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New Author
Interviews |
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Peter Ackroyd
A short essay by Peter Ackroyd about his 2009 novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
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Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, discusses her Booker shortlisted novel at the the London bookstore, Daunt Books (3 part video)
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William Kamkwamba
A short video about William Kamkwamba, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
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Louis Bayard
An essay by Louis Bayard about The Black Tower, an historical mystery set in the early 19th century
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November
Recommendations
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November 12, 2009
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Next
Issue:
On December 9 we'll send you "BookBrowse Highlights:
Best of the Year"
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Hello,
In this issue I invite you to:
- Read reviews of, and back-stories about,
The Lacuna,
Barbara Kingsolver's first novel in
nine years, recently released in hardcover;
and
Runemarks, a novel for teens by
Joanne Harris (author of
Chocolat
etc) which is just out in paperback.
- Find out what our members think of one
of the books they've been reading:
The New
Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands
on Tuition, and Get a Truly International
Education by Maya Frost.
- Enter to win copies of
Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Sarah's Key
is also our featured book club
recommendation this month.
- Enjoy a Q&A with Jamie Ford about his
first novel,
The House
at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.
- Browse our latest book club interview
with Bound To Be Read Books, an independent
bookstore in East Atlanta Village, Georgia,
home to many book clubs including the
infamous Scandalous Book Club.
- Read our latest blog post, "Autumn
Reading" by Elizabeth Strout.
Best regards
Davina Morgan-Witts
Editor, BookBrowse.com
|
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Featured Hardcover - The Lacuna
Below is part of BookBrowse's review of The
Lacuna.
Read the review in full here
The Lacuna: A Novel by
Barbara Kingsolver
Hardcover (Nov 2009), 528 pages.
Publisher: Harper
ISBN 9780060852573
BookBrowse Rating:
Critics' Consensus:
 From
the book jacket
Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey
from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and
Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and
J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant
story of a man pulled between two nations as they
invent their modern identities.
Review
I have read every novel by Barbara Kingsolver
and I love them all, even the less favorably
reviewed
Animal Dreams and
Prodigal Summer. Her writing is literary,
lyrical and relevant - but that's not the reason for
my deep affection. It's because she is a woman of
heart and mind who is unafraid of using her mind to
reveal her heart.
For almost 200 pages into The Lacuna, I was
worried. Some critics have said that the book starts
off slowly, but actually it's just hard to tell
where the story is going, and I thought perhaps
Kingsolver had lost her touch, as some writers do.
Suddenly, within the next forty pages, I was hooked,
convinced, and entirely seduced, and it only got
better from there on.
While I had early doubts about the story, the voice
had me from the start. I think voice is Kingsolver's
strongest suit. From the quirky, rebellious Taylor
Greer of
The Bean Trees to the four unique voices of
the sisters in
The Poisonwood Bible, she proves herself a
literary ventriloquist. The Lacuna is
narrated by two main voices. Harrison Shepherd's
story is told through his journals. Since he began
keeping them as a lonely thirteen-year-old boy and
wrote his last installment decades later, his voice
and style grow from a young David Copperfield type
to a disillusioned man but never lose their tone of
bewilderment. The voice of Violet Brown, Harrison's
loyal secretary, is the epitome of that southern
wisdom from the hills - part of Kingsolver's own
heritage.
 Through
Harrison's ability to recreate conversations in his
journals, we also hear from
Frida Kahlo (arguably, Mexico's most famous
female painter) who probably gives Harrison the most
mothering he ever had. (Imagine having Frida Kahlo
for a mother!) Most surprising of all is Leon
Trotsky, known as Lev in this story, with his
impassioned sense of history, the working class and
the true meaning of communism.
Any fan of Barbara Kingsolver would enjoy this book,
as would fans of early-to-mid 20th century
historical fiction. One critic complained of
preachiness, which I have noticed is a word often
aimed at women who speak up. I disagree and instead
found in The Lacuna one of the more sensitive
fictional accounts of the McCarthy era. In fact, as
Harrison Shepherd finds himself targeted by the FBI
and HUAC, his ordeal represents the intimate,
troubling effects of those times on a single
individual and brings the political into the
personal.
The title of this novel is also its continuous
imagery. A lacuna is a blank gap, a missing part (in
a piece of writing or music, in bone or cartilage),
a hole, a vacancy. Harrison Shepherd is haunted by
lacunae. He discovers them, he is tortured by them,
and ultimately it appears he is saved by one. His
story moved me to laughter, outrage, anxiety, but
mostly to tears. It is overall a very sad tale. When
I closed the book, I simply could not move.
Images:
Above: Self-Portrait Dedicated to
Leon Trotsky, by Frida Kahlo, 1937. (National Museum
of Women in the Arts). Below: Leon Trotsky, Diego
Rivera, and Andre Breton (1938)
One of the many stories behind the book: Trotsky
in Mexico
Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist
theorist, lived in exile in Mexico from 1936 until
his death in 1940. When Vladimir Lenin, head of the
Soviet government since 1917, died from
complications following an assassination attempt,
Joseph Stalin took over. Stalin had been appointed
by Lenin as General Secretary of the Soviet
Communist Party, though shortly before his death
Lenin began to favor Trotsky as his successor. A
clash between Trotsky and Stalin over the future
strategy of the country resulted in Trotsky's
expulsion from the Communist Party in 1927, and
Stalin ordered him to leave the Soviet Union in
1929.
 Because
international communism was widely considered a
threat, Trotsky was not welcome in most European
countries. He was offered brief periods of asylum by
Turkey, then France and Norway. In 1936, Diego
Rivera, a founder of the Mexican Communist Party and
supporter of Trotsky's views, used his influence to
help Trotsky gain permanent asylum in Mexico ....
continued
Reviewed by Judy Krueger
Above is part of BookBrowse's review of The
Lacuna.
Read the review in full here
Browse the book
Write your own review
Buy this book at Amazon
Compare prices at AddAll
Read-Alikes:
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto
Urrea
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
This is one of 14 detailed book reviews in our early
November issue of "BookBrowse Recommends".
BookBrowse's online magazines are one of the many
benefits of a BookBrowse membership.
One Month Free Membership
What you see for free in these emails
is a fraction of what BookBrowse has to offer. For
just $29.95 you could be enjoying a year of good
reading about good reading!
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First Impressions
The New Global Student: Skip
the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly
International Education by
Maya Frost
Publisher: Three Rivers
Publication Date: 05/19/2009
Advice, 336 pages
Readers' consensus:
From the book jacket
Good-bye, Old School. Hello, Bold School!
In 2005, Maya Frost and her husband sold everything
and left their suburban American lifestyle behind in
order to have an adventure abroad. The tricky part:
they had to shepherd their four teenage daughters
through high school and into college. This hilarious
and conspiratorial how-to handbook describes the
affordable, accessible, and stunningly advantageous
options they stumbled upon that any American student
can leverage to get an outrageously relevant global
education.
Ready to ditch the drama of the traditional
hypercompetitive SAT/AP/GPA path? Meet the bold
American students who are catapulting into the
global economy at twenty with a red-hot college
diploma, sizzling 21st-century skills, a blazing
sense of direction-and no debt.
Packed with myth-busting facts, laughable loopholes,
insider insights, astonishing success stories, and
poignant tales from the Frost daughters themselves,
this inspiring romp is guaranteed to get you
cheering.
BookBrowse Member Reviews
"If money is no object in your family, pass on this
book. If your college-bound student adores the
pressure of tests and getting into a prestige
college, don't bother with this book. If your
student isn't interested in the wide world out there
and how to make her mark, skip it. But if your
family wants to save time and thousands of dollars
in tuition and give your child the tools to become
someone with impact in the global community,, run -
don't walk - to your local independent bookstore and
buy this book. Excellent advice and specific
addresses to tailor your student's individual
program." - Susan Reiners (Dublin, NH).
"I loved this book and have already recommended it
to others; it is a book that can change lives. I
truly wish that this book had been written ten years
ago when my own children could have benefited from
its unconventional but well-researched advice. While
this book will not have a universal audience, I
believe that it will be an eye-opener and have great
value to readers looking for alternatives to the
American model of outrageously-priced college
tuition. The book tells the experience of the
author's family and contains many anecdotal stories,
but is also well documented and provides website and
other practical information." - Kathleen W.
(Appleton, WI).
"This is a great book for a parent of middle and
high schools students to read. The author's
daughters did a fast track to their first jobs that
you may (or may not) want to emulate! There is lots
of good information in this book, but you need to
balance her ideas against your own children's needs,
desires and maturity level." - Becky H. (Chicago,
IL).
"If you are the parent of a middle- or high school
student or a school counselor who wants to help
prepare high school students for challenging and
interesting careers in a global economy, you would
get practical, first-hand advice from The New
Global Student. ... The book would be a valuable
resource for families contemplating leaving the Old
School way of thinking about education and going
toward the Bold School of alternative education.
Other parents can follow Maya Frost's practical
suggestions to give their students a richer,
international education and not use up all the
family savings in the process. I enjoyed the book
and will recommend it to my two daughters who are
now considering expensive, traditional college
educations for their high school age children." -
Helen S. (Sun City West, AZ).
Read all the Reviews
Buy at Amazon
Compare prices at AddAll
|
Win
Sarah's Key by Tatiana
de Rosnay.
Published in paperback: Sep 2008
Enter the Giveaway
Discussion Guide
Excerpt
Buy at Amazon
Compare prices at AddAll
From the Jacket
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.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly
subtle, compelling portrait of France under
occupation and reveals the taboos and silence
that surround this painful episode.
Soon to be a major motion picture!
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. It beautifully conveys
Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's
trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing,
that the book is hard to put down.
Library Journal
Starred Review. Masterly and compelling, it
is not something that readers will quickly
forget. Highly recommended.
Sacramento Bee
Exceptional, emotional, and compelling...
Sarah Galvin, The Bookstore Plus, Lake
Placid, NY
Sarah's Key is told from both the
perspective of an 10-year-old girl whose family
is rounded up during the Vel D'Hiv in France in
1942 and an American who presently lives in
Paris. The heartbreak is real, the love is true,
and the need to find out how their two lives are
connected made this one of my absolute
favorites!
Roberta, The Book Stall at Chestnut Court
(Front Line, Newsletter)
I was overwhelmed by a novel that I had
missed when it first came our way - Sarah's
Key. It is a page-turner about World War II,
the Holocaust and contemporary Paris. I couldn't
put it down.
10 people will each win a paperback copy of
Sarah's Key.
This giveaway is open to residents of the USA
and Canada, unless you are a BookBrowse member,
in which case you are eligible to win wherever
you might live.
Closes November 17.
Enter the Giveaway
|
Featured Paperback Review For Teens
Below is part of BookBrowse's review of
Runemarks.
Read the review in full here
Runemarks
by Joanne Harris
Paperback (Oct 2009), 544 pages.
Publisher: Knopf Children's Books
ISBN 9780375844454
BookBrowse Rating:
Critics' Consensus:
 From
the book jacket
Seven o'clock on a Monday morning, five
hundred years after the end of the world, and
goblins have been at the cellar again. . . . Not
that anyone would admit it was goblins. In Maddy
Smith's world, order rules. Chaos, old gods,
fairies, goblins, magic, glamours - all of these
were supposedly vanquished centuries ago. But
Maddy knows that a small bit of magic has
survived. The "ruinmark" she was born with on
her palm proves it - and makes the other
villagers fearful that she is a witch (though
helpful in dealing with the
goblins-in-the-cellar problem). But the
mysterious traveler One-Eye sees Maddy's mark
not as a defect, but as a destiny. And Maddy
will need every scrap of forbidden magic One-Eye
can teach her if she is to survive that destiny.
Review
Joanne Harris has already proved her
versatility with her books for adults such as
Chocolat (1999),
Five Quarters of the Orange (2001),
Holy Fools (2004) and
Gentlemen and Players (2006); now she
breaks new territory with a novel for teens -
and what a great read it is!
500 years after Ragnarok (the end of the world
according to Norse mythology), Maddy Smith lives
a quiet life in a sleepy village a long way from
the center of power at World's End. So far away
that even the Examiners of "The Order" rarely
visit; so while the "ruinmark" on Maddy's hand
and her inquisitive nature have caused her to be
set apart from the others in the village, who
believe imagination to be a sin, with some even
mumbling "witch" behind her back, at least she
has been saved from the Cleansing which would
definitely have resulted if the Order were aware
of her presence.
The setting feels like a small village somewhere
in a rocky, hilly and bleak part of the North of
England a couple of hundred years ago; but
happily Harris saves us from any ye-oldy-worldy
speechifying and instead has her characters
speak in good solid modern-day speech with a
Northern bluntness; and whenever the plot looks
like it's in danger of taking itself to
seriously, she lightens things with a good laugh
- ensuring that Runemarks is better
compared to Rick Riordan's " Percy
Jackson and the Olympians" series than to
weighty tomes such as "The Lord of The Rings".
"Hel's living eye twitched in
growing annoyance. Tricks? she thought.
What does he think the others use? Does he
really think Freya's hair was ever naturally
that shade? Or that Sif's waist doesn't benfit
from a little tight lacing?" ....
Continued
Backstory: Runes - Pragmatic or Divine?
As the title suggests, runes have a key role
to play in
Runemarks, thus readers who have read
Runemarks,
or those interested in doing so, maybe
interested in knowing a little more about the
runes ...
Runes were the alphabetic script of the people
of Northern Europe. Although there is debate of
the origins, it is believed that they derived
from Roman letters. In addition to their use as
a written alphabet, runes also served as symbols
used for magic and divination and are actual
words in the language; for example fehu (F) can
mean cattle or wealth (one being synonymous with
the other). Thus, the rune Fehu indicates
possessions won or earned, good luck, hope and
plenty, success and happiness. Whereas Fehu
Reversed indicates loss of personal property or
esteem, or some sort of failure; cowardice,
stupidity and so forth. Runes remained in common
use well into the 17th century, until they were
officially banned by the church in 1639.
Norse mythology says that the runes originated
from the god Odin and came to man through the
god Heimdall, the guardian of the gods and link
between Midgard (literally middle-earth, the
world of humans) and Asgard (location of
Valhalla and home to the primary gods). Heimdall
sired three sons with human women: Thrall, Churl
and Jarl. When Jarl was old enough to show signs
of his nobility, Heimdall claimed him as his son
and taught him the runes. Thus Thrall, Churl and
Jarl were the ancestors of the three classes of
men: slave, freeman and noble.
A less divine interpretation is offered by the
Eastern Roman historian Procopius (500-565 AD)
who records that after raiding the European
continent for a few generations, the Germanic
people known as the heruli, retreated back to
Scandinavia in 512 AD. As their old territory
was now occupied by the Danes they settled in
present-day Sweden. The Proto-Norse word for the
heruli is erilar, etymologically close to jarl
(the modern-day Norwegian word for Earl). So it
doesn't seem too far fetched to extrapolate that
the heruli might have brought back the runic
alphabet with them and leveraged their knowledge
of the runes into a magical art, thus placing
themselves firmly at the top of the local
hierarchy; and, like many a culture before and
after them, then consolidated their position
with the help of a few well placed myths! ....
Continued
Above is part of BookBrowse's review of
Runemarks.
Read the review in full here
Browse the book
Write your own review
Buy this book at Amazon
Compare prices at AddAll
Read-Alikes:
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin
Colfer
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire by
J.K. (Joanne) Rowling
The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
Troll Fell by Katherine Langrish
This is one
of 14 detailed book reviews in our early
November issue of "BookBrowse Recommends".
BookBrowse's online magazines are one of the
many benefits of a BookBrowse membership.
One Month Free Membership
What you see for free in these
emails is a fraction of what BookBrowse has to
offer. For just $29.95 you could be enjoying a
year of good reading about good reading!
Start your one month free trial now
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Blog - Autumn Reading by Elizabeth Strout
 Not
long ago I awoke in the middle of the night and
realized immediately that it had arrived. The air,
when I had gone to bed, was still faintly sultry,
the air of evening that comes after a day of golden,
soft sunshine. But when I woke in the dark I felt
how the temperature had dropped, and the air smelled
of autumn. It was like learning a secret, the rest
of the city asleep around me, while I felt that I
was the first to learn: autumn had come swiftly,
quietly, to town. The moment was brief and
delicious, and resonant with sudden memories and
sensations that pulled me back into the comfort of
sleep, and when I woke it was still there, the edge
of the chill, but even more - the faint smell of
this change in the seasons.
It made me want to read.
There is much said about the "Summer Read," which
suggests beaches and lounging and porches and
hammocks. But this autumn, for the first time, it
came to me that I seem to prefer to read in
darkened, cozy places. I don't like to read on a
beach. I like to read in messy coffee shops, or on
subways (which, believe it or not, can sometimes
feel quite cozy), I like to read at night in strange
hotels when it is raining outside, or in my own
kitchen, late, as I eat peanut butter crackers. And
now that it really is autumn and getting dark
earlier, it seems the joy of reading has come to me
as it came to me when I was a child: that sweet
tugging on the senses, come here, come here. It is
surprising. I would have thought -- I have always
thought -- I am a person who likes to read, and the
where and the when didn't matter.
Who knew?
Maybe it is because I am at a stage in life where my
schedule is not as regulated by domestic needs as it
was when I was raising a family, and all reading was
done hungrily anywhere I got the time. Now - even
while I still feel there is never enough time, never
- I will pop onto the couch with a quilt, and tell
myself, Oh, just fifteen minutes and I will get back
to work, and then pick up one of the many open books
lying around. The loveliness of this! The glory of
it, as I snuggle down. Through the window, I see the
low clouds of autumn that seem to keep me blanketed
inside and safe, while I read the stories of people
who have felt this, lived through that, and I do not
mind that winter will unfold its own carpet one of
these days.
Comment on this blog
Read more from BookBrowse's blog
Elizabeth Strout is the author of
Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book
Sense pick;
Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles
Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the
Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. In 2009 she was
honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for
Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected
short stories about a woman and her immediate family
and friends on the coast of Maine. She can be
found online at
www.elizabethstrout.com
|
Book Club Chat
Bound To Be
Read Books is an independent bookstore in
East Atlanta Village, Georgia. BookBrowse caught up
with owner Jeff McCord to talk about the store's
many book clubs - including their infamous
Scandalous Book Club.
Read the Q&A
|
Featured Author Interview - Jamie Ford
Jamie Ford discusses his first novel, Hotel on
the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; where the
inspiration came from, and how his own heritage and
experiences are reflected in the novel (video and
text).
Read the Interview
Books by this author
|
News
Nov 11 2009: Veteran journalist and author
Linden MacIntyre has won Canada's Giller Prize for
his second novel. The Bishop's Man is
published by Random House Canada, the title
currently has no U.S....(more)
Nov 09 2009: Today is when the Google Books
Settlement parties were supposed to present their
revised agreement to the Federal court. But
unconfirmed reports this morning indicate that the
judge may have been asked for a little more time -
possibly until Friday the 13th of...(more)
Nov 06 2009: As Barnes & Noble prepares to
close all but two of their B. Dalton mall stores by
January 2010, Borders announced that they will close
about 200 of the remaining mall-based Waldenbooks
outlets in January, which will result in the loss of
about 1500 mostly part-time jobs. This will leave
Borders...(more)
Nov 05 2009: In a joining of like minds, NPR
and ABA have partnered to provide thoughtful
bestsellers and unique book coverage to readers,
both on NPR.org and IndieBound.org. Starting
November 13, NPR Books will publish four bestseller
lists weekly, using the Indie Bestseller List feeds;
and the book info...(more)
Oct 28 2009: The Nook has become the fastest
selling single item at Barnes & Noble since the
retailer introduced the e-reader October 20,
according to company CEO Steve Riggio.
Amazon reported that the Kindle was its fastest
selling product in both unit and dollar terms.
Neither company has...(more)
Read these news stories, and many others, in full.
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