Kim's bookshelf: 2010 en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:36:02 -0700 60 Kim's bookshelf: 2010 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Ladies of the Lake 6330351 372 Haywood Smith 031231695X Kim 2 2010 3.63 Ladies of the Lake
author: Haywood Smith
name: Kim
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/26
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: 2010
review:
This book completely drove me nuts with the brand name dropping, tree hugging agenda and minutely detailed description of clothing. By about a quarter of the way through the book, I was so sick of the virtue of everything organic and eco friendly that I wanted to hurl the book out the window! However, the story line was interesting enough (though perhaps a little melodramatic) that I kept reading to find out what would happen next, even if I had to grit my teeth through the irritating bits.
]]> Pictures of Hollis Woods 828084
is the place where a baby was abandoned

is the baby's name

is an artist

is now a twelve-year-old girl

who's been in so many foster homes she can hardly remember them all. When Hollis is sent to Josie, an elderly artist who is quirky and affectionate, she wants to stay. But Josie is growing more forgetful every day. If Social Services finds out, they'll take Hollis away and move Josie into a home. Well, Hollis Woods won't let anyone separate them. She's escaped the system before; this time, she's taking Josie with her. Still, even as she plans her future with Josie, Hollis dreams of the past summer with the Regans, fixing each special moment of her days with them in pictures she'll never forget. Patricia Reilly Giff captures the yearning for a place to belong in this warmhearted story, which stresses the importance of artistic vision, creativity, and above all, family.]]> 166 Patricia Reilly Giff 0439692393 Kim 4 2010, jenna 4.02 2002 Pictures of Hollis Woods
author: Patricia Reilly Giff
name: Kim
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2010, jenna
review:

]]> Bloody Jack (Bloody Jack, #1) 295649
Life as a ship's boy aboard HMS Dolphin is a dream come true for Jacky Faber. Gone are the days of scavenging for food and fighting for survival on the streets of eighteenth-century London. Instead, Jacky is becoming a skilled and respected sailor as the crew pursues pirates on the high seas.

There's only one problem: Jacky is a girl. And she will have to use every bit of her spirit, wit, and courage to keep the crew from discovering her secret. This could be the adventure of her life--if only she doesn't get caught. . . .]]> 304 L.A. Meyer 015205085X Kim 4 4.12 2002 Bloody Jack (Bloody Jack, #1)
author: L.A. Meyer
name: Kim
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/10
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, england, jenna
review:

]]> Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) 518848
With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.]]> 491 Garth Nix 0064471837 Kim 4 4.17 1995 Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1)
author: Garth Nix
name: Kim
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: 2010, fantasy, books-i-will-make-jason-read, 2020, great-series
review:
This book was a total delight after having read a couple of duds. The writing was so well done and the story so engrossing. Monsters and death and heroes and courage and mystery! I have rarely read a book that kept me as tense and involved as this one did! I will defintely read more of Garth Nix work!
]]> Abhorsen (Abhorsen, #3) 334643 The Ninth was strong and fought with might
But lone Orannis was put out of the light
Broken in two and buried under hill
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.

So says the song. But Orannis, the Destroyer, is no longer buried under hill. It has been freed from its subterranean prison and now seeks to escape the silver hemispheres, the final barrier to the unleashing of its terrible powers.

Only Lirael, newly come into her inheritance as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, has any chance of stopping the Destroyer. She and her companions -- Sam, the Disreputable Dog, and Mogget -- have to take that chance. For the Destroyer is the enemy of all Life, and it must be stopped, though Lirael does not know how.

To make matters worse, Sam's best friend, Nick, is helping the Destroyer, as are the necromancer Hedge and the Greater Dead Chlorr, and there has been no word from the Abhorsen Sabriel or King Touchstone.

Everything depends upon Lirael. A heavy, perhaps even impossible burden for a young woman who just days ago was merely a Second Assistant Librarian. With only a vision from the Clayr to guide her, and the rather mixed help of her companions, Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the Destroyer.

Before it is too late. . . .]]> 358 Garth Nix 0060278250 Kim 4 4.24 2003 Abhorsen (Abhorsen, #3)
author: Garth Nix
name: Kim
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/14
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: 2010, fantasy, books-i-will-make-jason-read, 2020, great-series
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)]]> 6218281
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”]]> 374 Alan Bradley 0385342306 Kim 4 2010, england, bookclub 3.81 2009 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Kim
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/17
date added: 2015/04/25
shelves: 2010, england, bookclub
review:

]]> <![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 Kim 4 4.29 2009 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
author: Christopher McDougall
name: Kim
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/04/25
shelves: recommended-by-friends, 2010, non-fiction, bookclub
review:

]]> Blackout (All Clear, #1) 6506307 491 Connie Willis 0553803190 Kim 4 3.85 2010 Blackout (All Clear, #1)
author: Connie Willis
name: Kim
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/04/25
shelves: 2010, wwii, historical-fiction, england, sci-fi, books-i-will-make-jason-read, bookclub
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #2)]]> 2159225 Children
You must not come
STOP
Dangerous

The Mysterious Benedict Society is back with a new mission: to go on a mind-bending international scavenger hunt designed to engage their individual talents. As they search for all the clues and riddles Mr. Benedict has hidden for them, Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance faces an unexpected challenge that will reinforce the reasons they were brought together in the first place and require them to fight for the very namesake that united them.

Join
The Mysterious
Benedict
Society
At your own
Risk]]> 440 Trenton Lee Stewart 0316057800 Kim 4 2010 4.21 2008 The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #2)
author: Trenton Lee Stewart
name: Kim
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/09/19
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> The Magician's Elephant 8841929 Book by Kate DiCamillo 206 Kate DiCamillo 1406322512 Kim 4 2010, fantasy 3.57 2009 The Magician's Elephant
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: Kim
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/03/22
shelves: 2010, fantasy
review:

]]> 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 Kim 3 2010, non-fiction 4.32 2005 The Glass Castle
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Kim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/28
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> Bellwether 24985
Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls to the grunge look - how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity - if not serendipity - which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless.

Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?)

But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer...]]> 248 Connie Willis 0553562967 Kim 4 2010, sci-fi 3.92 1996 Bellwether
author: Connie Willis
name: Kim
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/12/23
shelves: 2010, sci-fi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors]]> 6706806
BECCA

On a sunny day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight-year-old Becca Burke was struck by lightning. No one believed her—not her philandering father or her drunk, love-sick mother—not even when her watch kept losing time and a spooky halo of light appeared overhead in photographs. Becca was struck again when she was sixteen. She survived, but over time she would learn that outsmarting lightning was the least of her concerns.

BUCKLEY

In rural Arkansas, Buckley R. Pitank’s world seemed plagued by disaster. Ashamed but protective of his obese mother, fearful of his scathing grandmother, and always running from bullies (including his pseudo-evangelical stepfather), he needed a miracle to set him free. At thirteen years old, Buckley witnessed a lightning strike that would change everything.

Now an art student in New York City, Becca Burke is a gifted but tortured painter who strives to recapture the intensity of her lightning-strike memories on canvas. On the night of her first gallery opening, a stranger appears and is captivated by her art. Who is this odd young man with whom she shares a mysterious connection?

When Buckley and Becca finally meet, neither is prepared for the charge of emotions—or for the perilous event that will bring them even closer to one another, and to the families they’ve been running from for as long as they can remember.

Crackling with atmosphere and eccentric characters, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors explores the magic of nature and the power of redemption in a novel as beautiful and unpredictable as lightning itself.]]> 384 Michele Young-Stone 0307464474 Kim 2 2010 3.53 2010 The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors
author: Michele Young-Stone
name: Kim
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2010/12/22
date added: 2010/12/22
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way]]> 6136502 Bestselling author Ruth Reichl examines her mother’s life, giving voice to the universal unarticulated truth that we are grateful not to be our mothers

In Not Becoming My Mother, bestselling author Ruth Reichl embarks on a clear-eyed, openhearted investigation of her mother’s life, piecing together the journey of a woman she comes to realize she never really knew. Looking to her mother’s letters and diaries, Reichl confronts the painful transition her mother made from a hopeful young woman to an increasingly unhappy older one and realizes the tremendous sacrifices she made to make sure her daughter’s life would not be as disappointing as her own.

Growing up in Cleveland, Miriam Brudno dreamed of becoming a doctor, like her father. But when she announced this, her parents said, “You’re no beauty, and it’s too bad you’re such an intellectual. But if you become a doctor, no man will ever marry you.� Instead, at twenty, Miriam opened a bookstore, a profession everyone agreed was suitably ladylike. She corresponded with authors all over the world, including philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, political figures such as Max Eastman, and novelists such as Christopher Marlowe. It was the happiest time of her life.

Nearly thirty when she finally married, she fulfilled expectations, settled down, left her bookstore behind, and started a family. But conformity came at a tremendous cost. With labor-saving devices to aid in household chores, there was simply not enough to do to fill the days. Miriam—and most of her friends—were smart, educated women who were often bored, miserable, and silently rebellious.

On what would have been Miriam’s one hundredth birthday Reichl opens up her mother’s diaries for the first time and encounters a whole new woman. This is a person she had never known. In this intimate study Reichl comes to understand the lessons of rebellion, independence, and self-acceptance that her mother—though unable to guide herself—succeeded in teaching her daughter.]]> 128 Ruth Reichl 1594202168 Kim 4 2010, non-fiction 3.51 2009 Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Kim
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/12/19
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> The Razor’s Edge 31196 314 W. Somerset Maugham 1400034205 Kim 2 2010 4.20 1944 The Razor’s Edge
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Kim
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1944
rating: 2
read at: 2010/12/16
date added: 2010/12/16
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Kim 3 2010 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Kim
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2010/12/13
date added: 2010/12/13
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> The Cider House Rules 4687 1064 John Irving 0786226749 Kim 2 2010, historical-fiction 4.16 1985 The Cider House Rules
author: John Irving
name: Kim
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2010/12/11
date added: 2010/12/11
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction
review:

]]> Columbine 5632446
What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.]]> 417 Dave Cullen 0446546933 Kim 4 2010, non-fiction 4.28 2009 Columbine
author: Dave Cullen
name: Kim
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/12/01
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:
This is book is worth four stars, though I don't know "I really liked it" is quite the way to express my feelings about it. Dave Cullen's research on the lives and personality of Eric Harris and Derek Klebold and their reasons for the Columbine shootings is fascinating and scary and disturbing. Part of me wanted to understand them, and part of me wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I'm glad I read it, but I was also really glad to finish it.
]]> Room 7937843
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.]]> 321 Emma Donoghue Kim 5 2010 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Kim
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/11/30
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> The Painted Veil 99664 The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 246 W. Somerset Maugham 0307277771 Kim 3 2010 3.95 1925 The Painted Veil
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Kim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1925
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/25
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> Wickett's Remedy 19056
Alive with narrative ingenuity, and tinged with humor as well as sorrow, this inspired recreation of a forgotten era powerfully reminds us how much individual voices matter--in history and in life.
(back cover)]]> 384 Myla Goldberg 1400078121 Kim 4 2010, historical-fiction
My biggest complaint is that the book didn't really end so much as it just..... stopped. I think the conclusions were supposed to be gleaned from the sidenotes, but I kind of felt like I was just left hanging. And I also didn't feel like Q.D. really redeemd himself. My final verdict - good book, but I'd like Ms. Goldberg to come back and finish it!]]> 3.26 2005 Wickett's Remedy
author: Myla Goldberg
name: Kim
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/20
date added: 2010/11/20
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction
review:
I really, really liked this book. Unlike some, I was a fan of the margin notes. A little distracting, maybe, but many gave a sense of skipping to the end that I loved, as I am a professed skip-to-the-end-to-make-sure-it-ends-the-way-I-want kind of reader. I liked the characters, I liked the period, I liked the storyline. However, I do agree with many other posters, there are just too many storylines! Maybe this could be a trilogy - Lydia and Henry, Lydia fights the flu epidemic and Lydia fights Q.D. soda. I'd read all three!

My biggest complaint is that the book didn't really end so much as it just..... stopped. I think the conclusions were supposed to be gleaned from the sidenotes, but I kind of felt like I was just left hanging. And I also didn't feel like Q.D. really redeemd himself. My final verdict - good book, but I'd like Ms. Goldberg to come back and finish it!
]]> Climbing the Stairs 2011854
During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather's large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible.

Vidya's only refuge becomes her grandfather's upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya's brother decides to fight with the hated British against the Nazis, and when Raman proposes marriage too soon, Vidya must question all she has believed in.

Padma Venkatraman's debut novel poignantly shows a girl struggling to find her place in a mixedup world. Climbing the Stairs is a powerful story about love and loss set against a fascinating historical backdrop.]]> 256 Padma Venkatraman 0399247467 Kim 3 2010, india 3.86 2008 Climbing the Stairs
author: Padma Venkatraman
name: Kim
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/15
shelves: 2010, india
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Born to Run (Jack Swyteck, #8)]]> 3953924 Bestselling author James Grippando is back with another innovative and action-packed thriller featuring his ever-popular hero.

Jack Swyteck gets caught in a dangerous web of intrigue and murder at the top levels of the United States government in his most high-profile and disturbing case yet.

Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck guards his own family secrets closely, after his father's two terms as Florida's governor made some personal rifts public. Things between the two men are finally better, and whenever Harry Swyteck asks for Jack's help he gets it. Suddenly, Harry needs it more than ever before.

When Harry's friend, the vice president of the United States, goes hunting for alligators in the Everglades and winds up dead, the president positions Harry to be his new VP. Harry immediately asks Jack to be his lawyer. The prestige that comes from the job turns lethal, however, when Jack finds himself at the heart of a complicated cover-up that spans nearly fifty years and the globe. Before hostages can be released, an old secret must be revealed, one that could threaten the life of the president of the United States himself.]]> 325 James Grippando 0061556114 Kim 3 2010, non-fiction 3.83 2008 Born to Run (Jack Swyteck, #8)
author: James Grippando
name: Kim
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2010/11/15
date added: 2010/11/15
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath]]> 6455003
The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled cruelty and forty-one months of captivity, starvation rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture—far from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur.

The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out of a young cowboy turned sketch artist from Montana who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against Steele’s story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers.

The result is an altogether new and original World War II it exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate; it makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides.]]> 480 Michael Norman 0374272603 Kim 3 2010, wwii, non-fiction 4.18 1992 Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
author: Michael Norman
name: Kim
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/11
shelves: 2010, wwii, non-fiction
review:
I could only give this one 3 stars because it is so very hard to read about so much human misery and cruelty. Living in my comfortable, happy, sheltered, suburban home in 2010, I really can't comprehend the physical hardships those men endured, not to mention how people could treat others, even conquered captives, and especially fellow prisoners the way the POWs in the Phillipines were treated. Thank you so much to the authors for seeing the soldiers' stories through to some happiness and healing in their lives. Truly a book to make you appreciate the sacrificies made by our soldiers and inspire gratitude for the country and day and age we live in.
]]> <![CDATA[An Affair with Africa: Expeditions And Adventures Across A Continent]]> 1522647 262 Alzada Carlisle Kistner 1559635312 Kim 3 2010, non-fiction 3.45 1998 An Affair with Africa: Expeditions And Adventures Across A Continent
author: Alzada Carlisle Kistner
name: Kim
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/10/30
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Price of Stones: Building a School for My Village]]> 7366978

The extraordinary story of one man's gift to orphaned children in need of hope

Can one person really make a difference in the world? Twesigye Jackson Kaguri defied many naysayers-and his own nagging doubts-and proved that, with a dream and incredible determination, he could change many lives.

Growing up in rural Uganda, Kaguri overcame poverty to earn a degree from the national university and worked as a human rights advocate, eventually making his way to pursue studies at Columbia University. When he returned to his village in Uganda with his wife, they were overwhelmed by the plight of his village's many AIDS orphans and vowed to open the first tuition-free school in the district for these children. Faced with many daunting obstacles, including little money, skepticism among friends in both the U.S. and Uganda, corrupt school inspectors, and a lack of supplies, he doggedly built one classroom after another until they had an accredited primary school filled with students dreaming of becoming the future doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers, and even presidents of Uganda.

The Price of Stones is the stirring story behind the founding of the Nyaka AIDS Orphans School. Weaving together tales from his youth with the enormously inspiring account of the remarkable challenges and triumphs of the school, Kaguri shows how someone with a modest idea is capable of achieving monumental results. His story will captivate all readers of Three Cups of Tea and Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains.

]]> 288 Twesigye Jackson Kaguri 0670021849 Kim 5 2010, non-fiction 4.03 2010 The Price of Stones: Building a School for My Village
author: Twesigye Jackson Kaguri
name: Kim
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/10/22
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time]]> 49436 349 Greg Mortenson 0143038257 Kim 3 2010, non-fiction 3.66 2006 Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
author: Greg Mortenson
name: Kim
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/08
date added: 2010/10/08
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Callahan Chronicals (Callahan's, #1-3)]]> 34270 Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulars are anything but: time travelers, talking dogs, alcoholic vampires, cybernetic aliens--and a group of people who really, truly care about each other. It's the rare kind of place where bad pun are as appreciated as good conversation.

Time Travelers Strictly Cash is their policy, but then again everybody pays cash at Callahan's. Lay your money on the bar, name your poison, step up to the line drawn on the barroom floor, and after drinking make a toast and throw the glass into the fireplace. It's an odd tradition (don't worry about the cost--Callahan gets the glasses at a bulk discount), but one's that's led to some interesting stories.

Callahan's Secret may be something even the regulars would never guess. then again, it may be as simple as listening to those post-toast stories. After-all, like Callahan says, shared pain is lessened and shared joy in increased--a simple concept that could, after a few drinks, lead to saving the world....

This omnibus edition contains the trio of books that introduced the world to Mike Callahan, Jake Stonebender, Doc Webster, Mickey Finn, Fast Eddie Costigan, Long-Drink McGonnigle, Ralph Won Wau Wau and the rest of the regulars of Callahan's Place in the stories that helped Spider Robinson to win both a John W. Campbell Award and a legion of fans.
]]> 400 Spider Robinson 0812539370 Kim 0 Sappy. Didn't finish it. 4.31 1988 The Callahan Chronicals (Callahan's, #1-3)
author: Spider Robinson
name: Kim
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/09/28
shelves: 2010, books-i-didn-t-bother-to-finish
review:
Sappy. Didn't finish it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X Kim 4 2010, historical-fiction 4.34 1989 The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
author: Ken Follett
name: Kim
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/09/27
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction
review:
This was a great story. I really, really enjoyed it, except for the very descriptive and often violent sex and battle scenes. I did a lot of skipping ahead in this book to avoid polluting my tender little mind. However, if you are warned about this enough to avoid those parts, it is a fascinating story. I loved the depiction of 12th century life.
]]> The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Kim 1 2010, india 4.02 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Kim
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 1
read at: 2010/09/05
date added: 2010/09/05
shelves: 2010, india
review:
I will admit, without hesitation, that Lahiri is a good writer and I did enjoy reading her words, but I just could not get over the fact that I didn't like a single character in this book. Ashoke and Ashima are whiney and wimpy - if they dislike American ways so much, why stay here? If they miss India so much, why not go back? Gogol is a jerk, plain and simple. Moushumi is a tramp. I could go on, but these are the worst offenders. I will say that Ashima has the most appreciable growth by the end of the book. I almost liked her by the last page. Excellent prose, crappy characters.
]]> Syren (Septimus Heap #5) 4935682
Trouble is also brewing for Lucy and Wolf Boy, who have become entangled with some nefarious sailors at sea, and for Milo Banda, Jenna's father, who is harboring a mysterious treasure chest in his ship's hold.

Charismatic storyteller Angie Sage continues Septimus Heap's Magykal journey with more laugh-out-loud adventures, more enchanting charms and spells, and an ever-deepening understanding of the interior life of a young hero.]]> 628 Angie Sage 0747594155 Kim 3 2010, fantasy 4.11 2009 Syren (Septimus Heap #5)
author: Angie Sage
name: Kim
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/31
date added: 2010/08/31
shelves: 2010, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 Kim 4 2010 4.10 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kim
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/08/31
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mississippi Jack: Being an Account of the Further Waterborne Adventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman, Fine Lady, and Lily of the West (Bloody Jack, #5)]]> 295652
Bold, daring, and downright fun, Jacky Faber proves once again that with resilience and can-do spirit, she can wiggle out of any scrape . . . well, almost.]]> 611 L.A. Meyer 0152060030 Kim 3
SPOILER -- asking the opinion of others who have already read the book - SPOILER!!!!


Anyone else think the series totally jumped the shark when Jacky got caught up in a tornado? Gimme a break!]]> 4.21 2007 Mississippi Jack: Being an Account of the Further Waterborne Adventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman, Fine Lady, and Lily of the West (Bloody Jack, #5)
author: L.A. Meyer
name: Kim
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, england
review:
I've really been enjoying the Jacky Faber series, picking up one book right after another, but now, at book 5 in the series, I find an intresting trend. At every book, I roll my eyes a little more often, I can predict the trouble Jacky will get into LONG before it actually happens and, I swear, the whole Jacky/Jaimy thing is so drawn out, I'm not even rooting for them to get together anymore. I'm taking a break for a while. I love Jacky as a character, I just think she's starting to repeat the same adventures over and over again.

SPOILER -- asking the opinion of others who have already read the book - SPOILER!!!!


Anyone else think the series totally jumped the shark when Jacky got caught up in a tornado? Gimme a break!
]]> <![CDATA[In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #4)]]> 295650
A school outing goes awry as Jacky and her classmates are abducted and forced into the hold of the Bloodhound, a ship bound for the slave markets on the Barbary Coast. All of Jacky's ingenuity, determination, and plain old good luck will be put to the test as she rallies her classmates to fight together to avoid being sold on the auction block in this new installment of the Bloody Jack Adventures.]]> 515 L.A. Meyer 0152055576 Kim 3 4.32 2006 In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #4)
author: L.A. Meyer
name: Kim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, england
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3)]]> 295651 528 L.A. Meyer 0152058737 Kim 4 4.34 2005 Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3)
author: L.A. Meyer
name: Kim
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/04
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, england
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (Bloody Jack, #2)]]> 295654
Everything she does is wrong. Her embroidery is deplorable, her French is atrocious, and her table manners--disgusting! Then there's the small matter of her blue anchor tattoo. . . .

Despite her best efforts, Jacky can't seem to stay out of trouble long enough to dedicate herself to being ladylike. But what fun would that be, anyway?]]> 504 L.A. Meyer 0152054596 Kim 4 4.27 2004 Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (Bloody Jack, #2)
author: L.A. Meyer
name: Kim
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/14
date added: 2010/07/14
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, england
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour]]> 3231403 The masterfully told story of the unlikely men who came together to make the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history.

On the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world today. In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America's victory in the Cold War.

On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies', and most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them.

Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global war—together these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time.

This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world power—a masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time.]]> 624 Andrei Cherny 0399154965 Kim 4 2010, non-fiction, wwii 4.26 2008 The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour
author: Andrei Cherny
name: Kim
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/10
date added: 2010/07/10
shelves: 2010, non-fiction, wwii
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Kim 4 2010 4.34 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kim
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/03
date added: 2010/06/13
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage]]> 139069 The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

First edition: here.]]> 282 Alfred Lansing Kim 4 4.42 1959 Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
author: Alfred Lansing
name: Kim
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/03
date added: 2010/06/03
shelves: 2010, recommended-by-friends, non-fiction, books-i-will-make-jason-read, bookclub
review:

]]> Coraline 17061
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.

The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.

Only it's different.

At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages.]]> 176 Neil Gaiman 0061139378 Kim 1 4.13 2002 Coraline
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Kim
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2010/05/27
shelves: 2010, books-i-didn-t-bother-to-finish
review:
Just couldn't get into this. Gaiman wrote it for his daughter and you can tell, as it has the sense of a dad telling his daughter a serial bedtime story -- meandering, making things up as he goes, probably some parts that have special significance between father and daughter that don't really compute with the rest of the world. Didn't end up finishing it - moved on to more interesting stories.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Kim 4 2010 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kim
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/22
date added: 2010/05/22
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal]]> 655627
In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service who at one time volunteered to assassinate Hitler for his countrymen. Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Both countries provided for the mother of his child and his mistress. Sixty years after the end of the war, and ten years after Chapman’s death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapman’s files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.

A gripping story of loyalty, love, and treachery, Agent Zigzag offers a unique glimpse into the psychology of espionage, with its thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal.]]> 364 Ben Macintyre 0307353400 Kim 3 4.10 2007 Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Kim
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2010/05/19
date added: 2010/05/19
shelves: 2010, non-fiction, wwii, england
review:

]]> People of the Book 1379961 The New Yorker) novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war.
Inspired by a true story, "People of the Book" is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author.
Called "a tour de force" by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain.

When it falls to Australian rare book expert Hanna Heath to conserve this priceless work, the tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—a butterfly wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock the book’s deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
]]> 372 Geraldine Brooks 067001821X Kim 4 4.02 2008 People of the Book
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Kim
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/08
date added: 2010/05/03
shelves: 2010, books-i-will-make-jason-read
review:
I loved the structure of this book - reading farther and farther back to the origins of the Sarajevo Haggadah and Hanna's personal growth that occurs as she investigates its history. Maybe it ends just a little to neatly. Then again, a tidy little ending can be very satisfying!
]]> <![CDATA[The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey]]> 78508 The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.
From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.]]> 416 Candice Millard 0767913736 Kim 4 2010, non-fiction 4.18 2005 The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
author: Candice Millard
name: Kim
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/05/03
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:
A very well written and educational book, not only about Theodore Roosevelt, himself, but about the men who traveled with him and the Amazon rainforest as well. Millard is able to deviate from the course of the story to fill in background or educate on various aspects of rainforest life without losing the thread of the story and keeping the reader engrossed in what she has to say. An excellent read.
]]> Middlemarch 19090 George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) created in Middlemarch a vast panorama of life in a provincial Midlands town. At the story’s center stands the intellectual and idealistic Dorothea Brooke—a character who in many ways resembles Eliot herself. But the very qualities that set Dorothea apart from the materialistic, mean-spirited society around her also lead her into a disastrous marriage with a man she mistakes for her soul mate. In a parallel story, young doctor Tertius Lydgate, who is equally idealistic, falls in love with the pretty but vain and superficial Rosamund Vincy, whom he marries to his ruin.Eliot surrounds her main figures with a gallery of characters drawn from every social class, from laborers and shopkeepers to the rising middle class to members of the wealthy, landed gentry. Together they form an extraordinarily rich and precisely detailed portrait of English provincial life in the 1830s. But Dorothea’s and Lydgate’s struggles to retain their moral integrity in the midst of temptation and tragedy remind us that their world is very much like our own. Strikingly modern in its painful ironies and psychological insight, Middlemarch was pivotal in the shaping of twentieth-century literary realism.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of fourteen books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including the novels Disturbances in the Field, Leaving Brooklyn, and In the Family Way, and the memoir Ruined by Reading. Her poetry collection In Solitary and her translation of A Place to Live: Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg appeared in 2002.]]> 848 George Eliot 1593080239 Kim 4 2010, england 4.14 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Kim
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1872
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/23
date added: 2010/05/03
shelves: 2010, england
review:
I wanted to love Middlemarch. I really did. I love British lit and especially this time period. And I loved certain story lines part of the time and other story lines at other times. Sometimes I was riveted and couldn't wait to read what would happen next, other times I felt like the same events were being rehashed again and again. Really, how long does it take to establish that Fred is a screw up? That Lydgate is in debt and that Rosemond is a shrew? Yes, yes, we get it - Will really, REALLY loves Dorothea. I preferred some of the more minor storylines -- Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother, for example -- because they were not so heavily elaborated. Still, a good story, even if a bit belabored.
]]> <![CDATA[The Merchant of Death (Pendragon, #1)]]> 833710 Librarian Note: Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here


DENDURON

BOBBY PENDRAGON is a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy. He has a family, a home, and even Marley, his beloved dog. But there is something very special about Bobby.

He is going to save the world.

And not just Earth as we know it. Bobby is slowly starting to realize that life in the cosmos isn't quite what he thought it was. And before he can object, he is swept off to an alternate dimension known as Denduron, a territory inhabited by strange beings, ruled by a magical tyrant, and plagued by dangerous revolution.

If Bobby wants to see his family again, he's going to have to accept his role as savior, and accept it wholeheartedly. Because, as he is about to discover, Denduron is only the beginning....


Cover illustration by Victor Lee]]> 375 D.J. MacHale 0743437314 Kim 2 2010 3.97 2002 The Merchant of Death (Pendragon, #1)
author: D.J. MacHale
name: Kim
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at: 2010/04/29
date added: 2010/05/03
shelves: 2010
review:
It seems to me that D.J. MacHale wasn't sure who he was writing to. His writing style seems aimed at kids and yet much of his subject matter seems aimed at teens. I read this because it was recommended by a teenager I know and then my 9-year-old checked it out of her library at school. I found myself conficted between being unhappy about my 3rd grader reading a make-out scence and feeling like the writing and vocabulary and such were certainly on her level. I'm not going to encourage her to read any more books in the series though. By the time I'm ready for her to read the content, her reading level is going to be way beyond this.
]]> The Thirteenth Tale 40440
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.]]> 406 Diane Setterfield 0743298020 Kim 4 2010, england, bookclub 3.96 2006 The Thirteenth Tale
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Kim
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/03/25
shelves: 2010, england, bookclub
review:

]]> After You 5716100 The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other—and ourselves.

It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.

Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small—secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and those around her� forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who’s had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.]]> 352 Julie Buxbaum 0385341245 Kim 3 2010, england
I especially enjoyed the evolution of her marriage and how things came full circle in the end. Even relationships that seem to be perfect can hit bumps and sometimes simple love just doesn't heal all wounds, but effort and love can. And a happy ending. I like those.]]> 3.74 2009 After You
author: Julie Buxbaum
name: Kim
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/02/18
date added: 2010/02/26
shelves: 2010, england
review:
I don't usually go for chick lit too much, but this one was pretty good. Though there were the some of the typical chick lit cliches -- excessive clothing description, belabored emotional examination and internal conflict (what do I want? Yes, this is what I want, no its not what I want, why don't I want it?) - none of these are used to the point of annoyance. The precocious kid is even almost believeable as a precocious kid and not a mini adult. I enjoyed the development of Ellie's character and the gradual revealing of her history and disappoinments and how they came to play in the situation she finds herself in in the book.

I especially enjoyed the evolution of her marriage and how things came full circle in the end. Even relationships that seem to be perfect can hit bumps and sometimes simple love just doesn't heal all wounds, but effort and love can. And a happy ending. I like those.
]]> <![CDATA[The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education]]> 6061067 A West Point grad, Rhodes Scholar, and Army Ranger recounts his unique education and struggles with the hard lessons that only war can teach.

One haunting afternoon on Losano Ridge in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Captain Craig Mullaney and his infantry platoon were caught in a deadly firefight with Al Qaeda fighters, when a message came over the radio: one of his soldiers had been killed by the enemy.

Mullaney’s education,the four years he spent at West Point, and the harrowing test of Ranger School, readied him for a career in the Army. His subsequent experience as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford couldn’t have been further from the Army and his working-class roots, and yet the unorthodox education he received there would be surprisingly relevant as a combat leader.

But despite all his preparation, the hardest questions remained. When the call came to lead his platoon into battle and earn his soldiers� salutes, would he be ready? Was his education sufficient for the unforgiving minutes he’d face?

Years later, after that excruciating experience in Afghanistan, he would return to the United States to teach history to future Navy and Marine Corps officers at the Naval Academy. He had been in their position once, not long ago. How would he use his own life-changing experience to prepare them?

Written with unflinching honesty,The Unforgiving Minute is an unforgettable portrait of a young soldier grappling with the weight of his hard-earned knowledge, while at last coming to terms with what it really means to be a man.]]> 400 Craig M. Mullaney 1594202028 Kim 4 2010, non-fiction 4.02 2009 The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education
author: Craig M. Mullaney
name: Kim
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/26
date added: 2010/02/26
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:
I've been reading a lot of WWII books lately, so this was an interesting related book. I have to admit, I'm not real current on world events, so my knowledge of Afganistan consisted of the fact that we have troops there, they are fighting terrorists and it's a desert. It was fascinating to follow the extensive preparation that is put into creating a soldier and to experience it through the soldiers eyes. It is humbling and gratifying to know that the same kinds of heroes that fought in WWII, still fight for us today.
]]> The Rose of Sebastopol 2402259 405 Katharine McMahon 0297851829 Kim 4 3.57 2007 The Rose of Sebastopol
author: Katharine McMahon
name: Kim
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/31
date added: 2010/02/23
shelves: 2010, england, historical-fiction
review:
I liked Mariella quite a bit more at the end than I did at the beginning of this book. I couldn't really figure out what it was that Rosa loved so very much about her when they met as children, except perhaps that she was so isolated and Mariella just happened to be a person that was there to love. Early in the book she is so proper and obedient and ladylike that, other than her obsession with Henry, she hardly seems to have a personality! But through disappointment, adversity and being forced to learn a little self-sufficiency, she becomes a much more whole and interesting person by the conclusion. It's not easy to grow a backbone, but we all have to sometime!
]]> <![CDATA[One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)]]> 33512 One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.]]> 434 Jim Fergus 0312199430 Kim 2 2010, historical-fiction 3.89 1998 One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (One Thousand White Women, #1)
author: Jim Fergus
name: Kim
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at: 2010/02/18
date added: 2010/02/18
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dandelion Fire (100 Cupboards, #2)]]> 3392898 480 N.D. Wilson 037583883X Kim 3 2010 3.93 2008 Dandelion Fire (100 Cupboards, #2)
author: N.D. Wilson
name: Kim
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2010/02/05
date added: 2010/02/05
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting]]> 2352769 A hilarious and wickedly irreverent look at life with cancer

Lopsided is not your ordinary cancer memoir. Meredith Norton chronicles every step of her experience, starting with her bizarre symptoms while living in Paris to moving back home to California and living with her compulsive parents and their five television sets. Irreverent and incredibly funny, Norton rails against self-pity and victimhood and rants about the innumerable copies of Lance Armstrong’s cancer survival book pressed on her by well-meaning family and friends.

Alongside the harrowing portrait of her treatments, Norton offers equally amusing memories from her offbeat life. We see her childhood time during a somewhat racist ski trip, a family reunion at a Florida alligator farm, and her life in a tree house with a neighbor, who, despite being vegan, hates mice enough to taxidermy them into miniature versions of racecar drivers, Jesus, a UPS delivery man, and Sally Jesse Raphael.

Like David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Norton’s razor-sharp wit is at once riotous and excruciating. Lopsided is the remarkable debut of a masterful humorist.]]> 213 Meredith Norton 0670019283 Kim 2 2010, non-fiction 3.71 2008 Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting
author: Meredith Norton
name: Kim
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/26
date added: 2010/01/26
shelves: 2010, non-fiction
review:

]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Kim 5 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Kim
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/20
date added: 2010/01/20
shelves: 2010, five-star-books, historical-fiction, books-i-will-make-jason-read, bookclub
review:

]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Kim 4 2010, non-fiction, wwii 4.39 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Kim
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/01/17
shelves: 2010, non-fiction, wwii
review:

]]> <![CDATA[100 Cupboards (100 Cupboards, #1)]]> 1661390
Henry scrapes the plaster off the wall and discovers doors—ninety-nine cupboards of all different sizes and shapes. Through one he can hear the sound of falling rain. Through another he sees a glowing room—with a man strolling back and forth! Henry and his cousin Henrietta soon understand that these are not just cupboards. They are, in fact, portals to other worlds.

100 Cupboards is the first book of a new fantasy adventure, written in the best world-hopping tradition and reinvented in N.D Wilson's own inimitable style.]]> 289 N.D. Wilson 0375838813 Kim 3 2010 3.80 2007 100 Cupboards (100 Cupboards, #1)
author: N.D. Wilson
name: Kim
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/01/17
shelves: 2010
review:

]]> Pope Joan 27252 A world-wide bestseller, major motion picture and upcoming "Director's Cut" TV mini-series exclusively for the U.S!

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die�Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak–and his identity–and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom–wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price . . .

In this international bestseller, Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.]]> 422 Donna Woolfolk Cross 0345416260 Kim 4 4.08 1996 Pope Joan
author: Donna Woolfolk Cross
name: Kim
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/01/15
shelves: 2010, historical-fiction, bookclub
review:

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