Breakfast at Tiffany's and three stories - Truman Capote

 Breakfast at Tiffany's and three stories - Capote, Truman

Summary: In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Truman Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape. Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's; her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, “House of Flowers,” “A Diamond Guitar,” and “A Christmas Memory,” which the Saturday Review called “One of the most moving stories in our language.” It is a tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth. - (Random House, Inc.)

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Extremely loud & incredibly close - Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely loud & incredibly close - Foer, Jonathan Safran

Summary: Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.



Booklist Reviews
This follow-up to Foer's extremely good and incredibly successful Everything Is Illuminated (2002) stars one Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old amateur inventor and Shakespearean actor. But Oskar's boots, as he likes to say, are very heavy--his father, whom he worshiped, perished in the World Trade Center on 9/11. In his dad's closet a year later, Oskar finds a key in a vase mysteriously labeled "Black." So he goes searching after the lock it opens, visiting (alphabetically) everyone listed in the phone book with the surname Black. Oskar, who's a cross between The Tin Drum's Oskar Matzerath and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time's Christopher Boone, doesn't always sound like he's nine, but his first-person narration of his journey is arrestingly beautiful, and readers won't soon forget him. A subplot about Oskar's mute grandfather, who survived the bombing of Dresden, isn't as compelling as Oskar's quest for the lock, but when the stories finally come together, the result is an emotionally devastating climax. No spoilers here, but we will say that the book--which includes a number of photographs and some eccentric typography--ends with what is undoubtedly the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of literature. ((Reviewed February 1, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, or, Pearls before swine - Kurt Vonnegut

God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, or, Pearls before swine - Vonnegut, Kurt

Summary: Eliot Rosewater, the head of a giant philanthropic foundation, rushes around doing absurdly good deeds for useless people. The question is, is he mad--or is everyone else?



Staff Review:
Kurt Vonnegut wrote with such skill for such a long time, touching such a wide range of topics and ideas that choosing any of his books to read will likely provide a rewarding experience (much moreso than reading and attempting to comprehend the previous sentence). The tenor and tone of his writing makes even the most difficult of subjects relatable and important to understand in context. Knowing this, I chose God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine simply because I feel the material deals with very relevant and pertinent ideas as they relate to the world we live in today.

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The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam

The man in the wooden hat - Gardam, Jane

Summary: Tells the story of the fifty-year marriage of barrister Filth and his wife Betty, which is filled with secrets and hidden desires. - (Baker & Taylor)




Booklist Reviews
"Readers who enjoyed Gardam's Old Filth (2006) will welcome her new novel. A companion and an amplification rather than a sequel, it tells much of the same story, but from a different angle. Whereas jurist Sir Edward Feathers (aka Filth, for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong") was at the heart of the earlier work, here his wife, Betty, takes center stage, and we learn much more about their courtship and wedding in Hong Kong and their 50-year marriage. At the novel's end, we revisit Filth in old age, retired in Dorset and a widower wrestling with his past. Although the new book offers many rewards with its combination of sharp humor and deep humanity, readers who come upon it without having read Old Filth may be mystified at times. Albert Ross, for example, the dwarf who played such a pivotal role in Filth's life in the previous book, might seem an inexplicable presence here. Be sure to recommend the two books in tandem." Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Brilliant: The evolution of artificial light - Jane Brox

 Brillliant: The evolution of artificial light - Brox, Jane

Summary: Documents the role of light in history, tracing how the development of specific innovations had a pivotal influence on social and cultural evolution. By the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Five Thousand Days Like This One. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
Brox's fluency in history blossomed in the third of her memoirs about her family's farm, Clearing Land (2004). She now leaps from cultivation to illumination to cover another watershed in human civilization, the development of artificial light. A companionable writer, Brox begins by considering the simple yet ingenious lamps used by the artists who created prehistoric cave paintings, then moves on describe the exhausting labor involved in making household tallow candles. Whaling and whale oil lamps, the rise of gaslight, and the invention of kerosene and the start of the oil industry––Brox elucidates each wave of technological innovation with lively interest and an eye to social ramifications. Naturally the story of electricity dominates, delivering a curious cast of inventors to the page along with incisive critiques of electrical inequities, the appliance boom, and the need today for a new "smart grid." Brox also explains the adverse consequences of continual artificial light on humans and wildlife. Invaluable and thought-provoking, Brox's inquiry into artificial light reminds us that the too-much-of-a-good-thing paradox is inherent in all of our technological endeavors. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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I am America (and so can you) - Stephen Colbert

I am America (and so can you) - Colbert, Stephen

Summary: "From the host of television's comedy-punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23 hours of your day. This book contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast, his most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form. Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones. You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong"--From publisher description.

Kirkus Reviews
The fabulously fatuous father of "truthiness" and other neocon mantras expands his media icon with the obligatory book—and, read in the proper spirit, it's a lot of fun.So do we take Colbert, of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, seriously? Is he a persona or the real thing? Is he only in it for the money? No, that would be Ann Coulter, or maybe Friedrich Nietzsche, whose autobiography contained chapter titles such as "Why I Am Such a Genius" and "Why I Am Immortal." Colbert has a few more self-doubts than Nietzsche, if only for the sake of modesty. Would fellow blowhard Bill O'Reilly, for instance, ever confess to being frightened by baby carrots? Probably not, though, to judge by his books, O'Reilly would surely endorse Colbert's contention that such seemingly innocent but too-cute things are a gateway drug to gayness. Stranger theories have been proposed (where is Anita Bryant when you need her?), but no satisfactory argument has been mounted against it, and in all events the critics of Colbert are only those who do not "accept Jesus as my personal editor," namely "cable channels, the internet blogs, and the Hollywood celebritocracy, out there spewing ‘facts' like so many locusts descending on America's crop of ripe, tender values." Like John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, Colbert's litmus test of a book seems meant to be taken seriously only by those who get the joke, in which case the thing is very funny indeed. If, however, it is taken seriously to the point that the reader really starts believing that baby carrots are homoerotogenic, or that Koreans are evil, or that George Bush knows what he's doing, then it's time to take the book gently from that reader and commit said person to a nice quiet spell in the home for the bewildered.The answer, therefore, is yes, take Colbert seriously. Like a heart attack. Or like Lenny Bruce. Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

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Star Island - Carl Hiaasen

Star Island - Hiassen, Carl

Summary: Ann DeLuisa, body double for drug-addled pop star Cherry Pye, is kidnapped by an obsessed paparazzo, and Cherry's entourage must rescue her while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry's public--and from Cherry herself. - (Baker & Taylor)


Staff Review:
Another hilarious story from Mr. Hiasson, this one involving a pop star and paparazzi, as usual set in his home Florida. Fun read!

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Finding the still point : a beginner's guide to Zen meditation - John Loori Daido

Finding the still point : a beginner's guide to Zen meditation - Daido, John Loori

Summary: Provides information on the practice of Zen meditation, covering such topics as body positions, hara focus, breathing, relaxation exercise, and walking meditation. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
Loori, the revered and celebrated founder and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York, has authored numerous books on Zen Buddhist practice (The Eight Gates of Zen ). In this ultraslim illustrated primer, Loori distills that experience and wisdom into a resolute and economical guide for beginners. It will likely become a classic. Part One addresses the Zen basics such as meditation positions, hara focus, breathing, walking meditation and home practice. This section is particularly friendly for beginners with its concise instructional essays, most under 1,000 words. Loori's deceptively simple prose, arising from decades of practice and teaching, hits its mark as an arrow hits center target: the means and results are evident, but the flight is elegantly invisible. Part Two, a dharma talk on "The Great Way," effectively imparts "a direct expression of the spirit of Zen by the teacher to his… students." Tools such as an appropriately short glossary and suggested reading list are complemented by a 70-minute CD (not heard by PW ). The CD offers timed zazen sessions of 10 and 30 minutes, plus a brief talk by Loori on the benefits of meditation. This book-and-CD package promises to be a graceful gem in the legendary cosmic Diamond Net. (Sept.)

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Alone : Orphaned on the Ocean - Richard D. Logan and Tere Duperrault Fassbender

Alone : Orphaned on the Ocean - Logan, Richard D. and Fassbender, Tere Duperrault

Summary: Co-authored by a renowned psychologist and survival expert, this book delves into the details of how a little girl survived the at-sea murder of her family; the pod of whales who guarded her; and the aftermath and the recapturing of life.



Staff Review:
Stunning survival story of a little girl who was marooned on the sea after the murder of her family, and her road to recovering her life.

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Tinkers - Paul Harding

Tinkers - Harding, Paul

Summary: An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A tinker is a mender, and in Harding s spellbinding debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers humankind s contrary desires to conquer the "imps of disorder" and to be one with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his "strange and gentle" minister father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to becoming "unhitched" from everyday human existence and entering a state of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

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Buffy the vampire slayer: Season eight - Joss Whedon

Buffy the vampire slayer: Season eight - Whedon, Joss

Summary: In a direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series, the Slayers have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt, but not everything's fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly Reviews
The newest incarnation of the Buffy comic, written by series creator Whedon, is effectively the new season of the TV series. It plunges right into the show's dense cosmology and doesn't bother to explain anything to neophytes. Regulars will love it, however. "The Long Way Home" establishes the season 8 status quo: demon-killing heroine Buffy Summers is now commanding an army of hundreds of Slayers (and her little sister, Dawn, has been turned into a giant by Whedon's favorite transformative force, sex). Still, there's some creepy unfinished business from the TV show to deal with, and the U.S. Army is coming after her, too. A shorter story, "The Chain," concerns the bittersweet, truncated life of a Buffy look-alike sent underground as a decoy for the forces of evil. Jeanty, Owens and Lee's artwork, understandably, is in a very straightforward mainstream-comics style—the characters look as much as possible like the TV actors—although they manage a few interpretive flourishes, like a Cubist witch seen by one character in a fantasy sequence. The real draw, of course, is Whedon's writing. His dialogue is as snappy as ever, and his plots are hypercompressed and telegraphic. (Nov.)[Page 42]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.


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Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay - Collins, Suzanne
Series Title: The Hunger Games
Summary: Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol wants revenge ... and President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe!

Series: The Hunger Games

Staff Review:
Third installment of "The Hunger Games" does not disappoint. Fantastic , nail-biting stunner of a story all the way to the end.

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Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram - Roberts, Gregory David

Summary: Having escaped an Australian maximum security prison, a disillusioned man loses himself in the slums of Bombay, where he works for a drug kingpin, smuggles arms for a crime lord, and forges bonds with fellow exiles.



Kirkus Reviews
"The truth is, the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain": an elegantly written, page-turning blockbuster by Australian newcomer Roberts.The story is taken from Roberts's own life: an Australian escapes from prison (he committed armed robbery to support heroin addiction) and flees to Mumbai (here, Bombay), where, hiding in the slums, he finds himself becoming at once increasingly Christlike and increasingly drawn into the criminal demimonde. The narrator, Lin, now going by Shantaram Kishan Kharre, takes to healing the sick while learning the ways of India's poor through the good offices of a guide named Pribaker, who's a little shady and more than a little noble, and through the booze-fogged lens provided by dodgy Eurotrash expats like aging French bad boy Didier, who "spoke a lavishly accented English . . . to provoke and criticize friend and stranger alike with an indolent malignity." Measuring their lives in the coffeespoons of one monsoon season to the next, these characters work in the orbit of fabulous crimelords and their more actively malign lieutenants, all with murky connections to the drug trade, Bollywood, and foreign intelligence agencies (as one tells our narrator, "All the secret police of the world work together, Lin, and that is their biggest secret"). Violence begets violence, the afflicted are calmed and balmed, friends are betrayed, people are killed, prison doors are slammed shut, then opened by well-greased palms. It's an extraordinarily rich scene befitting Les Misérables, a possible influence here, or another less obvious but just as philosophically charged ancestor, James Michener's The Drifters. Roberts is a sure storyteller, capable of passages of precise beauty, and if his tale sometimes threatens to sprawl out of bounds and collapse under its own bookish, poetic weight, he draws its elements together at just the right moment.A roman-à-clef rejoinder to Suketu Mehta's Maximum City (p. 676), splendidly evoking an India few outsiders know.Agent: Jenny Darling/Jenny Darling & Associates, Australia Copyright Kirkus 2004 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Underground America : narratives of undocumented lives

Underground America : narratives of undocumented lives

Summary: Underground America tells the stories of men and women who have come to the United States seeking a better life for their families, only to be subjected to dehumanizing working conditions. Supporting myriad industries, these workers form an essential part of our economy — often by working the least desirable jobs without the most basic legal protections. Underground America allows this largely ignored part of our country to finally share its experiences.
- (Perseus Publishing)

Staff Review
Eye-opening and heart-breaking. These first person accounts share the lives and stories, hopes, dreams and crushing reality of 21 illegal immigrants.

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Puppet masters - Robert Heinlein

Puppet masters - Heinlein, Robert

Summary: First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed.

Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the U.S. government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting in. And four more agents who were sent in also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control.

Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the President of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand . . .

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The year of magical thinking - Joan Didion

The year of magical thinking - Didion, Joan

Summary: An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief. - (Baker & Taylor)




Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Didion--a master essayist, great American novelist, and astute political observer--uses autobiography as a vehicle for tonic inquiries into both the self and society. In Where I Was From (2003), she meshed family history with an examination of America's romance with the West. Here, in her most personal and generous book to date, she chronicles a year of grief with her signature blend of intellectual rigor and deep feeling. The ordeal began on Christmas 2003 when Didion and her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, learn that their daughter, Quintana Roo, is in intensive care with severe pneumonia and septic shock. Five grim days later, Dunne and Didion come home from the hospital, sit down to dinner, and Dunne suffers "a sudden massive coronary event" and dies. Married for 40 years and sharing a passion for literature, they were inordinately close. But Didion could not give herself over to grief: Quintana's health went from bad to worse as she developed a life-threatening hematoma on her brain. She survived, and Didion had the wherewithal to cope: "In times of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go the literature. Information was control." So she researches grief, schools herself in her daughter's medical conditions, and monitors the flux of flashbacks and fears that strobe through her mind. Didion describes with compelling precision exactly how grief feels, and how it impairs rational thought and triggers "magical thinking." The result is a remarkably lucid and ennobling anatomy of grief, matched by a penetrating tribute to marriage, motherhood, and love. ((Reviewed August 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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Charming Billy - Alice McDermott

Charming Billy - McDermott, Alice

Summary: When the late Billy Lynch's relatives and friends gather together to keep his memory alive, stories are woven and memories relived detailing his life in the close Irish-American community and the intricate feelings that resurface. 75,000 first printing. Tour. - (Baker & Taylor)

Kirkus Reviews
McDermott (At Weddings and Wakes, 1992, etc.) extends her view of Irish-American life with this gentle portrait of an alcoholic freshly dead from drink, and of the family he leaves behind to reveal and remember. Everyone at the wake agreed that Billy Lynch was a fine man- -when sober. But they also knew something of his pain, born from the long-ago death of his fiancé just before she was to come back to Brooklyn after a trip to Ireland. Only his cousin and best friend Dennis, though, knew the whole story: Eva didn't die, but she did marry her Irish love--a fact he concealed from Billy for 30 years, not knowing that Billy would mourn what might have been for the rest of his life, even after he met and married the gentle, love-struck Maeve. Then, in Ireland in 1975, to take The Pledge after years of hard drinking, Billy learned the truth by chancing to meet Eva as he was on his way to visit her grave--and promptly took back his Pledge. As he had in times previous, Dennis helped Maeve through the years that followed, answering Billy's wee-hours phone calls and bringing him to bed whenever he'd passed out, even as Dennis's own wife sickened of cancer and died. And now Dennis's daughter, grown with children of her own, has come home to support him after Billy was found dying in the street--just as Dennis supported Billy and Maeve, and as his father before him supported countless penniless Irish relations as they made the leap across the Atlantic to a new life. It's this daughter who puts the pieces of Billy's sad but profoundly loyal existence together, mingling them with her father's and her own in a special way that leaves her well prepared for the turn of events to come. A softly resonant and nostalgic tale told so masterfully, so movingly, that it seems to distill a human essence on virtually every page. Copyright 1998 Kirkus Reviews

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Story of a girl : a novel - Sara Zarr

Story of a girl : a novel - Zarr, Sara

Summary: In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna's life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Deanna was 13 when her father caught her and 17-year-old Tommy having sex. Three years later, she is still struggling with the repercussions: how Tommy jokingly made her into the school slut; how the story became legend in her small town; how her father looked at her then--and now doesn't look at her at all. Her brother, Darren, has mistakes to handle, too: he lives with his girlfriend and their baby in his parents' basement. And while Deanna's mother seems numb, her father is perpetually angry and depressed. Meanwhile, in a misguided search for love brought on by the confusion of seeing Tommy again, Deanna intentionally hurts her two closest friends. Although she's more aware than most how a single event can define a person, Deanna still struggles to gain insight into herself, her family, and her friends. When she finally does, she's able to create small but positive changes in her relationships with them all. Characters are well drawn, especially Deanna, whose complicated, deeply felt emotions turn the story. There are plenty of heartbreaking moments, too, including a poignant confrontation with Tommy. Though nothing is miraculously fixed by the close, everyone's perspective has changed for the better. This is a thoughtful, well-executed debut from an author who understands how to write for teens. ((Reviewed March 1, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

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Interpreter of maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of maladies - Lahiri, Jhumpa

Summary: A debut collection of short fiction blends elements of Indian traditions with the complexities of American culture in such tales as "A Temporary Matter," in which a young Indian-American couple confronts their grief over the loss of a child, while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. Original. 20,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

Kirkus Reviews
India is an inescapable presence in this strong first collection's nine polished and resonant tales, most of which have appeared in The New Yorker and other publications. Lahiri, who was born in London and grew up in Rhode Island, offers stories that stress the complex mechanics of adjustment to new circumstances, relationships, and cultures. Sometimes they re narrated by outside observers like the flatmates of an excited (presumably epileptic) young woman cured by relations with men (in The Treatment of Bibi Haldar ); the preadolescent American schoolboy cared for at Mrs. Sen s, where the eponymous immigrant is tortured by the pressure of adapting to American ways; or, most compellingly, the Indian-American girl emotionally touched and subtly matured by the kindness her parents show to a Pakistani friend who fears for the safety of his family back home amid civil war ( When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine ). Richly detailed portrayals of young marriages dominate tales like that of an Indian emigrant's oddly fulfilling relationship with his landlady, a bellicose centenarian ( The Third and Final Continent ); This Blessed House, in which the wedge afflicting a young couple is widened when they discover Christian paraphernalia left behind by their home's former owners; and A Temporary Matter, which delicately traces how a pair of academics, continually mourning their stillborn baby, find in an exchange of confessions a renewal of their intimacy. Lahiri is equally skilled with more sophisticated plots, as in her title story's seriocomic disclosure of a middle-aged tour guide's self-delusive romance, or in the complexity of Sexy, about a young American woman who s fascinated not only by her married Bengali lover but by all other things Indian including the manner in which she is and isn t deflected from her passion by an afternoon with an Indian boy victimized by his own father's infidelity. Moving and authoritative pictures of culture shock and displaced identity. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews

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The wild braid : a poet reflects on a century in the garden - Stanley Kunitz

The wild braid : a poet reflects on a century in the garden - Kunitz, Stanley

Summary: Throughout his life Stanley Kunitz has been creating poetry and tending gardens. This book is the distillation of conversations - none previously published - that took place between 2002 and 2004. Beginning with the garden, that "work of the imagination," the explorations journey through personal recollections, the creative process, and the harmony of the life cycle. A bouquet of poems and a total of 26 full-color photographs accompany the various sections. - (Blackwell North Amer)

Booklist Reviews
Kunitz, who will turn 100 years old in July, has twice been named Poet Laureate of the U.S. He is not only a distinguished and luminous lyric poet but also an ardent gardener. As he reflects on his callings in this lovely mix of prose, poetry, conversation, and photographs, he illuminates the many ways each practice nurtures the other. Kunitz traces his rapport with nature to his boyhood, when he found refuge from family tragedy in woods and fields. In describing his seaside Provincetown garden, he contemplates the garden as "the cosmos in miniature" and a "compressed parable of the human experience." He observes that both gardening and writing poetry depend on the "wild permissiveness of the inner life." In the aftermath of a serious illness and an amazing recovery, Kunitz talks radiantly about death and art, and how an artist's work expresses "gratitude for the gift of life." In all, this is a graceful and moving glimpse into a rare and giving artist's refined poetics, garden aesthetics, and spirituality. ((Reviewed May 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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13 Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Thirteen reasons why - Asher, Jay

Summary: When high school student Clay Jensen receives a box in the mail containing several cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

Kirkus Reviews
"Everything affects everything," declares Hannah Baker, who killed herself two weeks ago. After her death, Clay Jensen—who had a crush on Hannah—finds seven cassette tapes in a brown paper package on his doorstep. Listening to the tapes, Hannah chronicles her downward spiral and the 13 people who led her to make this horrific choice. Evincing the subtle—and not so subtle—cruelties of teen life, from rumors, to reputations, to rape, Hannah explains to her listeners that, "in the end, everything matters." Most of the novel quite literally takes place in Clay's head, as he listens to Hannah's voice pounding in his ears through his headphones, creating a very intimate feel for the reader as Hannah explains herself. Her pain is gut-wrenchingly palpable, and the reader is thrust face-first into a world where everything is related, an intricate yet brutal tapestry of events, people and places. Asher has created an entrancing character study and a riveting look into the psyche of someone who would make this unfortunate choice. A brilliant and mesmerizing debut from a gifted new author. (Fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

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Jack Kerouac's American journey : the real-life odyssey of On the road - Paul Maher

Jack Kerouac's American journey : the real-life odyssey of On the road - Maher, Paul

Summary: A Kerouac scholar traces the true adventures behind the twentieth century classic novel and discusses the real-life inspirations for the novel's memorable characters. - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly Reviews
This straightforward recounting of the travels that inspired On the Road attempts to fill in some of the gaps left by the already extensive chronicles of the famous beat's life. Though no period of the beat time line has been more fully documented, Maher (Kerouac: His Life and Work ) tackles the details with a clear-eyed objectivity that is refreshingly focused and relatively devoid of the spin that often plagues these endeavors. Maher draws on a wide range of sources, most notably some of Kerouac's less read works such as Visions of Cody , to gain insight into little-explored aspects of the writer's personality. For example, while Kerouac's Thomas Wolfe–obsession has been exhausted by scholars and biographers, Maher delves into Kerouac's experiences with Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, and, on a related tangent, explores Kerouac's Catholicism more comprehensively than most. Maher's book also fulfills the promise of its subtitle by showing the reader how real-life events corresponded to the famous passages of On the Road, with Maher's impressive research uncovering small gems like the appearance of a cowboy in a Colorado diner. Moments like these render this work another fine tool in the growing arsenal of the true Kerouac obsessive. (Oct. 9)[Page 153]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

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Y: the last man - Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra

Y: the last man - Vaughan, Brian K. & Guerra, Pia

Summary: Y: THE LAST MAN is the gripping saga of Yorick Brown, an unemployed and unmotivated slacker who discovers that he is the only male left in the world after a plague of unknown origin instantly kills every mammal with a Y chromosome. Accompanied by his mischievous monkey and the mysterious Agent 355, York embarks on a transcontinental journey to find his girlfriend and discover why he is the last man on Earth.

Now, the entire critically acclaimed Y: THE LAST MAN saga written by Brian K. Vaughan, one of the writers of LOST, is collected into a series of oversized, hardcover editions. . - (Random House, Inc.) 


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If God is love: rediscovering grace in an ungracious world - Philip Gulley

If God is love: rediscovering grace in an ungracious world - Gulley, Philip

Summary: Argues that one's beliefs play a key role in how one lives and interacts in the world, inviting readers to envision a world where everyone shares a belief that God loves every person and proposing world transformation through spiritual change.



Booklist Reviews
Gulley, a minister, and Mulholland, a theologian, turn the popular slogan "God is love" into a question that opens a Pandora's box of unanswered queries that some prefer remain unanswerable. If God is love, how are those who profess belief in God to act? If God is love, how does Christianity explain the vastly accepted dualistic theology of heaven and hell? If God is love, how can Christians live in God's grace? How can we continue to hate, slander, murder, and condemn our neighbors? If God is love, and God commands us to love our enemies, how can we justify war? Gently taking organized religion to task for perpetuating its power to control people, and only slightly lacing their discussion with their personal political opinions, the two Quakers propose ways to live, work, play, and be in a state of grace. Many may fault their approach for seeming overly simple at times. Yet anyone searching for a "graciousness primer" might look on this book as a commonsense example of such a manual. ((Reviewed October 1, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.


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My Name Is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok

My Name Is Asher Lev - Potok, Chaim

Summary: Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy.In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.


Review:
A novel of finely articulated tragic power. . . . Little short of a work of genius. --The New York Times Book Review

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Wittgenstein's Poker - David Edmonds & John Eidinow

Wittgenstein's poker : the story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers - Edmonds, David & Eidinow, John

Summary: A blend of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection brings to life the meeting of two great philosophers--Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper--on October 25, 1946 in Cambridge, England. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Here is ivory-tower drama at its crackling best. On Cambridge University's campus in 1946, two of the twentieth century's most notable philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, squared off in an intense 10-minute exchange rumored to have led to Wittgenstein brandishing a red-hot poker. What actually happened in this now-legendary clash, and how it reflects the development of philosophy and the times, is what Edmonds and Eidinow set out to discover. Wittgenstein came to the encounter with a reputation as a "charismatic genius." Popper, by contrast, presented a mundane picture, his academic life falling in the shadow of Wittgenstein, whose views on philosophy he fiercely derided. Both men were of Jewish extraction, displaced from Austria by the Nazi takeover. But Wittgenstein's wealth had allowed him freedoms denied the more middle class Popper. Feelings from all these myriad gulfs spilled over into the Cambridge encounter. The authors' profiling of the audience, which included Bertrand Russell, further illuminates what stoked the philosophical fires that day. Moving quickly from one brief chapter to another, Edmonds and Eidinow bring rich interpretation to the extraordinary incident, a BBC documentary on which is in the making. ((Reviewed October 1, 2001)) Copyright 2001 Booklist Reviews

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Sometimes a great notion: a novel - Ken Kesey

Sometimes a great notion: a novel - Kesey, Ken

Summary: Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper family’s rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.

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The once and future king - T.H. White

The once and future king - White, T.H.
Summary: The world's greatest fantasy classic is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot, of Merlyn and Guinevere, of beasts who talk and men who fly, of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad. It is the fantasy masterpiece by which all others are judged.

Quartet of novels by T.H. White, published in a single volume in 1958. The quartet comprises The Sword in the Stone (1938), The Queen of Air and Darkness--first published as The Witch in the Wood (1939)--The Ill-Made Knight (1940), and The Candle in the Wind (published in the composite volume, 1958). The series is a retelling of the Arthurian legend, from Arthur's birth to the end of his reign, and is based largely on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. After White's death, a conclusion to The Once and Future King was found among his papers; it was published in 1977 as The Book of Merlyn. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

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