The song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

The song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Summary: A retelling of the legend of Achilles follows Patroclus and Achilles, the golden son of King Peleus, as they lay siege to Troy after Helen of Sparta is kidnapped--a cause that tests their friendship and forces them to make the ultimate sacrifice. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
Following in Mary Renault's footsteps and adding some surefooted steps of her own, Miller debuts with a novel that combines the poetic drama of The Iliad with a 21st-century understanding of war, sex, sexual politics, and Trojan War heroism. Miller's tale begins with Patroclus' unhappy childhood as the disappointing son of an ambitious king. Exiled to Phthia, the 10-year-old is befriended by confident Prince Achilles. Over time their friendship blooms into love, while Achilles' mother, the sea nymph Thetis, grows jealously resentful. Patroclus and Achilles follow Agamemnon to recapture Helen from Troy, but the siege wears heavily on Achilles, who awaits the destiny his mother has foretold and his mentor, the centaur Master Chiron, has forewarned: to become the greatest of Greek warriors. In addition to the central story of Achilles and Patroclus, Miller offers a complex study of Briseis, the trophy beauty who inspires a rift between Achilles and Agamemnon; evokes Iphigenia's sacrifice at Aulis in one quick, brutal image; and probes relationships Homer only hinted at. With language both evocative of her predecessors and fresh, and through familiar scenes that explore new territory, this first-time novelist masterfully brings to life an imaginative yet informed vision of ancient Greece featuring divinely human gods and larger-than-life mortals. She breaks new ground retelling one of the world's oldest stories about men in love and war, but it is the extraordinary women—Iphigenia, Briseis, and Thetis—who promise readers remarkable things to come as Miller carves out a custom-made niche in historical fiction. Agent: Barer Literary. (Mar.)

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St. Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves - Karen Russell

St. Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves - Russell, Karen

Summary: Presents ten short stories set in the Florida Everglades and starring children who must survive against incredible odds.



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Russell's short stories, some of which have been published in the New Yorker and other journals, have already generated widespread attention, as has her youth: at 24, she's been included in New York magazine's list of "25 under 25 to Watch." This unusual, haunting collection confirms that the hype is well deserved. Like the individuals in Gina Oschner's stories (People I Wanted to Be, 2005), Russell's characters are caught between overlapping worlds--living and dead, primal and civilized, animal and human--and the adolescent narrators are neither children nor adults. Even the settings, the murky swamps and coasts of the Florida Everglades, reinforce the sense of wild impermanence. In "Haunting Olivia," two brothers spend their nights diving in search of their drowned sister's ghost ("Then what? Do we Genie-in-the-bottle her?" one brother asks). The title story, about the daughters of werewolves who are sent to boarding school to learn human behavior, is unforgettable. Russell writes even the smallest details with audacious, witty precision: an acne-plagued kid's face is a "pituitary horror, a patchwork of runny sores and sebaceous dips." And her scenes deftly balance mythology and the gleeful absurdity of Monty Python with a darker urgency to acknowledge the ancient, the infinite, and the inadequacies of being human: "Marooned in a clumsy body . . . I'm an imposter, an imperfect monster," says a young diver among silvery, streamlined fish. Original and astonishing, joyful and unsettling, these are stories that will stay with readers. ((Reviewed September 15, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews

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The tenth of December - George Saunders

The tenth of December: stories - Saunders, George

Summary: A collection of stories includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory Lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Saunders, a self-identified disciple of Twain and Vonnegut, is hailed for the topsy-turvy, gouging satire in his three previous, keenly inventive short story collections. In the fourth, he dials the bizarreness down a notch to tune into the fantasies of his beleaguered characters, ambushing readers with waves of intense, unforeseen emotion. Saunders drills down to secret aquifers of anger beneath ordinary family life as he portrays parents anxious to defang their children but also to be better, more loving parents than their own. The title story is an absolute heart-wringer, as a pudgy, misfit boy on an imaginary mission meets up with a dying man on a frozen pond. In "Victory Lap," a young-teen ballerina is princess-happy until calamity strikes, an emergency that liberates her tyrannized neighbor, Kyle, "the palest kid in all the land." In "Home," family friction and financial crises combine with the trauma of a court-martialed Iraq War veteran, to whom foe and ally alike murmur inanely, "Thank you for your service." Saunders doesn't neglect his gift for surreal situations. There are the inmates subjected to sadistic neurological drug experiments in "Escape from Spiderhead" and the living lawn ornaments in "The Semplica Girl Diaries." These are unpredictable, stealthily funny, and complexly affecting stories of ludicrousness, fear, and rescue. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Years of the forest - Helen Hoover

Years of the forest - Hoover, Helen

Summary: Clear brush and paths . Lay hardwood floor . Install wiring . Make a living . Take a vacation......These are some of the items that Adrian Hoover jotted down on his to-do list , soon after he and his wife , Helen , gave up urban comfort for the deeper delights of the wilderness in 1954. THE YEARS ON THE FOREST by Helen Hoover elaborates on that deceptively short list and describes the difficulties inherent in accomplishing each of those tasks . In fact , it would take sixteen years to check off every item on the list . This is the story of the Hoover's education in wilderness housekeeping and of the surprising challenges they faced at each step...

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Nothing's shocking - Jane's Addiction (CD)

Nothing's shocking - Jane's Addiction (CD)

Review
Though the songs aren't quite as good as those on Ritual De Lo Habitual, this album is much more consistent, with a heavy rock-funk-punk mix that's a pleasure to hear. The slower songs (especially "Summertime Rolls" and "Jane Says") work well, while the up-tempo material--in particular the closer "Pig's in Zen"--is both catchy and ambitious. It's a fine album overall, and if the band's Zeppelin-ward aspirations don't quite work, their music is still quite good in its own right. --Genevieve Williams Amazon.com

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The legendary Prestige quintet sessions - Miles Davis Quintet

The legendary Prestige quintet sessions - Miles Davis Quintet

CD Hotlist Reviews
These 1955/56 quintet sessions mark the point where Miles Davis kicked his drug habit and began to distinguish himself as a major bandleader and innovator. He was fronting his first great quintet, with John Coltrane on tenor sax, Paul Chambers on bass, pianist Red Garland, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Recorded over two dates in 1955 and 1956, this is some of the most engaging small group jazz of the decade, and resulted in five albums: The New Miles Davis Quintet, Relaxin', Steamin', Workin', and Cookin'. An additional CD includes rare live material from this era, plus enhanced content that includes five transcriptions of Miles Davis trumpet solos. Coltrane's playing is lyrical and expressive, Miles's trumpet is angelic, and the whole groove is gently sublime – these are musical giants, slowly waking to their explosive potential. Essential. (GH) Copyright CD HotList 2006.

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The media relations department of Hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday - Neil MacFarquhar

The media relations department of Hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday: unexpected encounters in the changing Middle East - MacFarquhar, Neil

Summary: The author narrates his encounters with residents of countries throughout the Middle East as they conduct their everyday lives and adjust to the dramatic political and social upheavals that have occurred throughout the region.

Kirkus Reviews
A sly, knowledgeable look at the changes in Arab mores and politics since the 1970s, from a New York Times journalist with extensive experience in the region.MacFarquhar (The Sand Café, 2006), the Times' former Cairo bureau chief and current UN chief, grew up in Marsa Brega, Libya, where his American father worked as a chemical engineer. Largely sheltered from the repercussions of the Six-Day War in 1967 and the military coup by Muammar Al-Qadhafi in 1969, the author returned to the Middle East after college in America to find out what he missed, learning Arabic and traveling through the area as a foreign correspondent. Here MacFarquhar attempts to uncover the positive changes in Libya, still plagued by Qadhafi's "erratic, often adolescent theatrics" and without a clear notion of his succession; Lebanon, where farmers in the Bekaa valley rue the end of the civil war in 1990, which eliminated their lucrative business growing hashish and opium; Kuwait, where the author interviewed a sex therapist (" ‘A veiled woman writing about sex. Can you imagine? They love it, sweetie,' she told me, laughing"); Saudi Arabia, where fatwas, or religious edicts, are issued daily on social and political matters; and Syria, where he spoke with Mohamed Shahrour, an outspoken critic of the narrow, violence-centered interpretation of the Koran. Everywhere the author encounters the repressive tentacles of the secret police agencies, or mukhabarat, especially in Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabi clerics, and Morocco, ruled by the whims of the king. Having to navigate among oil wealth, repression and the simmering resentment of a struggling populace continues to plague the Arab states, stifling what MacFarquhar believes—and convincingly argues—they urgently need: new ideas, technology and innovation.A humane, well-reasoned investigation of the Arab countries of the Middle East and the tremendous vitality of their inhabitants.Agent: David Halpern/The Robbins Office Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Axis of shame - Arthur C.Hasiotis

Axis of shame: Great Britain, Israel, the United States, and Turkey in the Middle East: how the Middle East mess came about and the only possible solution - Hasiotis, Arthur C.

Summary: [The author] has created a manifesto for political change so U.S. foreign policy can be free from the corruption of lobby money and America may begin to make positive steps toward repairing its damaged reputation and relationship with the Middle East. --P. [4] of cover.

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Battle Royale - Koshun Takami

Battle Royale - Koshun Takami

Summary: In an alternative future Japan, junior high students are forced to fight to the death! L to R (Western Style). Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan--where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller--Battle Royale is a Lord of the Fliesfor the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language. A group of high school students are taken to small isolated island and forced to fight each other until only one remains alive! If they break the rules a special collar blows their heads off. Koushun Takami's brutal, high-octane thriller is told in breathless. blow-by-blow fashion. Battle Royale is a contemporary Japanese pulp classic now available for the first time in English. - (Simon and Schuster)

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Modern vampires of the city - Vampire Weekend (CD)

Modern vampires of the city - Vampire Weekend (CD)

Summary: Modern Vampires of the City is Vampire Weekend's third album. The album is a bustling world of voices and visions. Modern Vampires of the City has a grandeur and romanticism evocative of the city where it was conceived.

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VEEP (DVD)

VEEP The complete first season (DVD)

Summary: Former Senator Selina Meyer was a charismatic leader and a rising star in her party with her eye on the White House, then she became Vice President. VEEP follows the whirlwind day-to day existence of Vice President Meyer as she puts out political fires, juggles a busy public schedule and demanding private life, and defends the President's interests, even as she tries to improve her dysfunctional relationship with the Chief Executive.

Video Librarian Reviews
Emmy-winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays fumbling American Vice President Selina Meyer in this HBO-aired comedy from British satirist Armando Iannucci. Dishing up plenty of bureaucratic dysfunction and petty infighting (Washington insider and former New York Times columnist Frank Rich served as an advisor), the series begins with one-time senator and rising star Meyer reduced to insignificance when she signs on for the second spot on what turns out to be the winning presidential ticket. Her staff—Amy (Anna Chlumsky), Mike (Matt Walsh), Dan (Reid Scott), and Gary (Tony Hale)—are clearly B-team players, and the episodes largely revolve around everyone's bickering and passing the buck while dealing with minor issues and ceremonial events that are pawned off by the president and his team (POTUS himself is never seen—another indication of how out of the loop Meyer is). For all the bills and task forces tossed around, the show doesn't address issues; rather, it's purely a comedy about petty personalities, political waste, and ineffectual leadership—which, given the climate in the nation's capital today, may not be too far off the mark (although the show is a little toothless, and manages to avoid political partisanship). Compiling all eight episodes from the 2012 debut season, extras include audio commentaries, deleted scenes and outtakes, and behind-the-scenes featurettes (the Blu-ray version also includes a bonus DVD with the entire season on a single flipper disc). A strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Code name Verity - Elizabeth Wein

Code name Verity - Wein, Elizabeth

Summary: In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* If you pick up this book, it will be some time before you put your dog-eared, tear-stained copy back down. Wein succeeds on three fronts: historical verisimilitude, gut-wrenching mystery, and a first-person voice of such confidence and flair that the protagonist might become a classic character—if only we knew what to call her. Alternately dubbed Queenie, Eva, Katharina, Verity, or Julie depending on which double-agent operation she's involved in, she pens her tale as a confession while strapped to a chair and recovering from the latest round of Gestapo torture. The Nazis want the codes that Julie memorized as a wireless operator before crash-landing in France, and she supplies them, but along the way also tells of her fierce friendship with Maddie, a British pilot whose quiet gumption was every bit as impressive as Julie's brash fearlessness. Though delivered at knifepoint, Julie's narrative is peppered with dark humor and minor acts of defiance, and the tension that builds up between both past and present story lines is practically unbearable. A surprise change of perspective hammers home the devastating final third of the book, which reveals that Julie was even more courageous than we believed. Both crushingly sad and hugely inspirational, this plausible, unsentimental novel will thoroughly move even the most cynical of readers. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Help, thanks, wow - Anne Lamott

Help, thanks, wow: three essential prayers - Lamott, Anne

Summary: Describes the three simple prayers--asking for assistance from a higher power, expressing gratitude, and feeling awe--that help to deal with the hardships of daily life.



Booklist Reviews
Inspiriting, trenchant, and funny, best-selling Lamott takes an imaginative do-it-yourself approach to spirituality in her disarming and stirring essays. Unabashedly emotional yet practical and sharply attuned to the absurdities and tragedies of life, she focuses on prayer in this mighty little volume, defining it as "communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding." If you are uncomfortable addressing God, Lamott suggests praying to "the Good." The point is to make contact with "the Real, with Truth, with the Light." To take a moment to focus and breathe. She cites three basic themes. Asking for help, she writes, "is the first great prayer." Giving thanks is essential, and not only when things are going well. One also benefits from summoning gratitude for hard truths and tough challenges. "Wow" is the joyful expression of wonder in response to astonishing moments great and small. With a stand-up comic's snap and pop, candid and righteous Lamott tells hilarious and wrenching tales about various predicaments that have sparked her prayers and inspired her to encourage others to pray anytime, anywhere, and any way. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Double cross - Ben MacIntyre

Double cross: the true story of the D-day spies - MacIntyre, Ben

Summary: Traces the sophisticated D-Day operation through which extraordinary spies deceived the Nazis about the location of the Allied attack, profiling the successful Double Cross System and the remarkable individuals who used the program to save thousands of lives. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
Despite massive efforts by the Abwehr, the German espionage service, the where and when of the D-Day landings were perhaps the most successfully kept secrets of WWII. As a result, the Germans were required to maintain forces all across their "Atlantic Wall." When the Normandy invasion began, the ability of the Germans to rush in reinforcements was severely hindered. The maintenance of the secret, as well as the continued deception foisted on the Germans, is chronicled superbly by Macintyre, a writer for The Times of London. The success was, in no small part, due to a varied crew of double agents. Some, like the Polish exile and fierce patriot Roman Garby Czerniawski, had admirable motives; others, including a neurotic Frenchwoman with an obsessive attachment to her dog, and an anti-Nazi German prone to financial manipulations, defy easy categorizations. The control and management of this corps by Allied intelligence officials were effective but frustrating, nerve-racking, and came close to disaster at least once. Macintyre has written a tense, exciting real-life spy story that illuminates a largely obscure aspect of WWII. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Mom & Me & Mom - Maya Angelou

Mom & Me & Mom - Angelou, Maya

Summary: In this book, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away, and unearths the well of emotions she experienced long afterward as a result. For the first time, she reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence, a presence absent during much of the author's early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Their reunion a decade later began a story that has never before been told.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
Written with her customary eloquence, Angelou's latest focuses on her relationship with her mother, the fierce, beautiful, charismatic, and determined Vivian Baxter—dubbed "Lady" by the 13-year-old Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) upon their reunion. Amid the breakdown in her marriage, Baxter had sent Angelou and her brother, Bailey, to live with their paternal grandmother in Arkansas when they were toddlers. But as Bailey grew older, their grandmother sent them to live with their mother in California. Though initially dubious, Angelou soon found a fierce supporter and life teacher in Baxter. Over her lifetime, Baxter was a boarding house owner, a gambler, a registered nurse, a pioneering sailor, and head of Stockton Black Women for Humanity; wise and generous, she wasn't opposed to threats and violence, when necessary. There are difficult times (including a violent, disturbing episode between Angelou and a jealous boyfriend), as well as triumphs, such as Angelou's job as the first African-American female streetcar conductor, obtained thanks to Baxter's encouragement. The book follows in the episodic style of Angelou's earlier volumes of autobiography, pulling the reader along effortlessly. The lessons and the love presented here will speak to those trying to make their way in the world. B&w photos. Agent: Helen Brann, the Helen Brann Agency. (Apr.)

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Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore - Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore - Sloan, Robin

Summary: After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.

Staff Comments: This book almost lost me about 3/4 of the way in, but successfully pulled me back in the end, and with secret codes, covert orders, underground libraries, old mysterious eccentrics, and young programmers and hackers, what's not to love?

BookPage Reviews

A 21st-century tale of wonders

Robin Sloan’s funny debut novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, is both a celebration and a send-up of the clashing worlds of technology and those who cling to dead-tree books. After losing a job at the corporate headquarters of NewBagel, where “ex-Googlers” developed software to create the perfect bagel, Clay Jannon gets hired at an unconventional bookstore in San Francisco. Unconventional because it’s open 24 hours, has very few customers, is vertical—there are three stories worth of books you have to climb a ladder to retrieve—and the books are written in secret code. What at first seems to be a front for an illegal operation turns out to be connected with a cult, and Clay goes on a mission to solve the mystery that has been plaguing its members for centuries, enlisting the help of a quirky team, like the Google acolyte he’s dating, the friend who got rich by developing “boob-simulation software” and Mr. Penumbra himself, the hopeful store proprietor.

Though there’s a code to be cracked in these pages, the real treat of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is Sloan’s energetic storytelling—and the many, many lines that you will surely want to share on Facebook and tweet to the masses. (“He has the strangest expression on his face—the emotive equivalent of 404 PAGE NOT FOUND.” Or: “If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages.”) Readers who don’t know a hashtag from a wiki will still appreciate the book’s ultimate message about friendship, and the conclusion that nothing—not even a world full of programmers and hackers—can substitute for a cunning mind.
Copyright 2012 BookPage Reviews.

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Dark triumph - Robin LaFevers

Dark triumph - LaFevers, Robin

Series: His Fair Assassin

Summary: "Sybella's duty as Death's assassin in 15th-century France forces her return home to the personal hell that she had finally escaped. Love and romance, history and magic, vengeance and salvation converge in this sequel to Grave Mercy"-- Provided by publisher.

Staff Comments: Grave Mercy had me in its grip within the first three pages, and Dark Triumph is just as engrossing, if not more so.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The riveting historical adventure that began with Grave Mercy (2012) here follows the story of another of Death's handmaidens, Sybella. Backtracking just a bit, the story starts with the climactic event of the previous book: Sybella warns Isme, her dear friend and fellow killer from the convent of St. Mortrain, that troops protecting Brittany's young duchess are riding into a trap to be sprung by Sybella's despotic father. The story's parameters are the same as in the previous book (the struggle between various forces to decide Brittany's fate, the relationship between the young women trained in the deathly arts and the saint who directs them); and once again the tale is filled with vicious battles, heart-stopping escapes, and intricately devised scenarios. However, in this book the wounds are deeper as Sybella must come to terms with her past and how her secrets tie and untie her to a knight who is the bane of her existence and her hope for the future. LaFevers is that wonderful sort of storyteller who so completely meshes events, descriptions, and characters that readers get lost in the world she has concocted. It's a place where history mingles with mystery, and love is never expected. With one more daughter of Death seeking her fate, readers can expect a sequel. But how will they stand the wait? HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grave Mercy debuted to starred reviews as far as the eye could see. That and an impressive PR campaign means this should be heavily in demand. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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