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The Given Day LP: A Novel

Dennis Lehane

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane's long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future. Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters more richly drawn than any Lehane has ever created, The Given Day tells the story of two families—one black, one white—swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.

Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era—Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.

Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time—including the Spanish Influenza pandemic—and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself. As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Muriel Barbery

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The enthralling international bestseller.

We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building’s tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there’s Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma’s trust and to see through Renée’s timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Change of Heart: A Novel

Jodi Picoult

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 197 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation.

Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?

Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love.

The Friday Night Knitting Club

Kate Jacobs

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 223 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

I'd rather just knit 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I love knitting, which is what attracted me to this book. A group of women gathered to do the hobby I enjoy most was a concept I couldn't pass up. After reading this book, though, I wish I could have. The story was yet another "single mom struggles to raise her child without any help" story. As another reviewer put it, I could have just watched a lifetime movie and got the same story in less than half the time. The characters were flat and generally uninteresting. I was well into chapter 10 before any excitement happened and even that was merely a ripple in life. If I was the author I would have frogged this piece long ago.

Editorial Review:

The New York Times bestselling sensation that's "Steel Magnolias set in Manhattan" (USA Today)-now in paperback.

Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered.

Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood.

Guns,Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond

List Price: $24.95 By: Audio Scholar Amazon Marketplace: 6 new & used starting at $12.00

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1082 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

European Advantages 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Professor Diamond takes up a very difficult question that spans centuries. He sets out to figure out why the Europeans were able to succeed not only in their enviornment, but control throughout the world.

Geography is something Diamond finds as a major factor. Geographic luck was able to determine that type of crops, and the conditions.

Diamond concludes that once the societies discovered how to produce enough food for themselves, then some of the other citizens were able to use their free time to advance other areas. This created specialists which resulted in the innovations of Guns and Steel. The germ advantage was because the Europeans lived with pigs.

Domestic animals (Diamond finds 14 thorughout history) most of them centered in Europe gave the major advantage against disease.

Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is an outstanding and interesting book to read.

Editorial Review:

13,000 years of human history,beginning when stone-age gathers constituted the entire population.

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1556 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Atlas may have shrugged, but I really cringed 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

** Spoiler Warning ***

Oh, boy, where do I start? First, let me say this: that hero of hers may have stopped the motor of the world, he certainly could not slow down Ayn Rand's FURIOUS typewriter. This edition has 1,168 pages in tiny fonts. It should have been, and easily could have been, condensed to 300-400 pages. At most.

As a literary work it is flawed. There is not much I want to add to what other reviewers have already commented: it is long, the characters are two-dimensional, the dialogs long and repetitive, etc.

The only good thing I can say about this book is that it exposes the hypocrisy of those "benevolent social planners". Read in light of our current times of government bailouts and "wealth spreading", it is eerily familiar (for this I give it more than the minimum 1 star).

But it is not a novel in the traditional sense, it is a vehicle for Ayn Rand to expound her philosophy. And expound she did, with a vengeance.

Maybe one day I will write a full review of her philosophy, which I think is also flawed (though it has some good elements). Why is it called "objectivism" anyway? It sounds more like "subjectivism" or "absolutism" to me: she views everything as black-or-white, there is no middle ground, and those who do not agree with her are branded "irrational".

Since this is a review of the book, let me focus on it now. It being a vehicle for her philosophy which presumably she wants the user to apply in real life, then the fictional world she constructs must be at least somewhat realistic. But it is not. It is populated with three types of people only: 1. the industrialists whose only goal is to maximize his or her profit; 2. hypocrites who pay lip service to the abstract concepts of "social justice", "equalization of opportunity", but whose real purpose is to restrict the freedom of the industrialists and 3. the gullible "public", waiting to be rescued by their heroes. Aside from the fact that there are more types of people in the real world, even the ones in the book are not believable. The villains are singlemindedly against the heroes, to the point of absurdity (and Ayn Rand thinks herself as the champion of reason). For example, why is Jim Taggart so against his sister's success when he is the president of the same company? He stands to profit from it! Yet he persistently tries to run his own company to the ground. All the villains are absurd caricatures in her book.

Even the "good guys" are not believable, and their relationships are just bizarre. Consider the following conversation between Rearden and Dagny, after they had sex for the first time (Keep in mind these are two main characters and heroes of the book, they went on to have a long relationship, which is fraught with contempt, despisement and violence).

Rearden: I want to you know this. What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I never loved anyone... I wanted you as one wants a whore .. You're as vile an animal as I am. .. I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. ...
Dagny: I want you, Hank. I'm much of an animal than you think. .. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms. .. If I'm asked to name my proudest achievement, I will say: I have slept with Hand Rearden. I had earned it.

Yet this is supposed to be a model relationship between the good guys. Now ask yourself if you would speak like this and have a relationship on such grounds. And Dagny is supposed to be a driven, shrewd and rational businesswoman. Give me a break. With heroes like these, who needs villains?

Editorial Review:

At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback.

With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers.

Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.

* Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1695 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

if i could time travel, i'd go back and not read this book 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

First, I'll echo another reviewer and say it had useless scenes that didn't add to the story. Also, it seemed like everything was so extreme. I was fine buying into the time-travel deal. That's obvious. But, what was supposed to be realism was so fantastical. There were nothing slightly mundane, nothing NOT melodramatic. All emotions were heightened. I kind of felt like I was reading a romance novel that was dressed up as legitimate literature. It was pretty crass without it being about--I don't know--circus sleazebags. I guess...I didn't feel like the characters grew up enough. Last thing that bugged me. There's a servant/maid/cook in the Abshire home (Clare's parents) who is so ridiculously a black mammy stock character, it's kind of embarrassing to read. It's like the author hasn't much experience with non-whites. And the portrayal of the Korean nanny/friend isn't too much better.

Okay, one more thing. The friendships portrayed in this novel are so substandard. Those who are "best" friends are really...lacking in depth and trust. The friendships are shallow, empty, backstabbing, heartless, and selfish. All while being portrayed as genuine and good (enough?). Strange, really. Made wonder if the author has experienced any truly good relationships.

Now the good stuff. I loved the format. Reading both perspectives, jumping around in time, etc...that was well-done. I'm not a writer, so I don't know how difficult this was, but it was rather consistent. The rules for time travel, and the personal rules that the characters set for themselves are adhered to as far as I could tell. There were enough well-written sentences that helped me process my own thoughts and feelings, which actually made the title of this review not entirely true. I'm kind of glad I read it. But, I wouldn't recommend it highly to anyone.

Editorial Review:

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Sea of Poppies: A Novel

Amitav Ghosh

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Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.  In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations.  The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive—a masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists.

The 13 Clocks

James Thurber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

My favorite book, apparently in revival 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This was the first book I ever remember, and the first book I could read to myself. I have read it out loud to many children, and hope to read it to future grandchildren. My copy, from 1950, sits with Darwin's Origin of Species, Ulysses, and the complete full size edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and I consider The 13 Clocks to hold its own against these masterpieces. I must have been about 6 when my father first read it to me, and it inspired me to learn to read myself. I named my doll Saralinda, but I have not had the courage to name a pet The Golux because it would be too important, almost a sacrilege.
In this new era, when I see small children using iPhones and plugged into video games, I hope that this new issue of Thurber's masterpiece and the publicity it has garnered will help at least a few parents to unplug the electronics, and just sit down to read out loud to their children. This book can be read to toddlers - the poetry and rhymes are like Seuss. It can be read to older, wiser 8-10 year olds because it is scary and melodious. And I have read parts of it out loud to 50 year olds, especially those with compassion fatigue, as there is no more clear literary example of burnout than Hagga, who went from crying diamonds to crying costume jewelry and rhinestones.
I am glad that others remember Thurber, and that a new generation can now appreciate what I consider to be the best children's book ever written.

Editorial Review:

How can anyone describe this book? It isn't a parable, a fairy story or a poem, but rather a mixture of all three. It is beautiful and it is comic. It is philosophical and it is cheery. What we suppose we are trying fumblingly to say is, in a word, that it is Thurber.



There are only a few reasons why everybody has always wanted to read this kind of story, but they are basic:



Everybody has always wanted to love a Princess.



Everybody has always wanted to be a Prince.



Everybody has always wanted the wicked Duke to be punished.



Everybody has always wanted to live happily ever after.



Too little of this kind of thing is going on in the world today. But all of it is going on valorously in The 13 Clocks.

The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

Diane Setterfield

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 599 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Wonderful read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are someone who enjoys sitting by the fireplace and reading Jane Eyre, if you simply love literature and words, you will like this novel.

It is the story of a reclusive author who decides she finally wants an authorized biography. Her relationship with the author she picks for the job, the story she tells, and the author's own investigation of the truth of the story, this constitutes the plot.

Character development is excellent, as are the descriptions of the English countryside.

Editorial Review:

Sometimes, when you open the door to thepast, what you confront is your destiny.

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchantingstories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate livesfor herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about herextraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret forso long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her ownpainful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret ismesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautifuland willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.