The amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud

The amulet of Samarkand - Stroud, Jonathan

Summary: Nathaniel, a magician's apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.



BookList Review
/*Starred Review*/ Gr. 6-12. Picture an alternative London where the Parliament, composed of powerful magicians, rules the British empire. When five-year-old Nathaniel’s parents sell him to the government to become a magician’s apprentice, the boy is stripped of his past and is given over for training to a grim, mid-level magician from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Over the next seven years, Nathaniel studies the lessons given by his cold master, but in secret he delves into advanced magic books, gaining skill beyond his years: he summons a djinn to steal the powerful amulet of Samarkand. Inspired by a desire for revenge, this bold act leads to danger and death. Nathaniel’s third-person narrative alternates with the first-person telling of Bartimaeus the djinn, a memorable and highly entertaining character. Rude, flippant, and cocky, his voice reflects the injustice of his millennia of service to powerful magicians who have summoned him to do their capricious bidding. His informative and sometimes humorous asides appear in footnotes, an unusual device in fiction, but one that serves a useful purpose here. Stroud creates a convincingly detailed secondary world with echoes of actual history and folklore. The strong narrative thrust of the adventure will keep readers involved, but the trouble that is afoot in London extends beyond the exploits here. The unresolved mysteries will be more fully explored in the next two volumes of the trilogy. One of the liveliest and most inventive fantasies of recent years. -- Carolyn Phelan (BookList, September 1, 2003, p123)

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Gulp - Mary Roach

Gulp: adventures on the alimentary canal:  - Roach, Mary

Summary: Few of us realize what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal. In her trademark style, Mary Roach investigates the beginning, and end, of our food, addressing such questions as why crunchy food is so appealing, how much we can eat before our stomachs burst, and whether constipation killed Elvis.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In her latest rollicking foray into taboo, icky, and underappreciated aspects of the human body, best-selling science writer Roach takes readers on a wild ride down the alimentary canal. Not that the author of Stiff (2003), Bonk (2008), and Packing for Mars (2010) ever takes a direct route anywhere. No, voraciously curious and intrepid Roach zips off in whatever direction her ardor for research and irrepressible instinct for the wonderfully weird lead her. She begins this hilarious, mind-expanding inquiry into eating, digestion, and elimination with the symbiosis between smell and taste, guided by an olfactorily gifted "sensory analyst," then profiles Horace Fletcher, proponent of a rigorous chewing routine known as "Fletcherizing" practiced by Henry James and Franz Kafka. We learn more than one can imagine about saliva and our passion for crispy and crunchy foods. Given Roach's fascination with what we find disgusting, scientific obsessions and bizarre experiments, and horrifying things we do to ourselves, the stories get stranger as she proceeds down the body. Roach interviews a prison inmate about "rectal smuggling" (including cell phones), tells tales of flatulence, and reveals the truth about Elvis Presley's fatal megacolon. For all her irreverence, Roach marvels over the fine-tuned workings and "wisdom" of the human body, and readers will delight in her exuberant energy, audacity, and wit. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Grace (CD)- Jeff Buckley

Grace (CD)- Buckley, Jeff

Summary: Resembling at times a soft-sung Robert Plant, Buckley was an intuitive vocalist capable of dizzying arabesques and choir-boy sweetness. He is joined here by a tight band for 10 tracks highlighting his stylistic range--Pearl Jam bluesy on "Eternal Life," impossibly serene on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," art-school noisy on "So Real," Led Zep daring on "Mojo Pin." Unorthodox, this was the debut of '94. --Jeff Bateman amazon.com

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The forever war - Dexter Filkins

The forever war - Filkins, Dexter

Summary: Provides a firsthand account of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, from the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, offering a study of the people involved from all sides of the conflict.


Booklist Reviews
Filkins, foreign correspondent for the New York Times, has covered the struggle against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. He marshals his broad experience to present a wide-ranging view of this struggle, told through a series of intense, vivid, and startling vignettes. Embedded with marines during the struggle for Fallujah, Filkins describes an almost surreal scene of confusion and unvarnished violence. In Kabul, Filkins witnesses the amputation of a pickpocket's hand, followed by the execution of an accused murderer under the Taliban regime. At a press briefing, a Taliban “minister of information” recites a litany of forbidden activities that is both absurd and terrifying. An interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, who bravely fought both the Soviets and the Taliban, is particularly poignant, since he would eventually be assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives. Filkins accompanies Americans searching a Sunni village for insurgents, where their insensitivity probably creates more enemies than they capture. A portrait of the difficulty, complexity, and savagery of a conflict that will be with us for some time. Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

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Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park -  Rowell, Rainbow

Summary: "Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try"-- Provided by publisher.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Right from the start of this tender debut, readers can almost hear the clock winding down on Eleanor and Park. After a less than auspicious start, the pair quietly builds a relationship while riding the bus to school every day, wordlessly sharing comics and eventually music on the commute. Their worlds couldn't be more different. Park's family is idyllic: his Vietnam vet father and Korean immigrant mother are genuinely loving. Meanwhile, Eleanor and her younger siblings live in poverty under the constant threat of Richie, their abusive and controlling stepfather, while their mother inexplicably caters to his whims. The couple's personal battles are also dark mirror images. Park struggles with the realities of falling for the school outcast; in one of the more subtle explorations of race and the other in recent YA fiction, he clashes with his father over the definition of manhood. Eleanor's fight is much more external, learning to trust her feelings about Park and navigating the sexual threat in Richie's watchful gaze. In rapidly alternating narrative voices, Eleanor and Park try to express their all-consuming love. You make me feel like a cannibal, Eleanor says. The pure, fear-laced, yet steadily maturing relationship they develop is urgent, moving, and, of course, heartbreaking, too. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The day my brain exploded - Ashok Rajamani

The day my brain exploded - Rajamani, Ashok

Summary: "After a brain bleed at the age of twenty-five, Ashok Rajamani, a first-generation Indian American, had to relearn everything: how to eat, how to walk and to speak, even things as basic as his sexual orientation. With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother's wedding!) as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process he introduces readers to his family--his principal support group, as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the reader into unfamiliar territory. More than a decade later he has finally reestablished a productive artistic life for himself, still dealing with the effects of his injury--life-long half-blindness and epilepsy--but forging ahead as a survivor dedicated to helping others who have suffered a similar catastrophe."--www.Amazon.com.

Booklist Reviews
More commonly known as strokes, cerebrovascular accidents—or CVAs—are an all-too-frequent occurrence among our nation's elderly population. About 87 percent of these are ischemic strokes resulting from sudden blood clots in the brain, whereas the other 13 percent are classified as hemorrhagic. This latter type of CVA, where either a blood vessel or arteriovenous malformation (AVM) unexpectedly ruptures, can occur at any age, as former New York public-relations executive Rajamani horrifyingly discovered when he was only 25. In this frank and witty account of his own brain "explosion," Rajamani describes in vivid detail the circumstances leading to the injury, and its devastating aftermath on both his family and himself, including chronic epilepsy and a freak form of blindness affecting the left side of each eye. With disarming drollery, the author also recounts his racism-tainted upbringing as an Indian American in white-dominated suburban Chicago. Shedding much-needed light on a little-known medical trauma, Rajamani's sharp-edged prose is both informative and inspiring, especially for the many marginalized sufferers of brain injury and those close to them. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Roll me up and smoke me when I die - Willie Nelson

Roll me up and smoke me when I die: musings from the road - Nelson, Willie

Summary: America's greatest traveling bard Willie Nelson muses about the things that are most important to him and celebrates the family, friends, and colleagues who have blessed his remarkable journey.


Kirkus Reviews
Legendary musician Nelson and his friends share a year's worth of stories, lyrics, riffs and dirty jokes. At age 79, the prolific Nelson (A Tale Out of Luck, 2008, etc.) shows no signs of slowing down as he continues to travel the world with his "band of gypsies." This funny, heartwarming collection doesn't quite capture the experience of being on the road with the circus, but Nelson's unmistakable voice shines through. The songwriter shares tales from the road, thoughts of the day, early memories, classic lyrics, and recollections of people like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, among a host of lesser-known collaborators. Sister Bobbie Nelson and various children also chime in, while Kinky Friedman offers an affectionate foreword and Nelson's son Micah contributes some terrific portraits of everyone from Ray Charles to Django Reinhardt. There are some semi-serious moments, but the best characteristic about the book is its sense of being mostly unplanned. Page by page, you might get a list of the best pickers Willie has ever heard, the lyrics and the inspiration for "Shotgun Willie," or musings on golf, addiction, biodiesel, Farm Aid or the Occupy movement. However, it is neither as immaterial as The Tao of Willie (2006) nor as essential as his autobiography. Like another collection, The Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes (2001), how closely readers follow Nelson's meandering path may largely depend on their own lucidity at the time. Just one volume in Nelson's long story that remains much like its author: funny, inspirational and bawdy, with a well-honed sense of humor. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Gallows thief - Bernard Cornwell

Gallows thief - Cornwell, Bernard

Summary: When Waterloo veteran Rider Sandman returns home to England from the war, he finds his country rife with corruption and injustice, and takes a job investigating the case of a painter sentenced to hang for a murder he did not commit. - (Baker & Taylor)


Library Journal Reviews
Disgraced by his father's suicide and impoverished by the debts that drove him to it, Capt. Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty's 52nd Regiment of Foot, has been forced to sell his commission to support his mother and sister. Desperate to earn a living but with no skills besides soldiering and cricket, he has come to London in search of a job. When the Home Secretary offers him temporary employment investigating a sensational murder, he accepts it as easy money. All he has to do is elicit a confession from the young artist accused of raping and murdering the Countess of Avebury during her portrait sitting. But when Sandman visits him in Newgate, the artist defends his innocence so vehemently that Sandman begins to have his doubts. Unwillingly, he is drawn into an investigation that not only risks his life but introduces him to the darkest secrets of several aristocratic families. As with his popular Richard Sharpe novels (Sharpe's Trafalgar) and his Arthurian trilogy, "The Warlord Chronicles," Cornwell is superb at weaving the ambience and issues of the day (this time Regency England) with a gripping plot and a memorable character. Readers will hope to see more. Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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The veggie-lover's Sriracha cookbook - Randy Clemens

The veggie-lover's Sriracha cookbook: 50 vegan rooster sauce recipes that pack a punch -  Clemens, Randy

Summary: "A vegan/vegetarian companion to the successful Sriracha cookbook, featuring 50 inventive, vegetable-based recipes with gluten-free variations"--Provided by publisher.

Library Journal Reviews
Freelance food writer Clemens became a vegetarian shortly after completing The Sriracha Cookbook. Though he insists this follow-up isn't just for vegans, it will appeal most to readers who are comfortable cooking with what he calls "hippie ingredients" (e.g., Bragg Liquid Aminos, flaxseed, coconut oil, and nutritional yeast). Global flavors infuse such recipes as Mouth on Fire Minestrone, Spicy California Rolls, and Spicy Tabbouleh-Stuffed Dolmas. Clemens covers most courses (e.g., snacks, soups, breakfasts, desserts) and includes plenty of gluten-free variations. VERDICT Vegan and vegetarian fans of the popular Sriracha condiment will enjoy Clemens's latest.

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Common errors in English usage - Paul Brians

Common errors in English usage - Brians, Paul

Staff Comment: There is something to be said for a grammar book that makes you laugh out loud.



Reviews:

I rarely take a Grammar Girl podcast live without at least quadruple-checking my main thesis, and Common Errors in English Usage has quickly become one of my most valued fact-checking resources. --'Grammar Girl' Mignon Fogarty

Paul Brians has written a handy and likable reference tool. When he gives you the right answer, he sends you off chuckling--a winning combination. --Jack Miles, Pulitzer Prize winner & former literary editor, LA Times

I'd call Paul Brians' book incredible, fabulous, or fantastic, except thanks to him, I know now that none of those words are what I really mean. Let's just say that Common Errors in English Usage is the most cheerfully useful book I've read since the Kama Sutra. --Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition

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Openly straight - Bill Konigsberg

Openly straight - Konigsberg, Bill

Summary: Tired of being known as "the gay kid", Rafe Goldberg decides to assume a new persona when he comes east and enters an elite Massachusetts prep school--but trying to deny his identity has both complications and unexpected consequences.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Now a junior in high school, Rafe, who has been out since he was 14, is thoroughly sick of being labeled "the gay kid." So he does something bold: he leaves his Colorado school to enroll in a private boys' academy in New England, where no one knows he's gay and he can be a label-free, "openly straight" part of a group of guys. Does this mean he goes back into the closet? No, he tells himself, not exactly: "It was more like I was in the doorway." But is he fooling himself? Can you put a major part of yourself on hold, and what happens when you then find yourself falling in love with your new (straight) best friend? Lambda Literary Award winner Konigsberg (Out of the Pocket, 2008) has written an exceptionally intelligent, thought-provoking coming-of-age novel about the labels people apply to us and that we, perversely, apply to ourselves. A sometimes painful story of self-discovery, it is also a beautifully written, absolutely captivating romance between two boys, Rafe and Ben, who are both wonderfully sympathetic characters. With its capacity to invite both thought and deeply felt emotion, Openly Straight is altogether one of the best gay-themed novels of the last 10 years. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.


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Angelmaker - Nick Harkaway

Angelmaker - Harkaway, Nick

Summary: Avoiding the lifestyle of his late gangster father by working as a clock repairman, Joe Spork fixes an unusual device that turns out to be a former secret agent's doomsday machine and incurs the wrath of the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Harkaway's celebrated debut, The Gone-Away World (2008), offered a gonzo take on postapocalyptic fiction, but it was really just a warm-up act—a prodigiously talented novelist stretching muscles that few other writers even possess—for this tour de force of Dickensian bravura and genre-bending splendor. At the center of the tale is a mild-mannered clockmaker in contemporary London, Joe Spork, who is doing his best to live down the legacy of his crime-boss father. Then an elderly lady, who happens to be a superspy from decades past, deposits a curious artifact on Joe's doorstop, and before you can say "doomsday machine," Joe's friends are being murdered, he's accused of terrorism, and he appears to be the only person with even an outside chance of saving humanity from a truly bizarre form of extinction: the doomsday machine, we learn gradually, was designed to bring world peace by forcing us to speak only the truth, but in the wrong hands, truth-telling can be the deadliest of weapons. Yes, there's espionage here, along with fantasy and more than a little steampunk, but there's also an overlay of gangster adventure, a couple of tender romance plots, and some fascinating reflections on fathers and sons and the tricky matter of forging a self in the shadow of the past. The latter is particularly interesting, as Harkaway is the son of John le Carré, and while he writes in an utterly different style and on a much grander scale than his father, the fact remains that—stripped of its mad monks and artificial bees and pre-Raphaelite craftsmen turned thugs—Harkaway's novel is at its core a powerful meditation on the anxiety of influence, similar in that way to his father's A Perfect Spy (1986). But influences aside, this is a marvelous book, both sublimely intricate and compulsively readable. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The rook - Daniel O'Malley

The rook - O'Malley, Daniel

Summary: A high-ranking member of a secret organization that battles supernatural forces wakes up in a London park with no memory, no idea who she is, and with a letter that provides instructions to help her uncover a far-reaching conspiracy.



Booklist Reviews
This Australian author's first novel adroitly straddles the thin line between fantasy, thriller, and spoof. Myfanwy Thomas awakens in a park with no memory of who she is and not a clue about whom all these dead bodies belong to or why they're all wearing latex gloves. Finding an envelope in her pocket, she reads the letter inside and discovers that she is an executive in a shadowy organization, the Checquy Group, that keeps the world safe from all manner of supernatural threats. And apparently, Myfanwy has been plunked down, memory-less, at a time when an ancient enemy of the Checquy Group is massing for a resurgence. The book has, in approximately equal measures, an X-Men vibe (the Checguy Group runs a boarding school for gifted youngsters) and a Tom Holt vibe (the story is about an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary world and scrambling to play catch-up). O'Malley is a nimble writer, effortlessly leaping back and forth between comedy and action. There's plenty of room here for a sequel that readers will no doubt begin clamoring for before they've even finished this book. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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The worst hard time - Timothy Egan

The worst hard time: the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl - Egan, Timothy

Summary: Presents an oral history of the dust storms that devastated the Great Plains during the Depression, following several families and their communities in their struggle to persevere despite the devastation.


Kirkus Reviews
Grim, riveting account by New York Times reporter Egan makes clear that, although hurricanes and floods have grabbed recent headlines, America's worst assault from Mother Nature came in the form of ten long years of drought and dust.The "dust bowl" of the 1930s covered 100 million acres spread over five states: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Colorado. From 1930 to 1935, nearly a million people left their farms, littered with animal corpses and stunted crops. Schools closed. Towns simply disappeared. Thousands died from "dust pneumonia," a new condition born of swallowing and inhaling the swirling topsoil. The author personalizes this tragedy by focusing on a handful of hardy settlers who came to America's heartland with high hopes and boundless energy, then watched with growing despair as the earth turned against them. In truth, the dust bowl was largely a human creation. The great southern plains, once covered with native grasses that fed the buffalo and held the soil in place, were essentially stripped bare in the 1920s by wheat-farmers eager to cash in on cheap land and high grain prices. The newly invented tractor made the job easier, and unusually wet weather in the late '20s made farming on the arid plains seem feasible. But then the Depression hit, wheat prices crashed and once-bountiful farms went fallow, abandoned to the deepening drought and ever-blowing winds that literally sent the soil skyward. In the midst of disaster, Egan finds heroes. Among them is country physician Doc Dawson, who opened a sanitarium for dust pneumonia victims, lost all his money farming and spent his last, penniless years running a soup kitchen.Stark and powerful, a gripping if depressing read and a timely reminder that a Nature abused can exact a terrible retribution. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

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Lonely hearts - John Harvey

 Lonely hearts - Harvey, John

Summary: When Shirley Peters is found strangled, her common-law husband is arrested, but a second victim appears while he is in custody, and Inspector Charlie Resnick has only a lonely hearts column to direct him to the killer - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
British poet and novelist Harvey introduces an appealing and memorable new series character in this, his seventh mystery. Charlie Resnick, a detective in an unnamed city in the North of England, is middle-aged, overweight, divorced and disillusioned. He is also deeply burdened by the evils that his job forces him to confront each day: child abuse, rape and murder. As one old friend puts it after seeing his photograph in the newspaper, ``You are always descending steps, Charlie, after giving evidence against some dreadful man. You always look so sad and angry.'' Featuring a variety of well-drawn cops and a fascinating array of suspects, this police procedural follows Resnick and his team as they investigate the murders of two women who shared nothing except their use of the local paper's lonely hearts column to meet men. As the investigation unfolds, an attraction develops between Charlie and welfare worker Rachel Chaplin--a romance that comes as a welcome respite from the mawkish, psycho-babbling seductions typical of current mysteries. (June) Copyright 1989 Cahners Business Information.

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Stratosphere boogie (CD)- Speedy West

Stratosphere boogie (CD)- Speedy West

Summary: Fans of country and jazz guitar will discover two new idols after delving into this 16-track collection, which features the best of the genre-shattering sessions recorded by this legendary duo. Between Bryant's jazzy, lightning-fast leads and West's brash, groundbreaking pedal steel work, the two recorded some of the most astounding instrumental country music of all time. (allmusic.com)

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Starstruck - Elaine Lee

Starstruck - Lee, Elaine

Summary: The offspring of two powerful dynasties, the Bajars and Medeas, compete and scheme against each other to take over the universe when the Great Dictator is dethroned.


Publishers Weekly
/* Starred Review */ This brain-bending SF epic is the type of book that once devoured, demands to be passed on to another unsuspecting reader with a meaningful look and a wistful sigh. It is not however the type of read that lends itself well to actually being pinned down in a description any longer than, "you must have this". Originally published in Heavy Metal in the 80s and expanded over the years, Starstruck is a soap opera, a space adventuring epic, and an ambitiously multi-layered visual treat that might just bend your mind. There is Galatia 9, a space faring adventurer with killer bow skills, and her new companion Brucilla the Muscle, a fierce and fun loving pilot running from her disgrace. Mary Medea who masquerades as the glamorous Queen Glorianna, and Erotic Anne, a sex droid who is achieving awareness. Verloona Ti and Lurcrezia Bajar are scorned sisters, manipulating those around them. Say goodbye to stories with a beginning, middle and end; plunge instead into a story that wraps around itself, creates new worlds in every panel, has a plethora of strong and intriguing female leads. Lee's quirky dialogue is more than matched by Kaluta's belle époque techno-finery. (Sept.) --Staff (Reviewed December 10, 2012) (Publishers Weekly, vol 259, issue 50, p)

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The Black Count - Tom Reiss

The Black Count: glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo - Reiss, Tom

Summary: Explores the life and career of Thomas Alexandre Dumas, a man almost unknown today, but whose swashbuckling exploits appear in The three musketeers and whose trials and triumphs inspired The count of Monte Cristo.



Booklist Reviews
The inspiration for some of the great adventure tales of Alexandre Dumas has long been a subject of curiosity and debate. According to Reiss, the inspiration for the great novel of intrigue, betrayal, and revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo, was Dumas' own father, General Alexandre Alex Dumas. In this often thrilling and often sad chronicle, Reiss makes clear that Alex lived a life as full of adventure, triumph, and tragic loss as any of his son's literary creations. He was born in Haiti, the child of an enslaved mother and an erratic French aristocrat who briefly sold his son into slavery. Despite the obvious and immense political and racial obstacles in his path, Alex found his way to Paris, became a skilled swordsman, and rose rapidly in the reorganized army of the French Republic, where he served admirably during Napoléon's invasions of Egypt. Unfortunately, like his literary counterpart, Edmond Dantès, Alex incurred the hostility of powerful people, leading to his fall from grace and eventual impoverishment. This is an absorbing biography that should redeem its subject from undeserved obscurity. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Crime and punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and punishment - Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Summary: Raskolnikov commits murder. He then must deal both with the police, and his own guilty conscience. Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammelled individual will, Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excrutiating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. The best known of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, Crime and Punishment can bear any amount of rereading without losing a drop of its power over our imagination.

Magill Book Review
Raskolnikov, an impoverished law student, plans to commit the perfect crime by murdering an old female pawnbroker. He hopes to gain money for himself and others and to demonstrate that he belongs to the portion of mankind not subject to conventional morality. Having studied the careers of men such as Napoleon Bonaparte, he embraces the theory that an elitist few are justified in pursuing their objectives through any means.No sooner is the murder committed than events begin to call his theory into question. When the pawnbroker's half sister arrives unexpectedly, Raskolnikov kills her also. In his haste and confusion, he overlooks most of the money and is unable to use the small amount he does take. Following the crime, he rapidly sinks into physical and mental illness.As the hero experiences intense guilt, other characters influence the course of his expiation. The cunning detective Porfiry discovers the truth early but waits until Raskolnikov is ready to accuse himself. Raskolnikov eventually realizes that he must choose one of two alternatives--confession or suicide.Characters such as Luzhin and the sensual Svidrigailov defeat themselves by exploiting others for their own selfish ends. Svidrigailov's suicide demonstrates to Raskolnikov the futility of egoism. Other characters--Raskolnikov's sister, Dounia, his friend Razumihin, and Sonia, a young prostitute--willingly sacrifice themselves and suffer for others. Aided by Sonia, who grows to love him, Raskolnikov chooses life, confession, and punishment, without, however, achieving true repentance.An intense psychological account, the narrative presents thoughts and emotions from each character's point of view. When the character is confused, the reader is also, for no authorial voice intrudes to clarify the situation. Unable to understand his own motives for the crime, the protagonist recognizes that one risks psychic disintegration by sweeping aside traditional morality.

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Drink - Iain Gately

Drink: a cultural history of alcohol - Gately, Iain

Summary: Investigates the history of alcohol as a controversial and ubiquitous part of western culture and Christianity, tracing its use in ancient civilizations, profiling famous drinkers, and evaluating the role of alcohol in such events as the Revolution and the Prohibition. 20,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Reviews
The history of the Western world as seen through the prism of booze, glorious booze.Gately (Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization, 2002) serves up a lavish account, lengthy but never dull, of how human civilization has prized and demonized alcohol throughout history. It's been mostly prized, he demonstrates, beginning with a discourse on how the epic poem Gilgamesh, possibly the first literary work in existence, shows intoxication and celebration as inextricably connected in Sumerian society circa 2000 BCE. Throughout ancient history, alcohol was considered a crucial component of the good life. Gately follows the role played in Greek culture by the wine-soaked deity Bacchus and the transmission of his cult to Rome. Comparatively abstemious in the republic's early years, Romans in the heyday of the empire considered the Hebrews among their more civilized subjects because they cultivated wine. In 988 CE, Prince Vladimir of Kiev chose Christianity over Islam as the faith to unite his people, changing the future of European religion because he couldn't abide the idea of not drinking. (Despite some token entries on Asia and the Middle East, this is a Western history.) Europe in the Dark Ages appears to have been utterly sozzled, with adults and children drinking ale for breakfast and throughout the day. It was only the introduction of tea and coffee in the 17th century that gave Europeans something better to drink than the admittedly foul water, though England's 18th-century gin craze still caused enough societal damage to bear resemblance to America's crack epidemic. Gately plays it straight throughout, with occasional witty asides such as the one on why absinthe never took off in London: "Why flirt with the occult when one already lived in Stygian gloom?" He considers modern temperance advocates, from Prohibitionists to today's health zealots, as being not just wrong, but spoilsports. In this lively book, the latter is the more damning charge.A heady cocktail.Agent: Jim Rutman/Sterling Lord Literistic Copyright Kirkus 2008 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

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Wolverine Origin - Bill Jemas

 Wolverine Origin - Jemas, Bill

Summary: Follows sickly, privileged James Howlett through his childhood, when he sees his father killed by groundskeeper Thomas Logan, to his escape into the wilds of northern Canada, where he is renamed Logan and nicknamed Wolverine. Marvel's best-kept mutant mystery revealed! Before the X-Men, before Weapon X, Wolverine's struggle with his subconscious savagery first flourished in family tragedy. Some of Marvel's most acclaimed creators unite to tell the tale that shaped mutantdom's mightiest misfit.

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Smarty girl: Dublin savage - Molloy, Honor

Smarty girl: Dublin savage - Molloy, Honor

Summary: An autobiographical novel set in 1960s Ireland, this irresistible story follows the rise and fall of the O’Feeney family, seen through the eyes of a precocious little girl. More savage than civilized, Noleen is a rare character from a Dublin long forgotten, where Nelson’s Pillar still stands in O’Connell Street?but not for long?and where untamed musicians gather in the O’Feeneys’ kitchen to raise a jar and the roof. Noleen’s father, a successful actor and scoundrel king of the city, does his best to destroy his family, while her mother tries to save it. Noleen schemes to make it through each Dublin day, cadging sweets and growing tough in the midst of chaos. In the end, however, nothing?not even a fierce girl’s powerful imagination?can hold the family together and keep them, safe as geese in the sky, in their home on Tolka Row.

"What Malloy does in remembering this journey is brave and honest, and the child-like spirit and voice she so skillfully captures are truly remarkable." - Irish America

“As magical as a fairy tale and just as grim, Honor Molloy’s Smarty Girl pierces the heart with its pure Irish song.” - Brown Alumni Magazine

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Nos4a2 - Joe Hill

 Nos4a2 - Hill, Joe

Summary: When Charles Talent Manx, an unstoppable monster who transforms children into his own terrifying likeness, kidnaps her son, Victoria McQueen, the only person to ever escape his unmitigated evil, must engage in a life-and-death battle of wills to get her son back.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In Heart-Shaped Box (2007) and Horns (2010), Hill showed hints of an enlarging literary toolbox. With this 700-page opus, the tool set is complete, and Hill has indeed built something very big. The story follows Vic, from 8-year-old girl to troubled teen to embattled mother, as she struggles to survive as a "strong creative"—one who has access (in her case, via a ramshackle bridge) to an alternate universe constructed from imagination. Problem is, a chief attraction of this other America is Christmasland, a snowy Neverland carnival controlled by cheery, ageless child-abductor Charlie Manx (think Bentley Little's Mailman or Stephen King's Pennywise). Manx tries to take Vic to Christmasland as a kid, and years later, in the book's central conflict, he tries to take her son. Hill doesn't spend much time in reality before careening deliriously off into a la-la land of horrifying absurdism (a bottomless Scrabble bag, a mouth full of fish-hook teeth). This engenders inelegance; at times, the parts are more than the whole. But Hill is omnivorous in his appetite for story and character, and here he has created his best: Lou, Vic's obese, warm-hearted lover; Bing, Manx's demented chief elf; and gutsy, heartbreaking Vic. Occasional drawings by Hill's Locke & Key conspirator, Gabriel Rodriguez, add one more element to this vast and gangly but undeniably readable work. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: What isn't being done for horror fiction's heir apparent? Big advertising, big author tour, big e-book teasers, big videos—even the advance reading copies are gorgeously produced. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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A wrinkle in time - Madeleine L'Engle

A wrinkle in time - Madeleine L'Engle

Summary: Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and in a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.



Kirkus Review
An allegorical fantasy in which a group of young people are guided through the universe by Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which and Mrs. What -- women who possess supernatural powers. They traverse fictitious regions, meet and face evil and demonstrate courage at the right moment. Religious allusions are secondary to the philosophical struggle designed to yield the meaning of life and one's place on earth. Young Meg's willingness to face IT in the form of a black east in order to save a dear friend is one sign of her growing awareness. Readers who relish symbolic reference may find this trip through time and space an exhilarating experience the rest will be forced to ponder the double entendres. (Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 1962)

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Adulting - Kelly Williams-Brown

Adulting: how to be a grown-up in 468 easy(ish) steps - Williams-Brown, Kelly

Summary: Presents humorous advice for young women about the transition into adulthood, covering such topics as jobs, living arrangements, money, friends, family, and dating. - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly Reviews
A young journo mines a brief life and years of advice from friends and professionals—counselors, social workers, her car mechanic Shane—in order to create this how-to guide to becoming (or simply being) a "grown-up." The 468 steps are more like tips than items on a checklist, and clearly labeled chapters allow readers to pick and choose their entry point. The "Domesticity" section explains, among other things, how to choose, decorate, and clean an apartment; "Get a Job" covers networking, job-specific resume-editing, techniques for salary negotiations, and includes a flowchart to determine how many drinks you should have at a company event; and "Money" walks readers through creating a budget and sticking to it, and illuminates the intricacies of 401(k)s, IRAs, and compound interest (all accompanied by Brown's illustrative sketches of animals—e.g., Pension Panda). Also provided are kitchen tips and simple recipes, thoughts on meeting new friends, tricks for doing laundry, and Shane the mechanic's advice on picking out a used car. Fun, chatty, and surprisingly informative, Brown's guide—already optioned for a TV adaptation, to be backed by Fox and produced by J.J. Abrams—is perfect for the wayward 20-something, or 30-something, or... Agent: Brandi Bowles, Foundry Literary + Media. (May 7)

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Tuva Groove (CD) - Kongar-ol Ondar

Tuva Groove (CD) - Kongar-ol Ondar

Summary: "Throat-singing" by Kongar-ol Ondar a native of Tannu Tuva (Siberia) accompanied by a variety of musicians and instruments. "This project was inspired by Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)... A taste of Feynman's drumming, chanting and storytelling are featured on several tracks." -- Cf. leaflet. Throat-singing is the Tuvan tradition whereby a soloist sings two, three, even four notes at once.

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Penny merriments street songs of 17th century England (CD)

Penny merriments street songs of 17th century England (CD)

Summary: "Recorded at St. Paul's Church, New Southgate London, 5th-6th September 2004" City Waites, Douglas Wootton (tenor), Lucie Skeaping (soprano), Richard Wistreich (bass baritone)

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Y Los Cubanos Postizos (CD) - Marc Ribot

Y Los Cubanos Postizos/Prosthetic Cubans (CD) - Marc Ribot

Summary: Marc Ribot - widely regarded as one of the world's most inventive and adventurous guitarists - makes his Atlantic Records debut with a new collection defined by its edgy and electric tones, punky and loose attitude. Ribot and Co. (including bassist Brad Jones of the Jazz Passengers and Ornette Coleman's Prime Time; percussionist E.J. Rodriguez; organ player John Medeski of Medeski, Martin and Wood; and drummer Robert J. Rodriguez of Miami Sound Machine) have brilliantly condensed legendary Cuban composer, Arsenio Rodriguez's large ensemble arrangements to suit a stripped-down sound of guitar, bass, conga, and occassional keyboard.

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