Contemporary Books - Page 9

The Savage Detectives: A Novel

Roberto Bolano

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Brilliant and essential reading for Bolano Fans 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Here is a helpful note, if someone is recommending Bolano to you to read: read The Savage Detectives first, and then read 2666. The development in Bolano's writing mastery from The Savage Detectives, which is without a doubt brilliant, to 2666 is amazing. I read 2666 first so when I read SD, I was constantly aware of the difference in writing style/development/mastery from SD to 2666, though the awareness did not hurt my appreciation of The Savage Detectives.

SD is Bolano practice of the Spanish picaresque style where bohemian romantic ways are reduced to decadence, degeneracy and frequently madness in Europe, North America, South America and Africa. This is a cosmopolitan voice and writer who lives(d) in the world, rather than indigenously and speaking from a place of contained experience. Bolano's familiarity with the world, cities, their characteristics and detail is stunning in SD. His access to the world and his examination of it and the transient people who move about it is the riveting accomplishment of this work that also hinges on wonderful narrations, that convey the narrative and characterize the speaker and protagonists; and a structure deeply dependent upon motifs and leitmotifs that allow his themes and metaphors to reverberate with rich meaning. This is a very organically structured novel that lays the bed for the more complex structure of 2666.

Furthermore, the seeds of 2666 are in SD, the wandering, the random life influences that bring change, the very segmented narration and the Bolano characters' obsessions with quests, to investigate and understand people, things or circumstances that contribute meaning or no meaning and purpose to the characters' lives.

SD book is an original. The voice of Bolano is a big one and will last. He mixes Artaud, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac, Baudelaire and Rimbaud in his own bohemian world. Yet his voice is new. SD book is amazing, a romantic road trip involving poets, artists, and bohemes and is as good as it gets, until you read 2666.

Editorial Review:

National Bestseller 

In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Roberto Bolaño tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age.

People of the Book: A Novel

Geraldine Brooks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 149 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not Good Enough for Readers of the Book 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book is a good story, full of everything I like: history and mystery, religion and bravery, and a good dose of female heroism. But the chapters read unevenly, with fast-paced and engaging passages followed by leaden and clichéd portrayals, especially the chapter devoted to the Jewish Partisans fighting under Tito and the absolutely ridiculously written chapter set in turn of the century Vienna (the dialog alone, both the interior words of the narrator and the words he exchanges with others, had me hooting in disbelief).

Not that any of Brooks' writing is entirely free of clichés or hackneyed phrasing and pacing. Her writing is suitable to the telling of a story but not for sketching a genuine moment in time or expressing an original vision of the past. She does not open anything up to her readers that is particularly new or beautifully acute and accurate. Nor is Brooks much good at character development: her figures tend to be just that, figures meant to represent a certain type of person or a certain place in time. Even her narrator is a flat and unbelievable structure (common to best sellers) and the narrator's mother and recently discovered father, even worse. Everything is in superlatives: uber-successful surgeon, famous and fabulous artist, most determined restorer of books with a PhD from Harvard (of course) willing to spend months and months learning how to make parchment (or grind berries or whatever), and yet the world's meanest mom (and youngest chair of the neurosurgery department) gives her not one damn iota of respect. Etc., etc. Subtlety is not one of Brooks' virtues: she likes to slam us over the head with her characters and the situations they find themselves in.

But Brooks is a fine historian and she gathers together a lot of good facts; she is a good story teller, capable of wrapping those acts in a drapery of fun and froth, or blood and gore. I would guess that the best chapters -- the ones most true and moving and fresh -- are based on her favorite, if not best, areas of research. She herself admits it is hard to tell again the story of Jewish persecution under the Nazis and she does not do a good job of it. In contrast, the initial chapter set in Sarajevo in 1996 was very real and alive, and I loved the chapter set in Seville in 1480 (although should not the setting have been Granada? That is were the Emir lived, and I believe Brooks is referring to the beautiful Alhambra which is in Granada and not in Seville, as the place where the slave girl is sent to paint the Emir's lover). Despite the gaff in location, that chapter was rendered with a lighter touch, and a richer emotional range (if we ignore the rape scene and the totally unbelievable lesbian interlude) than any of the other historical chapters. In addition, the heroine of that chapter actually seemed like a living and breathing person, not some Madame Tussaud wax figure.

Brooks' book has a good story. I wish she could have trusted all of us more to tell the story without telling us what we should think; I wish she could have given us more complex and real characters we could have identified with and cheered on; and I wish she had offered a fresh and meaningful observation into why we should not be burning books, but reading them. Her main characters profess to love books -- to be People of the Book -- but we never find out why.

For more reviews, go to www.readallday.org

Editorial Review:

The “complex and moving”(The New Yorker) novel by Pulitzer Prize–winner Geraldine Brooks follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called “a tour de force”by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century S pain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A Novel

Jeff Lindsay

List Price: $22.95 By: Doubleday Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $38.80

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 243 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Meet Dexter, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing . . . a monster who cringes at the site of blood . . . a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likable: he only kills bad people.

Dexter Morgan isn’t exactly the kind of man you’d bring home to Mom. Though he’s playful and has a wonderfully ironic sense of humor, Dexter’s one character flaw (his proclivity for murder) can be off-putting. But at heart Dexter is the perfect gentleman, supportive of his sister, Deb, a Miami cop, and interested only in doing away with people who really deserve his special visit. Dex is quite good-looking but totally indifferent to (and, frankly, a bit puzzled by) the attentions paid to him by women. Despite the fact that he can’t stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police department, a job that allows him to keep tabs on the latest crimes and keep an eye open for his next quarry.

Dexter’s well-organized life is suddenly disrupted when a second, much more visible serial killer appears in Miami. Dex is intrigued, even delighted, by the fact that the other killer appears to have a style reminiscent of his own. Yet he can’t help but feel that the mysterious new arrival is not merely invading his turf, but reaching out to him as well. This new killer seems to be doing more than copying Dexter—he seems to be saying, “Come out and play.” Dexter’s secret life makes for a lonely existence . . . even a lovable monster can be intrigued by the prospect of finding a friend.

Introducing one of the most witty and original narrators in years, Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter is a fresh, surprising, and brilliantly executed novel that is sure to receive wide acclaim.

Batman : The Dark Knight Returns

Frank Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 340 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre, then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller--known also for his excellent Sin City series and his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil--is probably the top contender. Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children's cartoon character into a hero for our times. The great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argued that only someone of Miller's stature could have done this. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon, and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. Secondly the artwork is fantastic--detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Lastly it's a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, street gangs roam but there are no heroes. Decay is ubiquitous. Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. And things have got worse than ever. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. Batman is back. The Dark Knight has returned. Awesome. --Mark Thwaite

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris

By: Little, Brown & Company Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $5.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 739 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Best Sedaris collection! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is Sedaris' best collection of short stories/memoirs/autobiographies. His writing is wonderful, in part because it's hard to separate fact from fiction. He has a true gift for writing. My favorite story is the title one but all are great. These stories are great to read all at once or one at a time!

best sedaris book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

i love this man and this is my favorite of his books (though i will admit i am just now reading Holidays on Ice). he makes me laugh out loud and has a way of putting words on paper that capture things in a way no one else can. even my sister, who is not a big reader and prefers more "chick lit" genre books was laughing out loud when she she picked this up out of desperation when we were on vacation. you will not be disappointed.

is there an option for ZERO stars?? 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Horrid just about covers it - not funny, very much a waste of time. I think the title is a good clue as to the content - complete drivel. I've given a couple of his other books a glance - everyone deserves a second chance, no? Unfortunately I have found the others similarly disappointing. His little stitched-together anecdotes are weak attempts at humor that don't come off funny and only make him seem more pathetic in the telling.

The Hollow

Nora Roberts

By: Piatkus Books Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $20.17

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Hollow 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Book was shipped in good time and arrived in perfect condition. I loved the book and have since read the 3rd in the trilogy also. I have had nothing but good service from Amazon and its vendors.

Love it 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best books I've read lately. I love the author and her trilogies.

Second in the "Sign of 7" trilogy. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

21 years ago three 10 year olds who were born on the same day, and are best friends, celebrate their birthday by sneaking into the woods to go camping & eat junk food. While there, they cut their wrists to merge their blood & become "Blood Brothers". But their childish ritual unleashes an ancient monster. Now every 7 years at their birthday the town goes crazy; murders, beatings, suicides, etc. This year it started months earlier and they know this will be the final showdown.

The basic plot of the series is good and I don't have a problem with the paranormal aspect as I expected it going into the first book

Why not a five? First, while I read the first book in the trilogy I`ve read a lot of books in between so it would have helped if there had been a review about the previous book in the beginning of this one.

Second, I could not tolerate the thing with Fox, Sage and Paula. I don't want to give it away to anyone, so I won't. I found it downright creepy, slightly nauseating and, at best, borderline incest. That none of the other characters, including Layla, had a problem with it was bizarre. Maybe this somehow factors into the next book but I'm not sure I have the stomach for it.

Betrayed (House of Night, Book 2)

P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I have to agree with Deidre(the 1st review on this page) 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I recently became interested in the Vampire novel genre after reading Twilight. Since reading it i have read several other vampire series, including this one. Sadly this one is at the bottom of my recommendation list for other to read. The first few books from this series were very promising, which made me read all of them that are released but i was very disappointed afterward. I did not feel as close to the characters as i wanted to, or become attached, at all. They definitely lacked personality, the authors were annoyingly repetitive and i felt as though there were many loose ends in the novels. I found myself asking questions about the story and characters that were given no answers. If you want to read a great story based on vampires, i would look elsewhere before reading House of Night.

Editorial Review:

Fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird has managed to settle in at the House of Night.  She’s come to terms with the vast powers the vampyre goddess, Nyx, has given her, and is getting a handle on being the new Leader of the Dark Daughters. Best of all, Zoey finally feels like she belongs--like she really fits in. She actually has a boyfriend…or two. Then the unthinkable happens: Human teenagers are being killed, and all the evidence points to the House of Night. While danger stalks the humans from Zoey’s old life, she begins to realize that the very powers that make her so unique might also threaten those she loves. Then, when she needs her new friends the most, death strikes the House of Night, and Zoey must find the courage to face a betrayal that could break her heart, her soul, and jeopardize the very fabric of her world.

The Giving Tree

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( S ) -> Silverstein, Shel

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 618 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Touching story - great lessons 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This has been one of my favorite books since my daughter was just a little girl. It's a wonderful story about giving and loving, a lesson all of us could learn just a little better. My daughter gave me a copy at the 25th aniversary and now I'm giving my 4 year old grandson a copy of the 40th anniversary edition. How great that there is a CD with the book. My grandson likes to listen and read at the same time. I think this is one of Silverstein's best.

Editorial Review:

"Once there was a tree ... and she loved a little boy." So begins a story Of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.

Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk ... and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.

This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein has created a moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return.

Dark City: A Novel (Vol 1)

Frank Lauria (Adapter), Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer, Alex Proyas

List Price: $5.99 By: St. Martin's Press Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $1.43

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 499 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A hidden gem 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A brilliant movie made even better in Blu-Ray. A great Sci-fi story with wonderful performances by Rufus Sewell, William Hurt and Keifer Sutherland. Highly recommended.

A FILM OF COMPLEX ENIGMAS? ODDLY: YES!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

In all of the reviews, someone must have made the connexion; but for those just now looking to buy this film in the Blu-ray edition, I should say a word or two.
First: the picture quality is excellent. The pictures look much more solid; and the sound is fantastic. If you have even a portion of the equipment, you can get much out of this movie. The "much" they provide.
But is it complex? Is the storyline a visionary enigma which baffles the viewer? Is there something deeper that we do not see?

The answer, I believe, is a surprising: Yes!!

On the surface, one seems to be filled in fairly quickly about what is going on. Eventually all is revealed; and revealed with a special-effects extravaganza flourish!
But the viewer of this film, is indeed misled into believing it is about a man who awakens in a bathtub; confused, dazed and thinking himself a killer. A killer soon being chased by unusual figures dressed in black. From there, the story mainly "seems" to revolve around this man, with Kiefer Sutherland ultimately providing some of the answers we need. Though not all.
The reality, though, is that the movie does not revolve around the gentlemen in the bathtub. The true center, and answer, to the enigmatic movie lies in none other than the occasionally seen: Kiefer Sutherland!

What does it all mean? Well, you figure it out for yourself. But I shall give you the beginning to the final answer to this movie. The name of Kiefer Sutherland is: Daniel P. Schreber.
There is your clue; and there is the Key to this movie and what it ultimately means.
I believe this movie should be given a second subtitle of: "Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness".

Once you make the true connexion--(and this has to be more than a coincindence!)--then rewatch "Dark City" with a fresh awe. An awe that few modern movies of any genre supply.

IN CHRIST JESUS: THE LIVING TRUTH: THE LIVING GOD INCARNATE!!!

Braithwaite :)

Editorial Review:

John Murdoch is accused of murder and believed to be mentally disturbed, but he is the only salvation from the violent killings that are happening, as long as he can remain alive. Original. Movie tie-in."

Son of a Witch: Volume Two in the Wicked Years

Gregory Maguire

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Total reviews: 221 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this captivating New York Times bestseller, beloved author Gregory Maguire returns to the land ofOz and introduces us to Liir, an adolescent boy last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully, Liir is shattered in spirit as well as in form. At the Cloister of Saint Glinda the silent novice Candle tends to him, willing him back to life with her unusual musical gifts. What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba's son?

He has her broom and her cape—but what of her powers?

Can he find his half-sister, Nor, last seen in the forbidding prison Southstairs? Can he fulfill the last wishes of a dying princess? In an Oz that, since the Wizard's departure, is under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up?

For the countless fans who have been dazzled and entranced by Maguire's Oz, Son of a Witch is the rich reward they have awaited so long.