6/19/2013: The best book I've read in a very long time and the first ever Bo Caldwell novel for me. I'd never before read anything about missionaries to China, let alone Mennonite missionaries. The saga of hardship and enduring love both Will and Katherine had for Christ, along with their abiding love for each and for the people they ministered to in countless ways is indeed very moving, inspirational and poignant. I highly recommend this book be read by every Christian, especially those who feel called...
6/19/2013: With a poetic voice, Ratner plunges us into this personal trial of a royal family wrenched from their home in Phnon Penh, Cambodia, during the late seventies; a time of revolution. Robbed of her childhood, the narrator, seven year old Raami, brings us on this horrific displacement as she and her family endure homelessness, hunger, hard labor and the death of loved ones in the 4 years the story depicts.
Though Raami's story which parallels with Ratner's own could easily leave my heart...
6/12/2013: Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part of the story, and the wonderful characters that this novel contains. McCann has the knack of illuminating the everyday things of a person's life, hidden pride, glowing praise, love for country family and children. Everyday items, inconsequential things assume a meaning that often in apparent only in hindsight. Taking real historical characters and...
6/9/2013: A magical book, an enchanted house, a cast of characters who previously lived there but remain on the walls in photographs to be talked to whenever the desire strikes you. Florence Nightingale, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath to name a few. This whimsical house lives and breathes, the walls moving in and out like a heartbeat, the lampshades bowing to get a closer look at you. The mysterious and magical 82-year-old Peggy who runs 11 Hope Street is a kind and wise woman.
Fans of Sarah...
6/9/2013: The Children’s Book is the fifth stand-alone novel by British author, Antonia S. Byatt. This novel spans about a quarter of a century, starting in 1895, and tells the story of children’s author, Olive Wellwood, her extended family, friends and acquaintances. Against a backdrop of Victorian, then Edwardian then World War One England, Byatt creates a dynasty that is exposed to Imperialists, Socialists, Fabians, Malthusians, Theosophists, and revolutionaries. Jung, Freud, Oscar Wilde,...
6/8/2013: I always learn something when I read one of Roach’s books. And I usually am laughing when I learn it! Roach has a great (some would say twisted) sense of humor (don’t overlook the footnotes!) that enlivens a book that could be deadly dull. Never fear, Roach will entertain you even while discussing feces and other products of the human body.
Gulp takes the subject of food and its ability to pass through the body while giving nourishment and pleasure to the human (and seventh grade boys a...
5/31/2013: Vaddey Rattner has written in lovely, poetic prose and poetry an autobiographical novel of her brutally painful childhood during the Khmer Rouge Cambodian Holocaust. I admired this book. It must not have been easy to write about such suffering in forced labor camps and the loss of her family members and millions of other human lives. The story begins with a lyrical portrait of her life before the Khmer Rouge started its insane path of attempting to "socialize" Cambodia and its...
5/30/2013: When I looked at the author's photo at the back of the book he looked to me to be about sixteen yrs. old, although a goodreads friend of mine assured me he was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Even so I am jealous that someone this young could write such a fantastic first novel.
In the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been many changes. One of the hardest hit areas has been Chechnya and it is here that this story takes place, midst the bombed out streets, the rubble...
5/25/2013: This debut novel, written for the young adult genre, is a very compelling and poignant novel. The heroine is a very strong but bruised, physically and mentally, character who is not a vampire or shape-shifter, or a fallen angel. In fact, that it is not, is another reason I found this novel refreshing. That is not to say that horrible things do not happen, although they are told in flashbacks and memories, but it also shows that things can work out. That a path can be changed, and for the good....
5/23/2013: A very large book - in number of pages and in content - and every page worth reading. Thoroughly enjoyed this one and her first book on the subjects, Wolf Hall. This one was more tightly edited and a bit easier to read because of that, but would recommend both to anyone interested in any part of English history.
So much has been written about this time period and these characters but Ms. Mantel has made Thomas Cromwell a sympathetic and extremely interesting character. So much so that I am...
5/22/2013: Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great uncle Shanti Behari Seth (Shanti Uncle), born in Biswan, and his German Jewish great aunt, Hennerle Caro (Aunty Henny), born in Berlin, describing them as two exiles who found their home in each other. Using interviews with his uncle as well as letters, photographs and official documents, Seth builds up a comprehensive image of the lives of two...
5/17/2013: Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight in Paris." It was very interesting, having a degree in literature, and learning more about this couple. I'm not one that puts Fitzgerald in the best writers of all time column. He might have been if he applied himself a bit differently. And Zelda might have been had she been allowed. But it does give a view into that time: The Lost...
5/14/2013: Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on science classes), Barbara Kingsolver gives her readers much to think about seriously: How we tend to settle for what seems good in our lives at the loss of the best; how we let preconceived notions affect our understanding of people and facts; how some of us may know a lot about something but if we are unable to communicate that knowledge with...
5/13/2013: Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read a book that is fun, with some great characters and an important message, all couched in the most wonderful way. Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, many of literature greats as well as feminist icons are all present, speaking and helping the woman who are called to this house. Even the cups and saucers change pictures daily, the walls laugh and messages...
5/13/2013: Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary Grace visits long ago events in childhood from an adult perspective.
Frank, the narrator of Ordinary Grace takes us back to the Minnesota summer of '61 where the story begins with the death of a boy. Frank's father is a minister, a man with strong beliefs and a foundation based on faith Frank and his family, his brother Jake, his sister,...
5/11/2013: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is the first novel of British-born American author, Helen Simonson. Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) lives in the charming English village of Edgecombe St Mary. Some six years after the death of his wife Nancy, it takes the events surrounding the sudden death of his younger brother, Bertie, to bring Mrs Jasmina Ali, the owner of the village shop, to his notice. As unlikely as it may seem, he finds he has a lot in common with this gentle woman of Pakistani descent....
5/3/2013: Had a very hard time rating this book. The writing is outstanding, time and place one can imagine what living here is like. and an unreliable narrator. The tone is foreboding, a little like children of the corn, but much better prose. My problem is partly the pacing, which moves so slowly, also one can only read so much about grain harvest, chaff and pigs also I am not sure I liked the ending. Anyway very atmospheric, story is good once it gets going and I loved the prose. Will appeal to those...
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
The best book I've read in a very long time and the first ever Bo Caldwell novel for me. I'd never before read anything about missionaries to China,...
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With a poetic voice, Ratner plunges us into this personal trial of a royal family wrenched from their home in Phnon Penh, Cambodia, during the late...
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First time novelist Vaddey Ratner captured my heart and senses in this novel based on her childhood in Cambodia. Her story transcends any news story...
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Amazon cuts off 5200 affiliates in Minnesota(Jun 19 2013) With Minnesota's online sales tax law due to take effect July 1, Amazon has played a familiar card by cutting ties with 5,200 members of its Associates...
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