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BookBrowse Highlights
November Recommendations
 
November 12, 2009
 
In This Issue
Featured Review
The Lacuna
 
First Impressions
The New Global Student
 
Win
Sarah's Key
 
Featured Review
Runemarks
 
Blog
Elizabeth Strout
 
Book Club Recommendation
Sarah's Key
 
Book Club Chat
 
Featured Author Interview
Jamie Ford
 
News
One Percent
 
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Next Issue:
On December 9 we'll send you "BookBrowse Highlights: Best of the Year"
 
 
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


Book Jacket The Lacuna: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

Hardcover (Nov 2009), 528 pages.

Publisher: Harper
ISBN 9780060852573


BookBrowse Rating:
Critics' Consensus:

Cherries in WinterFrom 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


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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.

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First Impressions

Book Jacket 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).
 
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Win
 

Sarah's Key Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.

Published in paperback: Sep 2008

Enter the Giveaway

Discussion Guide
Excerpt

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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


Book Jacket Runemarks by Joanne Harris

Paperback (Oct 2009), 544 pages.

Publisher: Knopf Children's Books
ISBN 9780375844454


BookBrowse Rating:
Critics' Consensus:

Sarah's KeyFrom 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


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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
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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.
 

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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

 
featured bookclub
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 Book Club Recommendation

Book Jacket Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Paperback (Sep 2008).
320 pages.
ISBN-13:9780312370848.

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.

Browse the book jacket, reviews and an excerpt.
Reading Guide.

Read-Alikes:
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
The Fighter by Jean-Jacques Greif
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
 

Featured Author Interview - Jamie Ford

Author Interview 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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