Fun & Games Synopsis

The 1980’s: it’s the time of Dungeons & Dragons, banana clips, and Atari. Jonathan Schwartz is growing up in a family like no other. His sisters, Nadia, the dark genius, and Olivia, the gorgeous tease and temptress, manipulate Jon and his friends for their own entertainment. And his Holocaust survivor grandparents? Their coping techniques are beyond embarrassing. A disastrous visit to Jon’s class by his grandmother unhinges his famous father, setting off a chain of events that threatens to send the dysfunctional Schwartz clan up in flames once and for all.

Fun & Games is a heartbreaking and hilarious story of faith, family secrets, betrayal, and loss—but it’s also a tale of friendship, love, and side-splitting shenanigans.

(Library Tales Publishing)

BOOK REVIEW by Tony Ziemek

Fun & Games is a rare combination of intelligence and entertainment. As the title suggests it’s a fun read and I finished it in one evening after a couple of false starts as I struggled to get past the initial 1980’s setting. I’ve been there once and didn’t really want to go back! But after a few pages the characters and the plot, the humour and the faultless prose take over and this reader at least was fully engaged.  The characters are beautifully rounded with marvellous eccentricities (especially the sister Nadia) but there is never a sense that Mr Slater is straining for effect.

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Mimi Synopsis

It’s Christmas Eve in Manhattan. Harrison Hanafan, noted plastic surgeon, falls on his ass. ‘Ya can’t sit there all day, buddy, looking up people’s skirts!’ chides a weird gal in a coat like a duvet. She then kindly conjures the miracle of a taxi. While recuperating with Franz Schubert, Bette Davis, and a foundling cat, Harrison adds items to his life’s work, a List of Melancholy Things (puppetry, shrimp-eating contests, Walmart…) before going back to rhinoplasties, liposuction, and the peccadilloes of his obnoxious colleagues.

Then Harrison collides once more with the strangely helpful woman, Mimi, who bursts into his life with all her curves and chaos. They soon fall emphatically in love. And, as their love-making reaches a whole new kind of climax, the sweet smell of revolution is in the air.

By turns celebratory and scathing, romantic and dyspeptic, Mimi is a story of music, New York, sculpture, martinis, public speaking, quilt-stealing, eggnog and, most of all, love. A vibrant call-to-arms, this is Lucy Ellmann’s most extraordinary book to date.

(Bloomsbury)

BOOK REVIEW

With the mention of Berlusconi in the opening paragraph (yes, I am referring to the former Italian Prime Minister known for inappropriateness), you quickly realise there is something distinctly different about this novel. The sheer audacity of the story and at times prose is at the outset utterly captivating.

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The Art of Travel Synopsis

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.

Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it. (Amazon)

BOOK REVIEW

While I do not as a rule read self help books, I had heard great things about the writings of Alain de Botton and so wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Of all non-fiction I am most partial to travel memoirs and so I decided that out of his extensive back catalogue The Art of Travel was the perfect place for me to start.

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I have just started reading a novella called The Flute Player from an exciting young author Shawn Mihalik.

There is a real sense of ease and modesty to his writing which appeals to me.

Signal 8 Press were kind enough to offer an ebook copy of  Yu Jihui’s recently released memoir The Gunners of Shenyang for giveaway to one lucky reader of Booklover Book Reviews.

And, the winner is

Rhonda

Congratulations Rhonda – please check your inbox for my email requesting your preferred ebook file type. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about this giveaway online and via Twitter.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you check out our review of The Gunners of Shenyang by Yu Jihui.

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Here are the books that arrived in my mailbox during the last week:

Click on the pictures for book details

I received a review copy of And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini from Bloomsbury Australia. I still have not found the time to read his best-selling titles The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns so am eager to not miss the boat this time around and am already hearing such great things…

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Only very rarely will I watch a movie of a book that I have read, because I am all too often disappointed.

BUT, I read The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald so long ago that the intricate details of the novel had become slightly hazy,

AND, my friend had received some free tickets to see the latest from Baz Luhrmann!

We saw it in standard cinema mode – it was too early in the day for us (and our stomachs) to watch it in 3D.

What did I think?

Leonardo DiCaprio made the perfect Jay Gatsby (lots of faraway dreamy looks) and I think Tobey Maguire suited the geeky Nick Carraway. Carey Mulligan was good as Daisy, but I think many other female actresses could have played that helpless female part equally well.

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I recently read and enjoyed immensely the debut novel from Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (read my review).

I reviewed this wonderful piece of literature as part of the promotion of its US release on 7 May 2013 by Hogarth via TLC Book Tours and then it was released in the UK etc a week later with quite different cover art.

US and UK

While I really like the haunting and ghostly feel of the US cover and its graduated pastel colours, I do think it breaks the general rule of book covers. The white title font would be quite difficult for some people to read.

The title is easier to read on the UK (but still not simple, being on the vertical) and instead of tapping into the haunting feel of the novel, this one evokes the more brutal aspects of war with the bold black and white lines and the symbolic wounded bird.

If pushed, I think I’d choose the UK cover, but it’s a close call for me…

Which cover do you prefer?

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Thanks to TLC Book Tours and Hogarth, I have a paperback copy of Anthony Marra’s recently released novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena to giveaway to one lucky US/Canadian reader.

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Today Booklover Book Reviews is hosting the TLC Book Tour for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra.

Synopsis

In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed–a failed physician–to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal, and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

With The English Patient’s dramatic sweep and The Tiger’s Wife’s expert sense of place, Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible. (Amazon)

BOOK REVIEW

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena deserves the adoration it has quickly garnered. It is stunning for many reasons, not least that it is the first published novel from author Anthony Marra, still in his twenties. The only recent parallel that comes to mind is the maturity of Jennifer duBois’ debut A Partial History of Lost Causes.

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Here are the books that arrived in my mailbox over the last few weeks:

Click on the pictures for book details

I received a review copy of A Beautiful Truth by Colin McAdam courtesy of Soho Press in anticipation of their hardback US release of this title in September 2013. Aussie readers (and ebook converts) can get your hands on a copy earlier from other publishers with regional rights if you’re interested. This sounds very moving – cannot wait.

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A quiet welcome to the month of June, and the official beginning of Winter in Australia. For those in the northern hemisphere heading toward summer holidays, do enjoy your beach reads while we snuggle under our favourite reading rug.

Here is a quick recap of what happened at Booklover Book Reviews during May:

Book Reviews Published:

Click on the pictures to read the reviews

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As part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2013, each month I will be highlighting a selection of the new books being released by Aussie Authors in the month ahead. June, and with it Winter, is officially about to begin in Australia, but we have had a particularly cool May, in Brisbane at least, and so the doonas have been in use here for a while now. For international readers not familiar with the term, ‘doona’ is what we call a duvet or quilt here in Australia.

These features will by no means provide a comprehensive listing of all the titles by Australian authors being released, just the ones I have come across in my travels around the web. I’ll ask readers, authors and publishers to let me know of any other notable Aussie Author book releases that I have overlooked in the Comments Section.

Book Releases by Aussie Authors in June 2013

Click on the covers to read book summary and publication details.

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