Literary Books - Page 4

Home: A Novel

Marilynne Robinson

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $14.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

American Wife: A Novel

Curtis Sittenfeld

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $14.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 127 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.


Praise for American Wife

“Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined.”
–Richard Russo

“What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady’s. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable.”
–Kurt Andersen


From the Hardcover edition.

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Amazon Price: $12.23 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Back Bay Books Amazon Marketplace: 55 new & used starting at $10.67

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( W ) -> Wallace, David Foster
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 357 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hysterically sad and tragically funny 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I'm a big fan of David Foster Wallace, a once-in-a-generation artist who, unfortunately for the rest of us, recently committed suicide. His death hit me surprisingly hard, considering I'd never met the man. As a personal tribute, I picked up his masterpiece again for a third read.

It's a sprawling work of genius, hysterically sad and tragically funny, about the pursuit of happiness and the difficulties of communication. Set in a near future world where the years are corporate-sponsored and America handles its garbage by catapulting it onto land we forced Canada to accept as a "gift," the novel is too big and brilliant to be summed up. All I can say is that if the length (1079 pages) and complexity (scores of characters, 100 pages of footnotes, deeply recursive language) don't scare you, then reading it can change the way you think about fiction. It's not everybody's taste, but it thoroughly blows my mind.

Rest in peace, brother.

Editorial Review:

In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novelThe Broom of the System.Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves.

The Savage Detectives: A Novel

Roberto Bolano

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Picador Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $8.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General AAS

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

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $8.54

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary

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.

My Sister's Keeper: A Novel

Jodi Picoult

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Washington Square Press Amazon Marketplace: 349 new & used starting at $1.59

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1047 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness.

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Anne Fadiman

By: Farrar Straus Giroux Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $119.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General AAS
Subjects -> Medicine -> Physician & Patient

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 222 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Spirit Cathces You and You Fall Down 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of a Hmong child diagnosed with epilepsy and her family's journey through a conflict between Western medicine and Hmong traditional health beliefs. The family escaped as refugees from Laos to be resettled in Merced, California. The conflict began when Lia experienced a seizure at 3 months old and was taken to the emergency room. Her medical team, based on the Western medical model, believed that Lia had epilepsy and could be treated adequately with anticonvulsants. Her parents believed her illness was qaug dab peg, described as the spirit catches you and you fall down. They believe the cure involved animal sacrifices and Hmong shaman medicine men. Lia's story was a description of a tragic case of miscommunication and lack of understanding of the family's cultural philosophy. Her uncontrolled epilepsy ultimately led to brain death at age 7. The author, Fadiman, presented the content in a narrative, non-opinionated way. The information is reliable and credible. Fadiman appears to have written the book to encourage a change in the policy of most healthcare providers to seek understanding and incorporate culture beliefs into their care. The American Nurses Association's Code of Ethics states that "the nurse, in all professional relationships, practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every individual." The story of Lia brings this statement to life. Through Fadiman's writing she gives examples for healthcare providers to develop in their practice...compassion and respect for others and their values. Policies have move to provide translators for patients, however, Fadiman may believe there is more work to do. Developing compassion and respect for others can be taught. On a scale of 0-5 this book is a 5.
This is an outstanding book that gives a personal story as an example of why healthcare policy should change to do more than just provide a translator, but a deeper understanding of others' cultures with respect. This book should be required reading for nursing students and healthcare professionals. Anyone interested in healthcare and culture would enjoy this book.

The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald

List Price: $6.95 By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $0.36

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Classics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General -> Classics

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1124 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Easily one of the best books I've read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I found a copy of this book in a very small, very messy book store in my area and decided to give it read. Fitzgerald from the start is extremely descriptive yet brief and poetic. What I find so very impressive about this book is it's ability to make you understand the depths of both the 1920's and the place this story has in it; yet the story and themes are not just easy to relate to, they are fresh even after 90 years. I am an actor and while reading the last 4-5 pages I found myself reading aloud from the book because the conclusion and final thoughts of the character telling the story are written in a profound way; one that makes me feel they should be spoken so that the meaning won't be lost.

Inspirational Literature 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is perhaps one of the most inspiration works of poetry to ever be created in the English Language. Nothing has inspired me more than the text Fitzgerald has laid down to tell the story of Nick, a well-to-do man from the Midwest and his new-found friend Jay Gatsby. The paragraphs Fitzgerald writes, describing the sites and sounds of the roaring twenties is what made this book a classic.

Everyone should have a copy of this book in their library.

Editorial Review:

Noted Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli draws upon years of research to present the Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance exactly as he intended according to the original manuscript, revisions, and corrections--with explanatory notes. Reprint.

The Goal : A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

List Price: $34.95 By: Highbridge Audio Amazon Marketplace: 6 new & used starting at $20.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 316 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

BAD CD - chapters mislabeled & out of order 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sound quality was great and the effects kept it interesting. Unfortunately, the computer files were mislabeled so when I put this on my ipod the chapters were rearranged. When I was listening, the chapters were presented out of order. It didn't seem to matter.

This was required reading for me so I don't care about the content. Although, the storyline about the narrator's personal life was too much added drama and negativity.

Great storyline & worth the read ... 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I was given this book at my workplace. I delayed reading it, honestly, because it looked a little old school. However, once I picked it up, I realized why it had been rated the #1 business book on several all-time lists. It's easy to read in a story format. It flows easily and allows the reader to digest the information as if he/she were in the room with the characters. The story is based around manufacturing and plant management but weaves in the entire business organization/team building/leadership side of things as well. I would have preferred a few more business applications. That's the only reason I give the book 4 stars. Overall, it's a nice read.

Editorial Review:

A fully dramatized version of the practical guide to business in fictional form offers an ensemble cast, accompanied by sound effects and music, that reveals how businesses can enhance productivity and provide personal fulfillment. Book available.

Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Washington Square Press Amazon Marketplace: 157 new & used starting at $4.46

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Literary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 472 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Only connect 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Nineteen Minutes is a book you can get lost in. Much of the horror that the nation experienced after the Columbine shootings has dissipated with time, and Picoult's plot, with its many similarities, can bring that horror rushing back to mind. This is a multidimensional story with vivid characters, a story that propels the reader into the pain and sensibilities of everyone involved. and stimulates the consideration of important questions. Does American culture foster violence? Is violence ever justified? When victims retaliate, who is to blame? What is, or isn't, happening within our families? What is the nature of friendship?
Those who view Picoult's depictions of high school life as stereotypic are sadly mistaken. The subculture is cruel, affecting all students, and this is nothing new. Reading Nineteen Minutes is not a comfortable experience, but it is a memorable one.

Editorial Review:

Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and The Tenth Circle, pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.