Of human bondage - W. Somerset Maugham

A bend in the river - V.S. Naipaul

The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben

When breath becomes air - Paul Kalanithi

Death comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

Oranges - John McPhee

A passage to India - E.M. Forster

The baron in the trees - Italo Calvino

Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

Their eyes were watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

The new Jim Crow : mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness - Michelle Alexander

Summary: As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status, much like their grandparents before them. Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.

Kirkus Reviews

A civil-rights lawyer's disturbing view of why young black men make up the majority of the more than two million people now in America's prisons.In this explosive debut, Alexander (Law/Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity) argues that the imprisonment of unusually large numbers of young blacks and Latinos—most harshly sentenced for possession or sale of illegal drugs, mainly marijuana—constitutes "a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialized social control." The "warehousing" of inner-city youths, she writes, is a new form of Jim Crow under which drug offenders—in jail or prison, on probation or parole—are denied employment, housing, education and public benefits; face a lifetime of shame; and rarely successfully integrate into mainstream society. The author blames the situation mainly on the War on Drugs, begun by Ronald Reagan in 1982, which grew out of demands for "law and order" that were actually a racially coded backlash to the civil-rights movement. The situation continues because of racial indifference, not racial bias, she writes. Many will dismiss the author's assertions; others will find her observations persuasive enough to give pause. Most people who use or sell illegal drugs are white, but in many states 90 percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. Police departments, given financial incentives—cash grants and the right to keep confiscated cash and assets from drug raids—to focus on drug enforcement, find it easier to send SWAT teams into poor neighborhoods, where they will face less political backlash, than into gated communities and college frat houses. Also, most people do not care what happens to drug criminals, feeling that "they get what they deserve." So what's to be done? Alexander writes that civil-rights leaders, reluctant to advocate for criminals, remain quiet on the issue; President Obama, an admitted former user of illegal drugs, is not in a position to offer leadership; and policymakers offer only piecemeal reforms. She hopes a new grassroots movement will foster frank discussion about race, cultivate an ethic of compassion for all and end the drug war and mass incarceration.Alarming, provocative and convincing. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (DVD)

Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (DVD)

Summary: It is 1850 in the beautiful, perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real estate arrangements with a wealthy nobleman. His wife, Lucy, begs him hot to go and is troubled by a strong premonition of danger. Despite her warnings, Jonathan arrives four weeks later at a large, gloomy castle. Out of the mist appears a pale, wraith-like figure with a shaven head and deep-sunken eyes who identifies himself as Count Dracula. The events that transpire slowly convince Harker that he is in the midst of a vampyre. What he doesn't know, however, is the magnitude of danger he, his wife and his town are about to experience as victims of the Nosferatu.

Video Librarian Reviews
Von Sternberg and Dietrich. Hitchcock and Stewart. Ford and Wayne. Scorsese and De Niro. To this list of legendary director-actor collaborations must be added Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. This magnificent six-disc DVD boxed set contains the five (mostly) brilliant films they made together, as well as an illuminating documentary that charts their tempestuous (to say the least) professional and personal relationship. As the accompanying booklet points out, "these two warriors of German cinema would challenge, inspire, and torture each other into creating some of the most enduring and unique experiences of modern film." Included are such masterpieces as the visually stunning conquistador epic Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1973), the production-problem-plagued Fitzcarraldo (1982) and the atmospheric remake of F.W. Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu (1979), as well as Herzog's moving adaptation of Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck (1979), and their final film together, the lesser-known Cobra Verde (1987), based on the life of a 19th century Brazilian bandit. The award-winning documentary, My Best Fiend (2000) is part tribute and part exorcism. Herzog praises Kinski as a "monumental, epochal actor," but adds that he was also "impulsive, unpredictable, half mad." One revealing anecdote corrects a rumor that Herzog directed Kinski while armed with a loaded rifle. Not true, Herzog insists. What happened, he claims, was that Kinski once threatened to leave the set, and Herzog threatened to shoot him with a rifle loaded with nine bullets; eight for Kinski and the ninth for himself. An instant library of world cinema masterworks, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (K. Lee Benson) Copyright 2003 Video Librarian Reviews

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Darkness at noon - Sidney Koestler

Darkness at noon - Koestler, Sidney

Summary: Tells the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik and October Revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the very Soviet Union he once helped to create. The novel is set in 1938 during the Stalinist purges and Moscow show trials.

Kirkus
The Moscow trials form the pivot around which this interpretation of the spirit and logic of the Russian Revolution is built. As an interpretation it is brilliantly handled; as a novel it is almost motionless; it appeals more as an exercise in revolutionary ratiocination. Koestler, who knew several of the actual figures in the trials, has chosen a fictional Rubashov to embody the characteristics and activities of those involved. Through the period of his prison stay, we see the mentality of the revolutionist in his intellectual self-debates as he approaches a period of doubt, questioning whether the end justifies the means, whether the idea of mankind is more valid than the idea of man. For this breach of faith he is executed. Many serious studies have been made of the trials; this novel comes as near the sense of truth as any of them. The market, however, is limited. (Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1941)

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Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway - Woolf, Virginia

Summary: A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life.

"Mrs. Dalloway was the first novel to split the atom. If the novel before Mrs. Dalloway aspired to immensities of scope and scale, to heroic journeys across vast landscapes, with Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf insisted that it could also locate the enormous within the everyday; that a life of errands and party-giving was every bit as viable a subject as any life lived anywhere; and that should any human act in any novel seem unimportant, it has merely been inadequately observed. The novel as an art form has not been the same since.
"Mrs. Dalloway also contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century."
--Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
- (Houghton)

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The hotel on Place Vendome - Tilar Mazzeo

The hotel on Place Vendome: life, death, and betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris - Mazzeo, Tilar

Summary: Taking readers behind the doors of Paris's Hotel Ritz during the Nazi occupation of World War II, this extraordinary chronicle reveals a hotbed of illicit affairs, deadly intrigues, courageous acts of defiance and treachery and the people and events that made this opulent cultural landmark legendary. 25,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
The Paris Hôtel Ritz evokes 20th-century glamour, smoke-filled air, and hard-drinking patrons with names like Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, and Chanel. WWII, however, brought Nazis, adding to the odd mix of Allied spies posing as German officers, members of the Resistance, and ambitious American journalists desperate to score the next scoop. Mazzeo (The Secret of Chanel No. 5) enthrallingly depicts a hotbed of both the magnificent and the mundane, the careless carousing and deep-seated tensions that kept the hotel a primary meeting place for both Allied and Axis agents. While the book doesn't deal directly in scenes of intrigue between key figures, its colorful vignettes reveal the hotel's role in the unsuccessful Valkyrie operation and the struggles of Coco Chanel and a one-name French movie star to survive their "horizontal collaborations." The stories of the hotel staff members who publicly served Hitler's trusted officials while privately supporting the Resistance reveal particularly heroic undertakings. Readers will enjoy Mazzeo's fascinating collection of secretive, scheming historical characters, all under one elegant roof. 19 b&w photos. (Mar.)

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The god of small things - Roy Arundhati

The god of small things - Arundhati, Roy

Summary: In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destrucion of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ It's easier to talk about small things because the big things in life are far too complex and painful. But even small things can loom large, and everything can change, radically, in a day, a moment. These are the sort of big things first-time novelist Roy ponders in this highly original and exquisitely crafted tale set in the tiny river town of Ayemenem in Kerala, India. The story revolves around a pair of twins, brother and sister, whose mother has left her violent husband to live with her blind mother and kind, if ineffectual, brother, Chacko. Chacko's ex-wife, an Englishwoman, has returned to Ayemenem after a long absence, bringing along her and Chacko's lovely young daughter. Their arrival not only unsettles the already tenuous balance of the divisive household, it also coincides with political unrest. The twins and their cousin--each brimming with vernal intelligence, innocent love and longing, curiosity and fear--barely have time to get acquainted before tragedy strikes, first in the form of an accident (caused by carelessness in love), then murder (the result of ancient prejudice). Roy's intricate, enchanting, and often wry tale is positively mythical in its cosmic inevitability, evocative circularity, and paradoxical wisdom. ((Reviewed May 1, 1997)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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Cry, the beloved country - Alan Paton

Cry, the beloved country - Paton, Alan

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, “We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony.”

Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man. - (Simon and Schuster)

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Replay - Ken Grimwood

Replay - Grimwood, Ken

Summary: Through a bizarre cycle of dying and coming back to life again and again, Jeff Winston receives six chances to change his life, correct previous mistakes, and find the happiness that has long eluded him - (Baker & Taylor)

Library Journal Reviews
The possibility of traveling back in time to relive one's life has long fascinated science fiction writers. Without a single gesture toward an explanation, this mainstream novel recounts the story of a man and a woman mysteriously given the ability to live their lives over. Each dies in 1988 only to awaken as a teenager in 1963 with adult knowledge and wisdom intact and the ability to make a new set of choices. Different spouses, lovers, children, careers, await them in each go-round of the past 25 years, as well as slightly altered versions of world events. Their deep commitment to one another continues through the centuries of their many lifetimes. This delightful and completely engrossing story will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Literary Guild selection. Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., American Hoechst Corp., Somerville, N.J. Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information.

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The rainbow - D.H. Lawrence

The rainbow - D.H. Lawrence

Summary: Set in the rural Midlands of England, The Rainbow (1915) revolves around three generations of the Brangwens, a strong, vigorous family, deeply involved with the land. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfillment, but it is Ursula, Anna's spirited daughter, who, in her search for self-knowledge, rejects the traditional role of womanhood.
In his introduction, James Wood discusses Lawrence's writing style and the tensions and themes of The Rainbow. This Penguin edition reproduces the Cambridge text, which provides a text as close as possible to Lawrence's original. It also includes suggested further reading, a fragment of 'The Sisters II' from his first draft, and chronologies of Lawrence's life and of The Rainbow's Brangwen family. - (Blackwell North Amer)

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Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa

Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter - Vargas Llosa, Mario

Mario falls in love with and marries his Aunt Julia, scandalizing the town, while Mario's friend Pedro becomes more and more obsessed with the soap operas he writes - (Baker & Taylor)

Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals.

The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.

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