way through the aisles, their bodies slow with old age. Of course it was never them.

My view:

I am usually not a short story reader, I prefer a novella to a short story. Madeleine Thien's SIMPLE RECIPES has been sitting on my TBR for ever, so the other day I picked up her book ad started reading, forcing myself to read one new book followed by a older book. Well......I just loved each and every short story in her book.

"SIMPLE RECIPES" some of my own memories came back vividly, the love of my father towards me, and his irritation with my older brother whom I love dearly. This always tore me up, I loved both equally and sometimes came to my brothers defence against my dad. Madeleine Thien's short story touched me deeply, as if she understood what I had and still felt. Isn't this one reason among others why we love books so much? They speak to us, explain our lives, relieve the loneliness of certain situations.

"FOUR DAYS FROM OREGON" deals with a young mother who decides she married the wrong man. Two sisters rebel when she leaves her husband and home, taking her daughters along into a new relationship. The author succeeds beautifully in letting us evolve with this family which ends up happily.

"ALCHEMY" a young girl spends many nights sleeping over at her friend Paula's home even so she has a wonderful family. This is a touching story which takes an unexpected turn when Paula is the one who wants her friend to sleep over. Here the author addresses a delicate situation with much care. I loved each and every story,

"Dispatch"

"House" which is so touching written with her pen.

"Bullet Train"

"A map of the city".

I put "CERTAINTY:A NOVEL" on my amazon wish list, this is her first full length novel. If her short stories are an example, her novel should be a great and gentle read.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVER

2009-09-12T07:14:00.006-04:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY *OLIVER*

FRIDAY FILL~INS

2009-09-11T11:04:00.005-04:00

1. That's a wonderful way to be.

2. You're over there ; I'm over here!

3. The possibilities include: an unlimited amount of books to read.

4. Homemade chicken soup ( I have a sore throat) is one of my favorite cool day recipes (today).

5. How will you know the way I feel if you do not walk in my shoes?.

6. A good book, a cosy blanket, Oliver by my side and a stormy sky make for a nice day ( we are on our 5th day of rain on the EASTERN SHORE.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to reading, tomorrow my plans include sitting for a beagle, Daisy and Sunday, I want to relax!