Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. - Sam Wasson

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the dawn of the modern woman - Wasson, Sam

Summary: Depicts the making of the iconic film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in the late 1950s, drawing on interviews with those involved in the film's production, including the actors, producer Richard Shepherd, and Truman Capote's biographer. Sam Wasson takes the reader from pre-production to on-set feuds and conflicts, while also noting Hepburn's impact on fashion (Givenchy's little black dress), Hollywood glamour, sexual politics, and the new morality.

Library Journal Reviews
Wasson (A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards) traces Audrey Hepburn's life and career leading up to Breakfast at Tiffany's and describes how her role inspired women as they emerged from restrictive 1950s cultural, social, and sexual stereotypes. At the same time, he weaves in the story of Truman Capote, author of the book that was the basis for the film, and examines the complex sources for his famous character Holly Golightly. By the time Wasson arrives at the shooting of the film, readers will have a solid understanding of Hepburn and Capote as well as many others in their spheres and involved with the film—from director Blake Edwards and composer Henry Mancini to costumer Edith Head and screenwriter George Axelrod. The anecdotes are numerous and deftly told, and Wasson does not shy away from relevant interpersonal challenges. VERDICT This well-researched, entertaining page-turner should appeal to a broad audience, particularly those who enjoy film history that focuses on the human factors involved in the creative process while also drawing on larger social and cultural contexts.—Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

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Anna and the French kiss - Stephanie Perkins

Anna and the French kiss - Perkins, Stephanie

Summary: When Anna's romance-novelist father sends her to an elite American boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school, she reluctantly goes, and meets an amazing boy who becomes her best friend, in spite of the fact that they both want something more.



Booklist Reviews
Anna is not happy about spending senior year at a Paris boarding school, away from her Atlanta home, best friend Bridgette, and crush Toph. Adapting isn't easy, but she soon finds friends and starts enjoying French life, especially its many cinemas; she is an aspiring film critic. Complications arise, though, when she develops feelings for cute—and taken—classmate Etienne, even though she remains interested in Toph. Her return home for the holidays brings both surprises, betrayals, unexpected support, and a new perspective on what matters in life—and love. Featuring vivid descriptions of Parisian culture and places, and a cast of diverse, multifaceted characters, including adults, this lively title incorporates plenty of issues that will resonate with teens, from mean girls to the quest for confidence and the complexities of relationships in all their forms. Despite its length and predictable crossed-signal plot twists, Perkins' debut, narrated in Anna's likable, introspective voice, is an absorbing and enjoyable read that highlights how home can refer to someone, not just somewhere. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The center of winter - Marya Hornbacher

The center of winter - Hornbacher, Marya

Summary: In the aftermath of her husband's devastating suicide, Claire Schiller moves with their two young children into the home of her in-laws during an oppressive Minnesota winter and shares unexpected moments of comfort, healing, and humor. A first novel. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ In northern Minnesota the winters seem to go on forever: bleak, gray, and everlasting. Dismal enough to drive a man to drink or despair, or both. So when, in the midst of this gloom, Arthur Schiller takes a gun to his head, he puts an end to his sorrow over his unhappy marriage, his mentally ill son, and failures real or imagined. His wife, Claire, had just told Arnold that she was going to leave him, and naturally blames herself for his death. His 12-year-old son, Esau, recently committed to the state mental hospital, blames himself, too. Even six-year-old Kate somehow feels responsible. In this eloquently evocative portrait of how one family copes with tragedy, Hornbacher limns their mourning with exquisite sensitivity and gentle humor. With precocious Kate as the heart of the novel, fragile Esau as its conscience, Hornbacher has created characters who are genuine, engaging, and unforgettable. Following her brutally honest memoir, the acclaimed Wasted (1998), with this stunning debut novel, Hornbacher, who inevitably will be compared to Alice Sebold, proves herself to be a master storyteller. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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The particular sadness of lemon cake - Aimee Bender

The particular sadness of lemon cake - Bender, Aimee

Summary: Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.



Library Journal Reviews
Rose Edelstein is nearly nine when she first tastes her mother's feelings baked into a slice of birthday cake. Her "mouth was filling up with the taste of smallness…of upset." Meals become an agony for Rose, and she subsists on junk food from the school vending machine. When her mother begins an affair, Rose can taste that, too. Her brilliant older brother, Joseph, seems to have some type of autism spectrum disorder, though it is never named. Rose grows up and manages what she now considers her food skill, discerning not only the city of production but also the personality and temperament of the growers and pickers. She also draws closer to her father, finally understanding his prepossessions. This is an unusual family, even by California standards. VERDICT Bender (Willful Creatures) deconstructs one of our most pleasurable activities, eating, and gives it a whole new flavor. She smooths out the lumps and grittiness of life to reveal its zest. Highly recommended for readers with sophisticated palates. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/10; online reading group guide and eight-city tour.]—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal


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The Cypress House - Michael Koryta

The Cypress House - Koryta, Michael

Summary: When Arlen Wagner awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he tries to warn them. Only 19-year-old Paul Brickhill believes him, and the two abandon the train, hoping to escape certain death. They continue south, but are soon stranded at the Cypress House--an isolated Gulf Coast boarding house run by the beautiful Rebecca Cady--directly in the path of an approaching hurricane. But the storm isn't the only approaching danger.

Staff Review
An absolutely chilling book, Mr. Koryta tells his tale with a cinematic realism that makes you see it all right in front of you. I really enjoyed his last title, "So Cold the River", as well.

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The great typo hunt - Jeff Deck

The great typo hunt: two friends changing the world, one correction at a time - Deck, Jeff

Summary: An account of the authors' haphazard cross-country effort to correct spelling and punctuation errors displayed on public signs relates how they discovered underlying truths about America's educational history and racial heritage.



Staff Review
I thought I saw typos everywhere before I read this book, but now they jump out at me. This is a very entertaining book. These guys are hilariously obsessive about things like apostrophes and spelling on signs, and their attempt try to get business owners to change them in real time is great reading.

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Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere - Gaiman, Neil

Summary: After he helps a stranger on a London sidewalk, Richard Mayhew discovers an alternate city beneath London, and must fight to survive if he is to return to the London he knew.




Booklist Reviews
Londoner Richard Mayhew and his ice-princess fiancee are hurrying to dinner with her media-tycoon boss when Richard spies a young woman lying dirty and bleeding in the street. Uncharacteristically not thinking twice, he picks the apparent beggar up and, leaving his intended on the spot, carries her to his apartment to recuperate. Next morning, two eerie men are at Richard's door. They are looking for the young woman, who is in the bathroom when they arrive. Over Richard's protests, they barge in and search the place, but the girl is nowhere to be found. After they leave, however, she shows up at Richard's elbow in the kitchen. Strange. But humdrum compared to the quest that Door (the young woman) enlists Richard to undertake with her in London Below, a subterranean city made up of long-forgotten parts of historic London and populated by people who "fell through the cracks," as Richard discovers he has shortly after Door first leaves him, and friends fail to recognize him, while strangers don't even seem to see him. The millions who know The Sandman, the spectacularly successful graphic novel series Gaiman writes, will have a jump start over other fantasy fans at conjuring the ambience of his London Below, but by no means should those others fail to make the setting's acquaintance. It is an Oz overrun by maniacs and monsters, and it becomes a Shangri-La for Richard. Excellent escapist fare. ((Reviewed May 15, 1997)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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The rape of Nanking - Iris Chang

The rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II - Chang, Iris

Summary: Published on the sixtieth anniversary of the atrocity, a chilling, true account of the 1937 massacre of 250,000 Chinese civilians by the invading Japanese military details a carnage for which the Japanese government has never admitted responsibility. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
In December 1937, the Japanese army captured Nanking, then China's capital. Thereafter Japanese embarked on two months of mass murder that have come to be called the rape of Nanking and during which as many as a third of a million Chinese may have been killed. Most survivors owed their lives to the heroic efforts of foreign residents, including a German engineer who was head of the local Nazi Party. Although thoroughly documented then and since, the rape of Nanking has been largely ignored by subsequent generations, as China and the West built new and better relations with Japan. This ignorance now seems part of the Japanese effort to portray themselves as innocent victims in the Pacific war. But if the events in Nanking are appalling in one way, Japanese editing of history is appalling in another. Chang's book is a memorial to the victims of Nan-king, a damning indictment of Japanese political historiography, a valuable addition to Pacific war literature, and a literary model of how to speak about the unspeakable. ((Reviewed December 1, 1997)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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Moloka'i - Alan Brennert

Moloka'i - Brennert, Alan

Summary: Dreaming of far-off lands away from her loving 1890s Honolulu home, seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her reentry into the world. 17,500 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Kirkus Reviews
A gritty story of love and survival in a Hawaiian leper colony: more a portrait of old Hawaii than a compelling narrative.The chronicle of leprosy-infected Rachel Kalama begins in 1891 in Honolulu and ends in the late 1960s on isolated Moloka'i, site of the Kalaupapa Leprosy settlement. As much a record of her life as of the changes in Hawaii itself over the years, screenwriter and fantasy author Brennert (Her Pilgrim Soul, 1990, etc.) vividly and graphically details both the landscape and the disease as he tells Rachel's story. She's five at the start, when her father, a sailor, comes back in time for Christmas with another doll for her collection and gifts for her older siblings Sarah, Ben, and Kimo. A few months later, Rachel is found to have leprosy, and the happy life the family has enjoyed ends. Considered dangerously contagious, Rachel is sent to the settlement on Molaka'i. There, in a hospital run by Catholic nuns, she lives with other young girls affected in varying degrees. As the years pass, Rachel's friends die; she befriends Sister Catherine, whose affection will sustain her; but, with the exception of her father, she has no contact with her family. Poor Rachel is doomed not only to suffer horribly but also to bear witness to history: a history that includes the end of the monarchy, the US annexation, the arrival of movies and airplanes, the Depression, and Pearl Harbor. Brennert also details changes in the treatment of leprosy--herbal injections, surgery, and, finally, the cure in the 1940's: sulfa derivatives. While Hawaii changes, Rachel grows up, falls in love, and marries Kenji, a fellow patient. She bears a daughter, but Ruth must immediately give the child up for adoption to avoid infection. Amid the heartbreak, Kenji is murdered and Rachel's symptoms worsen (she loses the fingers of her right hand). Rachel, though, is a survivor, and unexpected reunions compensate as she returns to a much-changed Honolulu.Not a comfortable read, but certainly instructive.Agent: Molly Friedrich/Aaron Priest Literary Agency Copyright Kirkus 2003 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Plainsong - Kent Haruf

Plainsong - Haruf, Kent

Summary: From the unsettled lives of a small-town teacher struggling to raise two boys alone in the face of their mother's retreat from life, a pregnant teenage girl with nowhere to go, and two elderly bachelor farmers emerges a new vision of life and family as their diverse destinies intertwine. 200,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Kirkus Reviews
A stirring meditation on the true nature and necessity of the family. Among the several damaged families in this beautifully cadenced and understated tale is that of Tom Guthrie, a high-school history teacher in small Holt, Colorado, who s left to raise his two young sons, Ike and Bobby, alone when his troubled wife first withdraws from them and then, without explanation, abandons them altogether. Victoria Roubideaux, a high-school senior, is thrown out of her house when her mother discovers she s pregnant. Harold and Raymond McPheron, two aging but self-reliant cattle ranchers, are haunted by their imaginings of what they may have missed in life by electing never to get married, never to strike out on their own. Haruf (Where You Once Belonged, 1989, etc.) believably draws these various incomplete or troubled figures together. Victoria, pretty, insecure, uncertain of her own worth, has allowed herself to be seduced by a weak, spoiled lout who quickly disappears. When her bitter mother locks her out, she turns to Maggie Jones, a compassionate teacher and a neighbor, for help. Maggie places Victoria with the McPheron brothers, an arrangement that Guthrie, a friend of both Maggie and the McPherons, supports. Some of Haruf s best passages trace with precision and delicacy the ways in which, gradually, the gentle, the lonely brothers and Victoria begin to adapt to each other and then, over the course of Victoria's pregnancy, to form a resilient family unit. Harold and Raymond's growing affection for Victoria gives her a sense of self-worth, which proves crucial when her vanished (and abusive) boyfriend, comes briefly back into her life. Haruf is equally good at catching the ways in which Tom and his sons must quietly struggle to deal with their differing feelings of loss, guilt, and abandonment. Everyone is struggling here, and it's their decency, and their determination to care for one another, Haruf suggests, that gets them through. A touching work, as honest and precise as the McPheron brothers themselves. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews

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One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One hundred years of solitude - Garcia Marquez, Gabriel

Summary: Probably García Márquez’s finest and most famous work, One Hun-dred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.
Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1928 in the town of Araca-taca, Colombia. Latin America’s preeminent man of letters, he is considered by many to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He began his writing career as a journalist and is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Collected Stories. His most recent work is a memoir, Living to Tell the Tale. García Már-quez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.


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City of thieves: a novel - David Benioff

City of thieves: a novel - Benioff, David

Summary: A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.



Booklist Reviews
In 1941, the Germans circled Leningrad, starving its remaining citizens. His mother and sister evacuated, 17-year-old Lev Beniov remained, heeding the call for every able-bodied man to come to the defense of his country. After being caught out after curfew, Lev is thrown in the Crosses, the notorious prison, and while waiting for what he assumes will be an inglorious end, a summary execution at dawn, he is joined by the gregarious, indefatigable, and literature-spouting soldier, Kolya, imprisoned for desertion. When their lives are spared, they are assigned the impossible task of acquiring a dozen eggs for the wedding of a colonel's daughter, a task that takes them into the company of cannibals and Einsatzgruppen, dreaded Nazi death squads. A high-spirited adventure, Benioff's second novel (following the 2001 debut, The 25th Hour), ostensibly an account of the author's grandfather—a quiet immigrant who sold his real-estate business and retired to Florida with his wife—takes more than a little poetic license. When Benioff tells his grandfather that a few things don't make sense in the narrative, his reply: "You're a writer. Make it up." Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

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Confessions of a blabbermouth - Mike Carey

Confessions of a blabbermouth - Carey, Mike

Summary: Tasha Flanigan loves to talk, especially on her blog, and when her mom brings home a creepy boyfriend and his daughter, Tasha can't help but talk about them.




Library Media Connection
This hilarious, British graphic novel chronicles the misadventures of Tasha, a manic blogger whose life is one huge drama. Her divorced mother brings home yet another boyfriend, a hack writer with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. His mysterious daughter, Chloe, starts school with Tasha; the plot thickens from that point on. Reluctantly, Chloe and Tasha work together on the yearbook committee, this year staffed by the 12s instead of the 13s, creating great animosity between the classes. Sylvie and her cronies, who terrorize the school, make their lives miserable. Throw into the mix Ben, a not-quite-yet boyfriend of Tasha's, and mayhem ensues. Mike Carey teams up with his teenage daughter, Louise, to write this very funny scenario. Louise's contribution is very evident in the understanding of the school scene. Alexovich's delightful illustrations with exaggerated, bold strokes and grimacing facial expressions complement the text nicely. The humorous dialogue is quite clever and very funny. Tasha's meanderings on her blog are both a creative outlet and a vent for her intense frustration with her mother's string of boyfriends. Real world situations create a very enjoyable romp through the ups and downs of Tasha's adolescence. Recommended. Susie Nightingale, Library Media Specialist, Santa Fe Trail Junior High School, Olathe, Kansas © 2008 Linworth Publishing, Inc.

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The Second Base Club - Greg Trine

The Second Base Club - Trine, Greg

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Elroy will do almost anything, from joining the wrestling team to forming a band, in order to get a girlfriend, until he finally realizes the truth of a girl friend's words about being himself.




Kirkus Reviews
Full of gauche guy humor, this coming-of-age tale about a 16-year-old boy's attempts to get to second base (with a girl) takes a while to get going, but once all the plot elements come together, it becomes warm and winning. Elroy isn't exactly sure what second base is, but he knows that he wants to get there. In his quest to answer that ancient question--what do girls want?--Elroy tries wrestling, creating a band and (gasp!) talking to them. Although his efforts have a tendency to misfire, his hard work pays off in other ways, causing him to grow and develop both physically and emotionally. So when his mettle is tested--a group of jocks actually have a second-base club that involves an unsavory secret--Elroy is ready. It's hard to buy that the news of the club hasn't leaked, and the ending feels a tad rushed, but by then the reader is so squarely in Elroy's corner that it really doesn't matter. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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