23 Feb

(2012) #8 review: Gandhi

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Reading Challenges, Non-Fiction, Graphic-Novels. Tagged: , , , , .

Gandhi: A Manga Biography

by

Kazuki EBINE

192 pages

Graphic “novel”

Published by Penguin in September 2011

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

      

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

This was a nice way of reconnecting with Gandhi. The biography focuses a lot on the beginning of Gandhi’s actions, especially in South Africa, before his work in India. The drawings were very good. If you think you don’t really know about him, this would be a perfect introduction.

I enjoy this new Penguin collection, the biography of the Dalai Lama was very good as well.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

The life of a true twentieth-century hero told in a vibrant graphic novel format.

Through his quietly powerful leadership and influential use of nonviolent resistance in India’s struggle against the British Raj, Mahatma Gandhi became one of the most revered figures of the modern era. While history has recorded Gandhi’s words and deeds, the man himself has been eclipsed by maxims of virtuosity that seem to have little resonance in our everyday lives. In Gandhi, the third volume in our exciting new manga biography series, created in conjunction with Emotional Content, Kazuki Ebine combines a gripping narrative with stunning illustrations to share Gandhi’s inspiring and deeply human story with a whole new generation of readers. [goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

[I could not find any picture of the author. Let me know if you know any].
Kazuki Ebine is an up-and-coming manga artist and has won several highly recognized awards from the major comic book magazines in Japan. He lives in Tokyo.

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

22 Feb

Review # 7 (2012): Half of a Yellow Sun

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Historical novels, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , .

Half of a Yellow Sun

by

Chimamanda Ngozi ADICHIE

541 pages

Published by Knopf in 2006

This book counts for the following challenges:

    

  

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

A friend of mine lent me her book last year, and it fit perfectly in my 52 countries Reading Challenge.

I had heard about Biafra in my younger years, but had no clear idea about all that was involved. This is a good historical novel, describing very well what was happening when Biafra tried to become independent, the violent reaction to their move and the huge suffering the population had to go through, with also famine at the same time.

I have lived several years with refugees from Africa and heard enough first hand horror stories of what they had to go through, so I’m always a bit hesitant in reading books on African wars these days. But this was done with style in this book and made it bearable for me. It also describes the political milieu and discussions around the issue of independence. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the past of Nigeria.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had. [goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents.

Chimamanda studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. At nineteen, Chimamanda left for the U.S to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, then went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. Chimamanda graduated summa cum laude from Eastern in 2001, and then completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

It is during her senior year at Eastern that she started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which was released in October 2003.

Chimamanda was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year, and earned an MA in African Studies from Yale University in 2008.

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

13 Feb

Block Book Club #2

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Book Club. Tagged: , , , , .

 

Our local book club was very excited to meet for its second time. Some were reading books presented by other members last month, so it sounds like the trading titles format is working well.

Here are the books shared this time:

Meeting #2 on 02/09/2012

(synopsis taken from Goodreads.com)

1. Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story Of Survival, Resilience, And Redemption (2010)
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Link to Emma’s review on her blog [it includes a book trailer]:http://wordsandpeace.com/2010/12/14/unbroken/ [you can also go to http://wordsandpeace.com , and type ‘Unbroken’ in the search box on the top right.]

2. Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing (2002)
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and better judgment—they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the Civil Rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.

3. Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper (2005)
“New York Times” bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness.
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate–a life and a role that she has never challenged…until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister–and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
“My Sister’s Keeper” examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child’s life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in “My Sister’s Keeper, ” Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.

4. William Kent Krueger, Iron Lake (Cork O’Connor #1) [1998-2011]

Here is the synopsis of the #1 in the series, but E. presented the whole series. So far, 11 volumes have been published.

William Kent Krueger joined the ranks of today’s best suspense novelists with this thrilling, universally acclaimed debut. Conjuring “a sense of place he’s plainly honed firsthand in below-zero prairie” “(Kirkus Reviews), ” Krueger brilliantly evokes northern Minnesota’s lake country — and reveals the dark side of its snow-covered landscape.

Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his “former” status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.

As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.

 

5. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (1936) [audiobook]

Revisit the South and fall under the spell of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler all over again. After six decades, this sweeping saga set against the backdrop of the war-torn South remains one of the most beloved American novels ever written.

 

6. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games/Catching Fire/Mockingjay (2008-2010) [presented by Pat]

Synopsis of the 1st volume:

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister Primrose, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before — and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love

 

7. A. presented the 2012 Master List of Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award (Illinois Children=s Choice Award) – grades 4 through 8. See here: http://www.rcyrba.org/pdf/2012MasterList.pdf

One of the books she enjoyed a lot on that list a few years ago was:

Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars (2000):

Gary D. Schmidt offers an unforgettable antihero in THE WEDNESDAY WARSin the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself.

 

8. Norman Ollestad, Crazy For The Storm (2009)

“Dad Said

Olestad, we can do it all. . . .”

Why do you make me do this?

“Because it’s beautiful when it all comes together. ”

I don’t think it’s ever beautiful.

“One day.”

Never.

“We’ll see, my father said. Vamanos.”

From the age of three, Norman Ollestad was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing by the intense, charismatic father he both idolized and resented. While his friends were riding bikes, playing ball, and going to birthday parties, young Norman was whisked away in pursuit of wild and demanding adventures. Yet it were these exhilarating tests of skill that prepared “Boy Wonder,” as his father called him, to become a fearless champion–and ultimately saved his life.

Flying to a ski championship ceremony in February 1979, the chartered Cessna carrying Norman, his father, his father’s girlfriend, and the pilot crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains and was suspended at 8,200 feet, engulfed in a blizzard. “Dad and I were a team, and he was Superman,” Ollestad writes. But now Norman’s father was dead, and the devastated eleven-year-old had to descend the treacherous, icy mountain alone.

Set amid the spontaneous, uninhibited surf culture of Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s, this riveting memoir, written in crisp Hemingwayesque prose, recalls Ollestad’s childhood and the magnetic man whose determination and love infuriated and inspired him–and also taught him to overcome the indomitable. As it illuminates the complicated bond between an extraordinary father and his son, Ollestad’s powerful and unforgettable true story offers remarkable insight for us all.

 

9. Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (2011) [presented by me on the occasion of Dickens’ 200th birthday on 2/7/2012]

The tumultuous life of England’s greatest novelist, beautifully rendered by unparalleled literary biographer Claire Tomalin.

When Charles Dickens died in 1870, “The Times” of London successfully campaigned for his burial in Westminster Abbey, the final resting place of England’s kings and heroes. Thousands flocked to mourn the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England. His books had made them laugh, shown them the squalor and greed of English life, and also the power of personal virtue and the strength of ordinary people. In his last years Dickens drew adoring crowds to his public appearances, had met presidents and princes, and had amassed a fortune.

Like a hero from his novels, Dickens trod a hard path to greatness. Born into a modest middle-class family, his young life was overturned when his profligate father was sent to debtors’ prison and Dickens was forced into harsh and humiliating factory work. Yet through these early setbacks he developed his remarkable eye for all that was absurd, tragic, and redemptive in London life. He set out to succeed, and with extraordinary speed and energy made himself into the greatest English novelist of the century.

Years later Dickens’s daughter wrote to the author George Bernard Shaw, “If you could make the public understand that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch, you would greatly oblige me.” Seen as the public champion of household harmony, Dickens tore his own life apart, betraying, deceiving, and breaking with friends and family while he pursued an obsessive love affair.

“Charles Dickens: A Life” gives full measure to Dickens’s heroic stature-his huge virtues both as a writer and as a human being- while observing his failings in both respects with an unblinking eye. Renowned literary biographer Claire Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickens’s own pen, a comedy that turns to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great-his indomitable energy, boldness, imagination, and showmanship-finally destroyed him. The man who emerges is one of extraordinary contradictions, whose vices and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.

Link to my review on this blog: http://wordsandpeace.com/2012/01/23/review-2-2012-charles-dickes-a-life/

 

Other titles briefly mentioned:

I’m sure there were many more, but these are the titles I heard
- Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Cicrle and Nineteen Minutes

- Nancy Horan, Loving Frank

- mysteries by C.J. Box

- Todd Burpo, Heaven Is For Real

- William P. Young, The Shack

- Murielle Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog [see my review here: http://wordsandpeace.com/2010/10/19/the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog/ ] and Gourmet Rhapsody  [http://wordsandpeace.com/2011/06/16/my-review-47-gourmet-rhapsody/ ]

- Erik Larson, The Devil in The White City  and In The Garden of Beasts, and Isaac’s Storm

- Joseph Heller, Catch-22 [not in too positive terms…]

- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

 

HAVE YOU TRIED YET TO SET UP
A TRADING TITLES BOOK CLUB?

7 Feb

Charles Dickens for our time?

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Fiction. Tagged: , .

Reflecting today on Charles Dickens, his work, the social portraits of his time, I was wondering if we had a Dickens or a Zola for our time.

Any idea? A fiction writer who would portray the tough social times so many go through in our 21st century?

He/she can be a European or American writer – I’m thinking more of our Western world here.

Please share any thought, with some examples of titles if necessary. Thanks!

2 Feb

January wrap-up

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Book Club, ebook, Fiction, Graphic-Novels, Historical novels, I Love France, Non-Fiction, Plays, Read in, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , , .

Wow, I don’t know if it’s the excitement of a new beginning with the first month of the year, or the excitement of working on 20ish Reading Challenges, or pure madness, that could well be all the above:

this month has been terrific, best EVER!

Ok, I did NOT finish any audiobook, mostly for technical reasons, I’ll explain when I post the review of the audiobook I finished 24 hours too late to make it for the January count.

BUT I read 11 books, with a total of 2803 pages, that is, an insane 90.4 pages/day! I had to redo the maths several times, to be sure it was correct.

Another neat thing, is that I’m working on my end of year recap as I go along,that will save tons of times at the end, and prevent mistakes.

So for instance, I add titles and numbers after each book I read on this public google recap sheet, and I update all my Reading Challenges on that one.

The cool thing is that to list the following titles, I just add to select them form my column, et voilà!

SO, here are the titles I read:

5 fiction:

Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier – in original French
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – historical novel, upcoming review
A Midsummer Night’s Dream , by Shakespeare – play
The Man In The Brown Suit , by Agatha Christie – mystery
Remembering Babylon , by David Malouf

I enjoyed them all, but my old love for le Grand Meaulnes was too strong against Agatha Christie, so that’s my favorite fiction this month:

6 non-fiction

Gandhi: A Manga Biography, by Kazuki Ebine – graphic format, upcoming review
The Adventures of Hergé, by José-Louis Bocquet – graphic format, upcoming review
Saint Gregory Palamas As A Hagiorite, by Hierotheos of Nafpaktos – upcoming review
Charles Dickens: A Life  , by Claire Tomalin
Cliffs Notes on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream , by Matthew Black
Paris My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) , by Amy Thomas – ebook

Difficult to resist the Parisian sweetness of Amy Thomas’ book, but I’m still giving my preference to this masterpiece, which I highly recommend for Dickens’ 200th anniversary coming up in a few days now:

***

Reading Challenges recap

Around the World in 52 books:  9/52
Around the world in 12 books: 1/12
European reading challenge: 4/5
I love Italy: 0/1-3
Dewey Decimal: 8/20
We want you to read French authors: 4/5 or 10 (ends in August)
Books in translation: 2/10-12
South Asia: 1/7
Middle East: 0/18
My own reading challenge: 0/5
What’s in a Name: 3/5
Ebook challenge: 3/10
Audiobook: 0/12
Support your library: 7/37
Finishing the series: 0/1
2nds challenge: 0/3
Foodies: 1/3
Japanese literature: 0/? (starts in June)
Historical novels: 1/7-10
New authors challenge: 8/15
A Shakespeare play a month: 1/12
SHAKESPEARE READING MONTHE: 1/1   -  COMPLETED
AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE MONTH: 1/1 – COMPLETED
DICKENS READING MONTH: 1/1  – COMPLETED
Graham Green Challenge: 0/1

***

Blog recap

December 2011:    29 posts =  total views =  1,718  = 55/day
January 2012:        21 posts =  total views =  2,165  = 70/day

Another very exciting event in January was my starting a book club for our block, with a very special format that everybody seems to enjoy. If you have not yet read about it, it’s here.

How was YOUR month of January?

1 Feb

I love France #14: Review #6 (2012): Paris, My Sweet

Posted by WordsAndPeace in I Love France, Non-Fiction, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , , .

I LOVE FRANCE!

This meme will be published every Thursday.
You can share here about any book
or anything cultural you just discovered related to France, Paris, etc.

Please spread the news on Twitter, Facebook, etc !
Feel free to grab my button,
and link your own post through Mister Linky
please if possible
include the title of the book or topic in your link.

*******

Paris, My Sweet:

A Year in the City of Light

(and Dark Chocolate)

by

Amy THOMAS

280 pages

Published by Sourcebooks today, Feb 1 , 2012!

Ebook received for free from Netgalley and Sourcebooks

I read this book for the following Challenges:

    

 

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

The ad for this ebook was so alléchante (appetizing) that I could not resist. And this was indeed a treat!

Amy, from New York, is sent for her work in Paris. As she had discovered treasures of bread and mostly sweets some years before, her tale of two cities is organized by chapter each dedicated to some great French and/or American sweet, from la madeleine to cupcakes.

It is both the story of her struggle in finding her place as an expat in the French society, and that was rather tough at the beginning, and the revelation of her deepening love for the city of light – for instance on  a vélib, the bicycles you can rent to go around in Paris.

This book is a treasure trove of fantastic places in Paris and New York if you have a sweet tooth. At the end of each chapter, she recapitulates a few key places in both cities where you can find what she presented in the chapter.

Also, at the very end of the book, you will find a long list of those amazing sweet houses in both cities.

This is irresistible, but really dangerous if you are on as diet. This book made me hungry all along, even though I’m not really a fan of sweets.

It is also a very good presentation of the French mentally, and this book may rightly debunk some of your too romantic ideas about the French people.

But all is well that ends well, Amy calls now Paris her home.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

Part love letter to New York, part love letter to Paris, and total devotion to all things sweet. Paris, My Sweet is a personal and moveable feast that’s a treasure map for anyone who loves fresh cupcakes and fine chocolate, New York and Paris, and life in general. It’s about how the search for happiness can be as fleeting as a sliver of cheesecake and about how the life you’re meant to live doesn’t always taste like the one you envisioned. Organized into a baker’s dozen of delicacies (and the adventures they inspired) that will tempt readers’ appetites, Paris, My Sweet is something to savor. [Goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amy Thomas is a writer based in Paris and New York.

It was during her junior year abroad at the American University of Paris that Amy’s infatuation with the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) blossomed into true love. But when she finished her degree at Babson College, it was to San Francisco that she moved. There, she started a career in advertising at J. Walter Thompson and Foote, Cone & Belding, working on accounts such as Levi’s, Amazon and the YMCA.

Along the way, her interest in the editorial world evolved into a second career and a move to New York brought her closer to home (and Madison Avenue). While her copywriting portfolio expanded to include Redken, BMW and Dove, her magazine and newspaper writing brought her to Sydney, Dublin, the Caucus mountains and the Connecticut coastline.

In 2008, fate or luck came her way with a job offer to work on Louis Vuitton’s digital advertising in the Paris office of Ogilvy & Mather. With a full-blown éclair addiction and an imaginary closet filled with only Vuitton, Paris is where Amy now calls home.

Here is her website, and her great blog on Paris.

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

“”A sweet and charming tale of Paris through the eyes of a cake-lover. Willie Wonka for grown ups — and a guide to some of the sweetest destinations in the City of Light. ” – Karen Wheeler, author of Tout Sweet

“”Such a charming, heartfelt book. Paris, My Sweet is as dainty and decadent as a box of pastel macarons, a bewitching tale of a young woman’s love affair with two iconic cities and the confections found in each one.”" – Ann Mah, author of Kitchen Chinese

“”Amy Thomas’s descriptions of the delicious delights in Paris and New York had me almost licking the pages.”  ” – Rachel Khoo, author of Little Paris Kitchen

“”Dessert lovers will devour this one… Amy Thomas draws the reader into the comfort of sweets seemingly found on every street corner in Paris, creating a delectable fantasy world. As a self-professed sugarholic, this memoir/travelogue/dessert guide to New York and Paris is a rare, nostalgic treat – equal parts charm, style, and wit.”" – Pichet Ong, chef and author of The Sweet Spot [amazon]

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

31 Jan

UPDATE on the Challenge BOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE FIRST YEARS OF MY LIFE – 2012

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Reading Challenges. Tagged: .

Hi there,

just to be sure you know, you can post your review for this challenge on the same page where you signed up.

Just go to the very end of the post, you will see 2 Mr Linkys:
- the first to join the challenge – and it’s never too late
- the 2nd to post your reviews. Please after your name put the year of the book you reviewd in brackets.

Thanks!

 

30 Jan

Review #5 (2012): A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Excerpts, Plays, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , .

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

by

William SHAKESPEARE

155 pages

Published ca. 1590

I read this book for the following Challenges:

   

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

I joined 2 reading challenges this year related to Shakespeare, and one of them had planned to have us read this play I had not read yet.

I have to say it’s not really my favorite by Shakespeare. I found the story within the story within the story a bit too complicated for a comedy. I did not like the characters of the women. My favorite character is probably Nick Bottom, that I would consider as the jester, smart and witty.

I even read along the cliffs notes volume on this play, just in case I was missing something big, but it did not seem so. By the way, this study book presents and analyses each scene, and presents then the general themes of the play.

After reading the play, I watched the BBC version of it, and found it a tiny bit more funny. I have the feeling anyway that Shakespeare would be horrified that we just read his plays, they should absolutely be watched to have a better idea. One example here is with Tom Snout playing a Wall, through which (that is, between 2 of his fingers), lovers tried to talk and kiss each other.

I’d like to integrate here a few comments I made to questions posted on the website hosting one of the challenges – click on the RIGHT challenge picture to see all the questions and comments for each act.

By the way, here is one of many online free versions

Act 1:

Do you perceive any allusions to myths and/or other works?
= yes, the relation between Hermia and her father Egeus reminds me a bit of Antigone nd her fasther Oedipus in Sophocles’ play:

Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes and his mother Jocasta. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, on pain of death.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus’ reign in Thebes, however, this is before he marries Jocasta. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus’ banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against Creon. In Sophocles’ version, both of Antigone’s brothers are killed in battle against the state. After Oedipus’ death, it was decided that the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices were to reign over Thebes taking turns. Eteocles, however, did not want to give away his power causing Polynices to leave Thebes to set up an army. In the fight against Thebes, the two brothers kill each other. After this event, Creon declares that, as punishment, Polynices’ body must be left on the plain outside the city to rot and be eaten by animals. Eteocles, on the other hand had been buried as tradition warranted. Antigone determines this to be unjust, immoral and against the laws of the gods, and is determined to bury her brother regardless of Creon’s law. She attempts to persuade her sister Ismene to join her, but fails. Antigone buries her brother by herself; eventually Creon’s guards discover this and capture her. Antigone is brought before Creon, where she declares that she knew Creon’s law but chose to break it, expounding upon the superiority of ‘divine law’ to that made by man. She defies his arguments, provoking his wrath and punishment.
Sophocles’ Antigone ends in disaster, with Antigone hanging herself after being walled up, and Creon’s son Haemon (or Haimon), who loved Antigone, killing himself after finding her body.

Have you any quote/quotes that has/have struck you as interesting in some way?
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

= I was a bit shocked at how negative this description of love is, but again, this is a comedy, and Shakespeare could very well mock those that have that type of reaction to love.

Act 2:

The 2nd Act for me is a definite turn in the comedy genre, and this really gives me the desire to watch the play after I finish reading it – it’s at my library.
In this Act, one passage, related to love again, as in my comment on Act 1, brought to mind something totally foreign to it: a very famous song in French by the Belgian singer/poet Jacques Brel.

Here is Helena to Demetrius:

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,–
And yet a place of high respect with me,–
Than to be used as you use your dog?

And here is the famous song by Jacques Brel: Ne me quitte pas:
In English translation, here is the passage, with the dog:

Don’t leave me
I won’t cry anymore
I won’t speak anymore
I will hide right there
To see you
Dancing and smiling
And to listen to you
Sing and then laugh
Let me become
The shadow of your shadow
The shadow of you hand
The shadow of your dog

if you want to hear in French, with English subtitles, here is a live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYiHBBuHWbI

this is a very silly parallel I admit, but I was struck by this image in Shakespeare, and right away thought of Jacques Brel, as this image is as striking in his own love song.

Act 4, at the end of scene 1, Bottom says:

[Awaking] When my cue comes, call me, and I will
answer: my next is, ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho!
Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout,
the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life, stolen
hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare
vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go
about to expound this dream. Methought I was–there
is no man can tell what. Methought I was,–and
methought I had,–but man is but a patched fool, if
he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of
this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s Dream,
because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the
latter end of a play, before the duke:
peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall
sing it at her death.

with parallel to Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 2:9-10:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

Shakespeare’s intertwined love polygons begin to get complicated from the start–Demetrius and Lysander both want Hermia but she only has eyes for Lysander. Bad news is, Hermia’s father wants Demetrius for a son-in-law. On the outside is Helena, whose unreturned love burns hot for Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander plan to flee from the city under cover of darkness but are pursued by an enraged Demetrius (who is himself pursued by an enraptured Helena). In the forest, unbeknownst to the mortals, Oberon and Titania (King and Queen of the faeries) are having a spat over a servant boy. The plot twists up when Oberon’s head mischief-maker, Puck, runs loose with a flower which causes people to fall in love with the first thing they see upon waking. Throw in a group of labourers preparing a play for the Duke’s wedding (one of whom is given a donkey’s head and Titania for a lover by Puck) and the complications become fantastically funny. [Goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “The Bard”). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare’s.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare’s genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called “bardolatry”. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

In February, we will read Macbeth, a favorite of mine that I studied every hard decades ago, so stay tuned!

HAVE YOU READ THIS PLAY YET?
WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR DON’T LIKE IN IT?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING IT?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

30 Jan

Reading Shakespeare A Play A Month Challenge

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Plays, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , .

I realize now I had not created that post yet!

So here are the plays we will be reading this year.

  • January — A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • February — Macbeth
  • March — Henry V
  • April — Much Ado About Nothing
  • May — Antony and Cleopatra
  • June — Richard III
  • July — As You Like It
  • August — King Lear
  • September — Cymbeline
  • October — Twelfth Night
  • November — Othello
  • December — Pericles

TO JOIN CLICK ON THE PICTURE

29 Jan

Review #4 (2012): The Man In The Brown Suit

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Fiction, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , .

The Man in the Brown Suit

by

Agatha CHRISTIE

277 pages

Published in 1924

I read this book for the following Challenges:

   

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

First, let me specify that I read this book for 2 Reading Challenges, as you can see above.  The Around The Word Reading Challenge chose South Africa for the month of January. I had wanted to read more by Agatha Christie, and I discovered that this book was partly taking place in that country.

This is an original mystery, in the sense that it is very witty and funny, a bit à la Wodehouse actually. At the beginning, it sounds really easy, but then the plot thickens, and is suddenly very complex, and you realize there are a lot of things and people involved in a crime that looked originally predictable.

I could not identify the killer until very late in the book, it goes almost without saying, but I had also a hard time figuring really who was who, and I had to re-read part of the book again once I was done. As I still was not sure I had got it completely, I cheated and checked the plot on wikipedia (the article is very good, but of course you should read the book first).

This is not to say that this is a too complicated mystery, but rather to say that I’m really dumb as far as mysteries are concerned – I probably don’t read or watch enough, so that I have a hard time guessing ahead of time; and also to say that this is an excellently plotted book.

If you have not read it yet, you should try it.

As for South Africa, there were some interesting descriptions of the landscape as the heroin discovers it when she gets off the boat.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

How odd, Anne Beddingfeld thought, that the stranger caught her eye, recoiled in horror, and fell to his death on the rails of Hyde Park Underground Station. Odder still was a doctor in a brown suit who pronounced him dead and vanished into the crowd. But what really aroused Anne’s suspicion was when she learned of the doctor’s link to the murder of a famous ballerina, a fortune in hidden diamonds, and a crime-lord embroiled in blackmail. And most frightening of all was the attempt made on Anne’s own life. But she is unable to resist the lure of an isolated mansion that could hold the solution to the bizarre mystery–even if she becomes the next victim… [Goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, U.K., as the youngest of three. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha’s senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.

During the First World War, she worked at a hospital as a nurse; later working at a hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her work, as many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.

On Christmas Eve 1914 Agatha married Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks. They divorced in 1928, two years after Christie discovered her husband was having an affair.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, came out in 1920. During this marriage, Agatha published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines.

In late 1926, Agatha’s husband, Archie, revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On 8 December 1926 the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their house Styles in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for eleven days.

In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie’s death in 1976. In 1977, Mallowan married his longtime associate, Barbara Parker.

Christie frequently used familiar settings for her stories. Christie’s travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was born. Christie’s 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie’s room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.

Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. She based at least two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, which is in the story collection of the same name, and the novel After the Funeral. “Abney became Agatha’s greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots.

During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital of University College, London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war crime novels.

To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Year Honours. The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club. In the 1971 New Year Honours she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, three years after her husband had been knighted for his archeological work in 1968.

From 1971 to 1974, Christie’s health began to fail, although she continued to write. In 1975, sensing her increasing weakness, Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson. Recently, using experimental textual tools of analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
HAVE YOU WATCHED THE MOVIE?
WHICH BOOK BY AGATHA CHRISTIE
IS YOUR FAVORITE?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

28 Jan

Review #3 (2012): Remembering Babylon

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Fiction, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , , .

Remembering Babylon

by

David MALOUF

200 pages

Published by Pantheon in 1993

I read this book for the following Challenges:

   

 

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

I had chosen to listen to The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, for this Australian Literature month, but it came too late for me at the library, so I decided to postpone the listening of it to next month, and to read now this novel by a famous Australian writer.

This book was good at descriptions of the landscapes, and mostly at exploring the theme of the “other”. What happens when someone totally different shows up in your community? How do people react? Fear, fascination, imagination? how does it affect them? how are they changed themselves by this unexpected encounter? It’s also about nature and society. There are some very powerful passages on these big themes, as the author presents the event from the perspective of each person involved.

If you need a short but dense and well written novel to introduce you to Australian literature, I highly recommend you this one.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia’s greatest living writers gives and immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions.  In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge: he is a force that at once fascinates and repels. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal. [Goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Malouf is the author of ten novels and six volumes of poetry. His novel The Great World was awarded both the prestigious Commonwealth Prize and the Prix Femina Estranger. Remembering Babylon was short-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also received the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

“A dazzling novel…The story has moments of such high intensity that they remain scorched in memory. As the story moves forward to its conclusion, we go unwillingly with it, not wanting this book, with the wisdom it contains, to stop speaking to us.” –The Toronto Star

“Remembering Babylon is another rare chance to read a work by one of the few contemporary novelists who examines our constantly battered humanity and again and again brings out its lingering beauty.” –The Globe and Mail

“There are passages of aching beauty in Remembering Babylon, and passages of shocking degradation. Mr. Malouf has written a wonderfully wise and moving novel, a novel that turns the history and mythic past of Australia into a dazzling fable of human hope and imperfection.” –The New York Times [amazon]

 

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
OR ANY OTHER BOOK BY MALOUF?
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE AUSTRALIAN WRITER?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

23 Jan

Review #2 (2012): Charles Dickens: A Life

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Excerpts, Non-Fiction, Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , .

Charles Dickens: A Life

by

Claire TOMALIN

417 pages

Published by Penguin Press, in Oct 2011

I read this book for the following Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

I need first to explain the discrepancy between the official page numbers of this book, Goodreads says 527 pages (and I have no idea why amazon says 576 pages, for the exact same book I have here) and my page count of only 417. The text itself stops at page 417, and this is mostly what I read: I only read a couple of notes. Pages 418-527 are notes, acknowledgements, bibliography and index. For honest reading statistics, I give the number of pages I read, that’s why my page number count is usually not the official one.

On February 7, 2012, we will be celebrating Dickens’ 200th birthday (1812-1870). For this wonderful literary occasion, I joined 2 challenges, and read this brand new fantastic biography. I enjoy a lot Dickens. The latest work of his I read, more acurately listened to, was A Tale of Two Cities, a few years ago.

This biography was fascinating: Tomalin does a great job at mixing Dickens’s life events and literary creations, not hesitating on delving into each novel, each character, to show all the links between his life and his writing. Both are anyway extremely connected.

Even as a very young boy, Dickens had a great sense of observation, and would even take notes of things he saw around him. He lived in very poor London areas, with a father who would almost constantly be in debt, and that makes the background of most of his characters.

As soon as he earned a living, Dickens became very generous at helping his family and friends, and many poor people at large, including a home he founded and financed for prostitutes.

Dickens had an incredible energy: he needed to move and walked miles and miles to find his inspiration, while working at many works at the same time.

All this was rather well until his midlife crisis, when he suddenly asked divorce and said he did not like his children, 10 of them. He stopped lots of his generous contributions and supports of friends. This 3rd part of the book was totally unexpected for me. It was brilliant at showing all the contradictions in Dickens, a man maybe too brilliant to ever reach a healthy balance in every thing, and find real emotional happiness.
The excerpt I included, being almost the end of the book, is a good illustration of the richness of his complex character.

But his work remains the work of a giant, and I encourage you to read something by Dickens, or this biography, on this coming month of February

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

In his time, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was the most popular author not only in his native England, but also in America: In fact, in just two days, his American Notes sold 50,000 copies in New York alone. Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens captures the inner workings of a fiercely private workaholic, a man whose mistreatment of family and friends seems at painful odds with his philanthropic activities and the deep human warmth communicated in his novels. Tomalin’s mastery of the materials and writing skills enable her to untangle and weave together events in Dickens’ professional career and private life that other chroniclers have missed. By any standard, a major biography of a major author by an award-winning biographer. Editor’s recommendation. [goodreads]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born Claire Delavenay in London, she was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She became literary editor of the ‘New Statesman’ and also the ‘Sunday Times’. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for ‘The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens’.

In addition, her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2003, the Latham Prize of the Samuel Pepys Club in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003.
She married her first husband, Nicholas Tomalin, who was a prominent journalist but who was killed in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her second husband is the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
She is Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English PEN (International PEN)

EXCERPT p.416

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK BY DICKENS?
HAVE YOU READ ANY OTHER BIOGRAPHY BY CLAIRE TOMALIN?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

23 Jan

Japanese Literature Challenge 2012

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Reading Challenges. Tagged: , , , .

This Challenge starts only in June 2012. I will add the link of the hostess then, and the titles I plan to read for it.

16 Jan

Block Book Club #1

Posted by WordsAndPeace in Audiobooks, Book Club, Fiction, Good books for your week-end, Historical novels, Non-Fiction. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Last week, I had a fabulous experience:

In the course of several block parties and other events, I realized we had quite a few very active readers on our block – one of them read 165 books last year, including men as well.

So after some time of thinking, I finally invited my block to meet as a book club. But a special book club, a trading titles one, meaning: we do not need to all read the same book, but we share a book we just read and loved a lot.

It was so much fun, there was so much excitement, when others had read the same titles, and in the exchange after each presentation.

We were 11, 4 men and 7 women. Some couples could not make it this time.

Here are the titles we shared:

Meeting #1 on 01/13/2012

(synopsis taken from Goodreads.com)

1.Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah’s key (2007) [presented by P. and P. - read by 5 people]
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

2. Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace (2005) [presented by M. - read by 3 people]
Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God.
It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it becomes overnight an open battleground among the Nazis, the Allies, resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians trying to survive.
Mary Doria Russell sets her first historical novel against this dramatic background, tracing the lives of a handful of fascinating characters. Through them, she tells the little-known but true story of the network of Italian citizens who saved the lives of forty-three thousand Jews during the war’s final phase. The result of five years of meticulous research, A Thread of Grace is an ambitious, engrossing novel of ideas, history, and marvelous characters that will please Russell’s many fans and earn her even more.

3. Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story Of Survival, Resilience, And Redemption (2010) [presented by J. - read by 3 people]
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Link to my review [it includes a book trailer]: http://wordsandpeace.com/2010/12/14/unbroken/

4. Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing (2002) [presented by A.]
On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and better judgment—they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the Civil Rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.

5. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (2011) [presented by P. - read by 2 people]
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

Link to my review: wordsandpeace.com/2011/11/15/80-review-1q84/

6. Keith Richards, Life (2010) [presented by R.]
Rock ‘n’ roll’s great survivor looks back on an extraordinary life. From the Rolling Stones’ first success in the 1960s through increasing fame and addiction to the present day, Richards tells his story in his own inimitable way.

7. John Sanford, Shock Wave  (2011) (Virgil Flowers #5) [presented by B. - read by 2 people]
Talk about risky business.
The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: the local merchants fearing for their businesses, and the environmentalists predicting ecological disaster. The protests don’t seem to be slowing the project down, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.
The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart’s headquarters. The second one explodes at the construction site itself. The blasts are meant to inflict maximum damage—and they do. Who’s behind the bombs and how far will they go? It’s Virgil Flowers’s job to find out . . . before more people get killed.

8. SJ Watson, Before I Go To Sleep (2011) [presented by me]
‘As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me …’ Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love – all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine’s life

Link to my review: http://wordsandpeace.com/2011/11/21/83-before-i-go-to-sleep/

9.  Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose (1971) [presented by L.]
Angle of Repose tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need, Ward is nonetheless embarking on a search of monumental proportions – to rediscover his grandmother, now long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward’s investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life.

10. Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle (2006) [presented by J.].
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.

Other titles briefly mentioned:
- Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
- Emma Donoghue, Room
- Books by Terry Goodkind [genre: fantasy]
- Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- Patricia MacLachlan, Waiting For The Magic [children book]

« Older Entries