FICTION 1. '61 Hours,' Lee Child 2. 'Storm Prey,' John Sandford 3. 'Dead in the Family,' Charlaine Harris 4.
...Tim O'Brien has been thinking lately about My Lai how those two words still haunt America, even as they've lost meaning to so many Americans.
...Ah, summer. The heat. The humidity. The air sometimes so suffocatingly thick you think you're walking through a bouffant.
...The Angel's Game is Carlos Ruiz Zafon's exercise in spinning the reader through a Faustian labyrinth filled with gothic mystery and tragic romance. This is sumptuous and dark fairy tale writing, with some serious thoughts on good and evil and the search for the human soul. Many memorable characters search for solace in this world; sadly, they, along with the reader, don't find much comfort or clarity in a disappointing conclusion that is more shadow than revelation.
Cover Photo Courtesy Knopf Read Full PostNew in Paperback: The Angel's Ga...
Guest Blogger: Susan DiMickeleWhen the word got out that I was writing a book, I always got the same question: How are you ever going to find the time?I resented this question each time it was asked. Why couldn’t I write a book in the busiest season of my life?But deep down, I had to admit the question wasn’t completely unfounded. After all, I’m a mother of three young children and I'm trying hard to cultivate a healthy marriage, a demanding career, and a stable home. My day job is even known to monopolize my life—as a partner at a large law firm, all the spare time I wish I had gets sucked up in billable hours, client meetings, and legal seminars. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I teach Sunday School on the side and try to stay connected to my friends and somewhat large extended family in between. And I love to cook and entertain guests in my home, and I’m known to devour every book I can get my hands on whenever I can find the time to read.I know, my life sounds exhausting. Which is why most of my friends and family couldn’t understand why I wanted to add writing to the mix. Don’t you already have enough on your plate? Are yo...
This is probably one of the few times that you will hear me say that I believe the movie will be better than the book. And in this case I think that it will be vastly better.
Never Let Me Go was one of those books that I just didn’t get. I read it pre-book blogging, when I was searching for a book to read with my book club. I had recently re-read Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, a novel that I had loved in college but had not loved so much on re-reading. I no longer wanted to suggest it for book club, but thought I might be able o go with the same author. I knew that Ishiguro had written the book upon which the movie of the same title, Remains of the Day, was based, so I figured that another of his books would be good as well.
I ended up having to pick something entirely different for my book club after reading Never Let Me Go. It’s a quick read, but as mysterious as...
I am pleased to welcome you all to my blog for my portion of the Nerds Heart YA tournament! Today Katie from Read What You Know and I are deciding between Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick and In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith.
Warning: This post is a bit on the long side. It contains two reviews with our final decision at the end. Enjoy!
Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick is told from the point of view of Matt Duffy, an eighteen-year-old Army private currently serving in Iraq, and when the story begins he finds himself in a military hospital with a brain injury. Although Matt is awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery in the situation that landed him in the hospital, he doesn’t feel so brave. His last memory from the day of the injury is watching a ...
Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature, has died, his publisher announced Friday. He was 87.
Saramago's works include "Blindness," "The Cave," "All the Names," "The Stone Raft" and "Seeing." The Nobel committee cited Saramago's restless need to invent wholly new
worlds in his fiction when they presented him the award for literature
in 1998. Saramago, the Nobel citation reads, "who with parables sustained by
imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once
again to apprehend an elusory reality." It concludes:Saramago's i...