Amy's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 23 Dec 2020 06:41:04 -0800 60 Amy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Station Eleven 21792828 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]>
354 Emily St. John Mandel Amy 3 4.13 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Amy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2020/12/23
shelves:
review:
This work longs for book group discussions. Since I live in the "real" Petoskey, the novelty of the location makes for a fun read, but there are many issues to grapple with and I don't think everyone is always going to agree/like/understand why and how things are in the "new" Petoskey.
]]>
The Giver (The Giver, #1) 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 Amy 4 4.12 1993 The Giver (The Giver, #1)
author: Lois Lowry
name: Amy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
Finally joined the masses and read this work. Don't just read it, discuss it.
]]>
Outlander (Outlander, #1) 10964
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.]]>
850 Diana Gabaldon 0440242940 Amy 5 4.25 1991 Outlander (Outlander, #1)
author: Diana Gabaldon
name: Amy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 1994/06/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
I read this 20 years ago in a 24-hour binge. This is truly entertaining writing. The Starz show has been so true to the book, so much so that we can predicted the dialogue while watching each episode. April of '15 can't come soon enough.
]]>
<![CDATA[Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption]]> 8664353
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.]]>
475 Laura Hillenbrand 1400064163 Amy 5 4.38 2010 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Amy
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
Worthy of every bit of hype received. I'm sorry it took me so long to read it. I can't recommend it enough.
]]>
<![CDATA[Me Before You (Me Before You, #1)]]> 15507958 Discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?]]>
369 Jojo Moyes Amy 5 4.24 2012 Me Before You (Me Before You, #1)
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Amy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/03/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
I did this on audio and it was fabulous. In light of current events, this is a good story to launch a good discussion about important issues sprinkled with good, lighthearted moments.
]]>
Eleanor & Park 15745753 "So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we're 16."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
"I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.]]>
328 Rainbow Rowell 1250012570 Amy 5 3.92 2012 Eleanor & Park
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
This is a homerun work, not because it is a perfect story, but because it is a honest story. Great writing, real characters, believable story line. Bravo!
]]>
We Were Liars 16143347 A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.]]>
242 E. Lockhart 0385741278 Amy 4 3.66 2014 We Were Liars
author: E. Lockhart
name: Amy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
Whoa! Thank you to all those who recommended this great YA work but wouldn't tell me what it was about. They just said read it! I give the same advice.
]]>
The Invention of Wings 18079776
Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ...

A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, The Invention of Wings evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognize; and celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood against all the odds.]]>
384 Sue Monk Kidd 0670024783 Amy 5 4.24 2014 The Invention of Wings
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Amy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:
This is her best work since The Secret Life of Bees. Engaging narrative in alternating voices makes the story move quickly--but don't rush, savor each chapter. This is yet another example where truth makes for great fiction!
]]>
All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]>
544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Amy 0 currently-reading 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Amy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1)]]> 11925514
When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Harrowing and beautifully written, Elizabeth Wein creates a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other. Code Name Verity is an outstanding novel that will stick with you long after the last page.]]>
452 Elizabeth Wein 1405258217 Amy 0 3.99 2012 Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1)
author: Elizabeth Wein
name: Amy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/19
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures]]> 16052012
From #1 New York Times best-selling author Kate DiCamillo comes a laugh-out-loud story filled with eccentric, endearing characters and featuring an exciting new format—a novel interspersed with comic-style graphic sequences and full-page illustrations, all rendered in black-and-white by up-and-coming artist K. G. Campbell.]]>
231 Kate DiCamillo 076366040X Amy 0 to-read 3.87 2013 Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: Amy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Light Between Oceans 13158800 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman's mesmerizing, beautifully written debut novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel's decision to keep this "gift from God." And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss.]]>
362 M.L. Stedman 1451681739 Amy 3 4.02 2012 The Light Between Oceans
author: M.L. Stedman
name: Amy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/06
shelves:
review:

]]>
Population: 485 409287 234 Michael Perry 0060958073 Amy 5 3.93 2002 Population: 485
author: Michael Perry
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2013/08/01
date added: 2013/09/06
shelves:
review:
My family read this book out loud to each during a recent road trip. The stand-alone chapters provided the perfect length and it was a great book, except when it was my turn to read and I was laughing so hard it took five tries to get the words out. Michael Perry is an incredible storyteller. He writes about everyday life elegantly and masterfully. If you grew up in a small town, his reflections will conjure up oodles of memories. If you have never experienced small town life, you'll find it difficult not to pack your bags. Upon returning from the road trip I immediately when out and purchased his latest work. He is that good!
]]>
The Cat's Table 11076177
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table" - as far from the Captain's Table as can be - with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story - by turns poignant and electrifying - about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.]]>
269 Michael Ondaatje 0224093614 Amy 4 3.60 2011 The Cat's Table
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Amy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/01
date added: 2013/09/06
shelves:
review:

]]>
The Maid's Version 17333270 164 Daniel Woodrell 0316205850 Amy 0 to-read 3.32 2013 The Maid's Version
author: Daniel Woodrell
name: Amy
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Clearing 153786 384 Tim Gautreaux 0340828900 Amy 5 3.92 2003 The Clearing
author: Tim Gautreaux
name: Amy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2009/06/01
date added: 2013/09/05
shelves:
review:
When I worked in a bookstore one day I took a phone call from a publisher who wanted to recommend we take a look at a couple of books, one of them being Tim Gautreaux's The Clearing. I found a copy of the book and read it. It was an amazing piece of work. A quick review of the story didn't capture my attention but I began to read it and was totally sold on the writing. When The Missing was released, I immediately got a copy and was once again captivated by Gautreaux's writing. The story this time around was a bit more interesting so the total package of The Missing is a highly recommended work. Gautreaux has a great sense of place, is a good story teller, and writes with great skill.
]]>
The Art Forger 14568987
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.

Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation, she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas painting—the one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardner—is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery.

Claire’s search for the truth about the painting’s origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life. B. A. Shapiro’s razor-sharp writing and rich plot twists make The Art Forger an absorbing literary thriller that treats us to three centuries of forgers, art thieves, and obsessive collectors. it’s a dazzling novel about seeing—and not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.]]>
355 Barbara A. Shapiro 1616201320 Amy 4 3.70 2012 The Art Forger
author: Barbara A. Shapiro
name: Amy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/01
date added: 2013/09/05
shelves:
review:
BA Shapiro has written entertaining and educational story that was the perfect summer read (actually listened to it on cd). The story is entertaining because it weaves contemporary and historical characters into a solid story line. It is educational because you learn a significant amount about painting, art restoration and world of art reproduction. And if you ever get a chance to hear B.A. Shapiro speak, do so. She does a fabulous job. It would be so fun to be in her classroom!
]]>
<![CDATA[Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots]]> 15949517
Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks, making croissants and chocolat chaud, seeking out rare ingredients, all to earn the love of her distracted chef of a mother, who is now packing her off to boarding school. In one last effort to prove herself indispensable, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother’s ideal meal, an obscure Middle Eastern dish called masgouf.

Victoria, grappling with her husband’s death, has been dreaming of the daughter they gave up forty years ago. An Iraqi Jewish immigrant who used to run a restaurant, she starts teaching cooking lessons; Lorca signs up.

Together, they make cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, kubba with squash. They also begin to suspect they are connected by more than their love of food. Soon, though, they must reckon with the past, the future, and the truth � whatever it might be. Bukra fil mish mish, the Arabic saying goes. Tomorrow, apricots may bloom.]]>
0 Jessica Soffer 1469249936 Amy 5 3.56 2013 Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots
author: Jessica Soffer
name: Amy
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/08/01
date added: 2013/09/05
shelves:
review:
This summer Colum McCann visited our town and highly recommended this work by his former student, Jessica Soffer. To date it is my favorite read of 2013. Soffer has created such a wonderful work that impacts all your senses. You'll care about each one of these imperfect but perfectly written characters (well, almost each one), and long to join them in their kitchens. And the perfect dessert--a good, most appropriate ending.
]]>
Let the Great World Spin 5941033
Let the Great World Spin
is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.� A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent� (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.]]>
351 Colum McCann 1400063736 Amy 5 3.95 2009 Let the Great World Spin
author: Colum McCann
name: Amy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2012/08/01
date added: 2013/09/05
shelves:
review:
This is the best book I read in 2012 although it was released in 2009. McCann is a master at his craft. Each chapter is a precious jewel and ultimate creates an incredible work of art.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)]]> 6218281
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”]]>
374 Alan Bradley 0385342306 Amy 4 3.81 2009 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Amy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2011/06/01
date added: 2013/03/24
shelves:
review:
This series as become my favorite "delightful" reading recommendations. I wish Flavia lived next door--well, may be not because that would mean lots of people are dying in my quiet little neighborhood. The perfect "pick me up" after you've read some dark, dystopian, tear your guts out sad piece of literature.
]]>
The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]>
313 John Green Amy 5 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Amy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/01
date added: 2013/03/24
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas]]> 175829
No bodies of water compare to the Great Lakes. Superior is the largest lake on earth, and together all five contain a fifth of the world’s supply of standing fresh water. Their ten thousand miles of shoreline border eight states and a Canadian province and are longer than the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. People who have never visited them―who have never seen a squall roar across Superior or the horizon stretch unbroken across Michigan or Huron―have no idea how big they are. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America, affecting the lives of tens of millions of people.

The Living Great Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas is the definitive book about the history, nature, and science of these remarkable lakes at the heart of North America. From the geological forces that formed them and the industrial atrocities that nearly destroyed them, to the greatest environmental success stories of our time, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are portrayed in all their complexity.

A Michigan native, Jerry Dennis also shares his memories of a lifetime on or near the lakes, including a six-week voyage as a crewmember on a tallmasted schooner. On his travels, he collected more stories of the lakes through the eyes of biologists, fishermen, sailors, and others he befriended while hiking the area’s beaches and islands.

Through storms and fog, on remote shores and city waterfronts, Dennis explores the five Great Lakes in all seasons and moods and discovers that they and their connecting waters―including the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and the East Coast from New York to Maine―offer a surprising and bountiful view of America. The result is a meditation on nature and our place in the world, a discussion and cautionary tale about the future of water resources, and a celebration of a place that is both fragile and robust, diverse, rich in history and wildlife, often misunderstood, and worthy of our attention.

“This is history at its best and adventure richly described.”�*Doug Stanton, author of In Harm’s The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors and 12 The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers

Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award Winner
Winner of Best Book of 2003 by the Outdoor Writers Association of America]]>
296 Jerry Dennis 0312331037 Amy 5 4.23 2003 The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas
author: Jerry Dennis
name: Amy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/01
date added: 2013/03/24
shelves:
review:
I read this book while sitting on a beautiful beach with the Atlantic Ocean in front of me. Even in that setting I would choose the great lakes over any ocean any day. If you've lived near HOMES, have ever seen HOMES, care anything at all about living in the USofA, or breath, you should read this book. Mr. Dennis provides great history, tells a great adventure story and educates you along the way.
]]>
Mister Pip 1172956
For Matilda, Dickens’s hero Pip becomes as real to her as her own mother, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun. Soon Mr. Watts’s book begins to inflame the children’s imaginations with dreams about Dickens’s London and the larger world. But how will they answer when the soldiers demand to where is this man named Pip?

Set against the stunning beauty of Bougainville in the South Pacific during the civil war in the early 1990s, Lloyd Jones’s breathtaking novel shows what magic a child’s imagination makes possible even in the face of terrible violence and what power stories have to fuel the imagination.]]>
272 Lloyd Jones 0676979270 Amy 5 3.78 2006 Mister Pip
author: Lloyd Jones
name: Amy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2012/04/14
shelves:
review:
Excellent story about what happens when the innocence of youthful imagination has extreme consequences. Great story for book groups and isn't too long. Highly recommended.
]]>
The Earth Hums in B Flat 8704712
Mari Strachan's unforgettable novel was one of the most acclaimed and successful debuts of 2009. It is a heart-breaking and hugely enjoyable story.]]>
347 Mari Strachan Amy 4 3.77 2009 The Earth Hums in B Flat
author: Mari Strachan
name: Amy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2011/01/25
shelves:
review:
Great debut novel. Touching story with good characters. Strachan has a good handle on giving her characters a unique voice to deal with the challenging circumstances of growing up. Life happens so this isn't a "charmer" but it is very worthy of your time.
]]>
Serena 2815590
Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a riveting novel that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.]]>
371 Ron Rash 0061470856 Amy 5 3.54 2008 Serena
author: Ron Rash
name: Amy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2010/02/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
What an incredible read. Rash has created a title character who is a force to be dealt with, and I warn you that most who do take her on to not fair very well. This is a great book group book, it is fun to read and cast it for a movie, and it great to know this woman is fictional because I don't want to know her. A very good read.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game]]> 8134072
What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest his blind side.]]>
339 Michael Lewis Amy 4 3.97 2006 The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
author: Michael Lewis
name: Amy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
I love football. Always have, always will. I saw the movie first and cried from the beginning to the end. But when my brother-in-law got the book, I knew I wanted to read it and I'm so glad I did. The story is heart warming, but the details of the development of the West Coast offense and the philosophy of the left tackle is incredibly interesting---but I think you have to like and have an understanding of football (because it gets pretty detailed) to truly appreciate that Lewis has written.
]]>
The Graveyard Book 2213661
There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.]]>
312 Neil Gaiman 0060530928 Amy 5 4.15 2008 The Graveyard Book
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Amy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
I listened to this book on audio and I found myself sitting in my car, or taking the cd inside and continuing the story immediately. I was hooked and I've got this on my list to actually read. I am not a good YA reader but will pick on one up if recommended. This is a story that is wasted on YA audience. Not for the faint of heart or those with a lack of imagination, Gaiman weaves a fascinating tale that is worth following to the very end.
]]>
America America 2217682
In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.]]>
458 Ethan Canin 0679456805 Amy 3 3.66 2008 America America
author: Ethan Canin
name: Amy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/06
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]>
Triangle 108307 242 Katharine Weber 0374281424 Amy 4 3.46 2006 Triangle
author: Katharine Weber
name: Amy
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
I enjoy historical fiction, especially about subjects I previously knew nothing about and this work falls in that category. The story of the deadly fire in the New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is tragic and Weber has created a compelling contemporary story which weaves its history with a bit of mystery that keeps the story moving.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Financial Lives of the Poets: A Novel]]> 8329290 The Financial Lives of the Poets is a comic and heartfelt novel from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter, author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back. Walter tells the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.]]> 305 Jess Walter Amy 5 3.78 2009 The Financial Lives of the Poets: A Novel
author: Jess Walter
name: Amy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
When an author I like recommends another author, I take those recommendations seriously. This is how I came to read this contemporary work by Jess Walter. Jess came to my local independent bookstore and was so interesting. I had read The Zero but I wasn't as taken as I was with this latest work. It is timely, edgy, funny, sad, and wonderfully written. I frequent the 7-11 store in my community, although not for milk, 'cause it's like $5 a gallon.
]]>
<![CDATA[Revenge of the Spellmans (The Spellmans, #3)]]> 8135621 YOUR LIFE WAS COMPLICATED
Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch -- in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject.

As the book opens, Izzy is on hiatus from Spellman Inc. But when her boss, Milo, simultaneously cuts her bartending hours and introduces her to a "friend" looking for a private eye, Izzy reluctantly finds herself with a new client. She assures herself that the case -- a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed -- will be short and sweet, and will involve nothing more than the most boring of PI rituals: surveillance. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence.

Meanwhile, Spellmania continues. Izzy's brother, David, the family's most upright member, has adopted an uncharacteristically unkempt appearance and attitude toward work, life, and Izzy. And their wayward youngest sister, Rae, a historic academic underachiever, aces the PSATs and subsequently offends her study partner and object of obsession, Detective Henry Stone, to the point of excommunication. The only unsurprising behavior comes from her parents, whose visits to Milo's bar amount to thinly veiled surveillance and artful attempts (read: blackmail) at getting Izzy to return to the Spellman Inc. fold.

As the case of the wayward wife continues to vex her, Izzy's personal life -- and mental health -- seem to be disintegrating. Facing a housing crisis, she can't sleep, she can't remember where she parked her car, and, despite her shrinks' persistence, she can't seem to break through in her appointments. She certainly can't explain why she forgets dates with her lawyer's grandson, or fails to interpret the come-ons issued in an Irish brogue by Milo's new bartender. Nor can she explain exactly how she feels about Detective Henry Stone and his plans to move in with his new Assistant DA girlfriend...

Filled with the signature side-splitting Spellman antics, Revenge of the Spellmans is an ingenious, hilarious, and disarmingly tender installment in the Spellman series.

]]>
385 Lisa Lutz Amy 4 4.20 2009 Revenge of the Spellmans (The Spellmans, #3)
author: Lisa Lutz
name: Amy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
Okay, so I've read the first three of the Spellman books this summer. Why mess with a good thing? I've loved them. They are the perfect summer read. Book #3 continues to reveal the wacky characters of this wonderfully dysfunctional but totally loving family. Secondary characters, as they come and go, add to the fun. I'm so glad Isabel has said "yes".
]]>
<![CDATA[Curse of the Spellmans (The Spellmans, #2)]]> 6981611 THEY'RE BAAAAACK.

Their first caper, The Spellman Files, was a New York Times bestseller and earned comparisons to the books of Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich. Now the Spellmans, a highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators, return in a sidesplittingly funny story of suspicion, surveillance, and surprise.

When Izzy Spellman, PI, is arrested for the fourth time in three months, she writes it off as a job hazard. She's been (obsessively) keeping surveillance on a suspicious next door neighbor (suspect's name: John Brown), convinced he's up to no good -- even if her parents (the management at Spellman Investigations) are not.

When the (displeased) management refuses to bail Izzy out, it is Morty, Izzy's octogenarian lawyer, who comes to her rescue. But before he can build a defense, he has to know the facts. Over weak coffee and diner sandwiches, Izzy unveils the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- as only she, a thirty-year-old licensed professional, can.

When not compiling Suspicious Behavior Reports on all her family members, staking out her neighbor, or trying to keep her sister, Rae, from stalking her "best friend," Inspector Henry Stone, Izzy has been busy attempting to apprehend the copycat vandal whose attacks on Mrs. Chandler's holiday lawn tableaux perfectly and eerily match a series of crimes from 1991­-92, when Izzy and her best friend, Petra, happened to be at their most rebellious and delinquent. As Curse of the Spellmans unfolds, it's clear that Morty may be on retainer, but Izzy is still very much on the case...er, cases -- her own and that of every other Spellman family member.

(Re)meet the Spellmans, a family in which eavesdropping is a mandatory skill, locks are meant to be picked, past missteps are never forgotten, and blackmail is the preferred form of negotiation -- all in the name of unconditional love.

]]>
409 Lisa Lutz 0641548850 Amy 3 3.98 2008 Curse of the Spellmans (The Spellmans, #2)
author: Lisa Lutz
name: Amy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
Once you've been introduced to the Spellman family it is hard to walk away knowing there are three more mad-capped adventures ready to be read. Book #2 provides more of dysfunctional characterists of each family member, and while the "mystery" of the nextdoor neighbor is a bit far fetched (although incredibly kind of him), I still loved getting to know the family even better.
]]>
The Lacuna 7962825 507 Barbara Kingsolver 0060852585 Amy 5 3.88 2009 The Lacuna
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Amy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
I listened to the first 300 pages on audio and then read the final 100 pages. I don't know if it was because of how I read the book, but it took me until the reading portion to start enjoy this work. And I do admit that the further away I get from completing it the more I like it (although not as much as my sister who has placed it on her Top 10 of All-Time List). Kingsolver is master at weaving a story (I loved The Poisonwood Bible) and is undoubtedly one of the best writers of my generation. I must also admit that every part of this story is necessary and I totally understand that my distraction with the first 300 is my problem, not Kingsolver's. I have NO problem highly recommending this work.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Spellman Files (The Spellmans, #1)]]> 6457085 Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors -- but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

Part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her fourteen-year-old sister, Rae (who's become addicted to "recreational surveillance"); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed "Lost Weekends"). But when Izzy's parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's a she must take one last job before they'll let her go -- a fifteen-year-old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life.

The Spellman Files is the first novel in a winning and hilarious new series featuring the Spellman family in all its lovable chaos.]]>
481 Lisa Lutz Amy 5 3.91 2007 The Spellman Files (The Spellmans, #1)
author: Lisa Lutz
name: Amy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2010/05/01
date added: 2010/08/19
shelves:
review:
Lisa Lutz has written the perfect summer read. Short chapters, wonderfully witty characters, crazy but believable situations, and a family that would be quite entertaining if I lived on their block. This has been my #1 recommend of the 2010 summer season.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Fourth Bear (Nursery Crime, #2)]]> 148809 382 Jasper Fforde 0670037729 Amy 5 4.06 2006 The Fourth Bear (Nursery Crime, #2)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Amy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2006/06/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
In the second installment of the "Nursery Crimes" stories, Jack Spratt and Mary Mary have to figure out what has happened to Goldilocks AND help track the Gingerbread Man, who has escaped from prison. Better written and a much better ending (and you think you know how these stories end---ha!).
]]>
<![CDATA[The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime, #1)]]> 6628
But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr. Wolff. Before long Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.

And on top of all that, the JellyMan is coming to town . . .]]>
383 Jasper Fforde 0143037234 Amy 4 3.93 2005 The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime, #1)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Amy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2005/04/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
I loved Fforde's character, Thursday Next (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Wells of Lost Plots, Something Rotten), but I really love Jack Stratt and Mary, Mary in this wacky "Nursery Crimes" story. In this first installment Humpty Dumpty has cracked and while some say suicide, Jack and Mary think murder. Yup, it's crazy but worth the read. #2 in the series, The Fourth Bear, is even better.
]]>
The Turtle Warrior 903751 384 Mary Relindes Ellis 0143034529 Amy 5 4.03 2004 The Turtle Warrior
author: Mary Relindes Ellis
name: Amy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
This is an incredible first novel by a wonderful writer (who has also become a friend!). The setting is Wisconsin during the Vietnam War and the story of a family, whose oldest son goes off to war and the youngest son is left at home to deal with an terrible father, a trapped mother, and absolutely wonderful native American next door neighbors.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)]]> 1232 487 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn Amy 5 4.26 2001 The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Amy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2003/09/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
This is one of the most entertaining books I have read in the past five years. It has it all for me. The love of books, true love, unrequieted love, Spain in the 50s (and all that entales), a Jean Valjean-Javert type of relationship and a good, appropriate ending. I have read it AND listened to it. Zafon has also written beautiful, haunting music related to the story. It, too, is wonderful.
]]>
The Visible World 462142
The Visible World is a literary page-turner and an immensely moving novel about the vagaries of love and our need to make sense of life through the telling of stories.]]>
242 Mark Slouka 0618756434 Amy 5 3.48 2007 The Visible World
author: Mark Slouka
name: Amy
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
In search of the story of his mother's life during WWII, before her life in America, a son returns to discover the her life in the Czech Republic (based on true events--I read this book while in Washington, D.C. in March and while visiting the Holocaust Museum, I stood in amazement while I read the actually account!). Excellent story.
]]>
<![CDATA[Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See]]> 655211
Mike May spent his life crashing through. Blinded at age three, he defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision.

Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling a revolutionary stem cell transplant surgery could restore May’s vision. It would allow him to drive, to read, to see his children’s faces. He began to contemplate an astonishing new Would music still sound the same? Would sex be different? Would he recognize himself in the mirror? Would his marriage survive? Would he still be Mike May?

The procedure was filled with risks, some of them deadly, others beyond May’s wildest dreams. Even if the surgery worked, history was against him. Fewer than twenty cases were known worldwide in which a person gained vision after a lifetime of blindness. Each of those people suffered desperate consequences we can scarcely imagine.

There were countless reasons for May to pass on vision. He could think of only a single reason to go forward. Whatever his decision, he knew it would change his life.

Beautifully written and thrillingly told, Crashing Through is a journey of suspense, daring, romance, and insight into the mysteries of vision and the brain. Robert Kurson gives us a fascinating account of one man’s choice to explore what it means to see–and to truly live.]]>
306 Robert Kurson 1400063353 Amy 5 3.94 2006 Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See
author: Robert Kurson
name: Amy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
Robert Kurson (The Shadow Drivers) has done it again. This is an incredibly fascinating, true story of a young man who lost his sight at a young age in a chemical accident. As an adult he is a prime candidate for stem-cell and cornea transplant surgery. An interesting look at how the brain develops, how we process information, and the risks people in life. Highly recommendated.
]]>
The Law of Dreams 147146 The Law of Dreams tells the story of a young man's epic passage from innocence to experience during The Great Famine in Ireland of 1847.

On his odyssey through Ireland and Britain, and across the Atlantic to “the Boston states,� Fergus is initiated to violence, sexual heat, and the glories and dangers of the industrial revolution. Along the way, he meets an unforgettable generation of boy soldiers, brigands, street toughs and charming, willful girls—all struggling for survival in the aftermath of natural catastrophe magnified by political callousness and brutal neglect.

Peter Behrens transports the reader to another time and place for a deeply-moving and resonant experience. The Law of Dreams is gorgeously written in incandescent language that unleashes the sexual and psychological energies of a lost world while plunging the reader directly into a vein of history that haunts the ancestral memory of millions in a new millennium.]]>
408 Peter Behrens 1586421174 Amy 5 3.84 2006 The Law of Dreams
author: Peter Behrens
name: Amy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
Fabulously written story of young man finding his way during the Irish potato famine.
]]>
The Zero 22195
Answer: The Zero.

Brian Remy has no idea how he got here. It's been only five days since his city was attacked, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life--as if he were a stone skipping across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound he doesn't remember inflicting. His son wears a black armband and refuses to acknowledge that Remy is still alive. He seems to be going blind. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn't know. And his old partner in the police department, who may well be the only person crazier than Remy, has just gotten his picture on a box of First Responder cereal.

And these are the good things in Brian Remy's life. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a mysterious government agency that is assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As he slowly begins to realize that he's working for a shadowy operation, Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, and soon realizes he's got to track down the most elusive target of them all--himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.]]>
336 Jess Walter 0060898658 Amy 4 3.50 2006 The Zero
author: Jess Walter
name: Amy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:

]]>
The Crow Road 12021 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780349103235

'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmont to bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.'

Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God and illegal substances...]]>
501 Iain Banks Amy 4 4.09 1992 The Crow Road
author: Iain Banks
name: Amy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2008/10/01
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
So I'm in San Francisco on business and since I've finished the book I brought with me, I need a book for the long plane ride home. After dinner with friends we hit a great little independent bookstore and I asked a staff member what fiction they might recommend. Being a good sales person, she asked me what I enjoy reading. I gave her some of my favorites and she sent me to another staff member who would make the best recommendation. He put The Crow Road in my hand. How can you not want to read a book with an opening line "It was the day my grandmother exploded." I was hooked from start to finish. I just purchase another of Bank's works this past weekend, The Steep Approach to Garbadale.
]]>
The Uncommon Reader 2940062 From one of England's most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading

When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.

With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England's best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.]]>
120 Alan Bennett 0312427646 Amy 4 3.85 2007 The Uncommon Reader
author: Alan Bennett
name: Amy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/01
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
A delightful, charming story about what happens when the Queen of England decides to become a reader after an her first encounter with a bookmobile. This is one of those books you love to recommend to your friends for them to give to their mothers.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet]]> 6065179 Discover The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet for iPad.Ěý


A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.Ěý]]>
375 Reif Larsen 1594202176 Amy 5 3.90 2009 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
author: Reif Larsen
name: Amy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
When one of my favorite booksellers, who has left the business, tells you he has found a book that makes him want to be back in store so he can sell it, you know you HAVE to find it and read it for yourself. Even the size of this book makes it a unique experience. You must meet T.S. You'll want to be his friend. Trust me.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)]]> 4912857
The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that when I opened those windows � my new windows � each evening its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets in my ear, that I could catch on paper and narrate to whomever cared to listen�

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city’s underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.

Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Close to despair, David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike anything that has ever existed � a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, and perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realizes that there is a connection between his haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.

Once again, Zafon takes us into a dark, gothic universe first seen in The Shadow of the Wind and creates a breathtaking adventure of intrigue, romance, and tragedy. Through a dizzyingly constructed labyrinth of secrets, the magic of books, passion, and friendship blend into a masterful story.
(jacket)]]>
531 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 0385528701 Amy 4 3.94 2008 The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Amy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/06/20
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
I give this book at 4 only because I gave The Shadow of the Wind a 5. I thoroughly enjoyed this prequel by Zafon and highly recommended it. You don't have to have read Shadow to enjoy Angel's Game but it doesn't hurt. If you've read Shadow then you know the setting. This story also takes you away to places far and wide.
]]>
Half of a Yellow Sun 18749 A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,� Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.]]>
435 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 1400044162 Amy 5 4.34 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Amy
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/21
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
A book group selection that initially didn't float my boat but upon completion has become one of my favorite reads of 2009. This work is worthy of all the praise it has received. A tough read because of the content but so worthwhile about a time I knew very little about.
]]>
<![CDATA[What Would Barbra Do?: How Musicals Changed My Life]]> 301101 288 Emma Brockes 0061254614 Amy 4 3.20 2007 What Would Barbra Do?: How Musicals Changed My Life
author: Emma Brockes
name: Amy
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
Known by many of friends to break into song at the drop of a hat, and usually one from a musical at that, this book was a pure delight to read. A perfect read for anyone who believes that they don't make 'em like they used to. Be prepared to laugh along with Brockes as she looks at the classic tunes (pre 1970s), contemporary productions and determine for yourself if you think Mary Poppins really is "practically perfect in every way." This is a "way too much fun" read.
]]>
Border Songs 6098855
Border Songs is that rare delight: a gently satirical portrait, an extraordinary love story and a celebration of the coincidental and the miraculous.


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
304 Jim Lynch 030727117X Amy 5 3.63 2009 Border Songs
author: Jim Lynch
name: Amy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/15
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
From the author of The Highest Tide, this story is full of wonderful characters (especially Brandon)who stick with you long after you've read the last page. For those of us who are relatively close to the Canadian border, this story provides a new look at what a border mean. Jim also does a fabulous job at presenting Brandon's unique qualities in a kind but quirky fashion. I loved the daily bird counts.
]]>
The Memory of Running 112147
Ron McLarty's The Memory of Running is this decade's novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy's life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week.

Rolling down the driveway of his parents' house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption. (From the publisher.)]]>
384 Ron McLarty 0143036688 Amy 4 3.76 2004 The Memory of Running
author: Ron McLarty
name: Amy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2007/11/01
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves:
review:
Recommended to me by a good friend, I began reading this work as an obligation to said friend, and while it took a while to get into it, I was soon sold and began to care about what was to happen to each character and the journey they were on. I love a good story and this is definitely a good story for those that enjoy what may appear, on the surface, to be the lighter side of life, but in truth, explores much deeper issues. Very enjoyable and best of all, an appropriate ending.
]]>
The Highest Tide 94673 272 Jim Lynch 1582346291 Amy 5 3.84 2005 The Highest Tide
author: Jim Lynch
name: Amy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2006/06/01
date added: 2008/01/05
shelves:
review:
Fabulous coming of age story of a young boy in the Pacific Northwest who, much to his chagrin, becomes quite popular when he discovers a squid on the sound early one morning. Great characters. Great story. Great education about the sea life too. Check out to see photos of sea life described in the book.
]]>
The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]>
592 Markus Zusak Amy 5 Stones from the River, the characters are neither Jews nor Nazis, just people trying to get though a difficult life. Inspired by the true story of the author's family. ]]> 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Amy
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2006/03/01
date added: 2008/01/05
shelves:
review:
This is probably my favorite book of '06. A young adult release, this story is wasted on the young! And I envy those who get to discover it for the first time. The story is WWII Germany, and like Hegi's Stones from the River, the characters are neither Jews nor Nazis, just people trying to get though a difficult life. Inspired by the true story of the author's family.
]]>
The Painter of Battles 2296703
One night, an unexpected visitor interrupts his solitude. As Faulques struggles to recall the face, the man explains that he was the subject of an iconic photo taken by Faulques in a war zone years ago–a photo that destroyed his life. “And why have you come looking for me?� asks Faulques. The stranger answers, “Because I’m going to kill you.�

So begins a life-or-death exchange in which Faulques is forced to recall a time when he loved a beautiful woman and risked his life daily for art and testimony. Yet as the tense dialogue between Faulques and his would-be killer continues, the stakes grow even higher. What they are grappling with becomes not just Faulques� fate, but the very nature of love and cruelty itself.]]>
278 Arturo Pérez-Reverte 0297851853 Amy 4 3.79 2006 The Painter of Battles
author: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
name: Amy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2008/01/05
shelves:
review:
Perez-Reverte is one of my favorite writers. His earlier works (everything before The Nautical Chart) are my favorites. I love the way I always learn about the topic while being catch up in the mystery/adventure of the book. This newest release is very contemporary and is an amazing look at war. The premise of the story is, for me, totally possible and I was captived and sadden by the atrocities of war described by both main characters. This is a story that lingers with you for days. I highly recommend it.
]]>
The Brothers K 19534 The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. Highly inventive formally, the novel is mainly narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of four boys and identical twin girls, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam.]]> 645 David James Duncan 055337849X Amy 5 4.39 1992 The Brothers K
author: David James Duncan
name: Amy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 1999/03/01
date added: 2008/01/05
shelves:
review:
This is one of my top 10 books. Period. A wonderful story of dealing with the issues of family, faith, war, baseball, the 60s/70s, growing up, the Pacific Northwest region. It has it all. Given and read (many times aloud) regularly by members of my family.
]]>
The Camel Bookmobile 78425
When Fiona Sweeney tells her family she wants to do something that matters, they do not expect her to go to Africa to help start a traveling library. But that is where Fiona chooses to make her mark: in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya, among tiny, far-flung communities, nearly unknown and lacking roads and schools, where people live daily with drought, hunger, and disease.

In The Camel Bookmobile, Fi travels to settlements where people have never held a book in their hands. Her goal is to help bring Dr. Seuss, Homer, Tom Sawyer, and Hemingway to a largely illiterate and semi-nomadic populace. However, because the donated books are limited in number and the settlements are many, the library initiates a tough fine: if anyone fails to return a book, the bookmobile will stop coming.

Though her motives are good, Fi doesn't understand the people she seeks to help. Encumbered by her Western values, she finds herself in the midst of several struggles within the community of Mididima. There the bookmobile's presence sparks a feud between those who favor modernization and those who fear the loss of the traditional way of life in the African bush. The feud heightens when one young man�"Scar Boy"—doesn't return his books. As promised, the library stops all visits, but Fi goes to the settlement alone, determined to recover what has been lost.

Evocative, seamless, and haunting, The Camel Bookmobile is a powerful saga that challenges our fears of the unknown. It is a story that captures the riddles and calamities that often occur when two cultures collide. It follows an American librarian who travels to Africa to give meaning to her life, and ultimately loses a piece of her heart. In the end, this compelling novel shows how one life can change many, in spite of dangerous and seemingly immutable obstacles.]]>
320 Masha Hamilton 0061173487 Amy 4 3.37 2007 The Camel Bookmobile
author: Masha Hamilton
name: Amy
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2006/10/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
When a young American woman feels called to do something more significant with her life, her bags are soon packed and she heads to Africa to be a part of the bookmobile program...hence the title. But cultures clash when the one rule (all books must be turned in for the bookmobile to keep returning to the village)is broken by a young, innocent child. Is your best intention right for everyone? Hmmm!
]]>
The Rest of Her Life 566850 The Rest of Her Life, Laura Moriarty delivers a luminous, compassionate, and provocative look at how mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another.Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy -- the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community. We see the story from Leigh's perspective, as she grapples with the hard reality of what her daughter has done and the devastating consequences her actions have on the family of another teenage girl in town, all while struggling to protect Kara in the face of rising public outcry.

Like the best works of Jane Hamilton, Jodi Picoult, and Alice Sebold, Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life is a novel of complex moral dilemma, filled with nuanced characters and a page-turning plot that makes readers ask themselves, "What would I do"]]>
320 Laura Moriarty 1401302718 Amy 5 3.36 2007 The Rest of Her Life
author: Laura Moriarty
name: Amy
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
Two days before her high school graduation a young girl accidentially killed a high school sophomore. The story is told from the mom's perspective (who is not the nicest of characters) and is a powerful story. Very much like Jodi Picoult but Laura Moriarty has her own voice (and lives in Lawrence!).
]]>
Coal Black Horse 352676
At fourteen, wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety—blue on one side, gray on the other� Robey thinks he's off on a great adventure. But not far from home, his horse falters and he realizes the enormity of his task. It takes the gift of a powerful and noble coal black horse to show him how to undertake the most important journey of his with boldness, bravery, and self-posession.

Coal Black Horse joins the pantheon of great war novels� All Quiet on the Western Front, The Red Badge of Courage, The Naked and the Dead .]]>
218 Robert Olmstead 1565125215 Amy 5 3.81 2007 Coal Black Horse
author: Robert Olmstead
name: Amy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
Concise, fabulously written story of a young boy sent to bring his father home from war and his companion is a majestic, coal black horse. Powerful, powerful story of a young boy becoming a man far too soon in his life.
]]>
Loving Frank 898885 I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.]]>
384 Nancy Horan 0345494997 Amy 5 3.76 2007 Loving Frank
author: Nancy Horan
name: Amy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
Fictional account of the lives of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney. If you think Brad and Angelina are popular, they've got nothing on these two. Frank designed a home from the Cheneys and he and Mamah fell in love and ran off to Europe. Life was far from easy and tragedy was, unfortunately, unavoidable. Well researched and well written. I was fascinated as I knew nothing about this side of one of American's most famous architect.
]]>
Forgive Me 60489
Nadine Morgan travels the world as a journalist, covering important events, following dangerous leads, and running from anything that might tie her down. Since an assignment in Cape Town ended in tragedy and regret, Nadine has not returned to South Africa, or opened her heart–until she hears the story of Jason Irving.

Jason, an American student, was beaten to death by angry local youths at the height of the apartheid era. Years later, his mother is told that Jason’s killers have applied for amnesty. Jason’s parents pack their bags and fly from Nantucket to Cape Town. Filled with rage, Jason’s mother resolves to fight the murderers� pleas for forgiveness.

As Nadine follows the Irvings to beautiful, ghost-filled South Africa, she is flooded with memories of a time when the pull toward adventure and intrigue left her with a broken heart. Haunted by guilt and a sense of remorse, and hoping to lose herself in her coverage of the murder trial, Nadine grows closer to Jason’s mother as well as to the mother of one of Jason’s killers–with profound consequences. In a country both foreign and familiar, Nadine is forced to face long-buried demons, come to terms with the missing pieces of her own family past, and learn what it means to truly love and to forgive.

With her dazzling prose and resonant themes, Amanda Eyre Ward has joined the ranks of such beloved American novelists as Anne Tyler and Ann Patchett. Gripping, darkly humorous, and luminous, Forgive Me is an unforgettable story of dreams and longing, betrayal and redemption.]]>
236 Amanda Eyre Ward 0345494466 Amy 4 3.45 2007 Forgive Me
author: Amanda Eyre Ward
name: Amy
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2007/04/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
Amanda Ward (How to be Lost) has written another great story. Centered about a war journalist who returns to South Africa with an American family, who will sit at the Truth and Reconcilation Commission and listen to the woman who killed their son seek forgiveness. The story has many dimensions and is well worth the read. This book was inspired by the true story of a Fullbright Scholar who was killed during apartheid and her family has played a significant, supporter role in her killer's lives.
]]>
<![CDATA[Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name]]> 64482
Vida's second novel is the riveting story of an unthinkable quest. Her indomitable heroine, Clarissa Iverton, slowly and painfully (but not without a sense of humor) peels away years of old lies in order to embrace a history she could never have imagined. Sharply focused and beautifully told, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is an ambitious and accomplished work of fiction that resonates with the themes of truth and forgiveness.

(Spring 2007 Selection)]]>
226 Vendela Vida 0060828374 Amy 5 3.61 2007 Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
author: Vendela Vida
name: Amy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/06/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
Most interesting story written by the wife of Dave Eggers. The story finds a young woman who discovers, at her father's death, that he really wasn't her father. The story is her journey to find her true father. And yes, it takes place in very cold places!!!
]]>
Keeping the House 478614
When Dolly Magnuson moves to Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, in 1950, she discovers all too soon that making marriage work is harder than it looks in the pages of the Ladies� Home Journal . Dolly tries to adapt to her new life by keeping the house, supporting her husband’s career, and fretting about dinner menus. She even gives up her dream of flying an airplane, trying instead to fit in at the stuffy Ladies Aid quilting circle. Soon, though, her loneliness and restless imagination are seized by the vacant house on the hill. As Dolly’s life and marriage become increasingly difficult, she begins to lose herself in piecing together the story of three generations of Mickelson men and Wilma Mickelson, who came to Pine Rapids as a new bride in 1896 and fell in love with a man who was not her husband; her oldest son, Jack, who fought as a Marine in the trenches of World War I; and Jack’s son, JJ, a troubled veteran of World War II, who returns home to discover Dolly in his grandparents� house.

As the crisis in Dolly’s marriage escalates, she not only escapes into JJ’s stories of his family’s past but finds in them parallels to her own life. As Keeping the House moves back and forth in time, it eloquently explores themes of wartime heroism and passionate love, of the struggles of men’s struggles with fatherhood and war and of women’s conflicts with issues of conformity, identity, forbidden dreams, and love.

Beautifully written and atmospheric, Keeping the House illuminates the courage it takes to shape and reshape a life, and the difficulty of ever knowing the truth about another person’s desires. Keeping the House is an unforgettable novel about small-town life and big matters of the heart.

Advance praise for Keeping the House
“Ellen Baker’s first novel is a wonder! Keeping the House is a great big juicy family saga, a romantic page-turner with genuine characters written with a perfect sense of history, time, and place. Her portrayal of the American housewife is hilarious and heartbreaking. I couldn’t have liked it more!�
–Fannie Flagg, author of Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven

“Ellen Baker’s first novel, Keeping the House, is a quilt that grids a small Midwestern town in the middle of the last century. Under this writer’s deft hands, each square is a story, a mystery, an indiscretion, a tale of the great house and grand family who once ruled there. Even more, it captures the roles of women both the living embodiments of demure ideals, and those who couldn’t fit the pattern. Edith Wharton’s novels of domestic despair and display come to mind with each page.�
–Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

“A born storyteller, Ellen Baker has written an enthralling family saga filled with three generations of memorable characters and capturing the dreams and frustrations of twentieth-century women in wonderful, spot-on historical detail.�
–Faith Sullivan, author of Gardenias and The Cape Ann

“Ellen Baker has written the novel I’ve been waiting to read for a very long time. It’s the book you want to curl up with, the book you rush home to, the book you wish you’d written. In Keeping the House , she serves up the complexities of family relationships, the anguish of victims of wars, the innermost thoughts of women, and the social mores of the past. Seasoned with mysteries that kept me devouring pages, this is one huge gourmet feast of a book for readers to savor. I look forward to every delicious book this author writes.�
–Bev Marshall, author of Walking Through Shadows and Right as Rain]]>
528 Ellen Baker 1400066352 Amy 5 3.74 2007 Keeping the House
author: Ellen Baker
name: Amy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
A young, newly married woman moves to a Wisconsin town in the early 50s. She is soon captivated by an abandon house on a hill and must know its history and its inhabitants. A great, lighter read you can recommend to any adult age women.
]]>
The Preservationist 100223 -A boat, she says.
-A ship, more like. I'll need the boys to help, he adds as an afterthought.
-We're leagues from the sea, she says, or any river big enough to warrant a boat.
This conversation is making Noe impatient. -I've no need to explain myself to you.
-And when you're done, she says carefully, we'll be taking this ship to the sea somehow?
As usual, Noe's impatience fades quickly. -We'll not be going to the sea. The sea will be coming to us."

In this brilliant debut novel, Noah's family (or Noe as he's called here)-his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law-tell what it's like to live with a man touched by God, while struggling against events that cannot be controlled or explained. When Noe orders his sons to build an ark, he can't tell them where the wood will come from. When he sends his daughters-in-law out to gather animals, he can offer no directions, money, or protection. And once the rain starts, they all realize that the true test of their faith is just beginning. Because the family is trapped on the ark with thousands of animals-with no experience feeding or caring for them, and no idea of when the waters will recede. What emerges is a family caught in the midst of an extraordinary Biblical event, with all the tension, humanity-even humor-that implies.]]>
256 David Maine 0312328486 Amy 4 3.65 2004 The Preservationist
author: David Maine
name: Amy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2007/08/16
shelves:
review:
The story of Noah and the Ark told from the perspective of Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. Very interesting and creative.
]]>