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BookBrowse Highlights
| November 20, 2014
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Hello
As another year draws to a close we're getting ready to announce BookBrowse's 2014 Award Winners - but to do so we need your help as it's your votes that decide who wins. If you have not yet cast your votes and would like to, please do so by Nov 25; and if you've already voted, thank you! And now on to this week's issue, stuffed with reviews, recommendations, interviews and more - including the winners of last night's National Book Awards. There will be no issue next week. Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers!
BookBrowse Editor
If the link to vote doesn't work, please copy/paste:
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Some of BookBrowse's content is free but full access is for members only. Not yet a member? Consider subscribing. Learn more!
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 1. First Impressions: Members Recommend Each month we give away books to US resident members to read and review (or discuss). Members who choose to take part receive a free book (including free shipping) about every three months. Here are their opinions on one recently published book:   The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson Publisher: St. Martin's Press Publication Date: Nov 2014 Historical Fiction, 368 pages Number of reader reviews: 44 Readers' consensus: 4.3/5.0 Members Say"The story line was very interesting and I read this book as fast as I could-- yet did not want it to end. The author's descriptions of 1900s Paris and its art world are from a woman's prospective and very enlightening. The plot line is exciting and twisty. I am going to recommend this one to all of my friends! Thank you BookBrowse!" - Sandra L. (Delray Beach, FL)"The word that kept coming to mind as I read The Paris Winter was fascinating--fascinating characters in a fascinating milieu in a fascination city. The place and time are Paris, December 1909-January 1910, when the Seine flooded disastrously." - Linda W. (Arlington, TX) Had me riveted from chapter one." - Cheryl P. (Lebanon, PA) "Imogen Robertson, skillfully tells the story of a young English woman who travels to Paris, with very little money, to study art in an era when women artists were often viewed as less than respectable! A page turner for sure!" - Marie D. (Waretown, NJ) More about this book | Read all the reviews Buy at Amazon | B&N | Indie
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 2. Editor's Choice: Paperback Nonfiction 
One Doctor by Brendan Reilly
Paperback (November 25, 2014), 352 pages. Publisher: Atria Books. BookBrowse Rating: 5/5, Critics' Consensus: 4.6/5 Buy at Amazon | B&N | IndieJanuary, 2010. A wealthy architect in his early fifties lies in bed at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He has a rare kind of pancreatic cancer that has spread to his liver. Within days, maybe hours, he'll be dead. The senior physician by the patient's bedside asks him the name of his regular doctor. The question vexes the patient, so he looks at his wife. "You mean like a family doctor?" she asks. "Yes," the physician says. The wife explains there's no family doctor; all her husband's doctors are cancer specialists. The physician recalling this scene, Brendan Reilly-and the author ... continued Full access to our reviews & beyond the book articles are for members only. But there are always four free Editor's Choice reviews and beyond the book articles on our homepage. |
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3. Editor's Choice: Hardcover Fiction
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon Jones
Hardcover (October 01, 2014), 704 pages. Publisher: Riverhead Books. BookBrowse Rating: 5/5, Critics' Consensus: 4.9/5 Buy at Amazon | B&N | IndieLook beyond the headlines. What do you see? Clarity of vision can rarely be gained by a news clip, however affecting it might be. To get at the truth, one needs to dig deeper and appreciate nuance. Marlon James' mesmerizing A Brief History of Seven Killings, does just that. It's a brilliant exploration of the factors behind a singular snapshot of time in December 1976: the assassination attempt on reggae star and Jamaican sensation, Bob Marley. Narrated from the viewpoint of an expansive cast of characters - from Kingston ganglords, writers, CIA operatives, and more - the novel ... continued Full access to our reviews & beyond the book articles are for members only. But there are always four free Editor's Choice reviews and beyond the book articles on our homepage.
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 4. Author Interview  Cristine Aptozicz discusses her Dr. Mütter's Marvels, and explains how a poet came to write a book about a plastic surgeon at the dawn of modern medicine. Read the Interview | Dr. Mütter's Marvels
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 5. Book Club Chat
 An interview with the No Dead Dogs Book Club, a group of eleven readers who live in New Jersey. When they were deciding whether or not to read Marly and Me one member cried, "Please no dead dogs!" and thus their name was born. Read the interview
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 6. Beyond the Book: North Korea's PUST  Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for...
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim Dr. Kim Chin-Kyung (aka Kim Jin Kyong, James Kim) is the founder of both the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) and its older sister institution, the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in China. It is at PUST that Suki Kim worked on assignment as an English teacher. Born in 1935 in Seoul, Kim was a soldier in a South Korean student battalion during the Korean War. He was wounded in 1950 in a particularly ferocious battle (only 17 out of 800 members of his unit survived) and as he lay on the field he promised God that if he lived he would "return the love to my enemies." He cites this incident as the basis for his life-long ambition of opening pathways to peace between the United States and South Korea on the one hand and communist China and North Korea on the other ... continued Read in full | More about this book
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 7. National Book Award Winners Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 National Book Award Winners, announced last night, Wednesday Nov 19:  Redeployment by Phil Klay (Fiction)
Hardcover Mar 2014. 304 pages. Published by Penguin Press
Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos (Nonfiction)
May 2014. 416 Pages. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy - or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don't see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes...  Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
(Young People's Literature) Aug 2014. 336 Pages. Published by Nancy Paulsen Books
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world.
 Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems by Louise Gluck
(Poetry)
Sep 2014. 80 Pages. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
You enter the world of this spellbinding book through one of its many dreamlike portals, and each time you enter it's the same place but it has been arranged differently. You were a woman. You were a man. This is a story of adventure, an encounter with the unknown, a knight's undaunted journey into the kingdom of death; this is a story of the world you've always known, that first primer where "on page three a dog appeared, on page five a ball" and every familiar facet has been made to shimmer like the contours of a dream, "the dog float[ing] into the sky to join the ball."
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 8. Recent Recommendations for Book Clubs
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 9. News
Nov 19 2014
Alice Lee, sister of, and gatekeeper for her sister Harper Lee (aged 88), died Monday. She was 103. According to AL.com Lee "was also celebrated as a trailblazer, one of the few women who practiced law in Alabama before World War II, and a church leader.... In 2012, at the age of 100, she was the ...(more)
Nov 13 2014
After Speaker of the House John Boehner said Monday he would block any attempt to pass e-fairness legislation in the lame-duck session of Congress, the Marketplace Fairness Coalition sent a letter signed by more than 320 organizations urging him to reconsider ... (more)
Nov 13 2014
Hachette Book Group and Amazon jointly announced today that "the companies have reached a new, multi-year agreement for ebook and print sales in the US." Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch said, "This is great news for writers. The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It ... (more)
Nov 13 2014
We don't normally report on the bestseller lists but this story seemed a reason to make an exception.... Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, the ninth book in Jeff Kinney's series, is the top selling title in all English-language territories globally, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K. ... (more)
Nov 12 2014
The National Book Foundation, GoodReads, Mashable and Penguin Random House are creating National Readathon Day, Participating readers are asked to read a book for four straight hours between 12-4 p.m. on Saturday, January 24, to raise funds to support the National Book Foundation, which brings books...(more)
More News Stories
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 10. Wordplay Solve one of our fiendish wordplay puzzles, and be entered to win the book of your choice! Enter nowThis week's wordplay Solve this clue: "A S I T Closet"
The answer to last Week's Wordplay: P M Fly " Pigs Might Fly" Meaning: A sarcastic remark used to indicate that an event is very unlikely and/or to question the credulity of someone. For example, "he said that he'd tidy his room today," to which somebody might reply "... and pigs might fly" or a variation such as "oh look, I think I just saw a flying pig." According to America's Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Titelman, the expression "if a pig had wings, it could fly" traces back to Proverbs of Scotland (1862). But other sources, most notably the usually reliable phrases.org.uk, find much earlier references - the earliest being John Withals' English-Latin dictionary, A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (1616): "Pigs fly in the ayre with their tayles forward." In Gnomologia (1732) Thomas Fuller moved the expression closer to its modern day form ...continued
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