J's bookshelf: all

J's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 26 Sep 2024 09:42:37 -0700 60 J's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Storyteller 53931 ]]> 245 Mario Vargas Llosa 0312420285 J 0 to-read 3.74 1987

author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: J
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox]]> 874419 1120 Shelby Foote 0394746228 J 4 4.53 1974

The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

author: Shelby Foote
name: J
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
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review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen J 4 3.86 1814

author: Jane Austen
name: J
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
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review:

]]> The Odyssey 152129 64 Adrian Mitchell 0789454556 J 5 4.02 -800

author: Adrian Mitchell
name: J
average rating: 4.02
book published: -800
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> The Shipping News 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 J 3 3.88 1993

author: Annie Proulx
name: J
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/12
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X J 4 Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"

Utah’s Reed Smoot was speaking to the 1930 Senate. To demonstrate just how filthy they were, he’d threatened to read from Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Honore de Balzac's Droll Tales, the poetry of Robert Burns, the Kama Sutra�� The place was packed. Unfortunately, he was bluffing.

“I'd rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books.��

Opium? Really? So I sat myself down to read. And it was dull. I tried to make myself concentrate on the ideas, consider the times, you know, act my age. But it was so�� so�� wordy. That seems a strange complaint to make of a book, but seriously �� where was the sex? As it turns out, this book isn’t about sex. Well, it is and it isn’t. To me it spoke of wholeness. Lawrence originally titled it Tenderness and that’s what Lady Chatterley’s lover, Mellors, struggles with. Against war, against the endless pursuit of money, against the hardness of life, he strives to protect the tenderness within. He wants to be whole. But hiding from the world �� from living �� doesn’t satisfy. Constance Chatterley values the mental over the physical in relationships until that’s all she has. And then it’s not enough. As her own father remarks to her husband, it doesn’t suit her to be a demi-vierge. “She’s not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she’s a bonny Scotch trout.��

Being a soft, ruddy, country-looking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and curling, brown hair, and a soft voice and rather strong, female loins she was considered a little old-fashioned and “womanly��. She was not a “little pilchard sort of fish,�� like a boy. She was too feminine to be quite smart.

Constance and Mellors are throw-backs, more fully female and male than their acquaintances. They don’t fit in modern society. Being more trout than pilchard in appearance myself, I think this is lovely. But Lawrence is getting at something else here. (Why? Where is the SEX??) We’re back to that old theme of metrosexuals ruining the world. Or Man versus Machine. Or agrarian values beset by��

Ah, but here it is! “I love that I can go into thee,�� Mellors tells her (This is it! The sex!) but he means more than that. (Of course he does. Good God. Does the man ever stop thinking? It’s annoying and I kind of like it and that annoys me all the more.) What he means is that he can lose himself in her. He can stop thinking about what it all means and worrying where it’s taking them. There’s just female reveling in male and man exulting in woman. In sex, by giving themselves up wholly to one another they become whole.

Finally! The sex!

Okay, I can see why Senator Smoot might not want this lying out where his kids could find it. There are words. Not just that wordy nonsense in the beginning that so perfectly proved to me Lawrence’s point that the mind is not enough. Other words. Shocking words that Lawrence batters you with until they seem ordinary and natural. Yes, there’s sex. Not the forthright, anatomically descriptive eroti�� okay, well maybe there�� and here, on page 224�� and, um�� yeah. It's pretty blatant. There’s also the gibberish about Lady Jane and John Thomas and at least one paragraph of conversation with John Thomas. But. For the most part I thought it fairly moving. The expressions may be outdated, but the emotions are not. Constance is trapped in a world where she doesn’t belong, a world where she can not truly live. Afraid of losing that essential part of him, which is not the testosterone driven manliness we imagine, but a more tender one, Mellors has refused to live.

Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened, because she was so beautifully out of contact. She and Clifford lived in their ideas and his books. She entertained�� there were always people in the house. Time went on as the clock does, half-past eight instead of half-past seven.

And then it began again. Life. And this is what will save us from the coldness of the world: life. Blood coursing in our veins, tenderness and feeling for others, “warm-hearted fucking��.

There, Mr Smoot. I've said it.
]]> 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover

author: D.H. Lawrence
name: J
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/18
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review:
“I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"

Utah’s Reed Smoot was speaking to the 1930 Senate. To demonstrate just how filthy they were, he’d threatened to read from Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Honore de Balzac's Droll Tales, the poetry of Robert Burns, the Kama Sutra�� The place was packed. Unfortunately, he was bluffing.

“I'd rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books.��

Opium? Really? So I sat myself down to read. And it was dull. I tried to make myself concentrate on the ideas, consider the times, you know, act my age. But it was so�� so�� wordy. That seems a strange complaint to make of a book, but seriously �� where was the sex? As it turns out, this book isn’t about sex. Well, it is and it isn’t. To me it spoke of wholeness. Lawrence originally titled it Tenderness and that’s what Lady Chatterley’s lover, Mellors, struggles with. Against war, against the endless pursuit of money, against the hardness of life, he strives to protect the tenderness within. He wants to be whole. But hiding from the world �� from living �� doesn’t satisfy. Constance Chatterley values the mental over the physical in relationships until that’s all she has. And then it’s not enough. As her own father remarks to her husband, it doesn’t suit her to be a demi-vierge. “She’s not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she’s a bonny Scotch trout.��

Being a soft, ruddy, country-looking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and curling, brown hair, and a soft voice and rather strong, female loins she was considered a little old-fashioned and “womanly��. She was not a “little pilchard sort of fish,�� like a boy. She was too feminine to be quite smart.

Constance and Mellors are throw-backs, more fully female and male than their acquaintances. They don’t fit in modern society. Being more trout than pilchard in appearance myself, I think this is lovely. But Lawrence is getting at something else here. (Why? Where is the SEX??) We’re back to that old theme of metrosexuals ruining the world. Or Man versus Machine. Or agrarian values beset by��

Ah, but here it is! “I love that I can go into thee,�� Mellors tells her (This is it! The sex!) but he means more than that. (Of course he does. Good God. Does the man ever stop thinking? It’s annoying and I kind of like it and that annoys me all the more.) What he means is that he can lose himself in her. He can stop thinking about what it all means and worrying where it’s taking them. There’s just female reveling in male and man exulting in woman. In sex, by giving themselves up wholly to one another they become whole.

Finally! The sex!

Okay, I can see why Senator Smoot might not want this lying out where his kids could find it. There are words. Not just that wordy nonsense in the beginning that so perfectly proved to me Lawrence’s point that the mind is not enough. Other words. Shocking words that Lawrence batters you with until they seem ordinary and natural. Yes, there’s sex. Not the forthright, anatomically descriptive eroti�� okay, well maybe there�� and here, on page 224�� and, um�� yeah. It's pretty blatant. There’s also the gibberish about Lady Jane and John Thomas and at least one paragraph of conversation with John Thomas. But. For the most part I thought it fairly moving. The expressions may be outdated, but the emotions are not. Constance is trapped in a world where she doesn’t belong, a world where she can not truly live. Afraid of losing that essential part of him, which is not the testosterone driven manliness we imagine, but a more tender one, Mellors has refused to live.

Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened, because she was so beautifully out of contact. She and Clifford lived in their ideas and his books. She entertained�� there were always people in the house. Time went on as the clock does, half-past eight instead of half-past seven.

And then it began again. Life. And this is what will save us from the coldness of the world: life. Blood coursing in our veins, tenderness and feeling for others, “warm-hearted fucking��.

There, Mr Smoot. I've said it.

]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 J 4 4.00 2001

author: Geraldine Brooks
name: J
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> The Remains of the Day 274186 here.

The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving “a great gentleman.�� But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness�� and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.]]> 245 Kazuo Ishiguro 0679731725 J 4 4.17 1989 The Remains of the Day

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Landscapes: John Berger on Art]]> 29092853 Landscapes, the companion volume to John Berger’s highly acclaimed Portraits, explores what art tells us about ourselves.

“Berger’s work is an invitation to reimagine; to see in different ways,�� writes Tom Overton in the introduction to this volume. As a master storyteller and thinker John Berger challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives.

In this brilliant collection of diverse pieces—essays, short stories, poems, translations—which spans a lifetime’s engagement with art, Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He pays homage to the writers and thinkers who infuenced him, such as Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists—from the Renaissance to the present—while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation.

Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist’s eye makes him a storyteller in these essays, rather than a critic. With “landscape�� as an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid defnition, this collection surveys the aesthetic landscapes that have informed, challenged and nourished John Berger’s understanding of the world. Landscapes—alongside Portraits—completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.]]> 272 John Berger 1784785873 J 4 4.17 2016 Landscapes: John Berger on Art

author: John Berger
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/25
date added: 2020/09/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Robert Fergusson: Selected Poems]]> 2138236 216 Robert Fergusson 1846970350 J 4 3.79 2000

author: Robert Fergusson
name: J
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/25
date added: 2020/09/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Coleridge: Poems: Introduction by John Beer (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)]]> 350096 256 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 0375400729 J 5 4.11 1997

Coleridge: Poems: Introduction by John Beer (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
name: J
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/03/01
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If you're looking up Coleridge, I needn't recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner for you. Instead I'll tell you what a nice little edition this is. Smallish, attractive, good paper, looks pretty lying on your nightstand. It fits perfectly in your purse too. Handy when you're stuck in traffic and need a poetry fix.
]]> Captain Blood: His Odyssey 1535982 Book by Sabatini, Rafael 427 Rafael Sabatini 1888173440 J 5 4.33 1922

author: Rafael Sabatini
name: J
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1922
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Complete Short Stories of Saki]]> 1749903 0 Saki 0899684394 J 4 4.20 1930

author: Saki
name: J
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1930
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/08/29
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]]> All Creatures Great and Small 2241226 The classic multimillion copy bestseller

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For over forty years, generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

James Herriot's memoirs have sold 80 million copies worldwide, and continue to delight and entertain readers of all ages.]]> James Herriot 060601358X J 4 4.04 1972 All Creatures Great and Small

author: James Herriot
name: J
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1972
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/04/12
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]]> Short Stories of Maupassant 2514801 1003 Guy de Maupassant J 4 3.50 1890

author: Guy de Maupassant
name: J
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1890
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/03/21
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)]]> 237209
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.]]> 429 Tana French 0670038601 J 4 3.75 2007 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)

author: Tana French
name: J
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2018/07/25
date added: 2018/07/25
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Kind of pissed off, but mulling it over.
]]> <![CDATA[Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution]]> 25691315
Today, only a modest, rusted and scarred metal sign near a dilapidated auto garage marks the mass grave where the bodies of the “Maryland Heroes�� lie��256 men “who fell in the Battle of Brooklyn.�� In Washington’s Immortals, best-selling military historian Patrick K. O’Donnell brings to life the forgotten story of this remarkable band of brothers. Known as “gentlemen of honour, family, and fortune,�� they fought not just in Brooklyn, but in key battles including Trenton, Princeton, Camden, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and Yorktown, where their heroism changed the course of the war.

Drawing on extensive original sources, from letters to diaries to pension applications, O’Donnell pieces together the stories of these brave men—their friendships, loves, defeats, and triumphs. He explores their arms and tactics, their struggles with hostile loyalists and shortages of clothing and food, their development into an elite unit, and their dogged opponents, including British General Lord Cornwallis. And through the prism of this one group, O’Donnell tells the larger story of the Revolutionary War. Washington’s Immortals is gripping and inspiring boots-on-the-ground history, sure to appeal to a wide readership.]]> 463 Patrick K. O'Donnell 0802124593 J 4 4.07 2016 Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution

Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution

author: Patrick K. O'Donnell
name: J
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2018/07/06
date added: 2018/07/06
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]]> Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1) 28446947 Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819.

How about Autumn 2016?

Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.

Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.

Ali Smith's new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. This first in a seasonal quartet casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearian jeu d'esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s Pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history-making.

Here's where we're living. Here's time at its most contemporaneous and its most cyclic.

From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves.

Here comes Autumn.]]> 264 Ali Smith 0241207002 J 4 3.67 2016 Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1)

author: Ali Smith
name: J
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2018/06/10
date added: 2018/06/10
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]]> After Me Comes the Flood 20829032
He shuts up the bookshop no one ever comes to and drives out of London. When his car breaks down and he becomes lost on an isolated road, he goes looking for help, and stumbles into the grounds of a grand but dilapidated house.

Its residents welcome him with open arms - but there's more to this strange community than meets the eye. They all know him by name, they've prepared a room for him, and claim to have been waiting for him all along.

As nights and days pass John finds himself drawn into a baffling menagerie. There is Hester, their matriarchal, controlling host; Alex and Claire, siblings full of child-like wonder and delusions; the mercurial Eve; Elijah - a faithless former preacher haunted by the Bible; and chain-smoking Walker, wreathed in smoke and hostility. Who are these people? And what do they intend for John?

Elegant, gently sinister and psychologically complex, this is a haunting and hypnotic debut novel by a brilliant new voice.]]> 232 Sarah Perry 1846689457 J 3 2.82 2014 After Me Comes the Flood

author: Sarah Perry
name: J
average rating: 2.82
book published: 2014
rating: 3
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> The Essex Serpent 32075861
Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne's spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.]]> 422 Sarah Perry 0062666371 J 4 3.49 2016 The Essex Serpent

author: Sarah Perry
name: J
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> The Ghost in the Noonday Sun 1304504 144 Sid Fleischman 0440415837 J 5 3.98 1965

author: Sid Fleischman
name: J
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1965
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher]]> 20563988
Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road on a Greek island, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.]]> 242 Hilary Mantel J 0 3.42 2014 The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

author: Hilary Mantel
name: J
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel J 0 4.26 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)

Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)

author: Hilary Mantel
name: J
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel J 0 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)

author: Hilary Mantel
name: J
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead]]> 13510313 400 Andrew Nicoll J 5 3.56 2012

If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead

author: Andrew Nicoll
name: J
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne]]> 25475468 A woman murdered
A crime unsolved
A mystery that has lasted a century

The brutal murder of wealthy spinster Miss Jean Milne a hundred years ago shocked the country to its core. But for a century, the case has gone unsolved. Why was she tied up, tortured and brutally murdered? And who could have committed such a heinous crime?

To all appearances, Miss Jean Milne was the model of respectability, living a quiet life alone in her seaside mansion. But behind the façade, she had a secret life, her frequent trips to London masking a very different lifestyle. Now, using newly released evidence from police files and eyewitness testimony hidden for a century, Andrew Nicoll has brought the case back from the dead to reveal what really happened.

It's a shocking tale of class division, money, sex, lies, betrayal and murder. And, at last, after a hundred years, the curious death of Miss Jean Milne may finally have found a solution.

]]> 345 Andrew Nicoll 1845029836 J 5 favorites 3.67 2015 The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

author: Andrew Nicoll
name: J
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> Edinburgh Picturesque Notes 19336359 80 Robert Louis Stevenson J 5 3.76 1879

author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: J
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1879
rating: 5
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]]> The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy 51061 142 Nick Bantock 0811806960 J 4
One star removed for the third book. Sorry. The first is perfect.]]> 4.37 1993

author: Nick Bantock
name: J
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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art, weirdness, wonder, love

One star removed for the third book. Sorry. The first is perfect.
]]> Greenvoe 824132 256 George Mackay Brown 190459817X J 4 4.02 1970

author: George Mackay Brown
name: J
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1970
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> Wind, Sand and Stars 8837 ]]> 229 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0156027496 J 5 4.18 1939

author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: J
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1939
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> Slow Man 926604 In this new book, Coetzee offers a profound meditation on what makes us human, on what it means to grow older and reflect on how we have lived our lives. Like all great works of literature, Slow Man is a novel that asks questions but rarely provides answers; it is a portrait of a man in search of truth. Paul Rayment’s accident changes his perspective on life, and as a result, he begins to address the kinds of universal concerns that define us all: What does it mean to do good? What in our lives is ultimately meaningful? Is it more important for one to feel loved or cared for? How do we define the place that we call “home��? In his clear and uncompromising voice, Coetzee struggles with these issues, and the result is a deeply moving story about love and mortality that dazzles the reader on every page.

]]> 265 J.M. Coetzee 0670034592 J 4 3.23 2005 Slow Man

author: J.M. Coetzee
name: J
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> The Power and the Glory 3690
In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, "Graham Greene's masterpiece��. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist."]]> 222 Graham Greene 0142437301 J 4 3.99 1940 The Power and the Glory

author: Graham Greene
name: J
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> In Search of Lost Time 18796
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of À la recherche du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).]]> 4211 Marcel Proust 0812969642 J 5 4.34 1913 In Search of Lost Time

author: Marcel Proust
name: J
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1913
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Short Novels of Dostoevsky]]> 138437 1960 Anchor Books; Paperback 0 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0385094353 J 4 4.17 1959

author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Thirty-Nine Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)]]> 147114
Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot that could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 118 John Buchan 0141441178 J 4 3.44 1915 The Thirty-Nine Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)

The Thirty-Nine Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)

author: John Buchan
name: J
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 J 3 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: J
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/11/13
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review:

]]> About Looking 470185 224 John Berger 0679736557 J 4 4.09 1980

author: John Berger
name: J
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2017/11/13
date added: 2017/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)]]> 2247142
It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.�� Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game.

“Sinister and strangely alluring,�� (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.]]> 271 Patricia Highsmith J 4 3.96 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)

author: Patricia Highsmith
name: J
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2017/11/13
date added: 2017/11/13
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Five People You Meet in Heaven]]> 175343
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie comes a novel that explores unexpected connections and the idea that heaven is more than a place: it's an answer.]]> 196 Mitch Albom J 3 3.75 2003 The Five People You Meet in Heaven

author: Mitch Albom
name: J
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/08/28
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review:

]]> The Poems of Catullus 287160
Charles Martin's masterful translation skillfully conveys the tones and rhythms of the Latin verse while never straying far from its original meaning. Scholars long familiar with the poems will see them here in a new light. Readers encountering them for the first time will discover in Catullus one of the ancient world's most modern voices.]]> 208 Catullus 0801839262 J 0 3.95 -60 The Poems of Catullus

author: Catullus
name: J
average rating: 3.95
book published: -60
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/03/08
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review:

]]> The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 752990 64 Omar Khayyám J 5 favorites 4.11 1120

author: Omar Khayyám
name: J
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1120
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/02/18
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> The Color Purple 373115 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983)

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.]]> 290 Alice Walker 0151191549 J 3 4.15 1982 The Color Purple

author: Alice Walker
name: J
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/02/03
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]]> Wuthering Heights 507157 am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being." Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.]]> 324 Emily Brontë 0553212583 J 5 3.80 1847 Wuthering Heights

author: Emily Brontë
name: J
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/08/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet]]> 22792008 234 Clifford Garstang 1941209114 J 0 to-read 4.39 2014

Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet

author: Clifford Garstang
name: J
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Cider House Rules 174750 The Cider House Rules is the heart-wrenching story of orphan Homer Wells and his guardian, Dr. Wilbur Larch. With nods of affection to both David Copperfield and Jane Eyre, Irving's novel follows Homer on his journey from innocence to experience, brilliantly depicting the boy's struggle to find his place in the world. Irving also wrote an Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1999 film adaptation of the novel that starred Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, and Charlize Theron.]]> 587 John Irving 0345387651 J 4 4.01 1985 The Cider House Rules

author: John Irving
name: J
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/09/18
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review:

]]> Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn J 0 3.93 2012 Gone Girl

author: Gillian Flynn
name: J
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2014/05/29
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Moby Dick 2389 6 Herman Melville 0143058096 J 4 3.47 1851

author: Herman Melville
name: J
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1851
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/02/11
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]]> Disgrace 6192 220 J.M. Coetzee 0143036378 J 5 Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that’s what’s in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.
�� It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. At page ten I would have readily given it five stars; the writing is superb. Halfway through I’d have given it four. Excellent, but slightly annoying. At the moment I finished it, shouting “WHAT?? What the hell kind of ending is THAT???�� and wondering if I was going into shock, I’d have demanded stars back for ruining my life. A little distance was needed before I could consider it rationally again.

�� The word disgrace is what struck me with nearly every page. Coetzee’s writing is like that. Tight. There’s no escaping what he wants you to see. It’s not outrageously blatant, but it’s none too subtle either. It’s good. So good you might be tempted to revel in it. Do not. This is not for the faint-hearted. Run. Read something easy, something happy. Anything. If you stay Coetzee will turn that word, disgrace, in your mind a hundred different ways. I’m no stranger to the word. I have been a disgrace, been disgraced, disgraced myself and others. Seriously. I thought I was immune to it.
�� The main character, David Lurie, is disgraced. Big deal. He disgraces a student. Yeah, I’m familiar with that. She’ll live. He is a disgrace. Yes, clearly. David Lurie is entering the disgrace of growing old. That’s where Coetzee has me.
�� I can’t find it in me to despise Lurie. He’s a Lothario and possibly worse (“She does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself.��), but I don’t have to live with him. Then there’s the sharp intelligence with too little empathy or emotion to make it truly sing. The bare objectiveness. He claims to have lost ‘the lyrical�� within himself, but it’s doubtful he ever had it. He’s a pretender. I’m amused by the fact that he, a professor of language, begins the affair that causes his public fall from grace by quoting Shakespeare’s first sonnet. The words apply as much to himself as to anyone. But self-delusion is my own stock-in-trade. I can’t condemn him for that. I don’t love him either. I feel as dispassionate as Lurie himself. The disgrace of the dying though - the 'without grace' �� that younger generations foist upon them. That they’re made to feel as intruders in life, burdensome. This is where Coetzee hooks me. And he reels me in. Reels me in until I find myself suffocating in a world I want no part of. A world of shame, dishonor, humiliation, degradation. Disgrace. That of a man, a father, a daughter, a woman, an unborn child. Now make those plural. Add the disgraces of South Africa, of humanity, of animals. Yes, animals. I suspected Coetzee would sneak in a little commentary on that. He has a reputation. I did not expect to be so affected by it. I, a confirmed carnivore, did not expect to lie awake at night considering vegetarianism. Coetzee brings that passionate quote at the beginning of this paragraph back to hit me square in the face near the end though and �� once again �� Disgrace.

�� So five stars, but would I recommend it? I’m still not sure. Read it if you dare. Coetzee is brilliant.

]]> 3.86 1999

author: J.M. Coetzee
name: J
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2014/01/13
shelves:
review:
�� This book made me want to read Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that’s what’s in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.
�� It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. At page ten I would have readily given it five stars; the writing is superb. Halfway through I’d have given it four. Excellent, but slightly annoying. At the moment I finished it, shouting “WHAT?? What the hell kind of ending is THAT???�� and wondering if I was going into shock, I’d have demanded stars back for ruining my life. A little distance was needed before I could consider it rationally again.

�� The word disgrace is what struck me with nearly every page. Coetzee’s writing is like that. Tight. There’s no escaping what he wants you to see. It’s not outrageously blatant, but it’s none too subtle either. It’s good. So good you might be tempted to revel in it. Do not. This is not for the faint-hearted. Run. Read something easy, something happy. Anything. If you stay Coetzee will turn that word, disgrace, in your mind a hundred different ways. I’m no stranger to the word. I have been a disgrace, been disgraced, disgraced myself and others. Seriously. I thought I was immune to it.
�� The main character, David Lurie, is disgraced. Big deal. He disgraces a student. Yeah, I’m familiar with that. She’ll live. He is a disgrace. Yes, clearly. David Lurie is entering the disgrace of growing old. That’s where Coetzee has me.
�� I can’t find it in me to despise Lurie. He’s a Lothario and possibly worse (“She does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself.��), but I don’t have to live with him. Then there’s the sharp intelligence with too little empathy or emotion to make it truly sing. The bare objectiveness. He claims to have lost ‘the lyrical�� within himself, but it’s doubtful he ever had it. He’s a pretender. I’m amused by the fact that he, a professor of language, begins the affair that causes his public fall from grace by quoting Shakespeare’s first sonnet. The words apply as much to himself as to anyone. But self-delusion is my own stock-in-trade. I can’t condemn him for that. I don’t love him either. I feel as dispassionate as Lurie himself. The disgrace of the dying though - the 'without grace' �� that younger generations foist upon them. That they’re made to feel as intruders in life, burdensome. This is where Coetzee hooks me. And he reels me in. Reels me in until I find myself suffocating in a world I want no part of. A world of shame, dishonor, humiliation, degradation. Disgrace. That of a man, a father, a daughter, a woman, an unborn child. Now make those plural. Add the disgraces of South Africa, of humanity, of animals. Yes, animals. I suspected Coetzee would sneak in a little commentary on that. He has a reputation. I did not expect to be so affected by it. I, a confirmed carnivore, did not expect to lie awake at night considering vegetarianism. Coetzee brings that passionate quote at the beginning of this paragraph back to hit me square in the face near the end though and �� once again �� Disgrace.

�� So five stars, but would I recommend it? I’m still not sure. Read it if you dare. Coetzee is brilliant.

]]> Mason & Dixon 413
We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.]]> 773 Thomas Pynchon 0312423209 J 5 Savage Beauty and tired of the endless formality of complete names in Love in the Time of Cholera, I fished Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon out of the box it came in weeks ago. Sat down, stirring sugar into the tea I intended to drink while I read, and dropped my spoon.

Page 1: What kind of madness is this?? Oh My God. I’m tingly. No, this is not erotica. I don’t think. I don’t know what it is. But I think I like it. A lot. Dear God. Is the whole thing like this? I can’t tell if I love it or hate it. If it goes on this way till the end I may come to loathe it.

Page 773: Yes. This (thus far) lovely torture is intended to continue. And yes. I read the last page. What of it? With writing like this I’m unlikely to remember it more than seven hundred pages from now anyway.

First sentence, I kid you not:

Snow-balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware, - the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar, - the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.

I am speechless.
]]> 4.12 1997 Mason & Dixon

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: J
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2008/11/06
date added: 2014/01/11
shelves:
review:
Bored with the Edna St Vincent Millay of Savage Beauty and tired of the endless formality of complete names in Love in the Time of Cholera, I fished Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon out of the box it came in weeks ago. Sat down, stirring sugar into the tea I intended to drink while I read, and dropped my spoon.

Page 1: What kind of madness is this?? Oh My God. I’m tingly. No, this is not erotica. I don’t think. I don’t know what it is. But I think I like it. A lot. Dear God. Is the whole thing like this? I can’t tell if I love it or hate it. If it goes on this way till the end I may come to loathe it.

Page 773: Yes. This (thus far) lovely torture is intended to continue. And yes. I read the last page. What of it? With writing like this I’m unlikely to remember it more than seven hundred pages from now anyway.

First sentence, I kid you not:

Snow-balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware, - the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar, - the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.

I am speechless.

]]> <![CDATA[The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #1)]]> 267123 The Warden centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. It was a highly topical novel (a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate), but like other great Victorian novelists, Trollope uses the specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality]]> 336 Anthony Trollope 0192834088 J 4
Obviously this is more about the gold and green 1902 volume next to me than the story inside. You can read about that anywhere. The Warden is the first of the much loved Chronicles of Barset, first published in 1855. The theme of the book is the clash of ancient privilege with modern social awareness. Blah, blah, blah�� What no one else can tell you is this: It is the exact size of my hand! How fantastic is that? The exact size! It was made (and re-bound by Alison Leakey, so states the inside cover) for me!! These are the things I love about it:

#1

#2 There’s a small stain on page 329. Tea. I know exactly what caused it.

��When the archdeacon left his wife and father-in-law at the Chapter Coffee House to go to Messrs Cox and Cumming, he had no very defined idea of what he had to do when he got there. Gentlemen when at law, or in any way engaged in matters requiring legal assistance, are very apt to describe such attendance as quite compulsory, and very disagreeable. The lawyers, on the other hand, do not at all see the necessity, though they quite agree as to the disagreeable nature of the visit; gentlemen when so engaged are usually somewhat gravelled at finding nothing to say to their learned friends; they generally talk a little politics, a little weather, ask some few foolish questions about their suit, and then withdraw, having passed half an hour in a small, dingy waiting-room, in company with some junior assistant-clerk, and ten minutes with the members of the firm; the business is then over for which the gentleman has come up to London, probably a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. To be sure he goes to the play, and dines at his friend’s club, and has a bachelor’s liberty and bachelor’s recreation for three or four days; and he could not probably plead the desire of such gratifications as a reason to his wife for a trip to London.
��Married ladies, when your husbands find they are positively obliged to attend their legal advisers, the nature of the duty to be performed is generally of this description.

Shocking. No, I’m telling you, it had nothing to do with the warden resigning. The chapter’s titled The Warden Resigns, for crying out loud. The warden resigning can’t have been a surprise. But something made a long-ago reader’s tea splash over the edge of the cup and onto the page. Only this page. Was it disbelief? Or recognition? Perhaps a married lady suddenly remembering: I have GOT to get to my lawyer.

#3 There are pages where every line begins with a single quotation mark. Sometimes it goes on for two or three pages. Every single line. Although Trollope was a great lover of punctuation (a semicolon on every page �� sometimes as many as six), I don’t think this was what he had in mind. Clearly the typesetter is trying to get my attention. Page 228, with its 30 quotation marks (and 4 extremely hot semicolons), is a serious poke in the eye to, well, pretty much everyone: government, church hierarchy, and especially journalists. Noted. Thank you. Highlighted by 100 single and seemingly meaningless quotation marks, pages 320-323 contain Mr Septimus Harding’s resignation letters and give you the man’s character in a nutshell. It’s like Cliffnotes by Typesetters. The whole point of the book in a few pages. So why bother to read the rest?

#4 Because it’s fun, that’s why. Trollope knows people and his characters are memorable. Yes, they have ridiculous names that make me laugh, but that’s the intention. It’s satire. Playfulness with a point. I did wonder if being an American who knows nothing of 19th century church politics would make the story less accessible or even irrelevant to me. Would I get the jokes? Yes, it’s accessible. It’s written in a realistic style and I didn’t need anyone to explain the archdeacon setting the scene as if he were writing a sermon, locking the door, and pulling Rabelais from a secret drawer. My only question is what else was in that secret drawer. Yes, it’s relevant. People haven’t changed. And yes, I got the jokes. At least I think I did. If not, I was laughing at something or Trollope was laughing at me and either way I don’t really care; it was fun. God, I love semicolons.]]> 3.75 1855 The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #1)

The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #1)

author: Anthony Trollope
name: J
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1855
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/01
date added: 2014/01/09
shelves:
review:
There is tranquility in a second-hand bookshop. Libraries are quiet because they must be. This is different. A kind of peace. Whatever it is, it suits me. I feel at home. It could just be the dust. Anyway, there I was kneeling in the art books, pulling them out and pushing them back. Have it, read it, not interested�� I made my way down the row that way and swung round to continue on the shelf behind me. It was low. It was low and I am short and - on hands and knees - I still had to bend down to see. I was Carter making the tiny breach into Tutankhamun's tomb. "Yes, I see wonderful things." Little books. Little books that fit in my hands. Little books that fit in my pocket. Little books that fit under my pillow at night. Rows of little books running along the wooden floor of the bookshop like a literary baseboard. I wondered what perverse person put them there. A brilliant short person, no doubt. I imagined them laughing maniacally: Bwahaha! Finally! Tall people will need us!

Obviously this is more about the gold and green 1902 volume next to me than the story inside. You can read about that anywhere. The Warden is the first of the much loved Chronicles of Barset, first published in 1855. The theme of the book is the clash of ancient privilege with modern social awareness. Blah, blah, blah�� What no one else can tell you is this: It is the exact size of my hand! How fantastic is that? The exact size! It was made (and re-bound by Alison Leakey, so states the inside cover) for me!! These are the things I love about it:

#1

#2 There’s a small stain on page 329. Tea. I know exactly what caused it.

��When the archdeacon left his wife and father-in-law at the Chapter Coffee House to go to Messrs Cox and Cumming, he had no very defined idea of what he had to do when he got there. Gentlemen when at law, or in any way engaged in matters requiring legal assistance, are very apt to describe such attendance as quite compulsory, and very disagreeable. The lawyers, on the other hand, do not at all see the necessity, though they quite agree as to the disagreeable nature of the visit; gentlemen when so engaged are usually somewhat gravelled at finding nothing to say to their learned friends; they generally talk a little politics, a little weather, ask some few foolish questions about their suit, and then withdraw, having passed half an hour in a small, dingy waiting-room, in company with some junior assistant-clerk, and ten minutes with the members of the firm; the business is then over for which the gentleman has come up to London, probably a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. To be sure he goes to the play, and dines at his friend’s club, and has a bachelor’s liberty and bachelor’s recreation for three or four days; and he could not probably plead the desire of such gratifications as a reason to his wife for a trip to London.
��Married ladies, when your husbands find they are positively obliged to attend their legal advisers, the nature of the duty to be performed is generally of this description.

Shocking. No, I’m telling you, it had nothing to do with the warden resigning. The chapter’s titled The Warden Resigns, for crying out loud. The warden resigning can’t have been a surprise. But something made a long-ago reader’s tea splash over the edge of the cup and onto the page. Only this page. Was it disbelief? Or recognition? Perhaps a married lady suddenly remembering: I have GOT to get to my lawyer.

#3 There are pages where every line begins with a single quotation mark. Sometimes it goes on for two or three pages. Every single line. Although Trollope was a great lover of punctuation (a semicolon on every page �� sometimes as many as six), I don’t think this was what he had in mind. Clearly the typesetter is trying to get my attention. Page 228, with its 30 quotation marks (and 4 extremely hot semicolons), is a serious poke in the eye to, well, pretty much everyone: government, church hierarchy, and especially journalists. Noted. Thank you. Highlighted by 100 single and seemingly meaningless quotation marks, pages 320-323 contain Mr Septimus Harding’s resignation letters and give you the man’s character in a nutshell. It’s like Cliffnotes by Typesetters. The whole point of the book in a few pages. So why bother to read the rest?

#4 Because it’s fun, that’s why. Trollope knows people and his characters are memorable. Yes, they have ridiculous names that make me laugh, but that’s the intention. It’s satire. Playfulness with a point. I did wonder if being an American who knows nothing of 19th century church politics would make the story less accessible or even irrelevant to me. Would I get the jokes? Yes, it’s accessible. It’s written in a realistic style and I didn’t need anyone to explain the archdeacon setting the scene as if he were writing a sermon, locking the door, and pulling Rabelais from a secret drawer. My only question is what else was in that secret drawer. Yes, it’s relevant. People haven’t changed. And yes, I got the jokes. At least I think I did. If not, I was laughing at something or Trollope was laughing at me and either way I don’t really care; it was fun. God, I love semicolons.
]]> The Return of the Native 32650 426 Thomas Hardy 037575718X J 4 3.87 1878

author: Thomas Hardy
name: J
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1878
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/03
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There used to be a lot more words in the world. Now we're all about short, blunt sentences. So obvious. So boring.
]]> The Leopard 2193815 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.

Although Giuseppe di Lampedusa had long had the book in mind, he began writing it only in his late fifties; he died at age sixty, soon after the manuscript was rejected as unpublishable. In his introduction, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Lampedusa's nephew, gives us a detailed history of the initial publication and the various editions that followed. And he includes passages Lampedusa wrote for the book that were omitted by the original Italian editors.]]> 294 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 0375714790 J 5 favorites
Thus begins Lampedusa’s masterpiece, his paean to death. Sensuous, insightful, subtle, The Leopard is a work of absolute beauty.

In 1860 Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is watching the lifeblood seep from his world: the power and the prestige, the unquestioned honors are all fading away, being bled out by revolution. He simply watches it go. He is resigned to it as he is resigned to his own nature. Sated ease tinged with disgust. His one constant joy in life, where he can escape this sense of himself, is the stars. He’s an astronomer and in the sky he finds blissful anonymity. There is no false revolution there. In the limitlessness of the sky there are no worries, only the reassurance that none of the rest matters because nothing ever really changes.

II. The history is interesting, but it’s superficial. E. M. Forster said The Leopard is not a historical novel, but a novel which happens to take place in history. The real story is something else. Somewhere between the characters �� drawn too well to be forgotten �� and the very fiber of Sicilians themselves.

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish-fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our languor, our exotic vices, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again.

Under this definition, I know a number of Sicilians who’ve never set foot in Sicily.

Perhaps only Tancredi had understood for an instant, when he had said with that subdued irony of his, “Uncle, you are courting death.�� Don Fabrizio looks for her constantly, sniffing the air for her scent, expecting to find her at every turn. This yearning for oblivion is so strong it’s a tangible thing. Fingering the rosary beads in the very first sentence. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Young lovers discovering ways of satisfying dark desires lost to the consciousness; beneath the conscious, the house, the gardens, the very air exhales it. Blackmail through beauty, redemption through blood. A dying man: A long open wagon came by stacked with bulls killed shortly before at the slaughterhouse, already quartered and exhibiting their intimate mechanism with the shamelessness of death. At intervals a big thick red drop fell onto the pavement. At a crossroad he glimpsed the sky to the west, above the sea. There was Venus, wrapped in her turban of autumn mist. She was always faithful, always waiting for Don Fabrizio on his early morning outings, at Donnafugata before a shoot, now after a ball. Don Fabrizio sighed. When would she decide to give him an appointment less ephemeral, far from carcasses and blood, in her own region of perennial certitude?

III. Floating above this longing for oblivion there is a story. Parts of it parallel the politics of Italy. Parts of it made my heart ache. There are sly bits that made me laugh.

Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her rosary brusquely into her jet-fringed bag, while her fine crazy eyes glanced around at her slaves of children and her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body vainly yearned for loving dominion.

IV. Finally, let’s start at the beginning. From the back cover: Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.
]]> 4.01 1958

author: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
name: J
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2010/02/01
date added: 2014/01/02
shelves: favorites
review:
I. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Now, and in the hour of our death. Amen.

Thus begins Lampedusa’s masterpiece, his paean to death. Sensuous, insightful, subtle, The Leopard is a work of absolute beauty.

In 1860 Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is watching the lifeblood seep from his world: the power and the prestige, the unquestioned honors are all fading away, being bled out by revolution. He simply watches it go. He is resigned to it as he is resigned to his own nature. Sated ease tinged with disgust. His one constant joy in life, where he can escape this sense of himself, is the stars. He’s an astronomer and in the sky he finds blissful anonymity. There is no false revolution there. In the limitlessness of the sky there are no worries, only the reassurance that none of the rest matters because nothing ever really changes.

II. The history is interesting, but it’s superficial. E. M. Forster said The Leopard is not a historical novel, but a novel which happens to take place in history. The real story is something else. Somewhere between the characters �� drawn too well to be forgotten �� and the very fiber of Sicilians themselves.

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish-fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our languor, our exotic vices, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again.

Under this definition, I know a number of Sicilians who’ve never set foot in Sicily.

Perhaps only Tancredi had understood for an instant, when he had said with that subdued irony of his, “Uncle, you are courting death.�� Don Fabrizio looks for her constantly, sniffing the air for her scent, expecting to find her at every turn. This yearning for oblivion is so strong it’s a tangible thing. Fingering the rosary beads in the very first sentence. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Young lovers discovering ways of satisfying dark desires lost to the consciousness; beneath the conscious, the house, the gardens, the very air exhales it. Blackmail through beauty, redemption through blood. A dying man: A long open wagon came by stacked with bulls killed shortly before at the slaughterhouse, already quartered and exhibiting their intimate mechanism with the shamelessness of death. At intervals a big thick red drop fell onto the pavement. At a crossroad he glimpsed the sky to the west, above the sea. There was Venus, wrapped in her turban of autumn mist. She was always faithful, always waiting for Don Fabrizio on his early morning outings, at Donnafugata before a shoot, now after a ball. Don Fabrizio sighed. When would she decide to give him an appointment less ephemeral, far from carcasses and blood, in her own region of perennial certitude?

III. Floating above this longing for oblivion there is a story. Parts of it parallel the politics of Italy. Parts of it made my heart ache. There are sly bits that made me laugh.

Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her rosary brusquely into her jet-fringed bag, while her fine crazy eyes glanced around at her slaves of children and her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body vainly yearned for loving dominion.

IV. Finally, let’s start at the beginning. From the back cover: Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.

]]> <![CDATA[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave]]> 91587
An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.]]> 160 Frederick Douglass 1593080417 J 4
I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away on a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.]]> 4.25 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

author: Frederick Douglass
name: J
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1845
rating: 4
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Who better to tell the story of a slave than a slave? Who better to tell the story of Frederick Douglass than Frederick Douglass? Fluent and powerful, this book offers insight into the conatus (!) that makes the slave declare his freedom at any cost.

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away on a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
]]> <![CDATA[Soul of the Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain]]> 1032347 357 Willard Mosher Wallace 1879664011 J 5
Wow. "The soul of a lion and the heart of a woman" according to General Sickel and I'd agree.

The unassuming college professor had grit, I'll tell you that. Enlisted in the army behind people's backs (supposedly going off to Europe to study languages - as if he weren't already fluent in eight or ten!) then declined, yes declined, the position of colonel. Modest, well spoken (in many languages), and did I mention The Hero of Little Round Top? Yikes! Bayonets! Wounded six times yet kept ticking till the end where he finished the war in style by ordering the Federal troops to salute the surrendering Confederacy. He followed that performance up with four terms as Governor of Maine and at least a dozen as the rather forward thinking President of Bowdoin College. Who knows what else? Not me because, sadly, my dear husband loaned this book - MY book - to some loser in a cowboy hat who never gave it back. Probably didn't even read it. So if you happen to see a guy in a cowboy hat walking round with my book, please, FIX BAYONETS!

]]> 4.11 1988 Soul of the Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain

Soul of the Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain

author: Willard Mosher Wallace
name: J
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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Fourteen years ago today I bought this book. We were in Gettysburg. We saw the carnage from Devil's Den to the Peach Orchard, heard Lee say "I will strike him there", witnessed the glory of Pickett's Charge, then we had lunch. There was a beautiful, carefully not restored Civil War era house turned restaurant with bullet holes in the walls and nineteenth century fare. Revived by peanut soup, we walked to this little bookshop where I met the hero of Little Round Top.

Wow. "The soul of a lion and the heart of a woman" according to General Sickel and I'd agree.

The unassuming college professor had grit, I'll tell you that. Enlisted in the army behind people's backs (supposedly going off to Europe to study languages - as if he weren't already fluent in eight or ten!) then declined, yes declined, the position of colonel. Modest, well spoken (in many languages), and did I mention The Hero of Little Round Top? Yikes! Bayonets! Wounded six times yet kept ticking till the end where he finished the war in style by ordering the Federal troops to salute the surrendering Confederacy. He followed that performance up with four terms as Governor of Maine and at least a dozen as the rather forward thinking President of Bowdoin College. Who knows what else? Not me because, sadly, my dear husband loaned this book - MY book - to some loser in a cowboy hat who never gave it back. Probably didn't even read it. So if you happen to see a guy in a cowboy hat walking round with my book, please, FIX BAYONETS!

]]> Absolute Friends 18997
Today, Mundy is a down-at-the-heels tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served. And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of an old German student friend, radical, and onetime fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict. After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life -- this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they? Who is Dimitri? Why does Dimitri's gold pour in from mysterious Middle Eastern bank accounts? And why does his apparently noble venture reek less of starry idealism than of treachery and fear? Some gifts are too expensive to accept. Could this be one of them? With a cooler head than Sasha's, Mundy is inclined to think it could.

In Absolute Friends , John le Carre delivers the masterpiece he has been building to since the fall of an epic tale of loyalty and betrayal that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and new alliances. This is the novel le Carre fans have been waiting for, a brilliant, ferocious, heartbreaking work for the ages.

“A searing, startling novel that sweeps through much of the twentieth century and up to the present conflict with Iraq.�� —Lev Grossman, Time]]> 456 John Le Carré 0316159395 J 0 holding-pattern 3.63 2003 Absolute Friends

author: John Le Carré
name: J
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/05
shelves: holding-pattern
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]]> A Song for Arbonne 533820
Arbonne is a sun-blessed country of vineyards and olive trees, and the home of a passionate, goddess-centered culture. To the north is Gorhaut, a dour Kingdom of warriors led by a cruel, misogynistic lord who sees Arbonne as ripe for the taking. One man is caught between the Blaise, a rough-hewn northern mercenary who serves, bemusedly, in the courts of the south.

When the invaders sweep down from the mountains, the men and women of Arbonne face their darkest They find the power of love and poetry tested against the might of fire and sword. And Blaise discovers that the fate of courtly Arbonne may lie in his rugged hands.

This is a dazzling imaginary history peopled with a vibrant array of characters, from the sardonic Blaise to the haughty queen of the Court of Love, to a beautiful minstrel girl whose life is forever changed by a chance encounter in a tavern. In the richness and complexity of its setting, A Song for Arbonne calls to mind The Name of the Rose; in its passion and romance, The Mists of Avalon and in its pace and sweep, such classic adventures as Ivanhoe or The Three Musketeers. This is storytelling at its very best, a novel to be savored and passed on with pleasure to one's fellow readers.]]> 513 Guy Gavriel Kay 0517593122 J 0 to-read 4.32 1992 A Song for Arbonne

author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: J
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson]]> 303865
In partnership with the New York Public Library, Doubleday is proud to introduce a very special collector's series of literary masterpieces. Lavishly illustrated with rare archival material from the library's extensive resources, including the renowned Berg collection, these editions will bring the classics to life for a new generation of readers. In addition to original artwork, each volume contains a fascinating selection of unique materials such as handwritten diaries, letters, manuscripts, and notebooks. Simply put, this series presents the work of our most beloved authors in what may well be their most beautiful editions, perfect to own or to give. Published on the occasion of Doubleday's 100th birthday, the New York Public Library Collector's Editions are sure to become an essential part of the modern book lover's private library.

]]> 256 Emily Dickinson 0517362422 J 5 4.18 1924 Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

author: Emily Dickinson
name: J
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1924
rating: 5
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]]> Cat’s Eye 51019 Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, and artist, and woman—but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knots of her life.]]> 462 Margaret Atwood 0385491026 J 0 to-read 3.94 1988 Cat’s Eye

author: Margaret Atwood
name: J
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/11/15
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]]> The Riverside Shakespeare 1036552 Taming of the Shrew
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
Midsummer Night's Dream
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Troilus and Cressida
All's Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
King Henry VI. Part 1
King Henry VI. Part 2
King Henry VI. Part 3
King Richard III
King John
King Henry IV. Part 1
King Henry IV. Part 2
King Henry V
King Henry VIII
Titus Andronicus
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Timon of Athens
Pericles
Cymbeline
Winter's Tale
Tempest
Two Noble Kinsmen
Sir Thomas More
Venus and Adonis
Rape of Lucrece
Sonnets
Lover's Complaint
Passionate Pilgrim
Phoenix and the Turtle]]> 1923 William Shakespeare 0395044022 J 5 favorites 4.74 1974 The Riverside Shakespeare

author: William Shakespeare
name: J
average rating: 4.74
book published: 1974
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Heart of Darkness and Other Tales]]> 4906 Heart of Darkness is set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, and tells of Marlow's perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer's agent, the renowned and formidable Mr. Kurtz. What he sees on his journey, and his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex him, and call into question the very bases of civilization and human nature. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted for film, radio, and television, the story shows Conrad at his most intense and sophisticated. The other three tales in this volume depict corruption and obsession, and question racial assumptions. Set in the exotic surroundings of Africa, Malaysia, and the east, they variously appraise the glamour, folly, and rapacity of imperial adventure. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography.]]> 225 Joseph Conrad 0192801724 J 5 3.59 1990 Heart of Darkness and Other Tales

author: Joseph Conrad
name: J
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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]]> Unaccustomed Earth 85301
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,�� a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,�� a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,�� a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.]]> 352 Jhumpa Lahiri 0676979343 J 0 holding-pattern 4.14 2008 Unaccustomed Earth

author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: J
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)]]> 10805160 Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin �� half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned �� two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder Squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.

Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .]]> 533 Tana French 1444705105 J 4 3.92 2012 Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)

Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)

author: Tana French
name: J
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)]]> 7093952
But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd given him the brush-off--probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.]]> 400 Tana French 0670021873 J 3 3.98 2010 Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)

Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)

author: Tana French
name: J
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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]]> The Earth from the Air 1953821 462 Yann Arthus-Bertrand 0500542627 J 0 to-gift 4.69 1999

author: Yann Arthus-Bertrand
name: J
average rating: 4.69
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/07/14
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]]> The Hiding Place 272676
Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who became a heroine of the Resistance, a survivor of Hitler's concentration camps, and one of the most remarkable evangelists of the twentieth century. In World War II she and her family risked their lives to help Jews and underground workers escape from the Nazis, and for their work they were tested in the infamous Nazi death camps. Only Corrie among her family survived to tell the story of how faith ultimately triumphs over evil.

Here is the riveting account of how Corrie and her family were able to save many of God's chosen people. For 35 years millions have seen that there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. Now The Hiding Place , repackaged for a new generation of readers, continues to declare that God's love will overcome, heal, and restore.

"A groundbreaking book that shines a clear light on one of the darkest moments of history."--Philip Yancey, author, The Jesus I Never Knew

"Ten Boom's classic is even more relevant to the present hour than at the time of its writing. We . . . need to be inspired afresh by the courage manifested by her family."--Jack W. Hayford, president, International Foursquare Church; chancellor, The King's College and Seminary

"The Hiding Place is a classic that begs revisiting. Corrie ten Boom lived the deeper life with God. Her gripping story of love in action will challenge and inspire you!"--Joyce Meyer, best-selling author and Bible teacher]]> 272 Corrie ten Boom 0800794052 J 4 4.60 1971 The Hiding Place

author: Corrie ten Boom
name: J
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1971
rating: 4
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]]> Lighthousekeeping 15052
One of the most original and extraordinary writers of her generation, Jeanette Winterson has created a modern fable about the transformative power of storytelling.]]> 232 Jeanette Winterson 0156032899 J 4 3.89 1997 Lighthousekeeping

author: Jeanette Winterson
name: J
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2013/04/30
date added: 2013/04/30
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]]> Tom Jones 1028649 916 Henry Fielding 0192834975 J 4 3.69 1749

author: Henry Fielding
name: J
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1749
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/04/26
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]]> <![CDATA[A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas]]> 866503
This volume combines two books which were among the greatest contributions to feminist literature this century. Together they form a brilliant attack on sexual inequality. A Room of One's Own, first published in 1929, is a witty, urbane and persuasive argument against the intellectual subjection of women, particularly women writers. The sequel, Three Guineas, is a passionate polemic which draws a startling comparison between the tyrannous hypocrisy of the Victorian patriarchal system and the evils of fascism.]]> 320 Virginia Woolf 0099734311 J 4 4.08 1938 A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas

author: Virginia Woolf
name: J
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1938
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/03/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Love Medicine (Love Medicine, #1)]]> 91440
Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.

Filled with humor, magic, injustice and betrayal, Erdrich blends family love and loyalty in a stunning work of dramatic fiction.]]> 367 Louise Erdrich 0060786469 J 5 4.02 1984 Love Medicine (Love Medicine, #1)

author: Louise Erdrich
name: J
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2012/11/25
date added: 2012/11/25
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review:

]]> The Moon Is Down 12722
In The Moon is Down, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the motivations and emotions of the enemy, Steinbeck uncovers profound and often unsettling truths both about war and human nature.]]> 144 John Steinbeck J 5 3.93 1942 The Moon Is Down

author: John Steinbeck
name: J
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/10/14
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery]]> 1966742
This is the story of the surgeon many call the father of open-heart surgery, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, who, along with colleagues at University Hospital in Minneapolis and a small band of pioneers elsewhere, accomplished what many experts considered to be an impossible He opened the heart, repaired fatal defects, and made the miraculous routine.

Acclaimed author G. Wayne Miller draws on archival research and exclusive interviews with Lillehei and legendary pioneers such as Michael DeBakey and Christiaan Barnard, taking readers into the lives of these doctors and their patients as they progress toward their landmark achievement. In the tradition of works by Richard Rhodes and Tracy Kidder, King of Hearts tells the story of an important and gripping piece of forgotten science history.]]> 302 G. Wayne Miller 0812930037 J 4 4.35 2000 King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery

King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery

author: G. Wayne Miller
name: J
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2012/08/30
date added: 2012/08/30
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]]> Summertime 6337163
A young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father - a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. Never having met the man himself, the biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee well, including a married woman with whom he had an affair, his cousin Margot, and a Brazilian dancer whose daughter took English lessons with him. These accounts add up to an image of an awkward, reserved, and bookish young man who finds it hard to make meaningful connections with the people around him.

Summertime is an inventive and inspired work of fiction that allows J.M. Coetzee to imagine his own life with a critical and unsparing eye, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being. Incisive, elegant, and often surprisingly funny, Summertime is a compelling work by one of today's most esteemed writers.]]> 266 J.M. Coetzee 1846553180 J 5 Sorry, John. I was on vacation at the beach. It was called Summertime. It was available in paperback and I was low on cash. What I got when I began to read was infinitely more. There are some books that affect us so deeply the $15.00 price seems ludicrous.

Admittedly, I am a lousy fan. There are few authors whose complete works I’ve read, no matter how much I admire their writing. Fewer still about whom I know anything personal. Summertime is a fictionalized biography. Interviews for a biography and notes written by the subject himself, really; an unfinished work. This furthers the impression of looking in on a life �� the naturalness of it, the side of biographies we don’t normally see. It’s an engaging portrait of a man, a writer, an artist, possibly even Coetzee himself. All those things. It’s wise and beautiful and wry and, if not a strictly factual account of his life, perhaps it gives a truer glimpse of him. For what great writer writes anything without showing us something of themselves?

One of the things I do know about him is his famed evasiveness. He seems disturbed by the rockstar writer phenomenon and plays with that here. The biographer interviews the women that have most impacted the great author’s life. What indelible mark did he leave on their own? Disappointment. He was only a man. A man who was more alive within himself, than out. He couldn’t dance. To express himself without words �� lots and lots of words �� was nearly impossible. Yet he rarely spoke. The painful awkwardness of being human is captured perfectly as he seems to slyly poke fun at both himself and the rest of us. The women are repeatedly referred to as “his conquests�� or “his women��, but it’s clear in each case that it’s him who has been conquered. As they speak of their relations with him, detailing his failings, they reveal more of themselves and their own shortcomings. That’s not to say they’re unlikable. More real. They’re strong, self-determined women, both touched and frustrated by this man. He speaks a different language, figuratively. And so he can be no more to them than South Africa in flux �� transitory, impermanent. Disappointment. They move on. The one constant, from beginning to end, is his father. Always in his mind, his memory, the reality of caring for him�� always a silent presence in his relationships with women. For that reason the story feels like an apology. To the women who never knew how much they meant to him. And to his father, for trying to live while he is dying.]]> 3.78 2009 Summertime

author: J.M. Coetzee
name: J
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2012/01/01
date added: 2012/08/03
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review:
Apparently this is the third of a type of trilogy. I did not know that. I bought it because it was short. Sorry, John. I was on vacation at the beach. It was called Summertime. It was available in paperback and I was low on cash. What I got when I began to read was infinitely more. There are some books that affect us so deeply the $15.00 price seems ludicrous.

Admittedly, I am a lousy fan. There are few authors whose complete works I’ve read, no matter how much I admire their writing. Fewer still about whom I know anything personal. Summertime is a fictionalized biography. Interviews for a biography and notes written by the subject himself, really; an unfinished work. This furthers the impression of looking in on a life �� the naturalness of it, the side of biographies we don’t normally see. It’s an engaging portrait of a man, a writer, an artist, possibly even Coetzee himself. All those things. It’s wise and beautiful and wry and, if not a strictly factual account of his life, perhaps it gives a truer glimpse of him. For what great writer writes anything without showing us something of themselves?

One of the things I do know about him is his famed evasiveness. He seems disturbed by the rockstar writer phenomenon and plays with that here. The biographer interviews the women that have most impacted the great author’s life. What indelible mark did he leave on their own? Disappointment. He was only a man. A man who was more alive within himself, than out. He couldn’t dance. To express himself without words �� lots and lots of words �� was nearly impossible. Yet he rarely spoke. The painful awkwardness of being human is captured perfectly as he seems to slyly poke fun at both himself and the rest of us. The women are repeatedly referred to as “his conquests�� or “his women��, but it’s clear in each case that it’s him who has been conquered. As they speak of their relations with him, detailing his failings, they reveal more of themselves and their own shortcomings. That’s not to say they’re unlikable. More real. They’re strong, self-determined women, both touched and frustrated by this man. He speaks a different language, figuratively. And so he can be no more to them than South Africa in flux �� transitory, impermanent. Disappointment. They move on. The one constant, from beginning to end, is his father. Always in his mind, his memory, the reality of caring for him�� always a silent presence in his relationships with women. For that reason the story feels like an apology. To the women who never knew how much they meant to him. And to his father, for trying to live while he is dying.
]]> Imperial Bedrooms 7519866 "Less Than Zero", we pick up again with "Clay".

In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned, and disturbed with "Less Than Zero", his 'extraordinarily accomplished first novel' ("New Yorker"), successfully chronicling the frightening consequences of unmitigated hedonism within the ranks of the ethically bereft youth of 80s Los Angeles. Now, twenty-five years later, Ellis returns to those same characters: to Clay and the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his.

But now, some years on, they face an even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age. Clay seems to have moved on - he's become a successful screenwriter - but when he returns from New York to Los Angeles, to help cast his new movie, he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is now married to Trent, and their Beverly Hills parties attract excessive levels of fame and fortune, though for all that Trent is a powerful manager, his baser instincts remain: he's still a bisexual philanderer.

Then there's Clay's childhood friend, Julian - who's now a recovering addict - and their old dealer, Rip - face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than he was in his notorious past. Clay, too, struggles with his own demons after a meeting with a gorgeous actress determined to win a role in his movie. And with his life careening out of control, he's forced to come to terms with the deepest recesses of his character - and with his seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal.]]> 256 Bret Easton Ellis 0330517090 J 4 3.20 2010 Imperial Bedrooms

author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: J
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> Cutting for Stone 3591262
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
(front flap)]]> 560 Abraham Verghese 0375414495 J 0 to-read 4.32 2009 Cutting for Stone

author: Abraham Verghese
name: J
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/07/05
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]]> Orient Express 3693
What happens to these strangers as they put on and take off their masks of identity and passion, all the while confessing, prevaricating, and reaching out to one another in the "veracious air" of the onrushing train, makes for one of Graham Greene's most exciting and suspenseful stories. Originally published in 1933, Orient Express was Greene's first major success. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition, originally titled "Stamboul Train," features a new introductory essay by Christopher Hitchens.]]> 197 Graham Greene 0142437913 J 4 3.48 1932 Orient Express

author: Graham Greene
name: J
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1932
rating: 4
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]]> The Swan Thieves 5983057
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.]]> 565 Elizabeth Kostova 1847442404 J 4 3.57 2010

author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: J
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/05
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]]> <![CDATA[A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 J 0 to-read 4.44 1996 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)

author: George R.R. Martin
name: J
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Three Short Novels of Dostoevsky]]> 12464256 Brand New. Ship worldwide 346 Fyodor Dostoevsky J 0 holding-pattern 3.00 1959

author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: J
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> A Severed Head 11253 204 Iris Murdoch 0140020039 J 0 holding-pattern 3.77 1961

author: Iris Murdoch
name: J
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/03/12
shelves: holding-pattern
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]]> Breadcrumbs 10637959 Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best friends. But they couldn't help it - Hazel and Jack fit, in that way you only read about in books. And they didn't fit anywhere else.

And then, one day, it was over. Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. And while her mom tried to tell her that this sometimes happens to boys and girls at this age, Hazel had read enough stories to know that it's never that simple. And it turns out, she was right. Jack's heart had been frozen, and he was taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to live in a palace made of ice. Now, it's up to Hazel to venture into the woods after him. Hazel finds, however, that these woods are nothing like what she's read about, and the Jack that Hazel went in to save isn't the same Jack that will emerge. Or even the same Hazel.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.

]]> 320 Anne Ursu 0062015052 J 0 holding-pattern 3.74 2011 Breadcrumbs

author: Anne Ursu
name: J
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/03/12
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]]> The Glass Castle 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]> 288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X J 3 4.32 2005

author: Jeannette Walls
name: J
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/02/01
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This book is about me. And I am not the heroine.
]]> <![CDATA[The Practice of Tempera Painting: Materials and Methods (Dover Art Instruction)]]> 1228703 Part of the explanation for this neglect, surely, is the absence of sufficient information about the materials and procedures involved in tempera painting. The present volume, in fact, is virtually the only complete, authoritative, step-by-step treatment of the subject in the English language, D.V. Thompson wrote this book after an exhaustive study, over many years, of countless medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the British Museum and elsewhere, and is unquestionably the world's leading authority on tempera materials and processes.
Beginning with an introductory chapter on the uses and limitations of tempera, the author covers such topics as the choice of material for the panel; propensities of various woods; preparing the panel for gilding; making the gesso mixture; methods of applying the gesso; planning the design of a tempera painting; use of tinted papers; application of metals to the panel; tools for gliding; handling and laying gold; combination gold and silver leafing; pigments and brushes; choice of palette; mixing the tempera; tempering and handling the colors; techniques of the actual painting; mordant gilding; permanence of tempera painting; varnishing; and artificial emulsion painting. The drawings and diagrams, illustrating the various materials and techniques, infinitely increase the clarity of the discussions.
As a careful exposition of all aspects of authentic tempera painting, including many of the possible modern uses for this ancient method, this book actually stands alone. No one who is interested in tempera painting as a serious pursuit can afford to be without it.]]> 141 Daniel V. Thompson 0486203433 J 0 4.22 1962 The Practice of Tempera Painting: Materials and Methods (Dover Art Instruction)

The Practice of Tempera Painting: Materials and Methods (Dover Art Instruction)

author: Daniel V. Thompson
name: J
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2012/01/12
date added: 2012/01/12
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]]> Zuleika Dobson 126683
Nobody could predict the consequences when ravishing Zuleika Dobson arrives at Oxford, to visit her grandfather, the college warden. Formerly a governess, she has landed on the occupation of prestidigitator, and thanks to her overwhelming beauty—and to a lesser extent her professional talents—she takes the town by storm, gaining admittance to her grandfather's college. It is there, at the institution inspired by Beerbohm's own alma mater, that she falls in love the Duke of Dorset, who duly adores her in return. Ever aware of appearances, however, Zuleika breaks the Duke's heart when she decides that she must abandon the match.

The epidemic of heartache that proceeds to overcome the academic town makes for some of the best comic writing in the history of English literature.]]> 252 Max Beerbohm 0140008950 J 4 3.72 1911 Zuleika Dobson

author: Max Beerbohm
name: J
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1911
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Agony and the Ecstasy: The Biographical Novel of Michelangelo]]> 6543966 664 Irving Stone 0385010923 J 2 4.14 1958

The Agony and the Ecstasy: The Biographical Novel of Michelangelo

author: Irving Stone
name: J
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1958
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/11/09
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]]> The Elegance of the Hedgehog 2967752
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.]]> 325 Muriel Barbery 1933372605 J 0 to-read 3.76 2006 The Elegance of the Hedgehog

author: Muriel Barbery
name: J
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/10/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)]]> 351211 503 Dorothy Dunnett 0679777458 J 5 4.59 1966

The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

author: Dorothy Dunnett
name: J
average rating: 4.59
book published: 1966
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ringed Castle (The Lymond Chronicles, #5)]]> 351198
Fifth in the legendary Lymond Chronicles , The Ringed Castle leaps from Mary Tudor's England to the barbaric Russia of Ivan the Terrible. Francis Crawford of Lymond moves to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. Yet even as Lymond tries to civilize a court that is still frozen in the attitudes of the Middle Ages, forces in England conspire to enlist this infinitely useful man in their own schemes.]]> 521 Dorothy Dunnett 0679777474 J 5 4.58 1971 The Ringed Castle (The Lymond Chronicles, #5)

The Ringed Castle (The Lymond Chronicles, #5)

author: Dorothy Dunnett
name: J
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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date added: 2011/09/04
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]]> Finn 102077
Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body–flayed and stripped of all identifying marks–drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim’s identity, shape Finn’s story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn�� s terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn’s mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity–not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America’s past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.]]> 287 Jon Clinch 1400065917 J 4 3.70 2007 Finn

author: Jon Clinch
name: J
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/09/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen]]> 6289283 Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.

With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.]]> 287 Christopher McDougall J 3 4.29 2009 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

author: Christopher McDougall
name: J
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez J 2 4.10 1967

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: J
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[The Love and Death of Caterina]]> 9500092 358 Andrew Nicoll 1849164711 J 5 3.19 2011

author: Andrew Nicoll
name: J
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/06/06
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]]> Lanark 161037 560 Alasdair Gray 184195120X J 0 holding-pattern 4.12 1981 Lanark

author: Alasdair Gray
name: J
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/05/05
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]]> Brighton Rock 48862 ISBN 9780099478478 moved to this edition.
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller, exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things'.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J.M. COETZEE]]> 269 Graham Greene J 4 3.69 1938 Brighton Rock

author: Graham Greene
name: J
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/08
date added: 2011/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock]]> 6656572 A groundbreaking portrait of the intense personal and artistic relationship between Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, revealing how their friendship changed American art.

The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar opposite of Thomas Hart Benton’s highly figurative Americana. Yet the two men had a close and highly charged relationship dating from Pollock’s days as a student under Benton. Pollock’s first and only formal training came from Benton, and the older man soon became a surrogate father to Pollock. In true Oedipal fashion, Pollock even fell in love with Benton’s wife.

Pollock later broke away from his mentor artistically, rocketing to superstardom with his stunning drip compositions. But he never lost touch with Benton or his ideas—in fact, his breakthrough abstractions reveal a strong debt to Benton’s teachings. In an epic story that ranges from the cafés and salons of Gertrude Stein’s Paris to the highways of the American West, Henry Adams, acclaimed author of Eakins Revealed, unfolds a poignant personal drama that provides new insights into two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.]]> 416 Henry Adams 1596914203 J 0 to-read 3.86 2009 Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

author: Henry Adams
name: J
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time]]> 46190 224 Rob Sheffield 1400083028 J 0 to-read 3.87 2007

Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

author: Rob Sheffield
name: J
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/03/08
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(as soon as I break down and buy it)
]]> <![CDATA[The Deerslayer (The Leatherstocking Tales, #1)]]> 246245 576 James Fenimore Cooper 0451529391 J 4 3.70 1841

The Deerslayer (The Leatherstocking Tales, #1)

author: James Fenimore Cooper
name: J
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1841
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/01/21
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]]> The Four Loves 30633 The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love--affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Masterful without being magisterial, this book's wise, gentle, candid reflections on the virtues and dangers of love draw on sources from Jane Austen to St. Augustine. The chapter on charity (love of God) may be the best thing Lewis ever wrote about Christianity. Consider his reflection on Augustine's teaching that one must love only God, because only God is eternal, and all earthly love will someday pass away:

Who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground--because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving? Would you choose a wife or a Friend--if it comes to that, would you choose a dog--in this spirit? One must be outside the world of love, of all loves, before one thus calculates.

His description of Christianity here is no less forceful and opinionated than in Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain, but it is far less anxious about its reader's response--and therefore more persuasive than any of his apologetics. When he begins to describe the nature of faith, Lewis writes: "Take it as one man's reverie, almost one man's myth. If anything in it is useful to you, use it; if anything is not, never give it a second thought." --Michael Joseph Gross]]> 170 C.S. Lewis 0006280897 J 4 4.13 1960 The Four Loves

author: C.S. Lewis
name: J
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1960
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece]]> 8430817 336 Noah Charney 1586488007 J 3 3.81 2010

Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece

author: Noah Charney
name: J
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2010/09/15
date added: 2010/11/30
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]]> Barchester Towers 1670648 553 Anthony Trollope 0195208137 J 4 4.35 1857

author: Anthony Trollope
name: J
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1857
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/11/30
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]]> Falling Man 28700
Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people.

First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his estranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes.

These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history.]]> 246 Don DeLillo 1416546022 J 2 3.27 2007 Falling Man

author: Don DeLillo
name: J
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2007
rating: 2
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date added: 2010/11/30
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