Susanna's bookshelf: all

Susanna's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 31 Oct 2023 12:09:29 -0700 60 Susanna's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 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 Susanna 5 3.88 1993

author: Annie Proulx
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)]]> 1024275 An Agatha Award Best Novel Nominee
Named One of the Century's Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

From New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King comes the book that introduced us to the ingenious Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles into his lap on the Sussex downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée, and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. This first book of the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries is full of brilliant deduction, disguises, and danger.]]> 346 Laurie R. King 0312427360 Susanna 5 3.92 1994 The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)

The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)

author: Laurie R. King
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Stormy Weather (Skink #3) 13061
"Hysterically funny...Hiaasen at his satirical best." - USA Today

Two honeymooners wake up early, make love twice, and brace themselves for a spectacle they won't be watching from the sidelines. A seductive con artiste stumbles into a scam that promises more cool cash than the lottery. A shotgun-toting mobile home salesman is about to close a deal with disaster. A law school dropout will be chasing one Gaboon viper, a troop of storm-shocked monkeys, and a newfound love life, while tourists by the thousands bail from the Florida Keys. We're now entering the hurricane zone, where hell and hilarity rule. And in the hands of the masterful, merciless Carl Hiaasen, we're going to have some weather.]]> 388 Carl Hiaasen 0446677167 Susanna 4 3.94 1995 Stormy Weather (Skink #3)

author: Carl Hiaasen
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle (Fifty Shades, #1-3)]]> 13641626 New York Times #1 bestselling trilogy has been hailed by Entertainment Weekly as being "in a class by itself." Beginning with the GoodReads Choice Award Romance Finalist Fifty Shades of Grey, the Fifty Shades Trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

This bundle includes the following novels:

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY: When college student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly Ana realizes she wants this man, and Grey admits he wants her, too - but on his own terms. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian's secrets and explores her own desires.

FIFTY SHADES DARKER: Daunted by Christian's dark secrets and singular tastes, Ana has broken off their relationship to start a new career. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and while Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Ana is forced to make the most important decision of her life.

FIFTY SHADES FREED: Now, Ana and Christian have it all - love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to turn Ana's deepest fears into reality.

This book is intended for mature audiences.]]> 1501 E.L. James Susanna 2 4.18 2005 Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle (Fifty Shades, #1-3)

Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle (Fifty Shades, #1-3)

author: E.L. James
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2012/06/03
date added: 2022/01/21
shelves:
review:
Guilty pleasure. This book is kinky and funny, sometimes accidently. The writer could have benefitted from a better editor, as she sometimes butchers the English language. With that said, I tore through all three books in a weekend. I found myself at times laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the story, but none the less, closed the last page a little bit sad that there was no more.
]]> The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Susanna 0 4.63 2015 The Nightingale

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels, #4)]]> 25242224 The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women �� the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up �� a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.]]> 473 Elena Ferrante 1609452860 Susanna 0 to-read 4.47 2014 The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels, #4)

The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels, #4)

author: Elena Ferrante
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)]]> 23156040 418 Elena Ferrante Susanna 0 to-read 4.38 2013

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)

author: Elena Ferrante
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)]]> 17465515 My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker's James Wood described as "large, captivating, amiably peopled ... a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal," Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's most accomplished storytellers. She writes vividly about a specific neighborhood of Naples from the late-1950s through to the current day and about two remarkable young women who are very much the products of that place and time. Yet in doing so she has created a world in which readers will recognize themselves and has drawn a marvelously nuanced portrait of friendship.

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.]]> 471 Elena Ferrante Susanna 0 to-read 4.47 2012 The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)

The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)

author: Elena Ferrante
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante Susanna 0 to-read 4.08 2011 My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)

My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)

author: Elena Ferrante
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Susanna 3 4.57 2005

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)

author: J.K. Rowling
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Basket Case 13063 400 Carl Hiaasen 0446695645 Susanna 4 3.82 2002

author: Carl Hiaasen
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/07/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Chocolate Money 13429643
Set in 1980s Chicago and on the East Coast, this electric debut chronicles the relationship between an impossibly rich chocolate heiress, Babs Ballentyne, and her sensitive and bookish young daughter, Bettina. Babs plays by no one’s naked Christmas cards, lavish theme parties with lewd installations at her Lake Shore Drive penthouse, nocturnal visits from her married lover, who “admires her centerfold�� while his wife sleeps at their nearby home.

Bettina wants nothing more than to win her mother’s affection and approval, both of which prove elusive. When she escapes to an elite New Hampshire prep school, Bettina finds that her unorthodox upbringing makes it difficult to fit in with her peers, one of whom happens to be the son of Babs’s lover. As she struggles to forge an identity apart from her mother, Bettina walks a fine line between self-preservation and self-destruction.

As funny as it is scandalous, The Chocolate Money is Mommie Dearest , Prep , and 50 Shades of Gray all rolled into one compulsively readable book.]]> 288 Ashley Prentice Norton 0547840047 Susanna 0 to-read 3.46 2012

author: Ashley Prentice Norton
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Group 387348
Librarian note: An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.

]]> 496 Mary McCarthy 0156372088 Susanna 0 to-read 3.69 1963

author: Mary McCarthy
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Facts of Life 176332 298 Graham Joyce 0753818426 Susanna 4 3.92 2002

author: Graham Joyce
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Netherland 2615008
Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.]]> 269 Joseph O'Neill 0307377040 Susanna 1
To make matters worse, I found the main characters, Hans and Rachel, to be mostly unlikeable, shallow, selfish, and self-centered. The characters Chuck and Angel were interesting, but not fully developed, and therefore failed to hold my interest. Saddest of all was Hans and Rachels's emotionally neglected son, Jake. I felt a detached sympathy for him, but again, the character was so poorly developed, that he failed to muster much emotion in me. I don't remember ever shedding a tear, or cracking more than a ghost of a smile while reading this book. Mostly, I remember a dull sense of urgency to just plod through it so I could toss it in the Goodwill pile. ]]> 3.43 2008 Netherland

author: Joseph O'Neill
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2008
rating: 1
read at: 2012/06/10
date added: 2012/06/10
shelves:
review:
I really wanted to like this book, based on the many glowing reviews. I originally purchased the book in 2008, and started it with high hopes. After slogging through several chapters, I reluctantly shelved it, promising to give it another shot at some point in the future. This weekend, spotting the bookmark poking up less than a quarter of the way in from this novel on my library shelf, I decided to give the book another try. Starting again from the beginning, I was struck by how O'Neill's style is so incredibly and unnecessarily verbose. I found myself muttering, "Blah, blah, blah" and resisting the urge to skim ahead. He droned glumly at times, rather than painting a picture.

To make matters worse, I found the main characters, Hans and Rachel, to be mostly unlikeable, shallow, selfish, and self-centered. The characters Chuck and Angel were interesting, but not fully developed, and therefore failed to hold my interest. Saddest of all was Hans and Rachels's emotionally neglected son, Jake. I felt a detached sympathy for him, but again, the character was so poorly developed, that he failed to muster much emotion in me. I don't remember ever shedding a tear, or cracking more than a ghost of a smile while reading this book. Mostly, I remember a dull sense of urgency to just plod through it so I could toss it in the Goodwill pile.
]]> <![CDATA[Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)]]> 6149509
In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.]]> 256 Joseph O'Neill 0307388778 Susanna 2 3.27 2008 Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)

author: Joseph O'Neill
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Susanna 4 3.76 2006 The Elegance of the Hedgehog

author: Muriel Barbery
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/30
date added: 2011/10/24
shelves:
review:

]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez Susanna 5 4.10 1967

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> When God Was a Rabbit 8874743 When God was a Rabbit is an incredibly exciting debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction.

Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it’s about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.]]> 325 Sarah Winman 0755379284 Susanna 0 to-read 3.74 2011 When God Was a Rabbit

author: Sarah Winman
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]> 372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Susanna 4 3.87 2002

author: Alice Sebold
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/08/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close]]> 4588
The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?

So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives, and complete strangers. He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years. But will it take him any closer to, or further from, his lost father?]]> 326 Jonathan Safran Foer 0618711651 Susanna 5 3.98 2005 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Winter Sea (Slains, #1) 3392089
In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.

Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.

But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her...

Please note: This novel has also been published under a different title: Sophia's Secret.

Please note, this title is the original recording, which is now known as Sophia's Secret

©2010 Susanna Kearsley (P)2011 Audible, Inc.]]> 527 Susanna Kearsley 0749080973 Susanna 4 4.08 2008 The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)

author: Susanna Kearsley
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/15
date added: 2011/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Yarnplay + Yarnplay at Home 6553330 Great projects. 239 Lisa Shobhana Mason 1600611915 Susanna 5 3.91 2008

author: Lisa Shobhana Mason
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/08/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[YarnPlay at Home: Handknits for Colorful Living]]> 1173046 128 Lisa Shobhana Mason 1600610056 Susanna 5 3.35 2007

YarnPlay at Home: Handknits for Colorful Living

author: Lisa Shobhana Mason
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/08/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[YarnPlay: Colorful Techniques and Projects for the Creative Knitter]]> 1173043 128 Lisa Shobhana Mason 1581808410 Susanna 5 3.38 2006

YarnPlay: Colorful Techniques and Projects for the Creative Knitter

author: Lisa Shobhana Mason
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/08/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Just Kids 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith Susanna 4 4.19 2010

author: Patti Smith
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/04/01
shelves:
review:
Patti took me back to my life in the early 80's. I was living a little further south, in Baltimore, but experiencing so much of what she described. The 80's for me was about a loss of innocence, but also a realization of one's social responsibility. It reminded me of my own acceptance that there is no black and white, but merely different shades of grey. Whether we're discussing sexuality, art or morality, one should never rush to judge. One must take a step back and consider the whole person. Patti did an amazing job of helping all of us take that step back and consider hers and Robert's lives. What we saw was flawed but brilliant artists who remained true to themselves, made less than perfect life choices, but in the end took care of one another. May we all be so lucky as to have friends and family who do the same.
]]> <![CDATA[God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]> 43369 307 Christopher Hitchens 0446579807 Susanna 2
As JFK said, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. In today's political climate, before we email our representatives in the Senate or Congress, we each must read the proposed legislation ourselves, make informed decisions based on fact, soften our language, listen to one another, and seek a common ground.

Again, I may agree with many of the points that the author raises, but I think I will choose to promote another writer who has followed the rules of expository writing 101. Supposition is not fact, and if you want to convince someone to assume your position on an issue from an intellectual rather than an emotional point of view, you had better have your references documented. As I say to my teenager, "Do your homework, damn it!" ]]> 3.94 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2011/01/11
date added: 2011/01/11
shelves:
review:
I will start by saying that the author has an interesting perspective, and I agree with this guy on many points, but his writing style is overly dramatic and confrontational, and intended to raise eyebrows rather than truly inform. In addition, he is sloppy, no I correct myself LAZY, with his references. If you are a novelist, have at it, but if your medium is expository text, you had better have your references identified. This guy makes all types of proclamations which he expects the reader to assume are fact without a single reference. Preaching to the converted is easy. Helping people on the other side of the debate to make an informed decision to change their point of view requires not only impassioned rhetoric, but also careful reference and thoughtful documentation.

As JFK said, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. In today's political climate, before we email our representatives in the Senate or Congress, we each must read the proposed legislation ourselves, make informed decisions based on fact, soften our language, listen to one another, and seek a common ground.

Again, I may agree with many of the points that the author raises, but I think I will choose to promote another writer who has followed the rules of expository writing 101. Supposition is not fact, and if you want to convince someone to assume your position on an issue from an intellectual rather than an emotional point of view, you had better have your references documented. As I say to my teenager, "Do your homework, damn it!"
]]> <![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 Susanna 0 to-read 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)

author: Hilary Mantel
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Winter Garden 6668467 394 Kristin Hannah 0312364121 Susanna 0 to-read 4.21 2010

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored�� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia �� a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo �� to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality�� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family �� past and present �� is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Susanna 5 4.12 2010

author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/01
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Little Bee 4078927 288 Chris Cleave 038566530X Susanna 4 3.62 2008

author: Chris Cleave
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/01
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Sh*t My Dad Says 7821447 "That woman was sexy. . . . Out of your league? Son, let women figure out why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them."

"Do people your age know how to comb their hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking."

"The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two."More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.]]> 159 Justin Halpern 0061992704 Susanna 4 3.97 2010

author: Justin Halpern
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/05
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:
Laugh out loud funny, and a guilty pleasure.
]]> <![CDATA[Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood]]> 24687 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.]]> 315 Alexandra Fuller Susanna 3 3.96 2001 Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

author: Alexandra Fuller
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2010/07/25
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life �� sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Susanna 4 3.85 2008 Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)

author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/02
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> A Scattered Life 7548569 267 Karen McQuestion Susanna 3 3.25 2010

author: Karen McQuestion
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/14
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
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 Susanna 4 4.46 2009

author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/05
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration�� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Susanna 0 currently-reading 4.45 2010 The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 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 Susanna 3 4.04 2010 Room

author: Emma Donoghue
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Where the Red Fern Grows 10365 Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann—a boy and his two dogs...

A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee County. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains—and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. Glory and victory were coming to them, but sadness waited too. And close by was the strange and wonderful power that's only found...

Where the Red Fern Grows—An exciting tale of love and adventure you'll never forget.

(from the back cover)]]> 272 Wilson Rawls 0375806814 Susanna 5 4.11 1961

author: Wilson Rawls
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/09/04
shelves:
review:

]]> The Story of Edgar Sawtelle 2731276
Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires—spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.]]> 566 David Wroblewski 0061374229 Susanna 3 3.64 2008 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

author: David Wroblewski
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2010/07/25
date added: 2010/08/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)]]> 6892870
Lisbeth Salander - the heart of Larsson's two previous novels - lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.

~from the jacket]]> 566 Stieg Larsson 030726999X Susanna 5 4.23 2007 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)

author: Stieg Larsson
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/15
date added: 2010/08/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Dog's Purpose (A Dog's Purpose, #1)]]> 8700616
Surprised to find himself reborn as a rambunctious golden haired puppy after a tragically short life as a stray mutt, Bailey's search for his new life's meaning leads him into the loving arms of 8 year old Ethan. During their countless adventures Bailey joyously discovers how to be a good dog. But this life as a beloved family pet is not the end of Bailey's journey. Reborn as a puppy yet again, Bailey wonders, will he ever find his purpose?

Heartwarming, insightful, and often laugh out loud funny, this book is not only the emotional and hilarious story of a dog's many lives, but also a dog's eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man's best friend. This story teaches us that love never dies, that our true friends are always with us, and that every creature on earth is born with a purpose.]]> 320 W. Bruce Cameron Susanna 5 4.40 2010 A Dog's Purpose (A Dog's Purpose, #1)

author: W. Bruce Cameron
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/08/24
shelves:
review:
If you have or have ever had a dog in your life, PLEASE pick up this book. I tore through this in 48 hours with very little sleep and experienced the entire roller coaster of emotions.
]]> <![CDATA[Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life]]> 25460
"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel..."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."]]> 370 Barbara Kingsolver 0060852550 Susanna 3 4.03 2007 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Jitterbug Perfume 8682 Jitterbug Perfume is an epic, which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn't conclude until nine o'clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.]]> 342 Tom Robbins 1842430351 Susanna 4 4.24 1984 Jitterbug Perfume

author: Tom Robbins
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)]]> 5060378 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 Susanna 5 4.25 2006 The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)

The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)

author: Stieg Larsson
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Susanna 5 4.17 2005 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

author: Stieg Larsson
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Five Quarters of the Orange 15096 Five Quarters of the Orange represents Harris's most complex and sophisticated work yet - a novel in which darkness and fierce joy come together to create an unforgettable story.

When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous Mirabelle Dartigen - the woman they still hold responsible for a terrible tragedy that took place during the German occupation decades before. Although Framboise hopes for a new beginning she quickly discovers that past and present are inextricably intertwined. Nowhere is this truth more apparent than in the scrapbook of recipes she has inherited from her dead mother.

With this book, Framboise re-creates her mother's dishes, which she serves in her small creperie. And yet as she studies the scrapbook - searching for clues to unlock the contradiction between her mother's sensuous love of food and often cruel demeanor - she begins to recognize a deeper meaning behind Mirabelle's cryptic scribbles. Within the journal's tattered pages lies the key to what actually transpired the summer Framboise was nine years old.

Rich and dark. Five Quarters of the Orange is a novel of mothers and daughters of the past and the present, of resisting, and succumbing, and an extraordinary work by a masterful writer.]]> 307 Joanne Harris 0060958022 Susanna 0 currently-reading 3.86 2001 Five Quarters of the Orange

author: Joanne Harris
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/02/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Reliable Wife 4929705
What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own. And what neither anticipated was that they would fall so completely in love.

Filled with unforgettable characters, and shimmering with color and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is an enthralling tale of love and madness, of longing and murder.]]> 291 Robert Goolrick 1565125967 Susanna 5 3.27 2009

author: Robert Goolrick
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4)]]> 1162543 "Don't be afraid," I murmured. "We belong together."
I was abruptly overwhelmed by the truth of my own words.
This moment was so perfect, so right, there was no way to doubt it.
His arms wrapped around me,
holding me against him....
It felt like every nerve ending in my body was a live wire.
"Forever," he agreed.

WHEN YOU LOVED THE ONE WHO WAS KILLING YOU, IT LEFT YOU NO OPTIONS. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?

TO BE IRREVOCABLY IN LOVE WITH A VAMPIRE is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs.

NOW THAT BELLA HAS MADE HER DECISION, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life - first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse - seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever?

THE ASTONISHING, BREATHLESSLY anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.]]> 756 Stephenie Meyer 031606792X Susanna 3 3.74 2008 Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2009/08/05
shelves:
review:
Pregnant pause... This one was a little slow for me until the last hundred pages or so....
]]> <![CDATA[Twilight: Een levensgevaarlijke liefde (Twilight, #1)]]> 6573014 Bella is er absoluut van overtuigd dat Edward levensgevaarlijk is, maar ook dat ze onvoorwaardelijk en onherroepelijk verliefd op hem is.

Als Isabella Swan naar het regenachtige Forks verhuist en de mysterieuze en aantrekkelijke Edward Cullen ontmoet, neemt haar leven een spannende en angstige wending. Edward, met zijn krijtwitte huid, gouden ogen, betoverende stem en bovennatuurlijke gave, is zowel onweerstaanbaar als ongenaakbaar. Tot nu toe heeft hij zijn ware identiteit verborgen weten te houden, maar Bella is vastbesloten achter zijn duistere geheim te komen. Wat Bella zich niet realiseert, is dat ze haar leven en dat van anderen in gevaar brengt naarmate ze hem beter leert kennen. Misschien is het zelfs al te laat…]]> 383 Stephenie Meyer 9047510054 Susanna 4 3.73 2005 Twilight: Een levensgevaarlijke liefde (Twilight, #1)

Twilight: Een levensgevaarlijke liefde (Twilight, #1)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3)]]> 428263 "BELLA?"
Edward's soft voice came from behind me. I turned to see him spring lightly up the porch steps, his hair windblown from running. He pulled me into his arms at once, just like he had in the parking lot, and kissed me again.
This kiss frightened me. There was too much tension, too strong an edge to the way his lips crushed mine - like he was afraid we had only so much time left to us.

As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob - knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?

READERS CAPTIVATED BY Twilight AND New Moon will eagerly devour Eclipse, the much-anticipated third book in Stephenie Meyer's riveting vampire love saga.]]> 629 Stephenie Meyer 0316160202 Susanna 4 3.73 2007 Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2009/08/05
shelves:
review:
More guilty pleasure... This one was THOROUGHLY enjoyable. Cut the sexual tension with a knife!
]]> <![CDATA[New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2)]]> 49041 There is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9780316160193 here.

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I FELT LIKE I WAS TRAPPED IN ONE OF THOSE TERRIFYING NIGHTMARES, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough.... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

FOR BELLA SWAN THERE IS ONE THING more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning....

LEGIONS OF READERS ENTRANCED BY THE New York Times bestseller Twilight are hungry for the continuing story of star-crossed lovers Bell and Edward. In New Moon, Stephanie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural spin. passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality.]]> 563 Stephenie Meyer 0316160199 Susanna 4 Guilty pleasure... 3.61 2006 New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2009/08/05
shelves:
review:
Guilty pleasure...
]]> The Story Sisters 5802140
What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks.

At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them. It confirms Alice Hoffman’s reputation as "a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled" (The Chicago Tribune).]]> 336 Alice Hoffman 0307393860 Susanna 0 to-read 3.82 2009 The Story Sisters

author: Alice Hoffman
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Midnight Sun [2008 Draft] 4502877 The record for the completed novel can be found here.

Midnight Sun is the much anticipated retelling of Twilight from Edward Cullen's perspective. An unedited partial draft was illegally leaked onto the internet in 2008; consequently, author Stephenie Meyer put the project on indefinite hold. Shortly afterward, she posted a letter to her fans on her website including a link to the entire partial draft of the book so that those who wanted to read it could do so legally and with her consent.

Note: Do not add a cover. Do not add translations. Do not add any other editions. Do not combine with editions of the full work. Do not add this book record to any series.]]> 264 Stephenie Meyer Susanna 0 to-read 4.01 2008 Midnight Sun [2008 Draft]

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)]]> 41865
First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite.]]> 498 Stephenie Meyer 0316015849 Susanna 3 Guilty pleasure! 3.66 2005 Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/07/08
shelves:
review:
Guilty pleasure!
]]> The Cleft 579954 260 Doris Lessing 0007233434 Susanna 2 2.93 2007

author: Doris Lessing
name: Susanna
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/06/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Susanna 4 4.14 2008 Unaccustomed Earth

author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/06/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Interpreter of Maladies 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Susanna 5 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies

author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/06/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism]]> 344308
In this elegant and thought-provoking memoir, Dawn Prince-Hughes traces her personal growth from undiagnosed autism to the moment when, as a young woman, she entered the Seattle Zoo and immediately became fascinated with the gorillas.

Having suffered from a lifelong inability to relate to people in a meaningful way, Dawn was surprised to find herself irresistibly drawn to these great primates. By observing them and, later, working with them, she was finally able to emerge from her solitude and connect to living beings in a way she had never previously experienced.

Songs of the Gorilla Nation is more than a story of autism, it is a paean to all that is important in life. Dawn Prince-Hughes’s evocative story will undoubtedly have a lasting impact, forcing us, like the author herself, to rediscover and assess our own understanding of human emotion.]]> 225 Dawn Prince-Hughes 1400050588 Susanna 3 3.83 2004 Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism

Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism

author: Dawn Prince-Hughes
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> All is Vanity 1308433 Drowning Ruth, deliciously satirizes the desire to shine in the world.

In All is Vanity, Margaret and Letty, best friends since childhood and now living on opposite coasts, reach their mid-thirties and begin to chafe at their sense that they are not where they ought to be in life. Margaret, driven and overconfident, decides the best way to rectify this is to quit her job and whip out a literary tour de force. Frustrated almost immediately and humiliated at every turn, Margaret turns to Letty for support. But as Letty, a stay-at-home mother of four, begins to feel pressured to make a good showing in the upper-middle-class Los Angeles society into which her husband’s new job has thrust her, Margaret sees a plot unfolding that’s better than anything she could make up. Desperate to finish her book and against her better nature, she pushes Letty to take greater and greater risks, and secretly steals her friend’s stories as fast as she can live them. Hungry for the world’s regard, Margaret rashly sacrifices one of the things most precious to her, until the novel’s suspenseful conclusion shows her the terrible consequences of her betrayal.

Widely celebrated for her debut novel, Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz once again proves herself to be a writer of remarkable depth and

range. Like Drowning Ruth, All is Vanity probes into the mysteries of the human heart and uncovers the passions that drive ordinary

people to break the rules in pursuit of their own desires.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 400 Christina Schwarz 0345439112 Susanna 2 3.10 2002 All is Vanity

author: Christina Schwarz
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/01/24
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

This is not anarchy, this is blindness.

‘Saramago repeatedly undertakes to unite the pressing demands of the present with an unfolding vision of the future. This is his most apocalyptic, and most optimistic, version of that project yet�� Independent]]> 326 José Saramago Susanna 3 4.04 1995 Blindness

author: José Saramago
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> The Things They Carried 133518
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.]]> 246 Tim O'Brien 0767902890 Susanna 4 4.14 1990 The Things They Carried

author: Tim O'Brien
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2008/11/16
date added: 2008/11/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Eat, Pray, Love 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Susanna 3 3.64 2006 Eat, Pray, Love

author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2008/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Naked 4138 Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.]]> 304 David Sedaris Susanna 0 to-read 4.10 1997 Naked

author: David Sedaris
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)]]> 136251
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited.]]> 759 J.K. Rowling Susanna 4 4.61 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)

author: J.K. Rowling
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time]]> 49436 349 Greg Mortenson 0143038257 Susanna 4 3.66 2006

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

author: Greg Mortenson
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2008/09/29
date added: 2008/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Susanna 0 to-read 4.44 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns

author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nineteen Minutes 14866
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?]]> 440 Jodi Picoult 0743496728 Susanna 3 4.16 2007 Nineteen Minutes

author: Jodi Picoult
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2008/08/20
date added: 2008/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Bone in the Throat 111129 The acclaimed first novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and host of Parts Unknown on CNN. A wildly funny, irreverent tale of murder, mayhem, and the mob.

When up-and-coming chef Tommy Pagana settles for a less than glamorous stint at his uncle's restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy, he unwittingly finds himself a partner in big-time crime. And when the mob decides to use the kitchen for a murder, nothing Tommy learned in cooking school has prepared him for what happens next.

With the FBI on one side, and his eccentric wise-guy superiors on the other, Tommy has to struggle to do right by his conscience, and to avoid getting killed in the meantime.

In the vein of Prizzi's Honor, Bone in the Throat is a thrilling Mafia caper laced with entertaining characters and wry humor. This first novel is a must-have for fans of Anthony Bourdain's nonfiction.]]> 304 Anthony Bourdain 1582341028 Susanna 3 Kitchen Confidential . I'd give it a B-/C+. ]]> 3.44 1995 Bone in the Throat

author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2008/08/15
date added: 2008/08/15
shelves:
review:
Blood, roaches, the mob, more blood, junkies, cement shoes, what's not to like? This dark novel looks at the ugly underworld of the restaurant business in Manhattan. It has its moments where Anthony Bourdain's dark, dry humor shines. It's not nearly as entertaining, however, as his true life portrayal, Kitchen Confidential . I'd give it a B-/C+.
]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Susanna 3 4.03 2002

author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2008/08/03
date added: 2008/08/03
shelves:
review:
I did enjoy this book, and finished it easily, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out why it won the Pulitzer. It's a good novel, well written and interesting, but the most remarkable thing about it was the author's choice of a main character. Callie is a hermaphrodite, and a very appealing and well formed character. Most of the other characters however, except the grandmother Desmondia, lacked depth. I also don't remember laughing out loud, or crying, at any point in the book. It failed to really move me, or to leave a lasting impression. Perhaps it's because I just finished "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl" by John Colapinto. The real-life account was so much more compelling, that perhaps this novel paled in comparison.
]]> 1984 5470 328 George Orwell Susanna 3 4.15 1949 1984

author: George Orwell
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/28
date added: 2008/07/29
shelves:
review:
I just re-read 1984 for my book club, and I can't say I enjoyed it, but George Orwell's prophecy, reaching forward to us in time from when this book was written in 1949, is more than a little scary. When you look at what has happened in this country in the last 8 years, the never ending war without cause fought for the purpose of keeping us afraid and obedient, the loss of individual freedoms and rights to privacy, the sanctioned inprisonment of human beings without and indictment or a trial, the parallels go on an on. What was a fantasy in 1949 is becoming our reality.
]]> The Host (The Host, #1) 1656001
As Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she's never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.

Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1 - ACE #2 ]]> 619 Stephenie Meyer 0316068047 Susanna 4 3.85 2008 The Host (The Host, #1)

author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/19
date added: 2008/07/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Stumbling on Happiness 56627 �� Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight?
�� Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want?
�� Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it?

In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to mis-conceive our tomorrows and mis-estimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.]]> 263 Daniel Todd Gilbert 1400077427 Susanna 0 to-read 3.82 2006 Stumbling on Happiness

author: Daniel Todd Gilbert
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/07/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones]]> 40136
The good, the bad, and the ugly, served up Bourdain-style.

Bestselling chef and No Reservations host Anthony Bourdain has never been one to pull punches. In The Nasty Bits , he serves up a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures. Whether scrounging for eel in the backstreets of Hanoi, revealing what you didn't want to know about the more unglamorous aspects of making television, calling for the head of raw food activist Woody Harrelson, or confessing to lobster-killing guilt, Bourdain is as entertaining as ever. Bringing together the best of his previously uncollected nonfiction--and including new, never-before-published material-- The Nasty Bits is a rude, funny, brutal and passionate stew for fans and the uninitiated alike. Anthony Bourdain is the author of seven books including the bestselling Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour . A thirty-year veteran of professional kitchens, he is the host of No Reservations on the Discovery Channel, and the executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan. He lives in New York City.

Praise for Anthony Bourdain: "Bourdain's enthusiasm is so intense that it practically explodes off the page . . . Bourdain shows himself to be one of the country's best food writers. His opinions are as strong as his language, and his tastes as infectious as his joy."-- New York Times Book Review

"[Writes] the kind of book you read in one sitting, then rush about annoying your coworkers by declaiming whole passages."-- USA Today

"Bourdain's prose is utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo and a precise ear for kitchen patois."-- New York magazine]]> 288 Anthony Bourdain 1582344515 Susanna 4 3.86 2005 The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2008/06/16
date added: 2008/06/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Sightings 334324 224 Susan Trott 0060971584 Susanna 5 4.19 1987

author: Susan Trott
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Brokeback Mountain 1627 Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication of "Brokeback Mountain," and the story was included in Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards. In gorgeous and haunting prose, Proulx limns the difficult, dangerous affair between two cowboys that survives everything but the world's violent intolerance.

]]> 55 Annie Proulx 0743271327 Susanna 5 4.01 1997 Brokeback Mountain

author: Annie Proulx
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Hundred Secret Senses 690866 The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.]]> 406 Amy Tan 080411109X Susanna 4 4.01 1995 The Hundred Secret Senses

author: Amy Tan
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Joy Luck Club 7763 Alternate cover editions of ISBN 9780143038092 can be found here.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives �� until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.]]> 288 Amy Tan Susanna 4 3.96 1989 The Joy Luck Club

author: Amy Tan
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Susanna 0 to-read 4.18 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

author: Michael Pollan
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World]]> 13839 297 Michael Pollan 0375760393 Susanna 4 4.06 2002

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

author: Michael Pollan
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2008/05/05
date added: 2008/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Born on a Blue Day 74812
This unique first-person account offers a window into the mind of a high-functioning, 27-year-old British autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. Tammet's ability to think abstractly, deviate from routine, and empathize, interact and communicate with others is impaired, yet he's capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation. Besides being able to effortlessly multiply and divide huge sums in his head with the speed and accuracy of a computer, Tammet, the subject of the 2005 documentary Brainman, learned Icelandic in a single week and recited the number pi up to the 22,514th digit, breaking the European record. He also experiences synesthesia, an unusual neurological syndrome that enables him to experience numbers and words as "shapes, colors, textures and motions." Tammet traces his life from a frustrating, withdrawn childhood and adolescence to his adult achievements, which include teaching in Lithuania, achieving financial independence with an educational Web site and sustaining a long-term romantic relationship. As one of only about 50 people living today with synesthesia and autism, Tammet's condition is intriguing to researchers; his ability to express himself clearly and with a surprisingly engaging tone (given his symptoms) makes for an account that will intrigue others as well.]]> 226 Daniel Tammet 1416535071 Susanna 3 3.82 2006 Born on a Blue Day

author: Daniel Tammet
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2008/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3)]]> 5191 295 Anita Shreve 0316601950 Susanna 4 3.56 1998

The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3)

author: Anita Shreve
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Beautiful and Damned 4708 The Beautiful and the Damned followed Fitzgerald's impeccable debut, This Side of Paradise, thus securing his place in the tradition of great American novelists. Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveau riche, and the New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects of wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day. Pocket Book's Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. Special features include critical perspectives, suggestions for further read, and a unique visual essay composed of period photographs that help bring every word to life.]]> 422 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743451503 Susanna 4 3.74 1922 The Beautiful and Damned

author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> This Side of Paradise 46165 This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semi-autobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. Now, readers can enjoy the newly edited, authorized version of this early classic of the Jazz Age, based on Fitzgerald's original manuscript. In this definitive text, This Side of Paradise captures the rhythms and romance of Fitzgerald's youth and offers a poignant portrait of the "Lost Generation."]]> 275 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0684843781 Susanna 4 3.66 1920

author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1920
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Tender Is the Night 46164 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 430 F. Scott Fitzgerald Susanna 4 3.81 1934

author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Double Bind 126807
In his moments of lucidity, the gentle, likable Bobbie alludes to his earlier life as a successful photographer. Laurel finds it hard to believe that this destitute, unstable man could once have chronicled the lives of musicians and celebrities, but a box of photographs and negatives discovered among Bobbie's meager possessions after his death lends credence to his tale. How could such an accomplished man have fallen on such hard times? Becoming obsessed with uncovering Bobbie's past, Laurel studies his photographs, tracking down every lead they provide into the mystery of his life before homelessness -- including links to the rich neighborhoods of her own Long Island childhood and to the earlier world of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, with its larger-than-life characters, elusive desires, and haunting sorrows.

In a narrative of dazzling invention, literary ingenuity, and psychological complexity, Bohjalian engages issues of homelessness and mental illness by evoking the humanity that inhabits the core of both. At the same time, his tale is fast-paced and riveting -- The Double Bind combines the suspense of a thriller with the emotional depths of the most intimate drama. The breathtaking surprises of its final pages will leave readers stunned, overwhelmed by the poignancy of life's fleeting truths, as caught in Bobbie Crocker's photographs and in Laurel Estabrook's painful pursuit of Bobbie's past -- and her own.

Behind The Double Bind

While Bobbie Crocker, the photographer in The Double Bind, is fictitious, the photographs that appear in the book are real. They were taken by a man named Bob "Soupy" Campbell, who, as Chris Bohaljian explains in his Author's Note, "had gone from photographing luminaries from the 1950s and 1960s to winding up at a homeless shelter in northern Vermont."

Bohaljian's viewing of Campbell's work after the photographer's death provided an inspiration for The Double Bind. "We tend to stigmatize the homeless and blame them for their plight," Bohjalian writes.

"We are oblivious to the fact that most had lives as serious as our own before everything fell apart. The photographs in this book are a testimony to that reality."]]> 368 Chris Bohjalian 1400047463 Susanna 3 3.64 2007 The Double Bind

author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2008/04/12
date added: 2008/04/13
shelves:
review:
Ok, having just finished this novel, I am trying to decide if I loved it or hated it. First, I should confess, I was intrigued from the first few pages, because I am a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I probably read The Great Gatsby 10 times when I was a teenager. The plot of this novel and it's inter-weavings with my old favorite drew me in. My main complaint is that the author waited too long to reveal "the truth", which left me feeling angry and disappointed at some of the "convenient" plot twists that led Laurel on her journey. I am glad I finished the book, because everything did come together at the end, but there were times while I was reading where I very nearly put the book down and walked away.
]]> <![CDATA[As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl]]> 41379 As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.]]> 289 John Colapinto 0060929596 Susanna 4
The little boy, despite the attempts by his parents to convince him otherwise, had a clear sense from the time he was small that he was a boy. He, his twin, and the parents were destroyed by the situation. They experienced terrible guilt, shame, and depression. The boy was ostracized by his peers, and fought tooth and nail against the inappropriate gender assignment. Dr. Money, at every turn, refused to admit the experiment was failure, and insisted on having the family continue the charade. When the boy was a teen, his family finally told him the truth, and allowed him to live as a boy.

The thing that probably struck me most about this book was the stunning hubris of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and their complete disregard for the well-being of the patient in favor of an interesting research topic. This case was made more enticing to Hopkins, because the child was an identical twin, and therefore a perfect experiment. It appears the hospital, with little or no formal oversight or review, allowed Dr. Money to mutilate and experiment on a human child. Their actions, and those of Dr. Money, were criminal in my mind, and I am shocked that even after all this time, after so much evidence has come to light, there have been no sanctions or repercussions.

The other thing that struck me was the terrible anguish any person and family must feel when a child is born "in the wrong body" naturally, and is forced to live as a gender they don't feel they really are. I am glad that we as a society have begun to accept such people.

]]> 4.03 2000 As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

author: John Colapinto
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2008/04/09
date added: 2008/04/12
shelves:
review:
This is the tragic true account of a little boy, who after a botched circumcision that destroyed his penis, was taken to Johns Hopkins for help. His poor and uneducated parents were convinced by a research scientist, one who was considered the expert in his field, to castrate the child and to raise him as a girl. This man's completely untested theory was that gender is malleable in babies and that "nurture beats nature". This man was not a doctor, had done no preliminary research on animals, and based his theory on his success with treating hermaphrodites and adult transexuals.

The little boy, despite the attempts by his parents to convince him otherwise, had a clear sense from the time he was small that he was a boy. He, his twin, and the parents were destroyed by the situation. They experienced terrible guilt, shame, and depression. The boy was ostracized by his peers, and fought tooth and nail against the inappropriate gender assignment. Dr. Money, at every turn, refused to admit the experiment was failure, and insisted on having the family continue the charade. When the boy was a teen, his family finally told him the truth, and allowed him to live as a boy.

The thing that probably struck me most about this book was the stunning hubris of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and their complete disregard for the well-being of the patient in favor of an interesting research topic. This case was made more enticing to Hopkins, because the child was an identical twin, and therefore a perfect experiment. It appears the hospital, with little or no formal oversight or review, allowed Dr. Money to mutilate and experiment on a human child. Their actions, and those of Dr. Money, were criminal in my mind, and I am shocked that even after all this time, after so much evidence has come to light, there have been no sanctions or repercussions.

The other thing that struck me was the terrible anguish any person and family must feel when a child is born "in the wrong body" naturally, and is forced to live as a gender they don't feel they really are. I am glad that we as a society have begun to accept such people.

]]> <![CDATA[A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius]]> 4953 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.]]> 530 Dave Eggers 0375725784 Susanna 0 to-read 3.70 2000

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

author: Dave Eggers
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)]]> 5139
Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.�� Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to complaints about “The Boss from Hell.�� Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day—and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.]]> 384 Lauren Weisberger 0307275558 Susanna 3 3.82 2003 The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)

The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)

author: Lauren Weisberger
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil]]> 386187
The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproarious black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.]]> 386 John Berendt 0679751521 Susanna 4 3.91 1994 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

author: John Berendt
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Me Talk Pretty One Day 4137 272 David Sedaris 0349113912 Susanna 0 to-read 4.01 2000

author: David Sedaris
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magical Thinking: True Stories]]> 79790 304 Augusten Burroughs 0312315953 Susanna 4 3.96 2004

author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Possible Side Effects 4433 Running with Scissors comes Augusten Burroughs's most provocative collection yet.
This book is approved for consumption by those seeking pleasure, escape, amusement, enlightenment, or general distraction. This book is not approved to treat disorders such as eBay addiction or incessant blind dating.��In studies, some people reported inappropriate, convulsive laughter, a tingling sensation in the limbs, and sudden gasping. Fewer than 1 percent reported narcolepsy.��Doll collectors may experience special sensitivity, as may discourteous drivers, candy-company brand managers, and nicotine-gum users.��This book has been shown to be especially helpful to those with parents, grandparents, life partners, and incontinent dogs. People with dry, cracked skin have responded well to this book, as have people with certain heart conditions.��Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this book, until you know what effects it may have on you.��This text is contraindicated in those suffering from certain psychiatric disorders, including---but not limited to---readers afflicted with anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure. ��Ask your doctor about Possible Side Effects.]]> 291 Augusten Burroughs 0312315961 Susanna 4 3.85 2006

author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Susanna 0 to-read 3.89 2003

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

author: Mark Haddon
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Running with Scissors 745412

��

Running with Scissors Acknowledgments
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.]]> 319 Augusten Burroughs 0312938853 Susanna 5 3.65 2002

author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism]]> 103407 ��
Originally published in 1995 as an unprecedented look at autism, Grandin writes from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person to give a report from “the country of autism.�� Introducing a groundbreaking model which analyzes people based on their patterns of thought, Grandin “charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words�� ( The Philadelphia Inquirer ).
��
For the new edition, Grandin has written a new afterword addressing recent developments in the study of autism, including new diagnostic criteria, advancements in genetic research, updated tips,��insights into working with children and young people with autism, and more.]]> 306 Temple Grandin 0307275655 Susanna 0 to-read 4.14 1995 Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism

Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism

author: Temple Grandin
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (A Harvest Book)]]> 7366
Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel. She has a perspective like that of no other expert in the field, which allows her to offer unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas.

People with autism can often think the way animals think, putting them in the perfect position to translate "animal talk." Grandin is a faithful guide into their world, exploring animal pain, fear, aggression, love, friendship, communication, learning, and, yes, even animal genius. The sweep of Animals in Translation is immense and will forever change the way we think about animals.

*includes a Behavior and Training Troubleshooting Guide
��
Among its provocative ideas, the book:

~argues that language is not a requirement for consciousness--and that animals do have consciousness.

~applies the autism theory of "hyper-specificity" to animals, showing that animals and autistic people are so sensitive to detail that they "can't see the forest for the trees"--a talent as well as a "deficit".

~explores the "interpreter" in the normal human brain that filters out detail, leaving people blind to much of the reality that surrounds them--a reality animals and autistic people see, sometimes all too clearly.

~explains how animals have "superhuman" skills: animals have animal genius.

~compares animals to autistic savants, declaring that animals may in fact be autistic savants, with special forms of genius that normal people do not possess and sometimes cannot even see.

~examines how humans and animals use their emotions to think, to decide, and even to predict the future.

~reveals the remarkable abilities of handicapped people and animals��.

~maintains that the single worst thing you can do to an animal is to make it feel afraid.]]> 358 Temple Grandin 0156031442 Susanna 5 4.14 2004 Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (A Harvest Book)

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (A Harvest Book)

author: Temple Grandin
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:
A fascinating look at the way an animals brain works from the point of view of the author, Temple Grandin, who is also autistic. Temple's love and understanding of animals is incredibly moving, and her theories, especially around the dog/human evolution were so spot-on. I was completely riveted and read this book cover to cover in one sitting. I still find myself quoting her more than a year after I read the book.
]]> Bastard Out of Carolina 25354 320 Dorothy Allison 0452287057 Susanna 5 4.14 1992

author: Dorothy Allison
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference]]> 2612 The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.]]> 301 Malcolm Gladwell 0316346624 Susanna 5 4.01 2002 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Susanna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Cold Mountain 10920 Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.

Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.

Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.]]> 449 Charles Frazier 0802142842 Susanna 4 3.89 1997

author: Charles Frazier
name: Susanna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]>