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Book of the Day 2010
January 2, 2010 & January 3, 2010Masterful Essays-
Novelist Jonathan Franzen(The Corrections; The Twenty-seventh City; Strong Motion) again lends his analytical gift to the autobiographical essay, picking up where The Discomfort Zone, which covered his childhood, left off. No matter what his subject-Alzheimer's, the post office,the modern novel-the essays all have a subtext of the private self developing within society's noisy engine. How to Be Alone offers the pleasure of Franzen's finely honed language, his willingness to explore both joy and grief(and the many shades between), and his ability to plant his feet firmly in reality while letting whimsy and imagination soar.
Title-How to Be Alone
Author-Jonathan Franzen
Published-2003 by Picador
January 4, 2010An Icelandic Gem-
This reissue of a novel that first appeared in English in 1966 is a good way to introduce yourself to the starkly beautiful and bygone world of Icelandic author Halldor Laxness, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature and better known for his magnificent novel "Independent People". In "The Fish Can Sing", Young Alfgrimur, after showing some talent as a singer, begins a quest to find the famous singer and national hero Gardar Holm(now a very old man). You'll become hooked on Laxness's lyrical majesty and rugged characters.
Title-The Fish Can Sing
Author-Halldor Laxness; translated from the Icelandic by Magnus Magnusson
Published-1966;2008 by Vintage
January 5, 2010The New World-
In Matthew Sharpe's "Jamestown", the settlers don't come in little wooden ships. They ride in a bus down a wrecked I-95, trying to escape postapocalyptic New York. They do, however, find Indians. Powhatan leads them as of old, and Pocahontas saves the life of Jack Smith and falls in love with Johnny Rolfe. There is a great deal of other mayhem, but it is Pocahontas who really captures our attention with her extraordinary way with words-she swings from Elizabethan to MySpaceian and numerous dialects in between. "This is a tour-de-force of black humor."-Publishers Weekly
Title-Jamestown
Author-Matthew Sharpe
Published-2008 by Harvest Books
January 6, 2010The Dip-Not Just A Dance-
Seth Godin's marketing and business blog has spawned a number of highly successful small books(Small Is The New Big;Permission Markenting: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers), but he's in slightly different territory here, tapping into a psychological view of what makes for success(in relationships, business, hobbies) and turning on its head the old adage "Winners never quit, and quitters never win." Quite the contrary, Godin argues. Winning means surviving the Dip-the doubts, lack of interest, rejection, the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to perfection. The key is to recognize the Dips that keep you engaged over the long haul. Everything else you should let go without a qualm or a dip.
Title-The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit(And When To Stick)
Author-Seth Godin
Published-2007 by Portfolio
January 7, 2010The Closer-
This third book of the Kanner Lake series begins with real estate agent Carla Radling narrowly escaping her premature demise at the hands of a charming British hit man. The action and thrills multiply fom there as other denizens of Kanner Lake are drawn into a deadly came of cat and mouse. Crimson Eve brims with secrets, lies, thrills, and suspense that keep the pages turning.
Title-Crimson Eve
Author-Brandilyn Collins
Published-2007 by Zondervan
January 8, 2010Rediscovered Classic-
The Unpossessed stands up masterfully under the test of time. Author Tess Slesinger(1905-1945) gives a marvelous send-up of the free love movement-imagine a madcap Edith Wharton or a female Evelyn Waugh. The story follows a cast of delightful artsy, lefty types trying to start a pompous, artsy, left magazine while also living their messy, backstabbing, self-serving lives and love affairs. Slesinger brilliantly draws a certain(rather large)segment of New York life in the 1930s. An introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick helps flesh out of the colorful scene.
Title-The Unposessed: A Novel of the Thirties
Author-Tess Slesinger
Published-1934;2002 by New York Review Books Classics
January 9,2010 & January 10, 2010Better Than A Pie In The Face-
This book brings an era of American history and culture to life(though the author, himself the impresario of a successful vaudeville troupe, insists that vauderville is not dead). With roots that reach way back to Punch and Judy and commedia dell'arte, vaudeville emerged as the dominant form of entertainment from about 1881 to 1932, and its influence reaches far beyond-even to today. There could be no better chronicler of this vibrant, colorful, and funny medium than Trav S. D.(the nove de plume of Travis Stewart).
Title-No Applause-Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous
Author-Trav S.D.
Published-2006 by Faber&Faber
January 11, 2010Misfits and Good Country People-
Flannery O'Connor had the rare ability to draw her characters in such sharp, lucid lines that you knew them as you did your own sister or your next-door neighbor. "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick," O'Connor writes of the child in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost"- and the girl is revealed in a flash. O'Connor's humor is sly, but as you smile you know there's serious business behind it. This collection put her on the map, and no wonder: The stories are captivating, strong, and unforgettable.
Title- A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories
Author-Flannery O'Connor
Published-1955;1999 by Harcourt
January 12, 2010Walker in the Cities-
According to the book jacket, psychogeography is defined as "meditation on the vexed relationship between psyche and place." Will Self practices psychogeography by discovering, on foot, the streets of Sao Paulo, Singapore, Los Angeles, London, and numerous other exotic and familiar cityscapes. The essays that result make for a stimulating amalgam of idea and anecdote. Edgy, kinky illustrations by Ralph Steadman make a perfect accompaniment to Self's wry, ground-level observations.
Title-Psychogeography: Disentangling The Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place
Author-Will Self;illustrations by Ralph Steadman
Published-2007 by Bloomsbury, USA
January 13, 2010Just Another Unhappy Family-
John Burnham Schwartz's well-researched novel of Japan's imperial world is based on a true story of Michiko Shoda, a commoner who married Crown Prince Akihito in the late 1950's. Alas, they did not live happily ever after. Schwartz's fictional account is believable in its detail, evocative in its portrayal of an exalted, hidden world, and often heartrendingly sad.
Title-The Commoner
Author-John Burnham
Published-2008 by Nan A. Talese
January 14, 2010Blogalicious-
Where did these works originate: therapised, dudely, underwearian, fugly, vomit-y, consciousness-jumped, mommyblogdaciousness, Nero-crazy, pidginized, votenfreude, angsty? In blogs, of course! And these examples are jus a few reasons that New York Times writer Sarah Boxer loves really good blogs. Here she presents 27 ofher all-time favorites, which include opinions from polished and published journalists as well as the inspired rants and jeremaids of the unknown.
Title-Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From The Wild Web
Author-Sarah Boxer
Published-2008 by Vintage
January 15, 2010Love In New England-
In Here on Earth March Murray Cooper returns to the Massachussetts town where she grew up and finds that true love of her youth has grown into an embittered, unforgiving man. She also finds that she still loves him despite this. Alice Hoffman unpacks the complexity of feelings and old wonds, and the world that harbos them, with evocative, lyrical prose. An Oprah Book Club selection.
Title-Here On Earth
Author-Alice Hoffman
Published-1997;1999 by Berkley
January 16, 2010 and January 17, 2010Wrongly Accused-
In Susan Choi's second novel, inspired by the Unabomber case of some years ago, one Professor Lee is a "person of interest" suspected of a bomb explosion that harms a colleague at the university where they both teach. While the plot is intriguing and unfolds with the best of them, the fascination of this beautifully written narrative is in the incisively drawn characters and the professor's scrutiny of his life as it all goes wrong.
Title-A Person of Interest
Author-Susan Choi
Published-2008 by Viking
January 18, 2010Who Killed The King?-
In 1999 Martin Luther King's family brought a wrongful death suit to court. The jury took just one hour to bring back a verdict, which declared that James Earl Ray did not kill the great civil rights crusader, naming the CIA, FBI, and others as the responsible parties. Attorney William F. Pepper did exhuastive research and has laid out his case in a methodical and straightforward way. Is he another conspiracy nut? Coretta Scott King didn't think so. An Act of State deserves serious attention.
Title-An Act of State
Author-William F. Pepper
Published-2003 by verso;updated edition 2008
January 19, 2010The Tough Guy and The Socialite-
Set in a playground of the rich in the Adirondacks during the 1930s, The Reserve is a big, ripping, cinematic melodrama. A sultry divorcee and a left-leaning, Hemingwayesque artist light up the big screen in the reader's mind with a torrid saga of romance, scandal, and homicide. It seems as if Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and Cloudsplitter, is out to have some fun. Like-minded readers will definitely want to go along for the wild ride.
Title-The Reserve
Author-Russell Banks
Published-2008 by Harper
January 20, 2010Art In America-
From the Washington Monument to Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, from Rodin's nudes to Mapplethorpe's, it seems that controversial art is as American as the stars and stripes. Michael Kammen shows us the issues and the politics, explains why censorship rarely succeeds, and gives us social and cultural history that is both engaging and insightful.
Title-Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
Author-Michael Kammen
Published-2007 by Vintage
January 21, 2010Who Was Prince Harry's Father?-
If celebrity and royal dish are your dish, Tina Brown has laid out a feast for you. The former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor doesn't just give you the lowdown-there's inside stuff here that you haven't see anywhere else. Gossip doesn't get any juicier than this.
Title-The Diana Chronicles
Author-Tina Brown
Published-2008 by Doubleday
January 22, 2010A Winter's Tale-
The premise of this beautiful war novel is that the Allies have lost WWII. In a rustic Welsh farming village, all the men have disappeared. The women struggle to farm the land in ther absence, not knowing that the men are in fact part of a resistance movement. When six german soldiers, headed by Albrecht Wolfram, come to the village of women, a complex series of events and emotions unfolds during a hard winter.
Title-Resistance
Author-Owen Sheers
Published-2008 by Nan A. Talese
January 23, 2010 and January 24, 2010Smile!-
John Brockman, publisher of the online forum Edge, has become a connoiseur of what can seem to be an almost extinct commodity-optimism. He gathers the answers to his question "What are you optimistic about?" every year and compiles the winning essays. Here he presents 150 answers to his intriguing question from movers and shakers, inventers and writers, thinkers and prizewinners. Guaranteed to improve your mood.
Title-What Are You Optimistic About? Today's Leading Thinkers On Why Things Are Good and Getting Better
Author-John Brockman
Published-2007 by Harper Perennial
January 25, 2010Absolutely New York's Finest-
"The day I nearly got my head blown off started like any other." That's how Kathy Burke grabs you by the collar at the very beginning to tell a story that includes drugs, corruption, and a tragic shooting. Burke became a cop back when only 1 percent of the NYPD were women. For 23 years she worked the most dangerous streets of New York and eventually became a detective, first grade, the highest rank. Burke and veteran journalist Neal Hirschfield have crafted an honest and compelling story about the experiences of a truly courageous woman.
Title-Detective: The Inspirational Story of the Trailblazing Woman Cop Who Wouldn't Quit
Author-Kathy Burk and Neal Hirschfield
Published-2008 by Scribner
January 26, 2010Wierd and Wonderful-
The stories in this volume include many of Murakami's earliest, as well as five very recent ones. The world of love,loss, and longing is familiar, but they may be emotions felt at the disappearance of an elephant or because a fly from a willow tree has snuggled into a sleeping woman's ear. Many involve animals; some are out-and-out sci-fi; all are delicate and beautiful. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a good introduction or a nice way to revisit.
Title-Blind Willow,Sleeping Woman
Author-Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin
Published-2006 by Knopf
January 27, 2010Moby Book-
It's no goldfish at 480 pages, but this history of whaling in the United Sates was chosen as one of the best books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Providence Journal. It's lively and thoroughly engrossing, and you'll be interested in how many crucial moments in the nation's history intersect with those of the whaling industry(Inidan-colonial relations and negotiations for land, the Revolution, and the War of 1812, for starters).
Title-Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
Author-Eric Jay Dolin
Published-2007 by W.W.Norton
January 28, 2010The Inhumanity Of It All-
THe winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, Imre Kertesz takes us deep into the sewer of political corruption and propaganda through the reminiscences of Antonia Martens, a policeman and special security agent in an unspecified Latin American country. Now in prison after the political regime that sanctioned his atrocities has fallen, Martens is devastatingly thorough in recounting his crimes and frightening philosophy.
Title-Detective Story
Author-Imre Kertesz, translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson
Published-2008 by Knopf
January 29,2010It's All In Your Head(Shot)-
Put together by a comedian and a head-shot photographer, this book is a collection of strange, funny, and just plain bizarre head shots and resumes(the calling cards that actors must give to casting directors to get auditions). The actors here are real people who run the gamut from aspiring amateurs to season performers-and each one is a fascinating character. The photos are hilarious and unexpected, and the resumes are equally entertaining and full of hidden gems. Anyone who wants a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood and the offbeat people who populate its fringes will enjoy this book.
Title-Holy Headshot!A Celebration Of America's Undiscovered Talent
Author-Patrick Borelli and Douglas Gorenstein
Published-2008 by Simon&Schuster
January 30, 2010 and January 31,2010FDR Day-
Saturday is Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birthday. That's one reason to be happy. Another is this outstanding and eminently readable biography of one our greatest presidents. The New Yorker says of Jean Edward Smith's work, "The Roosevelt who emerges here-niether a stranger nor a painted icon-is flawed and magnificent." If you're going to read just one FDR biography this year, FDR should be it.
Title-FDR
Author-Jean Edward Smith
Published-2007 by Random House
February 1, 2010Ask The Sphinx-
Nefertiti is great escapist fare for those who long to travel back in time to ancient Egypt. Rai Rehoptap has been called by his pharaoh, Amenhotep, to find the pharaoh's missing queen, the beautiful and charismatic Nefertiti. The skulduggery, violence, and suspense that follow are steeped in a wealth of period detail that makes the story as colorful as a royal concubine's amulet.
Title-Nefertiti: The Book Of The Dead
Author-Nick Drake
Published-2007 by HarperCollins
February 2, 2010If Jane Austen Were A Man-
Time editor and investment banker James Collins brings a knowing, smart, and masculine perspective to the romance genre in this delightfully diverting tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl's number, boy finds his best friend has snatched girl for himself. And then? You can probably surmise the ending, but even so, Collins-and you-have great fun getting there.
Title-Beginner's Greek
Author-James Collins
Published-2008 by Little, Brown
February 3, 2010Tough Love-
In the 1940s Laura MacAllan's husband took her to a farm in the Mississippi Delta, where she had to contend with having no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and a racist, misogynist father in-law. She turned to one of her black tenants for friendship, and troubles soon followed. Told from several different points of view, Hillary Jordan's first nove is beautifully constructed and a compelling, moving story. It won the Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change for 2006.
Title-Mudbound
Author-Hillary Jordan
Published-2008 by Algonquin Books
February 4, 2010Cherchez La Femme In Philly-
The husband of Philadelphia District Attorney Victor Carl's former fiancee has been murdered, and the police suspect Carl himself. Is his ex setting him up for a fall? Could be. If James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler is your cup of crime, then this hard-boiled noir whodunit is definitely for you.
Title-A Killer's Kiss
Author-William Lashner
Published-2007 by William Morrow
February 5, 201020th-Century Witness-
"No one except perhaps Eugene O' Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater," wrote John Lahr of August Wilson in The New Yorker. Wilson's life's work-ten plays that captured the African American experience in the 20th century-are brought together here in a boxed set with introductions by Lahr, Susan-Lori Parks, Toni Morrison, Frank Rich, and Laurence Fishburne, among others. Two of the plays, Fences and The Piano Lesson, won the Pultizer.
Title-The August Wilson Century Cirlce
Author-August Wilson
Published-2007 by Theatre Communications Group
February 6, 2010 and February 7, 2010Brain Candy-
Two writers for hit British TV shows(Spitting Images,Blackladder, and Quite Interesting) get together to prove that ther's nothing more fun than picking up incredibly obscure facts about things you never knew you didn't know. The driest, tallest,largest; the smallest, oldest; the first and the worst; nature, history, culture, technology-all to surprise and delight you, with concise explanations. One of the better collections of this kind.
Title-The Book of General Ignorance
Author-John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Published-2007 by Harmony
February 8, 2010You, Me and Hyperbole-
The inner lives of cartoon characters, adolescents who laugh too much, a boy's obsession in a pitch-black attic, a master builder of miniatures, the village that makes a duplicate of itself-you get all this and plenty of other fantastic products of Steven Millhauser's dazzingly crafty mind. In a time of fine storytellers, Millhauser is one of the liveliest cand cleverest of them.
Title-Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories
Author-Steven Millhauser
Published-2008 by Knopf
February 9, 2010A Good Day For A Poem-
"This is the moment when bliss is what you glimpse/from the corner of your eye, as you drive past," writes Robert Hass in his poem "September,Inverness." The San Francisco poet has been embellishing paper with his verse since the days when he sat at the feet of the great Beat poets, learning his craft from them and many others. His latest book shows a writer at the height of his powers, catching the eternal in the fleeting moment. Reading Hass will both lighten and deepen your day.
Title-Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005
Author-Robert Hass
Published-2007 by Ecco
February 10, 2010The Book Lovers' Book Lover-
Washington Post critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist Michael Dirda loves to read, and he wants everyone else to love to read, too. To further his cause, he has selected about 90 books to bring to our attention-from the well known(Sherlock Holmes) to the unjustly neglected (Jaroslav Hasek). No one writes with such infectious enthusiasm as Dirda. After the three-page piece on Gibbon, you might be itching to get to the bookstore and pick up the entire Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Title-Classics for Pleasure
Author-Michael Dirda
Published-2007 by Harcourt
February 11, 2010Creatures Great and Small-
Susan Richards, a veterinarian in upstate New York, took on the sick, abused horse Lay Me Down. The project brought the author(also a victim of abuse) to open up, in all sorts of ways. This is the story of a love between a woman, a mare, and a man, with wonderful studies of the relationships between the newcomer and the three Morgan horses on Richard's farm.
Title-Chosen by a Horse
Author-Susan Richards
Published-2007 by Harvest Books
February 12,2010Love Isn't Always Pretty-
Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides(The Virgin Suicides; Middlesex) has brought together 27 poignant stories about love-not the happily-ever-after kind but the kind that makes literature go 'round: the bittersweet, the ambiguous, the almost-had-it, the never-got-it, the suspended good-bye that lingers unspoken for decades. (The title is taken from Catullus, famous for his poem that begins "Odi et amo"- I hate and I love.)
Title-My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro
Author-edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
Published-2009 by Harper
February 13, 2010 and February 14, 2010 Classic Love-
In First Love, 16-year-old Vladmir falls hopelessly for the girl next door, Zinaida. She is five years older than he, and a number of other suitors compete for her attention. She does not discourage the boy, however, and he persists as the narrative moves on to a rather astounding ending. Read it for its sensitive evocation of youth's eye-opening introduction to the power of love. Spring Torrents, about a 22-year-old and the passion he feeds for a true femme fatale, is another of Turgenev's omniscient looks at a perennial theme.
Title-First Love
Author-Ivan Turgenev; translated from the Russian by Isaiah Berlin
Published-2007 by Penguin Classics
Title-Spring Torrents
Author-translated from the Russian by Leonard Sharpiro
Published-1872; 1980 by Penguin Classics
February 15,2010Down on the Pharma-
What starts out as a murder mystery, which launches archaeologist Louise Cantor on a worldwide tour to piece together the clues about her son's killing(among them, his obsession with JFK's brain), ends up as a searing expose of the rapacious greed of drug companies and how they have crippled Africa. Mankell shows he doesn't need his Kurt Wallender series to deliver a fascinating story.
Title-Kennedy's Brain
Author-Henning Mankell; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson
Published-2007 by New Press
February 16, 2010Stop Fighting, Boys!-
Longtime TV news correspondent and media historian Eric Burns (The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol) creates a wonderful sort of Mad Men starring James and Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and other bad boys, troublemakers and muckrakers all, in the boisterous, backstabbing world of 18th-century politics and publishing.
Title-Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism
Author-Eric Burns
Published-2006 by PublicAffairs
February 17,2010Watch What You Say-
Hidden in the nooks and crannies of all language are little monsters that jump out unbidden-those verbal blunders that cause embarassment, provoke thought, and engender more language, in the form of puns, jokes, and double entendres. Here is a history of malapropisms(named after Richard Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop) and a fascinating investigation of the psychological and cultural truths they express.
Title-Um...Slips, Stumpbles, and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean
Author-Michael Erard
Published-2007 by Pantheon
February 18, 2010So Far From Home-
The Lost City is La Joya, and though Jackson Small feels compelled to look for it, he has no idea if he is pursuing a dream-and was it a dream or did he murder his friend Connolly in Belize when they were serving there in the British army? Henry Shukman, a travel writer and poet, weaves a stirring novel of a young man testing fate under the equatorial sun. Don't miss this one. The New York Times Book Review says of The Lost City, "A golden streak of imaginative art makes this work so much more than an adventure yarn."
Title-The Lost City
Author-Henry Shukman
Published-2008 by Knopf
February 19, 2010Gass-Not Just Hot Air-
William Gass, philosoher, literary critic, novelist, and octogenarian, confesses his unguilty love affair with language, reading, and certain authors. Like "a young man hurrying to a rendezvous with a gorgeous older woman"(The Washington Post)-a sort of Casanova of texts-Gass describes the first meeting, the crystallization of desire, the rapture of discovery, the bliss of reading, "the order, release, and sounding of the meaning." You'll never look at Gertrude Stein the same way again.
Title-A Temple of Texts
Author-William H. Gass
Published-2007 by Dalkey Archive
February 20, 2010 and February 21, 2010Never At A Loss For A Laugh-
Here it is: 510 pages of witticisms, a reference of the risible to be savored and visited again and again. Andrew Martin, veteran writer, reviewer, humorist, and comedy critic, has gathered more than 5,000 pithy, pungent, and peppery quotations from the usual suspects and the unexpected-Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, the Simpsons, the Bible. Entries include biographical and contextual notes that add considerably to the enjoyment of this wonderful collection.
Title-Funny You Should Say That: Amusing Remarks From Cicero to The Simpsons
Author-edited by Anrew Martin
Published-2006 by Overlook Press
February 22, 2010Why Washington's Birthday Matters-
For General Washington the Revolutionary War wasn't so much about the military engagements. Rather, it was the struggles off the field that mattered: keeping his unpaid volunteers from deserting; getting the Continental Congress to live up to its responsiblities; staying one step ahead of the British in order to avoid a direct confrontation. Washington's genius turned out to be in somehow winning an obviously unwinnable war without winning many actual battles(he won only two). In lively and illuminating prose, Bruce Chadwick shows how he did it.
Title-George Washington's War: The Forging of a Revolutionary Leader and the American Presidency
Author-Bruce Chadwick
Pulished-2005 by Sourcebooks
February 23, 2010The Heart Breaks Hard-
Geogre Pelecanos gives us another gritty crime novel, set in Washington D.C. Lorenzo Brown fesh out of an eight-year prison stint, is doing pretty well, helping out at the Humane Society and falling a bit in love with Rachel, who is his probation officer and one hot-and complicated-mama. When Rachel is stabbed in an escalating gang war, Lorenzo gets a crash course in revenge. Pelecanos reveals some superb, stately pacing and a deceptively simple plot that show his absolute mastery over his chosen form.
Title-Drama City
Author-George Pelecanos
Published-2005 by Little, Brown
February, 24,2010Portrait of a Marriage-
A sensuous memoir reminiscent of Nabokov's Speak, Memory and Bergman's Funny and Alexander. The author's father was a well-known minister in Holland who "moved through life with the gusto and the commotion of a wagon train," but this is really the story of the author's relationship with his mother. A View of the Ocean is a moving portrait of a woman, a time, a place, and growing up. Jan De Hartog(The Captain and The Peacable Kingdom), a bestselling novelist and playwright, died in 2002.
Title-A View of the Ocean
Author- Jan De Hartog
Published-2007 by Pantheon
February 25, 2010Irreconcilable Differences-
If Henry James himself sometimes seems a little old-fashioned, you might try his present-day heir apparent, Ian McEwan. In this short but powerful novel, newlyweds Edward and Florence bring to their 1962 wedding night a crushing weight of fears, inexperience, overanticipation(Edward), and dread(Florence) that they cannot overcome, in spite of awkward and alienating attempts at communication that would make the master proud.
Title-On Chesil Beach
Author-Ian McEwan
Published-2007 by Doubleday; 2008 by Anchor
February 26, 2010Ah, Young Love-
You can lose yourself in this floridly sensuous novel from the Peruvian master Vargas Llosa. It begins in 1950 with the lusty teenagers Ricardo and Lily(who turns out to be a very bad girl)showing up unexpectedly and in many guises. Over four decades of richly painted history, she haunts him, eludes him, consumes him-and gets him into a lot of trouble. As Jonathan Yardley writes in The Washington Post, "Obviously, the novel was written for the sheer fun of it-the fun for Vargas Llosa in writing it, the fun for us in reading it.
Title-The Bad Girl
Author-Maria Vargas Llosa, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
Published-2007 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
February 27, 2010 and February 28, 2010The Southern Strategy-
Admire him or despise him, Jesse Helms, five-term senator from North Carolina, was a brilliant political tactician. William A. Link shows how Helms became on of the primary architects of the modern Republican Party, with its conservative evangelical base and reliable Southern vote. Even as America slowly became more tolerant, self-confessed bigots like Helms knew how to keep their hands on the levers of power. Link writes little about Helms's personal life, but for readers interested in political clout and how to get it, keep it, and use it, Righteous Warrior is an education.
Title-Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and The Rise of Modern Conservatism
Author-William A. Link
Published-2008 by St. Martin's Press
Move Over, Tipping Point-
Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne are two movers and shakers (CEO of Burson-Marsteller and adviser to Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates, White House fellow and counsel to Janet Reno, that sort of thing) who here take a serious and deeply knowledgeable look at how to identify signs of emerging phenomena, e.g., teenage boys knitting or the Soccer Mom(a phrase coined by Penn). The authors delve into how to tell what these microtrends mean and how to harness the data and ultimately turn such knowledge to profit. A fascinating study of 70 small movements that are signs of landscape-altering earthquakes to come.
Title-Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes
Author-Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne
Published-2007 by Twelve