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The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)

Michael Chabon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 293 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon

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Total reviews: 596 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.

But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.

More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park

The Stranger

Albert Camus

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Total reviews: 530 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.

Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation

Lewis Carroll

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent format for a great story to interest your kids 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book as the first pop-up book for my three-year old son and two-year old daughter. I knew it could be a risk, due to the fragile nature of pop-up books, however this one is truly a treat for my children, my wife, myself and everyone else who has seen it!

I'd recommend the book (for self-reading) to older children who know how the fragile the pop-ups can be, but if you read to your kids I recommend this to anyone. It's a classic story which inspires a child's imagination and has an excellent graphical presentation of the story which really captures my children's attention while they're read to.

I only gave this book four of five stars due to the small portions through-out most of the book which actually has the written text. These are also created with mini-pop-ups, but are not incorporated into the whole width and length of the book. Instead the main text of the book is grouped into small 3-4 inch wide pages with small text. Not something you want if you read to your children at bedtime with minimal lighting.

However, don't let this prevent you from buying the book! It is worth the price and has some of the most fantastic pop-ups I've ever seen!

Editorial Review:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is Robert Sabuda's most amazing creation ever, featuring stunning pop-ups illustrated in John Tenniel's classic style. The text is faithful to Lewis Carroll's original story, and special effects like a Victorian peep show, multifaceted foil, and tactile elements make this a pop-up to read and admire again and again.

A Christmas Memory

Truman Capote

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Total reviews: 74 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Haruki Murakami's favorite book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I read "Children on their Birthdays" twenty years ago. I found so many peculiar characters in the story, but they were all innocent. Also I felt a small dusty town in the south. Peculiar, innocent, and dustythey still impress on me. Three stories of literary calendartwo Christmas stories and one Thanksgiving in this book also take on peculiarity and innocence. Old cousins, dogs, and bullies they are all innocent. And so was Capote. However, I never found "dusty", but "breezy" in these stories. Capote is one of Haruki Murakami's favorite authors, and he translated some Capote's stories into Japanese. He translated them so good that we sometimes notice his original stories and his translation indistinguishable from one another.

Editorial Review:

A Christmas Memory is the classic memoir of Truman Capote's childhood in rural Alabama. Until he was ten years old, Capote lived with distant relatives. This book is an autobiographical story of those years and his frank and fond memories of one of his cousins, Miss Sook Faulk. The text is illustrated with full color illustrations that add greatly to the story without distracting from Capote's poignant prose.

The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

Lewis Carroll

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations!"

Readers who share Alice's taste in books will be more than satisfied with The Annotated Alice, a volume that includes not only pictures and conversations, but a thorough gloss on the text as well. There may be some, like G.K. Chesterton, who abhor the notion of putting Lewis Carroll's masterpiece under a microscope and analyzing it within an inch of its whimsical life. But as Martin Gardner points out in his introduction, so much of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is composed of private jokes and details of Victorian manners and mores that modern audiences are not likely to catch. Yes, Alice can be enjoyed on its own merits, but The Annotated Alice appeals to the nosy parker in all of us. Thus we learn, for example, that the source of the mouse's tale may have been Alfred Lord Tennyson who "once told Carroll that he had dreamed a lengthy poem about fairies, which began with very long lines, then the lines got shorter and shorter until the poem ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each." And that, contrary to popular belief, the Mad Hatter character was not a parody of then Prime Minister Gladstone, but rather was based on an Oxford furniture dealer named Theophilus Carter.

Gardner's annotations run the gamut from the factual and historical to the speculative and are, in their own way, quite as fascinating as the text they refer to. Occasionally, he even comments on himself, as when he quotes a fellow annotator of Alice, James Kincaid: "The historical context does not call for a gloss but the passage provides an opportunity to point out the ambivalence that may attend the central figure and her desire to grow up." And then follows with a charming riposte: "I thank Mr. Kincaid for supporting my own rambling." There's a lot of information in the margins (indeed, the page is pretty evenly divided between Carroll's text and Gardner's), but the ramblings turn out to be well worth the time. So hand over your old copy of Lewis Carroll's classic to the kids--this Alice in Wonderland is intended entirely for adults. --Alix Wilber

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)

Truman Capote

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Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Breakfast At Tiffanys 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote ***


Breakfast At Tiffany's is an American literary classic, which spawned not only a hit movie, but a horrible number one hit song as well in the early 1990's. Tiffany's is a story of love, a story of loss, and a story of finding yourself, as well as staying true to yourself. We follow a man who is in love with the woman would is ultimately his best friend, though he does not realize that he is in fact in love with her until almost the end of the story, though to the reader it will become quite clear almost instantly, as the main character seems to be completely obsessed and infatuated with this women, but will not admit this to his self. That is basically the jest of the story. The girl can not find a place where she is happy living, and really is only happy in Tiffany's department store, where she believes that no one and nothing bad can happen to you there. Along the way criminals and drug charges are thrown in, but these just delay her search for happiness which she will not compromise for anyone.

In the end the plot seems to run thin and is in my opinion very, very long winded. Even for such a short story as this is I feel it could have been shorter. Capotes writing style is fantastic and it is clear why he went on to become such a legend, but honestly I do not understand the hype behind Breakfast At Tiffany's, I think Capote had plenty of better material.

Editorial Review:

Contains:

Breakfast at Tiffany's
House of Flowers
A Diamond Guitar
A Christmas Memory

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Signet Classics)

Lewis Carroll

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Total reviews: 83 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Drug-Induced or Pure-Genius 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

When I was younger, I watched the Disney version of this book and was left absolutely horrified by what I had seen. I was about four years old and the constant visions of strange and horrid looking creatures flashing on the screen made me want to leave the room. Because of this, I was not so sure how much I wanted to read this story. Actually, even now, I'm not all together convinced that I really like this story. I feel that it is somewhat sacrilegious to say so but I just don't enjoy this story all that much. As read through the first few pages I could still see the strange and haunting images from the twisted children's movie. Maybe that's what has ruined this tale for me, but I do sincerely feel that it is more than that. When I am reading, I begin to feel hopeless, lost and somewhat confused. I don't really feel happy about saying this since I'm a high school boy, but I feel that you should know how strange the concepts are in this book. Honestly, I must say that reading this book made me feel as though I were on a drug trip. This book has the strangest and most disturbing elements such as drinks that reduce your size and cakes that re-enlarge you. Not to mention that creepy, talking cat in the tree, the Cheshire Cat.
From a thematic point of view, I suppose you could say that one theme from this story is the frustrations that come with the loss of one's childhood. What I mean by this is that when a person gets older, they encounter physical changes that radically change they way that a child views the world and may even frustrate them. Across the entirety of Alice's adventures, she runs into a series of absolutely ridiculous changes. While these changes are much more absurd than real changes we incur growing up, they cause Alice to become traumatized, frustrated, and even change her perspective of the world. Although she is forced to go through these changes, she continues to struggle to maintain a comfortable physical size. In chapter one, she tries to follow a rabbit into a garden and is unable to fit through the entrance because she is too large. She takes a drink that shrinks her to the appropriate size but then realizes that she left the key to the entrance on the above table. She then eats a cake that grows her to the size at which she can retrieve the key but is then once again too large to enter the garden, which is very frustrating to her. Again in chapter five, she looses control over her physical build and gets an irregularly long neck.
As for the characters in this book, I find all of them one hundred percent unbelievable and terrifying. The characters are all introduced abruptly and are completely beyond reason. For example, the Mad Hatter and his fellow creatures are constantly making insane remarks about class and the state of things. There is also a strange creature named the Cheshire Cat who is unaffected by all that goes on in Wonderland and merely observes all that goes on, somewhat like a stocker.
This story is told through the perspective of a narrative view through Alice's eyes and conclusions of the new world she has entered. This view gives a good perspective of how crazy the world can be. I mean, Wonderland may seem like and absolutely mashed land of turmoil but through the eyes of Wonderland, Alice is absolutely mad. I suppose this could be compared with the difference in views in today's society and other countries.
Again, I must say that I don't really like this book personally simply because it disturbs me so much, but I would still recommend it to others as they may not feel the same way. It really is a well written story, even if I don't like the general plot. I give this book a three out of five star rating.

Editorial Review:

The Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat-characters each more eccentric than the last, and that could only have come from Lewis Carroll, the master of sublime nonsense. In these two brilliant burlesques he created two of the most famous and fantastic novels of all time that not only stirred our imagination but revolutionized literature.

• Featuring the exquisite line drawings created for the original edition

The Canterbury Tales (Modern Library)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Editorial Review:

It would be impossible to overstate the influence of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. A work with one metaphorical foot planted in the Florentine Renaissance literary tradition of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the other in works ranging from John Bunyan, Voltaire, and Mark Twain to the popular entertainments of our own time, The Canterbury Tales stands astride the cultures of Great Britain and America, and much of Europe, like a benign colossus.

Beyond its importance as a cultural touchstone and literary work of unvarnished genius, Chaucer’s unfinished epic poem is also one of the most beloved works in the English language–and for good reason: It is lively, absorbing, perceptive, and outrageously funny–an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for generations of readers. Chaucer has gathered twenty-nine of literature’s most indelible archetypes–from the exalted Knight to the bawdy Wife to the besotted Miller to the humble Plowman–in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of late-medieval English society and both informs and expands our discourse on the human condition.

Presented in these pages in a new unabridged translation by the esteemed poet, translator, and scholar Burton Raffel–whose translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies–this Modern Library edition also features an Introduction by the well-known and widely influential medievalist and author John Miles Foley that discusses Chaucer’s work as well as to his life and times.

Despite the brilliance of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, the continual evolution of our language has rendered his words unfamiliar to many of us. Burton Raffel’s magnificent new translation brings Chaucer’s poetry back to life, ensuring that none of the original’s wit, wisdom, or humanity is lost to the modern reader.

Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2)

Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

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Total reviews: 184 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Into the Deep ... 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

'The Reliquary' is a sequel (of sorts) to 'The Relic', but you don't have to read 'The Relic' first to enjoy this associated but independent novel. It's time to get together again with Dr. Margo Green - Assistant Curator of New York Museum Of Natural History, Lt. Vincent D'Agosta - a New York City Detective, Agent Pendergrast from the FBI, Bill Smithback - crime reporter for the New York Post, and Dr. Whitney Frock - now retired Evolutionary Biologist and wheelchair bound.

It's been eighteen months since the Mbwun beast terrorized the Museum Of Natural History, when two skeletons are pulled from the Humboldt Kill canal (called The Cloaca because of its murky raw sewage). One is discovered to be that of wealthy debutant Pamela Wisher (a Paris Hilton type society girl), but the other doesn't even seem to be human. Dr. Margo Green is called in by the Medical Examiner to attempt to identify the skeleton. When the remains are identified to be those of Margo's old colleague Greg Kawakita, Lt. D'Agosta and Agent Pendergrast join her in her search to find out what Greg had been up to, and how his bones became so deformed. The answer lies in two places; the remnants of Greg's burnt out laboratory, and in the tunnels underneath New York from which the two skeletons were flushed from.

Margo's old friend Bill Smithback heads straight to Pamela's upper crust mother to get an exclusive scoop from her. Amazingly, she takes him in and obtains his help with her Take Back Our City campaign. He also manages a meeting with Mephisto, leader of the underground community called Route 666. Mephisto tells Smithback of a new group of "mole people" living deeper, below the Devil's Attic, that he calls "Wrinklers".

When Margo, D'Agosta, Pendergrast, and Smithback put their heads together, they discover a connection between the Wrinklers and what Greg Kawakita was working on before he died. They must unravel the puzzle before the city is torn apart by Mrs. Wisher's Tack Back The City campaign, the angry "mole people" who live far beneath Wisher's elegant apartments, and a police department under pressure to solve the grisly rash of murders. In order to do this, the four must travel deep below New York, into the subterranean tracks, tunnels, aqueducts, old sewers, abandoned stations, and once elegant private waiting rooms.

What really heightened my enjoyment of this book is that prior to it, I read an interesting non-fiction book called 'The Mole People' by Jennifer Toth. Written in 1993, she actually went into the tunnels and spoke with members of the underground society called "moles" or "mole people". In the author's notes at the end of 'Reliquary', Preston and Child also mention Toth's work. If you have the chance or are interested, read 'The Mole People' first and it will enhance what Preston and Child have written about the society in 'Reliquary'. It's just a suggestion, along with reading 'The Relic' first. Both books really augment the pleasure of reading 'Reliquary'. Enjoy!

Editorial Review:

Hidden deep beneath Manhattan lies a warren of tunnels, sewers, and galleries, mostly forgotten by those who walk the streets above. There lies the ultimate secret of the Museum Beat. When two grotesquely deformed skeletons are found deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid the investigation. Margo must once again team up with police lieutenant D'Agosta and FBI agent Pendergast, as well as the brilliant Dr. Frock, to try and solve the puzzle. The trail soon leads deep underground, where they will face the awakening of a slumbering nightmare.