Showing posts with label diaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diaries. Show all posts
Feb 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2013
The Richard Burton diaries - Richard Burton
The Richard Burton diaries - Burton, Richard
Summary: The personal diaries of the renowned actor and glamorous celebrity describe his life from 1939 to 1983 and his struggles with his weight, drinking, and jealousy when other men looked at the love of his life, Elizabeth Taylor. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Nearly three decades after his sudden death, Burton is experiencing a pop-cultural rebirth. Most people remember the Welsh-born actor as the heavy-drinking fifth (and sixth!) husband of Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he made several films (most memorably the 1966 classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the expensive 1963 fiasco Cleopatra) and whose combustible, extravagant, and scandal-ridden relationship with her will be dramatized later this month in the Lifetime television movie Liz & Dick. His personal musings about Taylor (plus scorn and praise for a plethora of his Tinseltown peers) are sure to be the most talked about here, but these diaries also provide a rounded portrait of a smart, witty, and doting husband and father. Burton squandered his once brilliant acting career, taking mediocre paycheck roles in later years, and battled enough demons to fill several lifetimes. For a true glimpse into the heart and mind of this wildly talented yet conflicted man—who garnered no less than seven Academy Award nominations, with no wins—this mammoth, unsanitized, and handsomely presented collection of Burton's innermost thoughts, along with the fascinating minutiae of a huge star's day-to-day existence, should restore his reputation as one of the most original Hollywood stars of all time. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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The absolutely true diary of a part-time indian
Summary: Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Kirkus Reviews
Alexie nimbly blends sharp wit with unapologetic emotion in his first foray into young-adult literature. Fourteen-year-old Junior is a cartoonist and bookworm with a violent but protective best friend Rowdy. Soon after they start freshman year, Junior boldly transfers from a school on the Spokane reservation to one in a tiny white town 22 miles away. Despite his parents' frequent lack of gas money (they're a "poor-ass family"), racism at school and many crushing deaths at home, he manages the year. Rowdy rejects him, feeling betrayed, and their competing basketball teams take on mammoth symbolic proportions. The reservation's poverty and desolate alcoholism offer early mortality and broken dreams, but Junior's knowledge that he must leave is rooted in love and respect for his family and the Spokane tribe. He also realizes how many other tribes he has, from "the tribe of boys who really miss . . . their best friends" to "the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers." Junior's keen cartoons sprinkle the pages as his fluid narration deftly mingles raw feeling with funny, sardonic insight. (Fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
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Sep 1, 2012
I capture the castle - Dodie Smith
Summary: The story of 17-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Over six turbulent months, she fills three diaries with sharply funny yet poignant entries and manages to find herself hopelessly in love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle" and the heart of the reader.
Kirkus Review
The author of popular theatrical hits, Autumn Crocus, etc., has produced a first novel, a gentle, genteel story of English eccentrics, kindly Americans, and an artless, unworldly background that has no current feel. The story is told in diary form by Cassandra, middle child of novelist Mortmain. At the moment, the family is stale-mated,- the father refusing to write, the stepmother able to pose only once in a while, Rose, beautiful and despairing of meeting anyone eligible to marry, even their friend, the librarian, can offer no solution. Rose wishes on a dewll -- and two Americans, Simon and Neil, appear, lost en route to the property Simon has inherited. They are fascinated by the whole unlikely thing,- the old castle, the girls, the identity of Mortmain, whose one great novel Simon knew. Both girls determine that Simon shall be Rose's -- and almost too late, with Rose in London shopping for her wedding, Cassandra realizes that it is Simon she loves, while Rose loves Neil. There's charm here -- there's a gay, English spotting of humor that makes the romance and the slight story almost a natural for the Thirkell followers -- for enthusiasts of the Jane Austen tradition. Literary Guild selection for November will give it the necessary impetus. And the crying need for clean and pleasant romance will find a measure of answer here. (Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1948)
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Aug 1, 2012
The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing: The pox party - M.T. Anderson
Summary: Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.
Kirkus Reviews
A historical novel of prodigious scope, power and insight, set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War. Readers are seduced by a gothic introduction to the child Octavian, whose bizarre situation is both lavish and eerie. Octavian is domiciled with a gentleman scholar at the "College of Lucidity." A sentient being, he is a living experiment, from his classical education to the notated measurement of his bodily intake and output; as such, the study will degenerate from earnest scholarly investigation to calculated sociopolitical propaganda. Upon learning that he's a slave, Octavian resolves to prove his excellence. But events force the destitute College to depend on a new benefactor who demands research that proves the inferiority of the black race. Like many Africans, Octavian runs away, joining the Revolutionary army, which fights for "liberty," while ironically never assuring slaves freedom. Written in a richly faithful 18th-century style, the revelations of Octavian's increasingly degraded circumstances slowly, horrifyingly unfold to the reader as they do to Octavian. The cover's gruesomely masked Octavian epitomizes a nation choking on its own hypocrisy. This is the Revolutionary War seen at its intersection with slavery through a disturbingly original lens. (Historical fiction. YA-adult) Copyright Kirkus 2006 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
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Apr 1, 2012
The archivist - Martha Cooley
Summary: A battle of wills between Matt, a careful, orderly archivist for a private university, and Roberta, a determined young poet, over a collection of T. S. Eliot's letters, sealed by bequest until 2019, sparks an unusual friendship and reawakens painful memories of the past. A first novel. 30,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
The articulate yet restrained archivist who narrates this exceptional first novel confides, "Books never cease to astonish me," a sentiment that could easily be aroused by Cooley's resolute and somber tale. It takes great vision and verve to work with the heavily freighted materials she handles so adroitly: the terrible legacy of the Holocaust; questions of faith, conversion, and sanity; and the life and poetry of T. S. Eliot. Using Eliot's tragic first marriage, religious convictions, and abortive relationship with his confidante, Emily Hale, as a template, Cooley explores and extends his traumas through the prisms of her highly cerebral characters. Now in his sixties, Matthias takes quiet pleasure in his guardianship of a university archive that contains letters between Eliot and Hale. This invaluable correspondence is off-limits until 2019, but Roberta, an attractive poet, is determined to gain access to it and draws Matthias into a tense tango of negotiations that unfreezes painful memories of his poet-wife's suicide. Much of Cooley's unusual novel flows like a psychological thriller, and even its slow passages are moodily compelling. ((Reviewed March 15, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews
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May 1, 2011
Halfway to Hollywood - Michael Palin
Summary: A second volume of diaries by the Monty Python comedian traces the years during which the iconic troupe completed their final group performance before Palin segued to such productions as "A Fish Called Wanda."
Staff Review
If you're a Monty Python fan at all, you'll love the second volume of Michael Palin's diaries. Hilarious, sweet and cheerful, I really enjoyed it.
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Nov 1, 2010
Tammy Pierce is unlovable - Esther Watson
Summary: Presents the diary of Tammy Pierce during her sophomore year of high school in 1988 with graphic illustrations, and describes her hopes, dreams, boredom, and agonizing experiences, which includes prank calls, school dances, boys, and more
Booklist Reviews
Watson says this panel-per-page graphic novel draws directly on a diary found in a gas-station washroom. If that's disingenuous, the protagonist s voice and candid but awkward self-perception are impressively authentic. Texas high-school sophomore Tammy is overweight, boy crazy, and underdeveloped in social skills when it comes to dealing with her younger brother, her "best" friend (a skanky jerk), and anyone else in her small, nasty circle. Watson s scratchy, turquoise-and-white art, reminiscent but not imitative of Lynda Barry's style, amplifies Tammy's physical and character flaws as well as her pathetic emotional life. Unlike the four Notebook Girls (2006), who are her age-mates, Tammy appears all alone in dealing with social and cultural nemeses she doesn t recognize. Her insider perspective is just as shocking as those of the notebook girls. Unlovable is a fine example of how art and narrative can be combined to make a potentially trivial book compelling and insight-provoking. In particular, Gen Xers ready for an unvarnished backward glance at the concerns and the cruelties of their high-school years will recognize Tammy with stark clarity. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
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