en-US Sun, 04 Jun 2023 01:57:02 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 31931614
In The euphoria of colossal innocence, he shot a bullet in the air. By the time it fell to earth, twelve year old Rudy Waltz was condemned as a double murderer, committed to care for his ruined parents - hi mother, whose ultimate fate rested on a radioactive mantlepiece, and his father, who - in his salad days - had found his best and only friend in a hapless young art student, Adolph Hitler. It was an odd beginning, if not an auspicious one. What can you expect when you're born in an Ohio City detined to be depopulated by a "friendly" neutron bomb? And - after all - it was only the beginning. As for the rest, as Rudy, forever to be known as... Deadeye Dick.]]> 240 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 044011747X Sandi 5 novels2010 3.74 1982
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: novels2010
review:

]]> 409449 Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 1999

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University.

Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.

Lurie pursues his relationship with the young Melanie - whom he describes as having hips "as slim as a 12-year-old's" - obsessively and narcissistically, ignoring, on one occasion, her wish not to have sex. When Melanie and her father lodge a complaint against him, Lurie is brought before an academic committee where he admits he is guilty of all the charges but refuses to express any repentance for his acts. In the furor of the scandal, jeered at by students, threatened by Melanie's boyfriend, ridiculed by his ex-wife, Lurie is forced to resign and flees Cape Town for his daughter Lucy's small holding in the country.

Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.]]> 220 J.M. Coetzee Sandi 4 novels2007
from: ]]> 3.81 1999
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2021/07/14
shelves: novels2007
review:
"Throughout Disgrace, Coetzee slyly plays with irony, as words and attitudes are revealed to be superficial at best, perverted at worst ... We are left wondering if it can possibly be enough to own up to one's life and expect redemption."

from:
]]> 5947099
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.
--back cover]]> 115 Gabriel García Márquez 1400095948 Sandi 4 novels2007
from ]]> 3.59 2004
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2019/03/28
shelves: novels2007
review:
"...It undeniably builds up an eccentric momentum, all the while dropping in pearls of what might be wisdom, or might just be senile dementia. Memories of My Melancholy Whores seems like an old man's fever dream, full of bizarre, arresting meditations on love, nostalgia and mortality."

from
]]> 30512 de ménage, des coups pleuvent et la porte claque. Son père vient de les abandonner. A l'école, les rumeurs ne tardent pas à courir. Et l'enfant abandonné devient vite le souffre-douleur de toute la cour : " Paddy Clarke n'a plus de papa Ha Ha Ha ".]]> 307 Roddy Doyle 2264022442 Sandi 0 novels2012, currently-reading 3.78 1993
author: Roddy Doyle
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: novels2012, currently-reading
review:

]]> 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Sandi 5 novels2012 4.41 1952
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: novels2012
review:

]]> 30510 288 Roddy Doyle 0670038164 Sandi 4 novels2012 3.80 2006
author: Roddy Doyle
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: novels2012
review:

]]> 381711 226 Roddy Doyle 0670867756 Sandi 4 novels2012 3.66 1996
author: Roddy Doyle
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: novels2012
review:

]]> 4954 401 Dave Eggers 1400033543 Sandi 0 novels2011 3.64 2002
author: Dave Eggers
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2012/11/15
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: novels2011
review:

]]> 50902 320 Shalom Auslander 1594489556 Sandi 4 3.87 2007
author: Shalom Auslander
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2008/08/29
date added: 2011/11/07
shelves:
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]]> 310612
His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.

His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex.

Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times.

A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.]]> 394 John Kennedy Toole 0802130208 Sandi 5 novels2011 3.89 1980
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2011/06/01
date added: 2011/06/08
shelves: novels2011
review:

]]> 15993
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately , her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of thierown lives. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing the family together for one last Christmas at home.

(back cover)]]> 565 Jonathan Franzen 0312421273 Sandi 5 novels2010 3.79 2001
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/07/26
shelves: novels2010
review:

]]> 7140754
When Michael’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.]]> 287 Ian McEwan Sandi 4 novels2010 3.28 2010
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/06/08
shelves: novels2010
review:

]]> 7312933
In fact, she reached her life’s quotient when her husband of five months walked out on her, only to abruptly change his mind a few weeks later and move back in. Stung by a whiplash of grief, resentment, and confusion, Charlotte calls a time-out, taking a small apartment where she can figure out what she wants. Instead, the thought of making even the simplest choices triggers an anxiety attack. In order to get out of bed in the morning, she must concoct a to-do list for each day, The Plan, one with absolutely no surprises.


“Without The Plan, horrible things can happen. I’m likely to end up sitting on a curb beside a taco truck on Sunset Boulevard, crying over a carne asada burrito, wondering where my marriage went. I can’t handle being the Weeping Burrito Girl.�

Charlotte knows all this self-absorbed introspection isn’t good for her, but she’s running out of people to turn to, as seemingly everyone in her life is pressuring her to make an immediate decision about her future. Then her new friend Francesca—an impulsive, smartass co-worker—offers Charlotte salvation in the unlikeliest of the fast-paced, super-tough, bump-and-bruise-filled world of roller derby.

Sure, it’s dangerous. Yeah, she could get hurt. But what’s a little physical pain when healing your soul is at stake? The question whether she’s on or off the track, will Charlotte be strong enough to stand on her own two feet?]]> 336 Pamela Ribon 1416503862 Sandi 3 novels2010 3.70 2010
author: Pamela Ribon
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/06/08
shelves: novels2010
review:

]]> 79548 London Evening News, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in 40 countries.

Moomin Book One is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reigns to her brother Lars in 1960. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century.

The Moomins are a tight-knit family � hippo-shaped creatures with easygoing and adventurous outlooks. Jansson's art is pared down and precise, yet able to compose beautiful portraits of ambling creatures in fields of flowers or rock-strewn beaches that recall Jansson's Nordic roots. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson's observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.]]> 95 Tove Jansson 1894937805 Sandi 5 novels2007
]]> 4.37 1977
author: Tove Jansson
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2007/12/11
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: novels2007
review:
No one in this god-forsaken country knows about the Moomins, BUT THEY SHOULD!


]]> 6194 J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.]]> 152 J.M. Coetzee 0140283358 Sandi 4 novels2007
from: ]]> 3.94 1980
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: novels2007
review:
"Coetzee displays such masterful control of the medium that we never view any of the characters as caricatures. Underneath the harrowing description is a distinct compassion, which seeps through to every layer of the novel."

from:
]]> 6193 In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience—the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.]]> 192 J.M. Coetzee Sandi 5 novels2007
from:
]]> 3.87 1983
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: novels2007
review:
"Coetzee is a writer of clarifying inventiveness and translucent conviction. Both are given voice gradually, seepingly, as if time itself were a character in the narrative."

from:

]]> 14130 564 Don DeLillo 3462029002 Sandi 4 novels2007
from: ]]> 3.71 1991
author: Don DeLillo
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: novels2007
review:
"The idea of a dangerous fiction, which one might bring to an analysis of DeLillo's novels, has in Mao II become an expressed element of his plot."

from:
]]> 46755 Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec.ĚýSetting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices. Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.ĚýHere is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families and marriage, and about women fragmented... and becoming whole.

]]> 199 Margaret Atwood 0385491050 Sandi 4 novels2009 3.47 1972
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/25
date added: 2009/11/09
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 6873
A two-timing pornographer becomes an unwilling object in the fantasies of one of his victims. A jaded millionaire buys himself the perfect mistress and plunges into a hell of jealousy and despair. And in the course of a weekend with his teenage daughter, a guilt-ridden father discovers the depths of his own blundering innocence.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 160 Ian McEwan 0679749837 Sandi 4 stories2009 3.33 1977
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/27
date added: 2009/10/16
shelves: stories2009
review:

]]> 759518
Twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham’s intelligence work—tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow—offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is only a bit player in a grim international comedy of errors. His relationship with Maria Eckdorf, an enigmatic and beautiful West Berliner, likewise promises to loosen the bonds of his ordinary life. But the promise turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening—a night when Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 270 Ian McEwan 0385494335 Sandi 5 novels2009 3.67 1990
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2009/11/02
date added: 2009/09/20
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 6869 The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.]]> 263 Ian McEwan 0385497520 Sandi 5 novels2009 3.60 1987
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/20
date added: 2009/09/20
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 48137 My Family and Other Animals will love this hilarious tale, which finds him as an adult still charmed by his beloved animals. A Zoo in My Luggage begins with an account of Durrell’s third trip to the British Cameroons in West Africa, during which he and his wife capture animals to start their own zoo. Returning to England with a few additions to their family—Cholmondeley the chimpanzee, Bug-eye the bush baby, and others—they have nowhere to put them as they haven’t yet secured a place for their zoo. Durrell’s account of how he manages his menagerie in all sorts of places throughout England while finding a permanent home for the animals provides as much adventure as capturing them. For animal lovers of all ages, A Zoo in My Luggage is the romping true story of the boy who grew up to make a Noah’s Ark of his own.]]> 198 Gerald Durrell 014303524X Sandi 4 nonfiction2009 4.09 1960
author: Gerald Durrell
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1960
rating: 4
read at: 2009/08/31
date added: 2009/08/31
shelves: nonfiction2009
review:

]]> 6871
Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encounter forty years earlier - a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time.

In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilisation's darkest moods - its black dogs - with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.]]> 149 Ian McEwan 0385494327 Sandi 4 novels2009 3.45 1992
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/17
date added: 2009/07/17
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 49219
The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day—something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.]]> 262 Ian McEwan 0385494149 Sandi 4 novels2009 3.67 1997
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/02
date added: 2009/07/02
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 674379 here

In this tour de force of psychological unease--now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack--McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying. "Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies."--Washington Post Book World.]]> 153 Ian McEwan 0679750185 Sandi 5 novels2009 3.39 1978
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/24
date added: 2009/05/24
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 763631
Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peter experiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with the family cat and cranky infant, battles a very bad doll who comes to life to seek revenge, and discovers in a kitchen drawer some vanishing cream that actually makes people vanish. In the final story, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside a grown-up's body and embarks on the truly fantastic adventure of falling in love. Moving, dreamlike and extraordinary, "The Daydreamer" is a celebration of imagination and fantasy.]]> 144 Ian McEwan 0385498055 Sandi 4 stories2009, novels2009 3.73 1994
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/14
date added: 2009/05/14
shelves: stories2009, novels2009
review:

]]> 5015
Later, as Perowne makes his way through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, a minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance as the Perowne family gathers for a reunion, that Henry's fears seem about to be realised.]]> 289 Ian McEwan 1400076196 Sandi 4 novels2009 3.64 2005
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/11
date added: 2009/05/11
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 163977 256 John Steinbeck 0582461502 Sandi 5 longago 3.84 1935
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1935
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/21
shelves: longago
review:

]]> 2526 No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order.

Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers.

A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks.
It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped.

This is not anarchy, this is blindness.

�Saramago repeatedly undertakes to unite the pressing demands of the present with an unfolding vision of the future. This is his most apocalyptic, and most optimistic, version of that project yet� Independent]]> 326 José Saramago Sandi 5 longago 4.04 1995
author: José Saramago
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/21
shelves: longago
review:

]]> 5114
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a story about the Glass family, narrated by Buddy, the second oldest brother. Buddy is attending his brother Seymour's wedding to a gal named Muriel, but he's on Army leave during active duty in World War II. At the wedding, everyone is stunned when Seymour does not show up.

The action of the story picks up when several characters end up carpooling together following the failed wedding. The others (the Matron of Honor and her husband, and a couple of stragglers) are talking about Seymour and the disappointment of his not showing up, and Buddy never tells them that he is secretly Seymour's brother, so they talk more openly with him than they otherwise would.

They criticize Seymour and speculate about his character flaws and deficiencies, but Buddy finds their assessments quite judgmental and biased. He then decides to tell the car who he really is, shaming them for their loose criticisms.

He finds Seymour's journal, and he discovers a strange message from their sister Boo Boo for Seymour on their bathroom mirror: "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom/ taller far than a tall man." This is a fragment from the Greek poet Sappho.

"Seymour: An Introduction" is a kind of elegy for Seymour from Buddy, told in the form of an introduction to the reader. The reader makes Seymour's acquaintance while knowing that Seymour technically isn't alive when the story is published, having killed himself in 1948.

This portion of the story is told in stream of consciousness, and it discusses Eastern religious mysticism.]]> 256 J.D. Salinger 0316766941 Sandi 5 longago 4.13 1955
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/21
shelves: longago
review:

]]> 56077 Cannery Row, the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter.

]]> 249 John Steinbeck 0143039474 Sandi 5 longago 4.11 1954
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/21
shelves: longago
review:

]]> 6862 Amsterdam isĚý"a dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned" ( The New York Times ) from the bestselling author of Atonement.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen�

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 208 Ian McEwan 0385494246 Sandi 4 novels2009 3.46 1998
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/21
date added: 2009/04/21
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 1912028
“No one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment." � The Washington Post Book World

It is 1962, and Florence and Edward are celebrating their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties become overwhelming. Unbeknownst to them both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 203 Ian McEwan 0307386171 Sandi 5 novels2009 3.63 2007
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/19
date added: 2009/04/19
shelves: novels2009
review:

]]> 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Sandi 5 novels2008, novels2009 3.94 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2009/03/23
date added: 2009/03/23
shelves: novels2008, novels2009
review:

]]> 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Sandi 5 longago 3.97 1997
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/03/07
shelves: longago
review:

]]> 186345 233 John Steinbeck 0141185511 Sandi 5 stories2009 3.92 1938
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/03/07
shelves: stories2009
review:

]]> 3526 First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by Clive Barker or Stephen King, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity that compel us to confront our secret kinship with the horrifying.]]> 165 Ian McEwan 0679750193 Sandi 5 stories2008 3.66 1975
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at: 2008/12/28
date added: 2008/12/28
shelves: stories2008
review:

]]> 2214742 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Itsik Malpesh is a poet and a dreamer who writes endlessly about his true love, Sasha, whom he has yet to meet. When Itsik's poems get him into trouble in czarist Russia, he begins an odyssey -- with a picture of his beloved Sasha in his coat. Her image stays with him as he labors at a small print shop in Odessa and through a long, hazardous passage to America. And it keeps him company until he settles in New York's garment district. In fact, Sasha stays with Itsik until the eve of his first public appearance as a poet, when she appears in person, as if by magic. But their happiness together is short-lived -- Sasha leaves him before the birth of their first child.



Years later, a young man in Boston who toils at preserving Yiddish books responds to an urgent call from New York, where he meets the elderly Malpesh, in need of a translator for his life story. In weaving together Itsik's tale of colorful characters, the two stumble upon an unlikely connection neither could have foreseen. A tale of love -- of homeland, a new country, a girl, and a culture -- Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a novel about the way history is captured for the ages through the lives and words of seemingly "average" men.
(Holiday 2008 Selection)]]> 371 Peter Manseau 1416538704 Sandi 4 novels2008 3.85 2008
author: Peter Manseau
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2008/12/10
date added: 2008/12/10
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 9516
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.]]> 153 Marjane Satrapi 037571457X Sandi 4 novels2008 4.27 2003
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2008/11/13
date added: 2008/11/13
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 2263969 The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. “On an island,� thinks the grandmother, “everything is complete.� In The Summer Book, Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life.

Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book, and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.Ěý

The Summer Book is translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.]]> 170 Tove Jansson 159017268X Sandi 4 novels2008 4.10 1972
author: Tove Jansson
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at: 2008/11/13
date added: 2008/11/13
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 378828 416 Dana Facaros 1860111173 Sandi 4 travel 3.67 1993
author: Dana Facaros
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2008/11/02
date added: 2008/11/02
shelves: travel
review:

]]> 244776
Astronaut Allen Cloud suffers severely from post-lunar depression, and dreams of returning to the far-off world in which he'd finally found peace. His wife's search for happiness takes her from the bottom of a bottle in middle America to Turkey, where she finds spiritual salvation. Their gay son Jonathan embarks on a journey of self-discovery, leading him from Houston to the sophisticated gay world of the East Coast. His acknowledgment of his sexual identity and pursuit of physical and spiritual fulfillment has its counterpoint in a repressed preacher's son, whose desires Jonathan awakens in high school and whose destiny Jonathan permanently alters.

Told by a brilliant quartet of voices, Sea of Tranquillity demonstrates a spectrum of emotion that sweeps from razor-sharp wit to wrenching heartache, from anger and alienation to acceptance and reconciliation.]]> 384 Paul Russell 0312303726 Sandi 5 novels2008 3.93 1994
author: Paul Russell
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2008/11/02
date added: 2008/11/02
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 1561322
No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.]]> 205 Miranda July 0743299418 Sandi 5 stories2008
from:

NB: I really love this book.]]> 3.62 2007
author: Miranda July
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2008/06/18
date added: 2008/08/15
shelves: stories2008
review:
"This is July at her best � funny and insightful, offering moments of utter heartbreak through deeper, more sophisticated storytelling."

from:

NB: I really love this book.
]]> 841644
With her inimitable compassion and wit, Hempel introduces characters who make choices that seem inevitable, and whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience.

For readers who have known Hempel's work for decades and for those who are just discovering her, this indispensable volume contains all the stories in Reasons to Live , At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom , Tumble Home , and The Dog of the Marriage . No reader of great writing should be without it.]]> 407 Amy Hempel 0743291638 Sandi 3 stories2008
from:

NB: As these are her collected stories, it's really more four books than it is one. Mostly, I think they're kind of uneven--not always compelling, but definitely have their moments--except for The Dog of Marriage (the last book in this volume), which I thoroughly enjoyed.]]> 4.20 2006
author: Amy Hempel
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2008/08/13
date added: 2008/08/15
shelves: stories2008
review:
"Hempel's world is modern, set in a vivid present that only very occasionally feels historical... Yet the overall sense of this book is one of almost classical tragedy. Here, to be sure, is beauty, and pity, and fear."

from:

NB: As these are her collected stories, it's really more four books than it is one. Mostly, I think they're kind of uneven--not always compelling, but definitely have their moments--except for The Dog of Marriage (the last book in this volume), which I thoroughly enjoyed.
]]> 50901
Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.]]> 207 Shalom Auslander 0743264576 Sandi 4 stories2008
from:

NB: I would not call Auslander a genius, but I would have given this book five stars had it not been for the offensive moments (usually in the form of replicating stupid stereotypes). An author this intelligent and given to turning convention on its head should really know better.]]> 3.89 2005
author: Shalom Auslander
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2008/08/15
date added: 2008/08/15
shelves: stories2008
review:
"These are stories which, for the most part, reduce religion to its absurd components. Auslander knows whereof he speaks. He endured a strict Orthodox upbringing; that influence isn't going away in a hurry... They read as though they have, in the writer's dream formulation, written themselves. I found myself asking, again and again, "why hasn't this been done already?" That's a good sign - a sign, almost, of genius; or at least of something pretty close to it. You will not get these out of your head once they're in there."

from:

NB: I would not call Auslander a genius, but I would have given this book five stars had it not been for the offensive moments (usually in the form of replicating stupid stereotypes). An author this intelligent and given to turning convention on its head should really know better.
]]> 6872 128 Ian McEwan 0679749845 Sandi 5 novels2008
from: ]]> 3.44 1981
author: Ian McEwan
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2008/07/09
date added: 2008/07/11
shelves: novels2008
review:
"McEwan, that master of the taciturn macabre, so organizes his narrative that, without insisting anything, every turn and glimpse is another tightening of the noose. The evils of power and the power of evil are transmitted with a steely coolness, and in a prose that has a feline grace."

from:
]]> 446 The Scarlet Letter, and begins to undertake his own literary venture, The Book of Human Folly, an account of "every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I have committed during my long and checkered career as a man."
Ěý
The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving, unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.]]> 306 Paul Auster 0312426232 Sandi 2 novels2008
from: ]]> 3.87 2005
author: Paul Auster
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2008/06/27
date added: 2008/06/27
shelves: novels2008
review:
"Auster, who once did a stint on public radio as the host of something called the National Story Project, which solicited real-life yarns from listeners, has a highly developed ear for authentic-seeming farfetched narratives. As Nathan's and Tom's own big adventures take over the book, though, the strange-but-true digressions of the first half turn into something not-so-strange--and false."

from:
]]> 16981 Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.

As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.]]> 581 Ralph Ellison Sandi 5 novels2008 3.91 1952
author: Ralph Ellison
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2008/06/10
date added: 2008/06/10
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 6199

A story told in prose as feverishly rich as William Faulkner's, In the Heart of the Country is a work of irresistable power. With vast assurance and an unerring eye, J. M. Coetzee has turned the family romance into a mirror of the colonial experience.

]]> 139 J.M. Coetzee Sandi 3 novels2008 3.66 1977
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2008/02/19
date added: 2008/02/12
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 35258 Gods and Monsters--re-creates the last days of film director James Whale, who was found dead in his swimming pool, an apparent suicide, in 1957. Bram offers sharp insights into the darkly comic sensibility that infuses Whale's two most famous films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, as memories of an impoverished English childhood, the trenches of World War I, and Hollywood studios compete for space in a mind whose defenses have been weakened by a stroke. Written in the fluid present tense of a cinematic treatment, Father of Frankenstein is a powerful evocation of an era before Hollywood celebrities could proclaim anything but domestic heterosexuality to the outside world.]]> 276 Christopher Bram 0452273374 Sandi 4 novels2008 4.15 1995
author: Christopher Bram
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2008/01/30
date added: 2007/12/11
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 349347
Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible.

He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same…]]> 592 Neil Gaiman Sandi 4 novels2008 4.03 2001
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2008/04/01
date added: 2007/12/11
shelves: novels2008
review:

]]> 108250
Sierva Maria De Todos Los Angeles, only child of the Marquis of Casalduero is bitten by a rabid dog at the beginning of this story. When she does not die, but evinces problems of a psychological nature, her father turns her over to a convent to be examined by church officials. But the priest who examines her, Cayetano Delaura falls in love with her. Their chaste affair, sexual without consummation, leads to their mutual destruction. Their plans to run away together are thwarted; the priest is banished and Sierva Maria dies after an awful exorcist ritual. When her body is found the narrator notes that 'the roots of her hair sprouted like bubbles on her shaved cranium; it was possible to see them grow.' Even in death, love triumphs over reason and logic.]]> 147 Gabriel García Márquez 0224040251 Sandi 5 novels2007
from: ]]> 3.86 1994
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2007/08/31
shelves: novels2007
review:
"What is body and what survives? What is flesh and what is spirit and what is demonic? Mr. García Márquez's answer is an almost didactic, yet brilliantly moving, tour de force."

from:
]]> 149496
The heavy themes of AIDS, sexual addiction, and unrequited love are expertly blended into the mix of slick humor and satire. Bram skillfully weaves together all the outlandish characters and their even more eccentric affairs, showing how all of them have a love-hate relationship with the theater, with each other, and with their own creative impulses. At turns graceful, shrewd, and ribald, Lives of the Circus Animals is terrific entertainment, steeped in the authentic details of theater life. This talented author's laugh-out-loud dialogue, burlesque situations, and shrewd insight into the vagaries of love are sure to win him an even more extensive readership.

Tom Piccirilli

]]> 352 Christopher Bram 0060542543 Sandi 4 novels2007 Better than I expected. 3.51 2003
author: Christopher Bram
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2007/06/01
date added: 2007/08/31
shelves: novels2007
review:
Better than I expected.
]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Sandi 3 novels2007 3.89 2003
author: Mark Haddon
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2007/05/09
shelves: novels2007
review:
Certainly a very compelling and original book and a quick, pleasant read, but I thought the author got sloppy with the narrator's point of view at times. However, I do now understand the Monty Hall Problem to a significantly greater degree!
]]> 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Sandi 5 longago Beyond words. 3.88 1937
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 5
read at: 2003/07/01
date added: 2007/04/19
shelves: longago
review:
Beyond words.
]]> 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Sandi 5 longago The Great Gatsby move me to tears every time.]]> 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 5
read at: 2001/05/01
date added: 2007/04/19
shelves: longago
review:
The closing lines of The Great Gatsby move me to tears every time.
]]> 14376 Einstein's Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.

Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein's Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.]]> 140 Alan Lightman 140007780X Sandi 5 stories2007
from: ]]> 4.08 1993
author: Alan Lightman
name: Sandi
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2007/04/18
shelves: stories2007
review:
"Lightman is absolutely brilliant. Despite that fact that he teaches physics at MIT, you don't need even the slightest background in the sciences to understand him. He's fascinating—and from the standpoint of fiction writing, his stories are beautifully and simply written, so straightforward yet somehow lyrical. He's very moving in his simplicity."

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]]> 6206 Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman's life as a mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.]]> 231 J.M. Coetzee Sandi 3 novels2007
from: ]]> 3.49 2003
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2007/04/18
shelves: novels2007
review:
"It is a book which begins like a cross between a campus novel and a Platonic dialogue, segues into introspective memoir and fanciful musing, and ends with a Kafkaesque bad dream of the afterlife. It is progressively permeated by the language of religion, by a dread of evil, and by a desire for personal salvation. Its key words are 'belief' and 'soul.'"

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]]> 37506
Possessing both the force of a parable and the excitement of a perfectly executed thriller,ĚýThe StrangerĚýis the work of one of the most engaged and intellectually alert writers of the past century.]]> 117 Albert Camus 0679420266 Sandi 5 novels2007 The Stranger . I mean, come on. Of course it's brilliant.]]> 3.95 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2007/04/18
shelves: novels2007
review:
I mean, it's The Stranger . I mean, come on. Of course it's brilliant.
]]> 329231
As the "Seattle Times" said of DeLillo's last novel, "Masterpieces teach you how to read them." "The Body Artist" is a haunting, beautiful and profoundly moving novel from one of the finest writers of our time.]]> 160 Don DeLillo 0743212215 Sandi 4 novels2007
from ]]> 3.05 2001
author: Don DeLillo
name: Sandi
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2007/04/18
shelves: novels2007
review:
"Ecstasy. That's a lot to ask of words, especially of words on the page. But if you respond to the poetry of DeLillo's meticulously worked prose, this novel will make you smile; if you think your way through the thematic puzzle, the convoluted notions about the grammar of language and the laws of time, it will stretch you; if you feel your way past the edges of a massive bereavement, it will dredge you. Imagine that: a stretched, dredged, smiling you."

from
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