Nicola's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:34:11 -0700 60 Nicola's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and A Fifty-Year Search]]> 6791212
Philomena's son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top Washington lawyer and a leading Republican official in the Reagan and Bush administrations. But he was a gay man in a homophobic party where he had to conceal not only his sexuality but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDS. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent where he was his desperate quest to find his mother before he died left a legacy that was to unfold with unexpected consequences for all involved.

The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the tale of a mother and a son whose lives were scarred by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith's moving account is heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.]]> 452 Martin Sixsmith 0230744273 Nicola 2 3.63 2009 The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and A Fifty-Year Search
author: Martin Sixsmith
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves:
review:
Not a bad read but sadly most of the content is fiction rather than the truth it purports to be
]]> Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X Nicola 0 currently-reading 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/05/23
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul]]> 10374638 Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there � thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship.
After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home � it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone.
The thirty-eight-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House, where she brings hospitality to the expatriates, misfits, missionaries, and mercenaries who stroll through its doors. She’s especially grateful that the busy days allow her to forget Tommy, the love of her life, who left her in pursuit of money and adventure.
Working alongside Sunny is the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son � who, unbeknownst to her, is facing his own religious doubts. Into the café come Isabel, a British journalist on the trail of a risky story; Jack, who left his family back home in Michigan to earn “danger pay� as a consultant; and Candace, a wealthy and well-connected American whose desire to help threatens to cloud her judgment.
When Yazmina, a young Afghan from a remote village, is kidnapped and left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her into the café and gives her a home � but Yazmina hides a secret that could put all their lives in jeopardy.
As this group of men and women discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they’ll form an unlikely friendship that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire country.
Brimming with Deborah Rodriguez’s remarkable gift for depicting the nuances of life in Kabul, and filled with vibrant characters that readers will truly care about, A Cup of Friendship is the best kind of fiction—full of heart yet smart and thought-provoking.]]> 317 Deborah Rodriguez 174275001X Nicola 3 3.60 2011 The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul
author: Deborah Rodriguez
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2016/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?]]> 11395597
Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness. It's a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the Universe as Cosmic Dustbin.

It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother.]]> 230 Jeanette Winterson 0307401243 Nicola 4 3.99 2011 Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/30
date added: 2016/10/03
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this. I read it straight after "Oranges" and really felt that we got to know winterson. I'm crap at reviews so I'll just leave it with really good and may well read more of her work
]]> <![CDATA[Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit]]> 15055
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.]]> 176 Jeanette Winterson Nicola 3 3.76 1985 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2016/10/03
date added: 2016/10/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom]]> 18849420
This is possible for everyone, regardless of your title or position. In fact, Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom will train you to make this a reality. Although it’s not an easy process, it is a worthwhile one.

By making a shift in your approach to leadership, you can become a highly effective leader who enjoys your work and makes the world a better place. The shift is simply a matter of gradually becoming more focused on how you can serve others and increase your capacity to do so.

Matt Tenney introduces us to the principles in this book through the story of going from selfish to servant while on his journey from prisoner to monk to social entrepreneur. He also cites numerous business case studies and research that demonstrate how putting serving first results in:

- Attracting top talent
- Increased engagement and lower turnover
- A more innovative team culture
- Better customer service
- A better ROI on marketing efforts

The book also offers practical, actionable guidance for making the shift to becoming an extraordinary leader who is devoted to serving and inspiring greatness in others.

All of the author proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to charity.]]> 224 Matt Tenney 1118868463 Nicola 0 to-read 4.02 2014 Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom
author: Matt Tenney
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Americanah 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Nicola 4 4.32 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2015/09/05
date added: 2015/09/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts]]> 19047105
They call them custard tarts - the girls who work at the Pearce Duff custard and jelly factory. But now the custard tarts are up in arms, striking for better conditions. Among them is Nellie Clark, trying to hold her family together after the death of her mother. She has the most desperate struggle to make ends meet, often going hungry to feed her little brothers.

Two men vie for Nellie's love. One is flamboyant, confident and a chancer. The other is steady, truthful and loyal. But the choice is not as easy as it might seem.

Looming over them all - over Bermondsey, over the factory, over the custard tarts and their lives and loves - is the shadow of the First World War. And that will change everything and everyone.]]> 400 Mary Gibson 1781855773 Nicola 3 Lovely light read 3.90 2013 Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts
author: Mary Gibson
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/05
date added: 2015/09/05
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Lovely light read
]]> After the Fall 17125479
In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. For Martha, it was an escape. For her artist husband Kit, it was a dream. For their small twin boys, it was an adventure. For sixteen-year-old Sacha, it was the start of a nightmare.

They end up on the isolated east coast of the North Island, seemingly in the middle of a New Zealand tourism campaign. But their peaceful idyll is soon shattered as the choices Sacha makes lead the family down a path which threatens to destroy them all.

Martha finds herself facing a series of impossible decisions, each with devastating consequences for her family.]]> 357 Charity Norman 1743314892 Nicola 3 4.02 2012 After the Fall
author: Charity Norman
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2015/08/08
date added: 2015/08/08
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]]> Afterwards 12598982
Black smoke stains a summer blue sky. A school is on fire. And one mother, Grace, sees the smoke and rush. She knows her teenage daughter Jenny is inside. She runs into the burning building to rescue her.

Afterwards Grace must find the identity of the arsonist and protect her children from the person who's still intent on destroying them. Afterwards, she must fight the limits of her physical strength and discover the limitlessness of love.]]> 386 Rosamund Lupton 0307716546 Nicola 4 3.79 2011 Afterwards
author: Rosamund Lupton
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/08/07
shelves:
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]]> Bossypants 9476337
She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

(Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!)

]]> 277 Tina Fey 0316056863 Nicola 0 to-read 3.90 2011 Bossypants
author: Tina Fey
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece]]> 9429895
Everyone kept saying it would get better with time, but that's just one of those lies that grown-ups tell in awkward situations. Five years on, it's worse than ever: Dad drinks, Mum's gone and Jamie's left with questions that he must answer for himself.

This is his story, an unflinchingly real yet heart-warming account of a young boy's struggle to make sense of the loss that tore his family apart.]]> Annabel Pitcher 1409132889 Nicola 4 3.98 2011 My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
author: Annabel Pitcher
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2015/05/27
date added: 2015/05/27
shelves:
review:
A bittersweet story of loss, love and how healing finally begins because of a cat
]]> Yes Please 20910157 Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious. Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.]]> 329 Amy Poehler 0062268341 Nicola 0 to-read 3.85 2014 Yes Please
author: Amy Poehler
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Lowland 17262100
From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives.

Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.

Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri's achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date.]]> 340 Jhumpa Lahiri 0307265749 Nicola 0 to-read 3.86 2013 The Lowland
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 12262741 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State � and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.]]> 336 Cheryl Strayed 0307592731 Nicola 0 to-read 4.06 2012 Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Cheryl Strayed
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Orchardist 13540215
You belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, a solitary orchardist named Talmadge carefully tends the grove of fruit trees he has cultivated for nearly half a century. A gentle, solitary man, he finds solace and purpose in the sweetness of the apples, apricots, and plums he grows, and in the quiet, beating heart of the land--the valley of yellow grass bordering a deep canyon that has been his home since he was nine years old. Everything he is and has known is tied to this patch of earth. It is where his widowed mother is buried, taken by illness when he was just thirteen, and where his only companion, his beloved teenaged sister Elsbeth, mysteriously disappeared. It is where the horse wranglers--native men, mostly Nez Perce--pass through each spring with their wild herds, setting up camp in the flowering meadows between the trees.

One day, while in town to sell his fruit at the market, two girls, barefoot and dirty, steal some apples. Later, they appear on his homestead, cautious yet curious about the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, Jane and her sister Della take up on Talmadage's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Yet just as the girls begin to trust him, brutal men with guns arrive in the orchard, and the shattering tragedy that follows sets Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect them, putting himself between the girls and the world, but to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.

Writing with breathtaking precision and empathy, Amanda Coplin has crafted an astonishing debut novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in. Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, she weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune, bound by their search to discover the place they belong. At once intimate and epic, evocative and atmospheric, filled with haunting characters both vivid and true to life, and told in a distinctive narrative voice, The Orchardist marks the beginning of a stellar literary career.

The National Book Foundation selected Amanda Coplin as one of the authors being honored as "5 Under 35" in 2013.]]> 426 Amanda Coplin 006218850X Nicola 0 to-read 3.77 2012 The Orchardist
author: Amanda Coplin
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity]]> 11869272
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy."

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.]]> 278 Katherine Boo 1400067553 Nicola 0 to-read 3.97 2012 Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
author: Katherine Boo
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![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 Nicola 0 to-read 4.12 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 Nicola 0 to-read 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/23
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]]> How Should a Person Be? 9361377 The Middle Stories and Ticknor comes a bold interrogation into the possibility of a beautiful life. How Should a Person Be? is a novel of many identities: an autobiography of the mind, a postmodern self-help book, and a fictionalized portrait of the artist as a young woman � of two such artists, in fact.

For reasons multiple and mysterious, Sheila finds herself in a quandary of self-doubt, questioning how a person should be in the world. Inspired by her friend Margaux, a painter, and her seemingly untortured ability to live and create, Sheila casts Margaux as material, embarking on a series of recordings in which nothing is too personal, too ugly, or too banal to be turned into art. Along the way, Sheila confronts a cast of painters who are equally blocked in an age in which the blow job is the ultimate art form. She begins questioning her desire to be Important, her quest to be both a leader and a pupil, and her unwillingness to sacrifice herself.

Searching, uncompromising and yet mordantly funny, How Should a Person Be? is a brilliant portrait of art-making and friendship from the psychic underground of Canada's most fiercely original writer.]]> 306 Sheila Heti 0887842402 Nicola 0 to-read 3.35 2010 How Should a Person Be?
author: Sheila Heti
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Ten Thousand Saints 9680533
Moving back and forth between Vermont and New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is an emphatically observed story of a frayed tangle of family members brought painfully together by a death, then carried along in anticipation of a new and unexpected life. With empathy and masterful skill, Eleanor Henderson has conjured a rich portrait of the modern age and the struggles that unite and divide generations.]]> 388 Eleanor Henderson 0062021028 Nicola 0 to-read 3.49 2011 Ten Thousand Saints
author: Eleanor Henderson
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Swamplandia! 8584686
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.]]> 315 Karen Russell 0307263991 Nicola 0 to-read 3.22 2011 Swamplandia!
author: Karen Russell
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> NW 13537891 NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.]]> 296 Zadie Smith 0241144140 Nicola 0 to-read 3.49 2012 NW
author: Zadie Smith
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Lifeboat 12888599
Adrift on the Atlantic, the weather deteriorating and supplies dwindling, the caraways scheme and battle, caught up in a vicious power struggle between ruthless but experienced sailor and an enigmatic matron with surprising powers of persuasion.

Choosing a side will seal her fate, but Grace has made her way in the world by seizing every possible advantage. As she recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met and considers the new life of privilege she thought she'd found, Grace must now decide: Will she pay any price to keep it?

The Lifeboat is a masterful debut, a story of hard choices, ambition, and entertainment narrated by a woman as complex and unforgettable as the events she describes.]]> 279 Charlotte Rogan 0316185906 Nicola 0 to-read 3.18 2012 The Lifeboat
author: Charlotte Rogan
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol]]> 17349236 Combining in-depth research with her own personal story of recovery, an award-winning journalist delivers a groundbreaking examination of a shocking yet little recognized epidemic threatening society today-the precipitous rise in risky drinking among women and girls

While the feminist revolution has allowed women to close the gender gap professionally and educationally, it has also witnessed a disturbing rise in equality in more troubling areas of life as well. In the U.S. alone, the rates of alcohol abuse among women have skyrocketed in the past decade. DUIs, "drunkorexia" (choosing to limit eating to consume greater quantities of alcohol), and health problems connected to drinking are all on the rise, especially among younger women-a problem exacerbated by the alcohol industry itself. Battling for women's dollars and leisure time, corporations have developed marketing strategies and products targeted exclusively to women. Equally alarming is a recent CDC report showing a sharp rise in binge-drinking, putting women and girls at further risk.

Anne Dowsett Johnston illuminates this startling epidemic, dissects the psychological, social, and industry factors that have contributed to its rise, and explores its long-lasting impact on our society and individual lives, including her own. In Drink, she brilliantly weaves in-depth research, interviews with leading researchers, and the moving story of her own struggle with alcohol abuse. The result is an unprecedented and bold inquiry that is both informative and shocking.]]> 320 Ann Dowsett Johnston 0062241796 Nicola 0 to-read 3.68 2013 Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol
author: Ann Dowsett Johnston
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
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]]> Her 15794110
Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.
Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.

Wall Street Journal, "Favorite Books of the Year 2013"
Cosmopolitan, "Best Books of the Year for Women"
Library Journal, "Best Books of 2013"
Salon, "Best Books of 2013"]]> 320 Christa Parravani 0805096531 Nicola 0 to-read 3.66 2013 Her
author: Christa Parravani
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Boy, Snow, Bird 18079683 Boy, Snow, Bird is a deeply moving novel about three women and the strange connection between them. It confirms Helen Oyeyemi’s place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of her generation.]]> 308 Helen Oyeyemi 1594631395 Nicola 0 to-read 3.33 2013 Boy, Snow, Bird
author: Helen Oyeyemi
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Bad Feminist 18813642 Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

Feel me, see me, hear me, reach me --
Peculiar benefits --
Typical first year professor --
To scratch, claw or grope clumsily or frantically --
How to be friends with another woman --
Girls, girls, girls --
I once was Miss America --
Garish, glorious spectacles --
Not here to make friends --
How we all lose --
Reaching for catharsis : getting fat right (or wrong) and Diana Spechler's Skinny --
The smooth surfaces of idyll --
The careless language of sexual violence --
What we hunger for --
The illusion of safety/the safety of illusion --
The spectacle of broken men --
A tale of three coming out stories --
Beyond the measure of men --
Some jokes are funnier than others --
Dear young ladies who love Chris Brown --
So much they would let him beat them --
Blurred lines, indeed --
The trouble with Prince Charming, or, He who trespassed against us --
The solace of preparing fried foods and other quaint remembrances from 1960s Mississippi : thoughts on The help --
Surviving Django --
Beyond the struggle narrative --
The morality of Tyler Perry --
The last day of a young black man --
When less is more --
The politics of respectability --
When Twitter does what journalism cannot --
The alienable rights of women --
Holding out for a hero --
A tale of two profiles --
The racism we all carry --
Tragedy, call, compassion, response --
Bad feminist : take one --
Bad feminist : take two]]> 320 Roxane Gay 0062282719 Nicola 0 to-read 3.93 2014 Bad Feminist
author: Roxane Gay
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Land of Love and Drowning 18693616
In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.

Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Uniquely imagined, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and the author's own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evoke an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prizewinning young writer.]]> 358 Tiphanie Yanique 1594488339 Nicola 0 to-read 3.33 2014 Land of Love and Drowning
author: Tiphanie Yanique
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Nicola 0 to-read 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> A History of Loneliness 19381636
Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church. He sees his friends stand trial, colleagues jailed, the lives of young parishioners destroyed, and grows nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insults. At one point, he is even arrested when he takes the hand of a young boy and leads him out of a department store looking for the boy's mother.

But when a family event opens wounds from his past, he is forced to confront the demons that have raged within the church, and to recognize his own complicity in their propagation, within both the institution and his own family.

A novel as intimate as it is universal, A History of Loneliness is about the stories we tell ourselves to make peace with our lives. It confirms Boyne as one of the most searching storytellers of his generation.]]> 384 John Boyne 0857520954 Nicola 5 4.26 2014 A History of Loneliness
author: John Boyne
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2015/05/14
date added: 2015/05/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Boy in the Striped Pajamas]]> 39999
Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one.]]> 224 John Boyne 0385751079 Nicola 5 4.17 2006 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
author: John Boyne
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2015/04/15
date added: 2015/04/15
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Wow! Started and finished in a day. Very powerful
]]> And the Mountains Echoed 16115612 404 Khaled Hosseini 159463176X Nicola 4 4.06 2012 And the Mountains Echoed
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2015/04/15
date added: 2015/04/15
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]]> This Is Where I Am 17396286 480 Karen Campbell 1408832712 Nicola 3 4.17 2013 This Is Where I Am
author: Karen Campbell
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/13
date added: 2015/04/13
shelves:
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]]> This Boy 17615084 'The best memoir by a politician you will ever read' The TimesSchool on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, the rock-and-roll years, the race riots; this boy has seen it all. Alan Johnson's childhood was not so much difficult as unusual - particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not in respect of the poverty, which was shared with many of those living in Britain's post-war slums, but in its transition from being part of a two-parent family to having a single mother and then to no parents at all...This is essentially the story of two incredible women: Alan's mother, Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children; and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together and out of care when she herself was still only a child.This Boy is one man's story, but it is also the story of England and the West London slums which are hard to imagine in the capital today. No matter how harsh the details, Alan Johnson writes with a spirit of generous acceptance, of humour and openness which makes his book anything but a grim catalogue of miseries.________ PRAISE FOR THIS 'Moving and unforgettable' Sunday Times'Poignant' Telegraph'Eloquent' Guardian'Wonderful' Spectator'Tribute to two strong women' Daily Mail]]> 304 Alan Johnson 1448110483 Nicola 3
Hard not to like Alan tho' as after his harsh childhood and the abandonment by his father he doesn't seem to harbour any resentment]]> 4.18 2013 This Boy
author: Alan Johnson
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/24
date added: 2014/12/24
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An interesting book and a great insight into Alan Johnsons early years. I enjoyed the book and it certainly puts things into perspective although I'd be surprised if we didn't find some children growing up now just as Alan Johnson did but I didn't find it particularly well written and once I'd got around half way couldn't help but rushing through it just for the joy of finishing it.

Hard not to like Alan tho' as after his harsh childhood and the abandonment by his father he doesn't seem to harbour any resentment
]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Nicola 5 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> When We Were Orphans 28923
Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

The story is straightforward. Its telling is remarkable. Christopher's voice is controlled, detailed, and detached, its precision unsurprising in someone who has devoted his life to the examination of details and the rigors of objective thought. But within the layers of his narrative is slowly revealed what he can't, or won't, see: that his memory, despite what he wants to believe, is not unaffected by his childhood tragedies; that his powers of perception, the heralded clarity of his vision, can be blinding as well as enlightening; and that the simplest desires--a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding--may give rise to the most complicated truths.

A masterful combination of narrative control and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his best.]]> 320 Kazuo Ishiguro 0571225403 Nicola 3 3.53 2000 When We Were Orphans
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/12/19
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]]> May We Be Forgiven 16061734
Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

Harry finds himself suddenly playing parent to his brother’s two adolescent children, tumbling down the rabbit hole of Internet sex, dealing with aging parents who move through time like travelers on a fantastic voyage. As Harry builds a twenty-first-century family created by choice rather than biology, we become all the more aware of the ways in which our history, both personal and political, can become our destiny and either compel us to repeat our errors or be the catalyst for change.

May We Be Forgiven is an unnerving, funny tale of unexpected intimacies and of how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together.]]> 480 A.M. Homes 0670025488 Nicola 2 3.67 2012 May We Be Forgiven
author: A.M. Homes
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/19
date added: 2014/12/19
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]]> The Hundred-Foot Journey 7347109
"That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist."

And so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life’s journey in Richard Morais’s charming novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey . Lively and brimming with the colors, flavors, and scents of the kitchen, The Hundred-Foot Journey is a succulent treat about family, nationality, and the mysteries of good taste.

Born above his grandfather’s modest restaurant in Mumbai, Hassan first experienced life through intoxicating whiffs of spicy fish curry, trips to the local markets, and gourmet outings with his mother. But when tragedy pushes the family out of India, they console themselves by eating their way around the world, eventually settling in Lumière, a small village in the French Alps.

The boisterous Haji family takes Lumière by storm. They open an inexpensive Indian restaurant opposite an esteemed French relais —that of the famous chef Madame Mallory—and infuse the sleepy town with the spices of India, transforming the lives of its eccentric villagers and infuriating their celebrated neighbor. Only after Madame Mallory wages culinary war with the immigrant family, does she finally agree to mentor young Hassan, leading him to Paris, the launch of his own restaurant, and a slew of new adventures.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is about how the hundred-foot distance between a new Indian kitchen and a traditional French one can represent the gulf between different cultures and desires. A testament to the inevitability of destiny, this is a fable for the ages—charming, endearing, and compulsively readable.]]> 256 Richard C. Morais 1439165645 Nicola 3 3.53 2008 The Hundred-Foot Journey
author: Richard C. Morais
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/19
date added: 2014/12/19
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]]> 12 Years a Slave 22856344 Ěý
Solomon was an African American born free in New York during the 19th century, but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south. Twelve Years a Slave paints a vivid picture of the horrid realities of slavery and the harrowing circumstances under which Northup was restored to freedom. It was recently adapted into a multi-Oscar winning film directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Fassbender, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Ěý
Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in ebook form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.]]> 248 Solomon Northup 1551997339 Nicola 0 currently-reading 4.16 1853 12 Years a Slave
author: Solomon Northup
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1853
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/09/03
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Emancipating Alice 21483738 Now that her husband, George, is dead, middle-aged homemaker Alice Owens thinks his oppressive reign over her life has ended—but she is wrong.
George thwarts her attempts at freedom, mentally and physically, from beyond the grave. * * *

Alice returns from a routine grocery-shopping trip to find her husband slumped over their kitchen table, as dead as her love for him.
Glad her strangled life with him has ended, she prepares for the arrival of her adult children—a daughter who hates her, and a needy son—who will inevitably show up for the funeral.
But while cleaning out George's belongings, Alice stumbles across enigmatic documents linking him to an African-American charity and a heinous crime committed over thirty years prior.

Alice grapples not only with memories of her marriage's turbulent past, but with murder and infidelity from George's secret double life pushing themselves into her present.
Will Alice finally gain the freedom she has always desired? Or will George's secrets shove her over the edge?]]> 346 Ada Winder 0615991831 Nicola 4 3.59 2012 Emancipating Alice
author: Ada Winder
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/25
date added: 2014/08/25
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Nicola 5 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2014/08/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[7lbs in 7 Days Super Juice Diet]]> 1130753 233 Jason Vale 0007231474 Nicola 3 3.68 2001 7lbs in 7 Days Super Juice Diet
author: Jason Vale
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2014/08/18
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism]]> 16113737
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?� “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?� “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?� and “What’s the reason you jump?� (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.�) With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.]]> 135 Naoki Higashida 0812994868 Nicola 3 3.84 2005 The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
author: Naoki Higashida
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2014/08/18
shelves:
review:
As a mother of children with autism it was an illuminating read. Perhaps one I'll have to come back to time and time again
]]> <![CDATA[50 Ways To Find A Lover (Sarah Sargeant, #1)]]> 6399857 434 Lucy-Anne Holmes 0330458396 Nicola 3
Read it in a day, thoroughly enjoyed it :)]]> 3.79 2009 50 Ways To Find A Lover (Sarah Sargeant, #1)
author: Lucy-Anne Holmes
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/18
date added: 2014/08/18
shelves:
review:
This is a perfect bit of chic lit. It's trite, formulaic and the ending is completely expected. It's August , however, and I wanted something light, silly and entertaining

Read it in a day, thoroughly enjoyed it :)
]]> <![CDATA[Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)]]> 15790842
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?]]> 544 Kate Atkinson 0316176486 Nicola 2 3.76 2013 Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/17
date added: 2014/08/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Nicola 3 4.00 2013 The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/16
date added: 2014/08/16
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The book is fine, Don is something of a caricature and yet functions remarkably well for a man that allegedly has Aspergers. I am a parent of two children with Aspergers and it's difficulties extend far beyond having difficulty socially and liking routine. That being said, it's a sweet book with a happy ending.
]]> Marjorie Morningstar 14504
28 hours and 26 minutes]]> 565 Herman Wouk 0316955132 Nicola 2
This was a damn hard slog and I've never been more relieved to finish a book. I'm now asking myself why I even bothered to finish it but I'm sure I saw a good review somewhere and I got half way through expecting it to get better. The two central characters are vacuous, banal and a very unlikely match. Marjorie is beyond spoilt "Marjorie choked over the raw bar champagne, which tasted like lemon soda gone bad" Well lucky Marjorie can tell the difference between good and bad champagne!

Thank goodness I didn't stay up late at night reading it!]]> 3.98 1955 Marjorie Morningstar
author: Herman Wouk
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1955
rating: 2
read at: 2014/04/25
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves:
review:
Tedious

This was a damn hard slog and I've never been more relieved to finish a book. I'm now asking myself why I even bothered to finish it but I'm sure I saw a good review somewhere and I got half way through expecting it to get better. The two central characters are vacuous, banal and a very unlikely match. Marjorie is beyond spoilt "Marjorie choked over the raw bar champagne, which tasted like lemon soda gone bad" Well lucky Marjorie can tell the difference between good and bad champagne!

Thank goodness I didn't stay up late at night reading it!
]]> The Wasted Vigil 3417673
Marcus, an English doctor whose progressive, outspoken Afghani wife was murdered by the Taliban, opens his home—itself an eerily beautiful monument to his losses—to the others: Lara, from St. Petersburg, looking for evidence of her soldier brother who disappeared decades before during the Soviet invasion; David, an American, a former spy who has seen his ideals turned inside out during his twenty-five years in Afghanistan; Casa, a young Afghani whose hatred of the West plunges him into the depths of zealotry; and James, the Special Forces soldier in whom David sees a dangerous revival of the unquestioning notions of right and wrong that he himself once held.

In mesmerizing prose, Nadeem Aslam reveals the complex ties—of love and desperation, pain and salvation, madness and clarity—that bind the characters. And through their stories he creates a timely and achingly intimate portrait of the “continuation of wars� that shapes our world.

In its radiant language, its depth of feeling, and its unflinching drama, The Wasted Vigil is a luminous work of fiction.]]> 372 Nadeem Aslam 0571238777 Nicola 0 to-read 3.73 2008 The Wasted Vigil
author: Nadeem Aslam
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)]]> 13214
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.� At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare�) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0553279378 Nicola 0 4.30 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
author: Maya Angelou
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> Midnight’s Children 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]> 647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 Nicola 0 to-read 3.98 1981 Midnight’s Children
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> Little Women 372311 388 Louisa May Alcott 0517214628 Nicola 5 4.22 1868 Little Women
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1868
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally]]> 40532 321 Marcus J. Borg 0060609192 Nicola 0 to-read 4.14 2001 Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally
author: Marcus J. Borg
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Elf 3019902 368 Silvana De Mari 0747577889 Nicola 4 4.16 2004 The Last Elf
author: Silvana De Mari
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> Brick Lane 18723 As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.
Monica Ali's splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvelous and the terrifying spiral together.]]> 432 Monica Ali 0743243315 Nicola 2 3.45 2003 Brick Lane
author: Monica Ali
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at: 2009/08/11
date added: 2014/04/20
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review:
this was the first book that I actually couldn't finish. I've prided myself on always finishing a book but I felt no empathy towards any of the characters and just couldn't bring myself to spend my time reading the last 1/3 of the book ...
]]> 1984 5470 328 George Orwell Nicola 0 4.15 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> Scum of the Earth 552008 Darkness at Noon. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution.

Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.

--From the 2006 paperback edition.]]> 253 Arthur Koestler 0907871496 Nicola 0 to-read 4.28 1941 Scum of the Earth
author: Arthur Koestler
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Memory of Love 7784648
As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, these men are drawn unwittingly closer by a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.

A work of breathtaking writing and rare wisdom, The Memory of Love seamlessly weaves together two generations of African life to create a story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, in the end, the very nature of love.]]> 445 Aminatta Forna 1408808137 Nicola 0 to-read 3.92 2010 The Memory of Love
author: Aminatta Forna
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Fraction of the Whole 1833852 An irreverent comic adventure, spanning three continents, about a father and son against each other and against the world.

For most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.

As he recollects the events that led to his father’s demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries—about his infamous outlaw uncle, Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin’s constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It’s a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafés of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a wild rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.

A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores, and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz.]]> 530 Steve Toltz 0385521723 Nicola 0 to-read 4.13 2008 A Fraction of the Whole
author: Steve Toltz
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> Christopher and His Kind 16809 What most impressed the first readers of this memoir, however, was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements.

A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) is the author of Down There on a Visit, Lions and Shadows, A Meeting by the River, The Memorial, Prater Violet, A Single Man, and The World in the Evening, all available from the University of Minnesota Press.

]]> 352 Christopher Isherwood 0816638632 Nicola 0 to-read 4.08 1976 Christopher and His Kind
author: Christopher Isherwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Nicola 4
Its a bit too adult for my son right now but, neverthless, I quite enjoyed the book for a bit of light holiday reading.

I don't always have the time commitment, or brain cells, necessary for Khaled Hosseini.]]> 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/15
date added: 2014/04/20
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I read this as 2 of my children have Aspergers and I thought it would be suitable for my oldest (currently 12). As a parent of Aspies I couldn't find many "holes" in Christopher, although I suspect his ability to find an address in London to be a bit far-fetched but its fiction. :D

Its a bit too adult for my son right now but, neverthless, I quite enjoyed the book for a bit of light holiday reading.

I don't always have the time commitment, or brain cells, necessary for Khaled Hosseini.
]]> Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

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

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn Nicola 4 3.93 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/02/06
date added: 2014/02/10
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Its a good book. Not a literary heavyweight but a complete page turner nevertheless. Crime isn't my usual genre but I thoroughly enjoyed this. It certainly gave me a few sleepless nights (from reading, not worrying)
]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

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

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

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

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

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Nicola 5 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2014/02/01
date added: 2014/02/10
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Loved it. Beautiful tale of war, love and loss.
]]> The Man in the Picture 1854160
By the renowned storyteller Susan Hill--whose first ghost story, The Woman in Black, has run for eighteen years as a play in London's West End--here is a new take on a form that is fully classical and, in Hill's able hands, newly vital. The Man in the Picture is a haunting tale of loss, love, and the very basest fear of our beings.]]> 145 Susan Hill 1846680751 Nicola 0 to-read 3.63 2007 The Man in the Picture
author: Susan Hill
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sophie’s World 10959 An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.]]> 403 Jostein Gaarder 1857993284 Nicola 0 3.94 1991 Sophie’s World
author: Jostein Gaarder
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/12/08
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review:

]]> The Christmas Mystery 58301 160 Jostein Gaarder 1842552821 Nicola 0 currently-reading 3.76 1992 The Christmas Mystery
author: Jostein Gaarder
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/12/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society]]> 2728527
“Treat yourself to this book, please - I can’t recommend it highly enough.� (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love)

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.�

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb....

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island - boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

“A jewel... Poignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends.� (People)

“A book-lover’s delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary.� (Chicago Sun-Times)

“A sparkling epistolary novel radiating wit, lightly worn erudition and written with great assurance and aplomb.� (The Sunday Times [London])

“Cooked perfectly à point: subtle and elegant in flavour, yet emotionally satisfying to the finish.� (The Times [London])]]> 277 Mary Ann Shaffer 0385340990 Nicola 0 currently-reading 4.13 2008 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
author: Mary Ann Shaffer
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/11/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Cold Comfort Farm 92780 233 Stella Gibbons 0143039598 Nicola 3 Quite bizarre 3.89 1932 Cold Comfort Farm
author: Stella Gibbons
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1932
rating: 3
read at: 2013/11/03
date added: 2013/11/03
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Quite bizarre
]]> 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 Nicola 5 4.44 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2013/08/13
date added: 2013/08/13
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]]> A Week in December 6378740
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it � and party on as though tomorrow is a dream.

Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.]]> 392 Sebastian Faulks 0091794455 Nicola 2 3.29 2009 A Week in December
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2013/08/09
date added: 2013/08/09
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I love some of Sebastian Faulks early works but this was hard going. I battled on to the end which was distinctly underwhelming. In all honesty, several weeks after finishing the book I can barely remember the plot ....
]]> <![CDATA[The End of Your Life Book Club]]> 13414676
Mary Anne Schwalbe is waiting for her chemotherapy treatments when Will casually asks her what she's reading. The conversation they have grows into tradition: soon they are reading the same books so they can have something to talk about in the hospital waiting room. The ones they choose range from classic to popular, from fantastic to spiritual, and we hear their passion for reading and their love for each other in their intimate and searching discussions.

A profoundly moving testament to the power of love between a child and parent, and the power of reading in our lives.]]> 336 Will Schwalbe 0307594033 Nicola 4 3.80 2012 The End of Your Life Book Club
author: Will Schwalbe
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/09
date added: 2013/08/09
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This is an utterly wonderful book, one that had me somewhat hooked. It was such a relief to find people who believe in the characters in books, who wonder what they do after the books are finished ... I sobbed when I reached the end, even though it was no surprise ....
]]> Past Imperfect 1670785 The stage is set for one of the most electrifying and intriguing thrillers of all time. Dominic Fornier is the detective who finds himself at the heart of the investigation. A simple provincial case that becomes one of the largest and most important in criminal history; the case of a lifetime, but one that seems impossible to win.
Fornier’s only hope is to try to prove a link between the two boys...the final missing key that will expose the killer.
A chilling journey through forensic, medical and psychiatric evidence between France, America and London; a breathless paperchase of clues extracted from a young boy's psyche; revenge, blackmail and political corruption behind a trial that captures a nation...and a desperate race against time to catch a murderer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks.]]> 627 John Matthews 0140277544 Nicola 3 3.52 1999 Past Imperfect
author: John Matthews
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/08/05
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]]> The Brave 3245080 Salvation comes when his glamorous actress sister is swept off to Hollywood by one of his heroes, TV cowboy Ray Montane. But with the Cold War looming, the sinister side of Tinseltown seeps through and Tommy and Diane soon find themselves in jeopardy. Forty years on, Tommy has to confront his boyhood ghosts when his own son finds himself charged with murder. ]]> 488 Nicholas Evans 1847441041 Nicola 0 3.62 2009 The Brave
author: Nicholas Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2012/07/19
date added: 2012/07/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Swallows and Amazons (Swallows and Amazons, #1)]]> 125190 Swallows and Amazons introduces the lovable Walker family, the camp on Wild Cat island, the able-bodied catboat Swallow, and the two intrepid Amazons, Nancy and Peggy Blackett.]]> 315 Arthur Ransome 087923573X Nicola 0 currently-reading 4.01 1930 Swallows and Amazons (Swallows and Amazons, #1)
author: Arthur Ransome
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/07/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Weight of Water 228534 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational ax murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. (Can you guess which one?) She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness. The plot weaves between the narrative of the eyewitness and Jean's private struggle with jealousies and suspicions as her marriage teeters. A rich, textured novel.]]> 246 Anita Shreve 0316780375 Nicola 4 3.66 1997 The Weight of Water
author: Anita Shreve
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Fortune's Rocks (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #1)]]> 89399
A stunning new work from Anita Shreve, the author of the acclaimed bestsellers The Pilot's Wife and The Weight of Water, Fortune's Rocks is a profound and moving story about unwise love and the choices that transform a life.

On a beach in New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a young woman is drawn into a rocky, disastrous passage to adulthood. Olympia Biddeford is the only child of a prominent Boston couple--a precocious and well-educated daughter, alive with ideas and flush with the first stirrings of maturity. Her summer at the family's vacation home in Fortune's Rocks is transformed by the arrival of a doctor, a friend of her father's, whose new book about mill-town laborers has caused a sensation. Olympia is captivated by his thinking, his stature, and his drive to do right--even as she is overwhelmed for the first time by irresistible sexual desire. She and the doctor--a married man, a father, and nearly three times her age--come together in an unthinkable, torturous, hopelessly passionate affair. Throwing aside propriety and self-preservation, Olympia plunges forward with cataclysmic results that are the price of straying in an unforgiving era. Olympia is cast out of the world she knows, and Fortune's Rocks is the story of her determination to reinvent her broken life--and claim the one thing she finds she cannot live without.

A meditation on the erotic life of women, an exploration of class prejudices, and most of all a portrayal of the thoughts and actions of an unforgettable young woman, Fortune's Rocks is a masterpiece of narrative drama, beautifully written by one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.]]> 528 Anita Shreve 0316734837 Nicola 4 3.90 1999 Fortune's Rocks (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #1)
author: Anita Shreve
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> Life Before Man 72584 361 Margaret Atwood 0385491107 Nicola 3 3.42 1979 Life Before Man
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1979
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Moral Disorder and Other Stories]]> 17644
The first story, "The Bad News," is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. The narrative then switches time as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence in "The Art of Cooking and Serving," "The Headless Horseman," and "My Last Duchess." We follow her into young adulthood in "The Other Place" and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories: "Monopoly," "Moral Disorder," "White Horse," and "The Entities." The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab," deal with the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. As the New York Times has said: "The reader has the sense that Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations."]]> 240 Margaret Atwood 0385503849 Nicola 4 3.63 2006 Moral Disorder and Other Stories
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)]]> 6080337
Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...

By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.]]> 431 Margaret Atwood 0385528779 Nicola 4 4.06 2009 The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> Cat’s Eye 51019 Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, and artist, and woman—but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knots of her life.]]> 462 Margaret Atwood 0385491026 Nicola 4 3.94 1988 Cat’s Eye
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> Alias Grace 58027 636 Margaret Atwood 3442723434 Nicola 5 3.97 1996 Alias Grace
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> The Blind Assassin 78433 The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.]]> 637 Margaret Atwood Nicola 4 3.96 2000 The Blind Assassin
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)]]> 46756 Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.]]> 389 Margaret Atwood Nicola 4 4.01 2003 Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> An Equal Music 50366 A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more.

Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.]]> 383 Vikram Seth 037570924X Nicola 4 3.81 1999 An Equal Music
author: Vikram Seth
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/07/15
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]]> Dear Fatty 4391492
She first appeared on the British entertainment scene as part of the groundbreaking alternative comedy group, the Comic Strip, which marked a radical departure from the more traditional comedy acts of the time. Later came the all-female Girls on Top with Jennifer Saunders, Ruby Wax and Tracy Ullman. Then, as part of the wildly successful duo, French and Saunders, Dawn helped create a repertoire of brilliantly observed recurring characters parodying popular culture and impersonating everything from Madonna and Harry Potter to The Exorcist. Dawn's more recent role in The Vicar of Dibley again has showcased not only her talent but also her ability to take a controversial issue and make it mainstream and funny. From her early years as an RAF child to her flat-sharing antics with Jennifer Saunders, from her outspoken views on sizeism to her marriage to Lenny Henry, Dear Fatty will chronicle the fascinating and hilarious rise of a complex, dynamic and unstoppable woman.]]> 368 Dawn French 1846053447 Nicola 2 3.80 2008 Dear Fatty
author: Dawn French
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2008
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Riding Lessons (Riding Lessons, #1)]]> 142886
But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world.]]> 387 Sara Gruen 0061241083 Nicola 0 to-read 3.42 2004 Riding Lessons (Riding Lessons, #1)
author: Sara Gruen
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Perfect Day 199798 Ěý
Robert Harlan has three loves in his wife, his daughter, and his writing. But when his thirst for success causes him to lose focus on his family life, it takes a few more missteps—and finally, a stranger with a mysterious message about the brevity of his future—before he discovers the truth about who he has become, what he has lost, and what it will take to find love again...

â€� A Perfect Day examines love, relationships and self-awareness...This well-written story spans the range of emotions from joy to sorrow and grief.”â€� The Sunday OklahomanĚý]]> 352 Richard Paul Evans 0451213262 Nicola 0 to-read 4.00 2003 A Perfect Day
author: Richard Paul Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)]]> 85386 Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit� Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.]]> 325 John Updike 0449911659 Nicola 2 3.58 1960 Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)
author: John Updike
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1960
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)]]> 50365 A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.]]> 1474 Vikram Seth 0060786523 Nicola 5 4.11 1993 A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)
author: Vikram Seth
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/22
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]]> The Nanny Diaries (Nanny, #1) 228333 306 Emma McLaughlin 0312291639 Nicola 4 3.47 2002 The Nanny Diaries (Nanny, #1)
author: Emma McLaughlin
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> The Divide 114006
On a crystalline Montana morning, two backcountry skiers find the body of a young women embedded in the ice of a remote mountain creek. All through the night police work with floodlights and chainsaws to extract her. Identifying her, however, takes no time at all. Abbie Cooper is wanted for murder and acts of ecoterrorism, and her picture is on law enforcement computers all across the country. But how did she die? And what was the trail of events that led this golden child of a loving family so tragically astray?

A devastating journey of discovery that extends from the streets of New York to the daunting grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, The Divide tells the story of a family fractured by betrayal and struggling in search of lost happiness. It explores the pain we inflict on those we love the most, and charts the passions and needs, the dashed hopes and disillusionments that connect and divide all men and women.]]> 512 Nicholas Evans 0451219295 Nicola 5 3.74 2005 The Divide
author: Nicholas Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> The Loop 25422 511 Nicholas Evans 0552144959 Nicola 5 3.96 1998 The Loop
author: Nicholas Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> The Horse Whisperer 479415 A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest beings - to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to...

THE HORSE WHISPERER

He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana. Annie has risked everything - her career, her marriage, her comfortable life - in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them. The accident has turned Pilgrim savage. He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed. But Annie won't give up on him. For she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of he daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence. Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives - including Tom Booker's - will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold. At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption - a magnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed. It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.]]> 451 Nicholas Evans 0440222656 Nicola 5 3.87 1995 The Horse Whisperer
author: Nicholas Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> The Smoke Jumper 9282
His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,� Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.

In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more…]]> 576 Nicholas Evans 0440235162 Nicola 5 4.07 2001 The Smoke Jumper
author: Nicholas Evans
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> Corelli’s Mandolin 3388 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set in the early days of the second world war, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn’t so bad—at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, who responds to a Nazi greeting of “Heil Hitler� with his own “Heil Puccini�, and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches.

British author Louis de Bernières is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Here he keeps it to a minimum, though certainly the secondary characters with whom he populates his island—the drunken priest, the strongman, the fisherman who swims with dolphins—would be at home in any of his wildly imaginative Latin American fictions. Instead, de Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin works on many levels, as a love story, a war story and a deconstruction of just what determines the facts that make it into the history books.]]> 437 Louis de Bernières 067976397X Nicola 5 3.97 1994 Corelli’s Mandolin
author: Louis de Bernières
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> Good Night, Mr. Tom 161099 320 Michelle Magorian 006440174X Nicola 0 to-read 4.27 1981 Good Night, Mr. Tom
author: Michelle Magorian
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Faraway Tree Stories (The Faraway Tree #1-3)]]> 17490 583 Enid Blyton 1405201711 Nicola 5 4.29 1991 The Faraway Tree Stories (The Faraway Tree #1-3)
author: Enid Blyton
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> Engleby 956719
"My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university."

With that brief introduction we meet one of the most mesmerizing, singular voices in a long tradition of disturbing narrators. Despite his obvious intelligence and compelling voice, it is clear that something about solitary, odd Mike is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate named Jennifer Arkland and she goes missing, we are left with the looming Is Mike Engleby involved? As he grows up, finding a job and even a girlfriend in London, Mike only becomes more and more detached from those around him in an almost anti-coming-of-age. His inability to relate to others and his undependable memory (able to recall countless lines of text yet sometimes incapable of summoning up his own experiences from mere days before) lead the reader down an unclear and often darkly humorous path where one is never completely comfortable or confident about what is true.

Mike Engleby is a chilling and unforgettable character, and Engleby is a novel that will surprise and beguile Sebastian Faulks' readership.]]> 319 Sebastian Faulks 0385524056 Nicola 1 3.76 2007 Engleby
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 1
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]]> Charlotte Gray 133937 Birdsong comes Charlotte Gray, the remarkable story of a young Scottish woman who becomes caught up in the effort to liberate Occupied France from the Nazis while pursuing a perilous mission of her own.

In blacked-out, wartime London, Charlotte Gray develops a dangerous passion for a battle-weary RAF pilot, and when he fails to return from a daring flight into France she is determined to find him. In the service of the Resistance, she travels to the village of Lavaurette, dyeing her hair and changing her name to conceal her identity. Here she will come face-to-face with the harrowing truth of what took place during Europe's darkest years, and will confront a terrifying secret that threatens to cast its shadow over the remainder of her days. Vividly rendered, tremendously moving, and with a narrative sweep and power reminiscent of his novel Birdsong, Charlotte Gray confirms Sebastian Faulks as one of the finest novelists working today.]]> 401 Sebastian Faulks 0375704558 Nicola 5 3.83 1998 Charlotte Gray
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Nicola
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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]]> Birdsong 6259 483 Sebastian Faulks 0679776818 Nicola 5 4.11 1993 Birdsong
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Nicola
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/21
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