readingrec

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:08:00 +0000

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is today's recommended book, and you might have seen this book featured on The Daily Show with John Stewart. Adelstein has an amazing story, and asks some great questions, in order to bring to you one of the best books coming out today.

Here is the synopsis of Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein:

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells the riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter—who made rookie mistakes like getting into a martial-arts battle with a senior editor—to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.

Here is an interview with Jake Adelstein about his hard hitting book about Japanese organized crime and the United States:

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The National Book Awards Winners 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:27:00 +0000

The National Book Awards 2009 were announced and they are quite hefty titles from several genres. Here is the latest and greatest additions to the National Book Awards

The national book awards 2009 winners:

Fiction: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

Poetry: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop

Young People's Literature: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Writing A Book Doesn't Pay Well

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:28:00 +0000

Thought about writing a book?

Maybe this will stop you.

This news piece is getting a good amount of buzz and rightfully so. A New York Times Bestseller seems to not be making ends meet...but then again, I have no job and live in a crappy city.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

As before, the only thing I've blanked out is Penguin Group's address. This statement represents the sale period from November 30, 2008 through May 31, 2009. It was issued on August 18, 2009 and I received it on November 2, 2009.

On the statement my publisher reports sales of 7,550 copies and returns of 10,812 copies. The publisher released credits of 21,140 copies or $13,512.69 from reserves held against returns, but at the same time reserved credits against another 13,790 copies or $8,814.57, which reduces the credit adjustment to 7,350 copies or $4698.12.

Total sales for the novel now stand at 89,142 copies, minus returns of 27,479, for net sales of 61,663 copies. My credited earnings from this statement was $2,434.38 with no money due; it will probably take another six months to a year for the novel to earn out the last of my $50,000.00 advance.

So how much money have I made from my Times bestseller? Depending on the type of sale, I gross 6-8 percent of the cover price of $7.99. After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36, which is actually pretty good since on average I generally net about 30-40 percent of my advance. Unless something triggers an unexpected spike in my sales, I don't expect to see any additional profit from this book coming in for at least another year or two.

One thing I didn't mention in the last post is whether or not my sell-through, advance, and royalties are typical of an author with a top twenty Times mass market bestseller. Very few authors offer up their numbers, and even when they do they either go the anonymous survey route and/or don't post statements, and publishers rarely give us any information at all, so it's difficult to know. But based on my estimation of comparative print run sizes, placement, distribution and a couple of other factors, I'd say no; my numbers overall probably run lower than most of the other authors on the list (of course if any other Times bestseller authors out there want to post their royalty statements, we'd all love to see the real numbers so we can establish a range.)

Speaking of comparisons, the publisher's portion of sales on this book has grossed them around $453,839.68. I don't have any hard figures on the publisher's net, so I can't give you the bottom line there. If I had to make a guess, I'd say they probably netted around $250K on this one.

You can read more in debt about making no money on a best seller and what not, by clicking here.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Going Rogue Is No Harry Potter

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:44:00 +0000

All eyes are on Sara Palin right now, as she is embarking on a media tour to support her book (which came out today) "Going Rogue". She has been doing a media blitz talking about her book, her last few years, and really just telling her story. Whether you like her or you hater her, she's a character that is really getting a lot of attention both from political fanatics, and those standing on the sidelines (like me).

So what do I think?

I'm not sure.

My wife is from Palmer, Alaska and she talks about Palin in positive light. So I guess I'll side with her.

The Associated press recently talked about the reaction that her book is getting in Alaska near her home town, and it might surprise you that it's just not as big as the national media might have you believe.

Sarah Palin's book is highly anticipated in her home state — but she's no Harry Potter.

David Cheezem, co-owner of Fireside Books in Palmer, said people have been calling to make sure they'll be able to get the former GOP vice presidential candidate's memoir, "Going Rogue." He's opening early with coffee and doughnuts to celebrate the Tuesday release.

"I'm excited about the event," he said. "Am I as excited as I was for Harry Potter? No. That was huge."

If you haven't heard about this book...maybe you should check out some more information about Going Rogue by Sarah Palin:

One year ago, Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage like a comet. Yet even now, few Americans know who this remarkable woman really is.

On September 3, 2008 Alaska Governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention that electrified the nation and instantly made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

As chief executive of America's largest state, she had built a record as a reformer who cast aside politics-as-usual and pushed through changes other politicians only talked about: Energy independence. Ethics reform. And the biggest private sector infrastructure project in U.S. history. And while revitalizing public school funding and ensuring the state met its responsibilities to seniors and Alaska Native populations, Palin also beat the political "good ol' boys club" at their own game and brought Big Oil to heel.

Like her GOP running mate, John McCain, Palin wasn't a packaged and over-produced candidate. She was a Main Street American woman: a working mom, wife of a blue collar union man, and mother of five children, the eldest of whom was serving his country in a yearlong deployment in Iraq and the youngest, an infant with special needs. Palin's hometown story touched a populist nerve, rallying hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to the GOP ticket.

But as the campaign unfolded, Palin became a lightning rod for both praise and criticism. Supporters called her "refreshing" and "honest," a kitchen-table public servant they felt would fight for their interests. Opponents derided her as a wide-eyed Pollyanna unprepared for national leadership. But none of them knew the real Sarah Palin.

In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother. She also opens up for the first time about the 2008 presidential race, providing a rare, mom's-eye view of high-stakes national politics—from patriots dedicated to "Country First" to slick politicos bent on winning at any cost.

Going Rogue traces one ordinary citizen's extraordinary journey and imparts Palin's vision of a way forward for America and her unfailing hope in the greatest nation on earth.

Pick up the book Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, and see what the hype is about.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Stephen King on The View

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:36:00 +0000

Stephen King stopped by "The View" last week to talk about his new book and more. I happened to catch it live because I have no job and I'm a loser.

Here is the video of Stephen King's appearance from that show that only me and the housewives must watch, "The View":

Under The Dome by Stephen King

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:44:00 +0000

Stephen King worked on this 1,000 page massive book for over 20 years. He had started it, put it down, then worked on it some more, then put it down. Well it's finally here. In a couple of days there will be several people getting this 1st edition book that is insane in size and scope...and is a natural recommendation for new Stephen King fans and old fans alike. A supernatural look at what could be our future is now here...from the master of horror.

Here is a review of Under The Dome by Stephen King from Amazon.com:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when--or if--it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens--town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing--even murder--to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

True Grit by Charles Portis

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:56:00 +0000

Charles Portis has long been acclaimed as one of America's foremost comic writers. True Grit is his most famous novel--first published in 1968, and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

True Grit is eccentric, cool, straight, and unflinching, like Mattie herself. From a writer of true cult status, this is an American classic through and through. This new edition, with a smart new package and an afterword by acclaimed author Donna Tartt, will bring this masterpiece to an even broader audience.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Timbuktu by Paul Auster

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Timbuktu by Paul Auster is an interesting book to pick up if you're looking for something interesting to read. This point of view story follows a dog and homelessness in a unique voice that isn't seen often in the literary or cinema world.

Here is a review of the book Timbuktu by Paul Auster from amazon online:

In Timbuktu Paul Auster tackles homelessness in America using a dog as his point-of-view character. Strange as the premise seems, it's been done before, in John Berger's King, and it actually works. Filtering the homeless experience through the relentlessly unsentimental eye of a dog, both writers avoid miring their tales in an excess of melodrama. Whereas Berger's book skips among several characters, Timbuktu remains tightly focused on just two: Mr. Bones, "a mutt of no particular worth or distinction," and his master, Willy G. Christmas, a middle-aged schizophrenic who has been on the streets since the death of his mother four years before. The novel begins with Willy and Mr. Bones in Baltimore searching for a former high school English teacher who had encouraged the teenage Willy's writerly aspirations. Now Willy is dying and anxious to find a home for both his dog and the multitude of manuscripts he has stashed in a Greyhound bus terminal. "Willy had written the last sentence he would ever write, and there were no more than a few ticks left in the clock. The words in the locker were all he had to show for himself. If the words vanished, it would be as if he had never lived."

Paul Auster is a cerebral writer, preferring to get to his reader's gut through the brain. When Willy dies, he goes out on a sea of words; as for Mr. Bones, this is a dog who can think about metaphysical issues such as the afterlife--referred to by Willy as "Timbuktu":

What if no pets were allowed? It didn't seem possible, and yet Mr. Bones had lived long enough to know that anything was possible, that impossible things happened all the time. Perhaps this was one of them, and in that perhaps hung a thousand dreads and agonies, an unthinkable horror that gripped him every time he thought about it.

Once Willy dies and Mr. Bones is on his own, things go from bad to worse as the now masterless dog faces a series of betrayals, rejections, and disappointments. By stepping inside a dog's skin, Auster is able to comment on human cruelties and infrequent kindnesses from a unique world view. But reader be warned: the world in Timbuktu is a bleak one, and even the occasional moments of grace are short lived. --Alix Wilber

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Pastoralia by George Saunders

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Pastoralia by George Saunders is the recommended book of the day, and it is definitely an interesting one to note. If you haven't heard of George Saunders, then wake up!

Here is a review of Pastoralia by George Saunders from amazon online:

In both his acclaimed debut, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and his second collection, Pastoralia, George Saunders imagines a near future where capitalism has run amok. Consumption and the service economy rule the earth. The Haves are grotesque beings, mutilated by their crass desires and impossible wealth. The Have Nots are no less crippled, both emotionally and physically, by their inferior status. It's a kind of Westworld scenario, but instead of robots, the serving wenches, bellboys, and extras are real people, all of them mercilessly indentured by the free market.

Sounds like bleak stuff, doesn't it? Yet Saunders handles his characters with grace and humor. In the title story, for example, a couple occupies a squalid corner of a human zoo, where they act out a parody of caveman times, communicating in grunts and hand motions (speaking is instantly punishable by the Orwellian management) and conducting their lives during 15-minute smoke breaks. In "Winky," a born loser (really, all of Saunders's characters are born losers) visits a self-help seminar, where he's encouraged to rid himself of all those people who are "crapping in your oatmeal." Exhilarated at the prospect of dumping his simple, crazy-haired, religion-besotted sister, he returns home to the bleak discovery that he needs her as much as she needs him. The protagonist of "Sea Oak" works as a stripper in an aviation-themed restaurant and lives next to a crack house with his unemployed sisters, their babies, and a sweet old maid of an aunt. The aunt dies, and then returns from the grave--not so sweet, now, and still decomposing--with strange powers and a sobering message:

You ever been in the grave? It sucks so bad! You regret all the things you never did. You little bitches are going to have a very bad time in the grave unless you get on the stick, believe me!

The characters and situations in the rest of Pastoralia are equally wretched. But Saunders rescues them from utter despair with a loving belief in the triumph of the human spirit: yes, things can always get worse, but worse is better than the cold dirt of the grave. And in the small space between wretchedness and death there is plenty of room for laughter, and even love. --Tod Nelson

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb by R. Crumb

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:36:00 +0000

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb by R. Crumb is the much talked about book that gets a literal graphic novel translation of an epic book of sorts. It's an interesting thing to see, especially since R. Crumb has been out of the spotlight for a while now.

From Creation to the death of Joseph, here are all 50 chapters of the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as never before. Envisioning the first book of the bible like no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator, reveals here the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest and deeply moving way. Originally thinking that we would do a take off of Adam and Eve, Crumb became so fascinated by the Bible’s language, “a text so great and so strange that it lends itself readily to graphic depictions,” that he decided instead to do a literal interpretation using the text word for word in a version primarily assembled from the translations of Robert Alter and the King James bible.

Now, readers of every persuasion—Crumb fans, comic book lovers, and believers—can gain astonishing new insights from these harrowing, tragic, and even juicy stories. Crumb’s Book of Genesis reintroduces us to the bountiful tree lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire that rained from the heavens, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh, where Joseph’s embalmed body is carried in a coffin, in a scene as elegiac as any in Genesis. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretation that have often obscured the Bible’s most dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of Biblical originals: from the serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing like an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a “kind’ve depressed guy who doesn’t strike you as physically courageous,” and his bother, Esau, “a rough and kick ass guy,” to Abraham’s wife Sarah, more fetching than most woman at 90, to God himself, “a standard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard.”

As Crumb writes in his introduction, “the stories of these people, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories. They were the foundation, the source, in writing of religious and political power, handed down by God himself.” Crumb’s Book of Genesis, the culmination of 5 years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling which celebrates the astonishing diversity of the one of our greatest artistic geniuses. .

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:26:00 +0000

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates is an interesting book for fans of Norma Jean aka Marilyn Monroe. This clever take on her life is an amazing piece of work and it got major success and acclaim.

Here's more information about Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates from amazon.com, including a review of the book:

In her most ambitious work to date, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker -- the child, the woman, the fated celebrity and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist -- intensely conflicted and driven -- who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood's myth and an extraordinary woman's heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great twentieth-century American star.

It is surprising and shocking to realize that Joyce Carol Oates, one of the great writers living today, has never made The New York Times bestseller list (at least not in recent memory). Far less talented (and less famous) authors have made it while she, in all likelihood not caring much, has been shut out. That could easily change with her new novel, Blonde, which may be the masterpiece of a staggeringly distinguished career.

This 700-plus-page tome is based on the life of (you guessed it) Marilyn Monroe. In fictional form, with names changed (husband Joe DiMaggio is referred to as "The Ex-Athlete," Arthur Miller as "The Playwright," John F. Kennedy as "The President," for example), this may be the most accurate and compelling portrait of this beautiful and complex woman that one is ever likely to read.

But why discuss it on the mystery page, you might well be asking yourself. It was the author's intent to structure the book as a mystery, and of course she succeeds, as she seems to succeed at everything she attempts in the world of letters. And there is a murder, apparently arranged by a secret government bureau (FBI? CIA?), although that could be the victim's hallucination. Of course, it could also be both real and hallucinated (remember, even paranoids have enemies).

If you like biographies, you'll like Blonde. If you like novels, you'll like Blonde. If you like mysteries, you'll like Blonde. And if you fear that more than 700 pages by one of the greatest of living literary lions might be tough slogging, here's a little excerpt from the chapter titled "The President's Pimp:"

Sure he was a pimp.

But not just any pimp. Not him!

He was a pimp par excellence. A pimp nonpareil. A pimp sui generis. A pimp with a wardrobe, and a pimp with style. A pimp with a classy Brit accent. Posterity would honor him as the President's Pimp.

A man of pride and stature: the President's Pimp.

At Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs in March 1962 there was the President poking him in the ribs with a low whistle. "That blonde. That's Marilyn Monroe?"

He told the President yes it was. Monroe, a friend of his. Luscious, eh? But a little crazy.

Thoughtfully, the President asked, "Have I dated her yet?"

Nothing inaccessible about Joyce Carol Oates, especially in this most readable and relentlessly fascinating study of the lovely woman with whom the whole country was at least a little in love. --Otto Penzler

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Today's reading recommendation is definitely nothing crazy in the graphic design world, the cover leaves a lot to be desired. But it seems really interesting to say the least. Check out this interesting book entitled, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It is quite the literary success, as it is something that ties together so much more than traditional book offerings.

Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been something like House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lot going on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record, written by a blind man named Zampanò, about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural, surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions, for example, are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators, Danielewski packs in poems, scientific lists, collages, Polaroids, appendices of fake correspondence and "various quotes," single lines of prose placed any which way on the page, crossed-out passages, and so on.
Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction. So apart from its narrative high jinks, what does House of Leaves have to offer? According to Johnny Truant, the tattoo-shop apprentice who discovers Zampanò's work, once you read The Navidson Record,

For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.

We'll have to take his word for it, however. As it's presented here, the description of the spooky film isn't continuous enough to have much scare power. Instead, we're pulled back into Johnny Truant's world through his footnotes, which he uses to discharge everything in his head, including the discovery of the manuscript, his encounters with people who knew Zampanò, and his own battles with drugs, sex, ennui, and a vague evil force. If The Navidson Record is a mad professor lecturing on the supernatural with rational-seeming conviction, Truant's footnotes are the manic student in the back of the auditorium, wigged out and furiously scribbling whoa-dude notes about life.
Despite his flaws, Truant is an appealingly earnest amateur editor--finding translators, tracking down sources, pointing out incongruities. Danielewski takes an academic's--or ex-academic's--glee in footnotes (the similarity to David Foster Wallace is almost too obvious to mention), as well as other bogus ivory-tower trappings such as interviews with celebrity scholars like Camille Paglia and Harold Bloom. And he stuffs highbrow and pop-culture references (and parodies) into the novel with the enthusiasm of an anarchist filling a pipe bomb with bits of junk metal. House of Leaves may not be the prettiest or most coherent collection, but if you're trying to blow stuff up, who cares? --John Ponyicsanyi

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Super-Cannes by J. G. Ballard

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:18:00 +0000

Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard is an interesting book with an even more interesting cover. Seriously, check this thing out, it evokes a certain sense of emotion. Super-Cannes is today's recommendation.

Check out this review of Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard from Amazon.com to you:

The connoisseur of the bizarre (Cocaine Nights, The Atrocity Exhibition, etc.) turns his attentions to the globalized corporate elite in his 26th book. Crippled aviator Paul Sinclair ("I counted the titanium claws that held the kneecap together") accompanies his young wife, Jane, to her new posting at a luxurious corporate park on the French Riviera. A manicured paradise of multinational conglomerate HQs and their executives' villas, Eden-Olympia (which the author has modeled on the current business parks of Antibes-les-Pins and Sophia-Antipolis) is managed by a seductive yet sinister psychiatrist named Wilder Penrose, who ensconces the Sinclairs in the house of a former local doctor named Greenwood, who one day went on a suicidal murder spree, leaving 10 dead. In short Ballardesque order, the Sinclairs become estranged from one another: Jane falls into heroin-fueled m‚nages with the Belgian couple next door; Paul takes up tranquilizers and trysts with an Eden-Olympia vamp. Paul becomes obsessed with unraveling the mystery of the massacre, coming almost to identify with Greenwood. His efforts eventually reveal the horrifying true nature of Eden-Olympia, where the most bestial drives of corporate executives are harnessed in Brownshirt-style "therapy sessions" to create optimum working efficiency. Paul's collision course with the psychopathic Penrose is a new twist on Ballard's weird neo-romanticism, whereby our self-defining "latent psychopathy" is put to use to save society rather than to revel in hedonistic defiance of it (… la Crash). Ballard actually seems to have penned a story with a clear-cut hero (if the reader overlooks Paul's drug use and pedophiliac urges) and villain ("I don't want to start a race war or not yet"), with the fate of civilization in the balance. This novel, for all the author's trademark grotesqueries, may be Ballard's most commercially viable yet.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:14:00 +0000

If you've seen the movie, you might have missed the book. The Namesake is an interesting book and it's an amazing piece of literature from around the globe! The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is our recommended book for today, enjoy reading.

Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling first novel, now in paperback for the first time. The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.

With empathy and penetrating insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.

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After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Today's recommendation is After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami, which is an interesting read of mixed stories from around the globe! Well, mainly from the mind of Haruki Murakami, acclaimed Japanese writer.

The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.

An electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package—and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may or may not be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. As haunting as dreams, as potent as oracles, the stories in After the Quake are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work today.

And here is a review of the book from Amazon online:

Haruki Murakami, a writer both mystical and hip, is the West's favorite Japanese novelist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murakami lived abroad until 1995. That year, two disasters struck Japan: the lethal earthquake in Kobe and the deadly poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. Spurred by these tragic events, Murakami returned home. The stories in After the Quake are set in the months that fell between the earthquake and the subway attack, presenting a world marked by despair, hope, and a kind of human instinct for transformation. A teenage girl and a middle-aged man share a hobby of making beach bonfires; a businesswoman travels to Thailand and, quietly, confronts her own death; three friends act out a modern-day Tokyo version of Jules and Jim. There's a surreal element running through the collection in the form of unlikely frogs turning up in unlikely places. News of the earthquake hums throughout. The book opens with the dull buzz of disaster-watching: "Five straight days she spent in front of the television, staring at the crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways." With language that's never self-consciously lyrical or show-offy, Murakami constructs stories as tight and beautiful as poems. There's no turning back for his people; there's only before and after the quake. --Claire Dederer

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:01:00 +0000

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is an award winning piece of literature with a classic literary communication that is modern and yet...somewhat post modern at the same time.

Here is a review and more information of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood:

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

And here is a review from Amazon online:

The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be:

What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain.

Meanwhile, Atwood immediately launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase's novel, The Blind Assassin, posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fictional parables. Complicated? You bet. But the author puts all this variegation to good use, taking expert measure of our capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to--or prefers to--overlook what's in plain sight. And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters. On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her. --Darya Silver

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:56:00 +0000

The Human Stain by Philip Roth is an interesting book that won an Award for literature, and you probably missed it. Check out more information below:

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.

Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."

The Human Stain by Philip Roth was reviewed by Amazon.com, and this is what they had to say:

Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies."

But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.

In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"

Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

How the Dead Live by Will Self

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:53:00 +0000

Here you go, another recommendation from me the guy that writes blogs. I got fired yesterday from my job, which sucks, but that doesn't mean I'll stop...unless I get a new job sooner than later. I suck.

Today's recommended book is How the Dead Live by Will Self, an interesting look into a unorthodox titled book.

Here's a synopsis of How The Dead Live by Will Self:

Will Self has one of literature's most astonishing imaginations, and in How the Dead Live his talent has come to full flower. Lily Bloom is an angry, aging American transplanted to England, now losing her battle with cancer. Attended by nurses and her two daughters -- lumpy Charlotte, a dour, successful businesswoman, and beautiful Natasha, a junkie -- Lily takes us on a surreal, opinionated trip through the stages of a lifetime of lust and rage. From '40s career girl to '50s tippling adulteress to '70s PR flak, Lily has seen America and England through most of a century of riotous and unreal change. And then it's over. Lily catches a cab with her death guide, Aboriginal wizard Phar Lap Jones, and enters the shockingly banal world of the dead: the suburbs. She discovers smoking without consequences and gets another PR job, where none of her coworkers notices that she's not alive. She gets to know her roommates: Rude Boy, her terminally furious son who died in a car accident at age nine; Lithy, a fetus that died before she ever knew it existed; the Fats, huge formless shapes composed of all the weight she's ever gained or lost. How the Dead Live is Will Self's most remarkable and expansively human book, an important, disturbing vision of our time.

An interesting book from a best selling author, and if you're not convinced that this might be something to check out, you should then read this review from amazon.com:

In April 1988, 65-year-old Lily Bloom quickly succumbs to cancer in the Royal Ear Hospital. ("Where do they keep the Royal Ear, I wonder? I think of it as very large--as big as a dinner tray--and very red, angrily red.") But after life there's death. Guided by an aborigine named Phar Lap Jones, she is transported by a Greek Cypriot minicab driver to the North London dead neighborhood of Dulston. There, accompanied by her dead son, Rude Boy, she's introduced to the 12-step Personally Dead meetings, and she watches over her living daughters--the cold, ambitious Charlotte, and her favorite, the heroin-addicted Natasha. "Natasha is peculiarly charged by the drug--and even by the mere anticipation of its effects. She shifts from being vulnerable and skittish and withdrawn to being strong and steady and extrovert. She's told me before that it makes her feel 'complete' and 'confident,' and I can see what she means. When she's off heroin she's a fucking nightmare--when she's on it she's a peach."

Since Will Self's face, voice, and, notoriously, life story are familiar to many who will never pick up his fiction, there's always the risk of reading How the Dead Live as autobiography. In which case, he's clearly based Lily on his New York-born Jewish mother, and he's wittily retooled large chunks of his own much-publicized addictions, transmuting himself into the beautiful and glamorously doomed Natasha. But Lily is feisty and articulate, with a complex history spanning two continents, two husbands, and a constantly re-created personality--a great literary creation. Self's sympathetic account of Lily's decline into her morphine-laden deathbed is deeply affecting, and his long-term obsession with London provides us with the utterly convincing Dulston. His treatment of modern Jewish life in North London (rather than New York) will find its fans and critics, but the novel grows beyond such local concerns. Ultimately, it is about the vexed relationship between the worries of contemporary Western life and a more transcendent spirituality--signaled by Self's opening gesture to The Tibetan Book of the Dead and by the all-seeing Phar Lap Jones. How the Dead Live is a big book with big ideas, and quite definitely Will Self's most ambitious and mature work to date. --Alan Stewart

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The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:29:00 +0000

Here is the latest in our round up of the best of fiction list we got from Borders. This is the best so far, not necessarily the best ever of 2009. The latest book is The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen, which is an interesting book to say the least.

A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal—if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal—is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum’s hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald’s, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science’s inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:58:00 +0000

This is now a major motion picture, but the video came up first. You should seriously consider this book for your end of summer reading. It's an interesting work through quite a nice cool situation. Julie Powell decides to make all the Julia Child recipes from her Mastering French Cooking book. There are a lot of great variables to throw in here, and the movie is quite interesting, so why not read it? Check out Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, as our recommendation for your reading library today.

Here is a review of Julie and Julia by Julie Powell:

Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell's attempt to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 days. The result is a masterful medley of Bridget Jones' Diary meets Like Water for Chocolate, mixed with a healthy dose of original wit, warmth, and inspiration that sets this memoir apart from most tales of personal redemption.

When we first meet Julie, she's a frustrated temp-to-perm secretary who slaves away at a thankless job, only to return to an equally demoralizing apartment in the outer boroughs of Manhattan each evening. At the urging of Eric, her devoted and slightly geeky husband, she decides to start a blog that will chronicle what she dubs the "Julie/Julia Project." What follows is a year of butter-drenched meals that will both necessitate the wearing of an unbearably uncomfortable girdle on the hottest night of the year, as well as the realization that life is what you make of it and joy is not as impossible a quest as it may seem, even when it's -10 degrees out and your pipes are frozen.

Powell is a natural when it comes to connecting with her readers, which is probably why her blog generated so much buzz, both from readers and media alike. And while her self-deprecating sense of humor can sometimes dissolve into whininess, she never really loses her edge, or her sense of purpose. Even on day 365, she's working her way through Mayonnaise Collee and ending the evening "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffy...sitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us...."

Inspired and encouraging, Julie and Julia is a unique opportunity to join one woman's attempt to change her life, and have a laugh, or ten, along the way. --Gisele Toueg

Here is an interview with Julie Powell writer of Julie and Julia by Julie Powell:

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:09:00 +0000

You should really consider checking out the latest book from the best of list so far, it's the book Little Bee by Chris Cleave. It is getting a lot of good buzz, which is enlightening to say the least.

Here is a review of Little Bee by Chris Cleave:

Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah’s Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee’s elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:01:00 +0000

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is today's recommendation from the Best of Fiction thus far, and it's interesting to note. This book is quite interesting and some rave reviews are out there right now, I didn't think it was that great because of the image on the cover, but overall it's not half bad.

Here's some more information about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford from amazon.com:

"Sentimental, heartfelt….the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices."-- Kirkus Reviews

“A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel."
-- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.”
-- Lisa See, bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is an interesting novel, and it's far better than your preconceived notion. Check it out today, as one of the best of fiction so far, from borders.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:20:00 +0000

The best of fiction list from Borders was published recently, and they have some heavy hitters. First up, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is highly recommended. A nice fiction book that covers all sorts of influential ideas taught through a deep empathetic universe.

Here is a review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett from The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Sybil Steinberg

Southern whites' guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don't tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.

Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns to her parents' cotton farm in Jackson. Although it's 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.

Skeeter is in some ways an outsider. Her friends, bridge partners and fellow members of the Junior League are married. Most subscribe to the racist attitudes of the era, mistreating and despising the black maids whom they count on to raise their children. Skeeter is not racist, but she is naive and unwittingly patronizing. When her best friend makes a political issue of not allowing the "help" to use the toilets in their employers' houses, she decides to write a book in which the community's maids -- their names disguised -- talk about their experiences.

Fear of discovery and retribution at first keep the maids from complying, but a stalwart woman named Aibileen, who has raised and nurtured 17 white children, and her friend Minny, who keeps losing jobs because she talks back when insulted and abused, sign on with Skeeter's risky project, and eventually 10 others follow.

Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett's accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.

The murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen through African American eyes, but go largely unobserved by the white community. Meanwhile, a room "full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women" pretentiously plan a fundraiser for the "Poor Starving Children of Africa." In general, Stockett doesn't sledgehammer her ironies, though she skirts caricature with a "white trash" woman who has married into an old Jackson family. Yet even this character is portrayed with the compassion and humor that keep the novel levitating above its serious theme.

Do not miss out on this one, one of Borders best of fiction so far for 2009. The Help by Kathryn Stockett might be your end of summer reading book, check it out.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

Best of Reading Fiction 2009 List

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Recently Borders put out their best of list for 2009 fiction. For the next few weeks we're going to feature those books as recommendations for the best of 2009 so far. It's only been 8 months, but there's been some great books coming out of the wood work, so check it out in the coming days.

Can't find this book in your local store? Don't want to pay high prices on books? Check out our online book store and save money on your books. Or simply go to Amazon.com and search the massive database of books out there. Click here to visit the official Reading Rec store powered by Amazon.com

City of God by E L Doctorow

noreply@blogger.com (Library Kid) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:36:00 +0000

City of God by E. L. Doctorow is today's recommendation and it's quite the journey. The book is like taking a philosophy course, but without the pretentious professor mocking your efforts. This book is quite the interesting, dense book.

Here is a synopsis of City of God by E.L. Doctorow: With brilliant and audacious strokes, the author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on the idea of a modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring and dazzling inventive tour-de-force is a riveting detective story about a cross that vanishes from a Lower-East-Side church, only to reappear on the roof of an Upper-West-Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery-and by the Episcopal priest and female rabbi who investigate the strange desecration-is a well-known novelist whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age.

Employing a multi-voiced narrative that perfectly captures the riffs and rhythms of latter-day New York, then broadens to implicate a cast of characters including scientists, war veterans, prelates, Holocaust survivors, cabinet members, theologians, filmmakers, and crooners, City of God is E. L. Doctorow's most ambitious and intensely personal work. Vast in scope, biblical in tone, it is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America's preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time.

Not convinced? Here is a review of City of God by E.L. Doctorow from Amazon.com:

You want ambition? E.L. Doctorow's City of God starts off not merely with a bang but with the big bang itself, that "great expansive flowering, a silent flash into being in a second or two of the entire outrushing universe." It doesn't, to be sure, remain on this cosmic plane throughout. There's a mystery here, along with a romance, a chilling Holocaust narrative, and a deep-focus portrait of fin-de-siècle Manhattan--not to mention cameo appearances by that Holy Trinity of contemporary mythmaking: Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Frank Sinatra. But while the author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate is no slacker when it comes to entertainment, he has more in mind this time around. Even the title, with its Augustinian overtones, tips us off to the author's preoccupation with belief, human consciousness, and "our wrecked romance with God."

Let's return, however, to that mystery. In the early pages of the novel, an enormous brass cross is pilfered from a church on the Lower East Side. Father Thomas Pemberton of St. Timothy's promptly sets off in search of it, dubbing himself the Divinity Detective. Yet he suspects from the start that this is no ordinary theft, with no ordinary solution:

So now these people, whoever they are, have lifted our cross. It bothered me at first. But now I'm beginning to see it differently. That whoever stole the cross had to do it. And wouldn't that be blessed? Christ going where He is needed?

Where He seems to be needed is the opposite side of the ecumenical aisle. The cross turns up on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, a tiny Manhattan institution to which Pemberton has clearly been led by fate. His encounter with the synagogue's rabbinical duo--a husband-and-wife team struggling to reclaim a pre-scriptural state of "unmediated awe"--transforms his life. It also destroys what's left of his conventional Christian belief. Augustine's spin on original sin, for example, now strikes him as "a nifty little act of deconstruction--passing it on to the children, like HIV." And as his relationship with Judaism deepens, he discards the clerical collar altogether and embarks upon a penitential exploration of the Holocaust--which in turn allows Doctorow to loop his narrative back and forth between several generations of (mostly) Jew and Gentile.

Astonishingly enough, the foregoing only scratches the surface of City of God. This marvelous hybrid also includes a metafictional framework (i.e., an author-as-character with a rather Doctorovian resume), an ongoing rumination on city life, and a dozen other major strands and minor players. There are, not surprisingly, a number of misfires. For example, Doctorow has long been interested in the power of American popular song--in the way that, say, Gershwin's work has come to function as a kind of secular hymnal. Yet the author's postmodernist variations on the standards, which appear at regular intervals throughout the novel under the ominous rubric of "The Midrash Jazz Quartet Plays the Standards," are jaw-droppingly awful. One might also argue that the book is too centrifugal, too devoted to the storytelling principle of the big bang. Still, there is an undeniable power to the way Doctorow makes his fictional worlds collide, setting off all manner of historical and philosophical conflagrations. At one point he imagines "the totality of intimate human narrations / composing a hymn to enlightenment / if that were possible." A tall order, yes. But despite its occasional longueurs, City of God suggests that it's possible indeed. --James Marcus

City of God by E L Doctorow is an interesting book, with roughly under 300 pages and provides an introspective look at life and human interaction with a little more than pretentious tones.

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