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Tome Raider
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010 |
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by Andre Dubus III
W.W. Norton & Company, 1999, 365 pages
In “House of Sand and Fog,” the central characters all have reasonable goals and desires, but they all confront problems that are largely beyond their control.
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Saturday, 23 January 2010 |
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by Jeffrey Eugenides, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993, 256 pages
“The Virgin Suicides” marked a breathtaking debut for Jeffrey Eugenides, who
would later win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with “Middlesex.” The only important question he leaves unanswered is “why?” What would lead five perfectly
healthy, radiantly beautiful, precociously intelligent young women to
take their own lives?
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Friday, 07 August 2009 |
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by Howard Norman,
Picador, 1994
289 pages
Fabian Vas, the narrator and protagonist of Howard Norman’s 1994
novel “The Bird Artist,” reveals two key personal details within the
book’s opening paragraph. First, he explains that he is, as the title
suggests, a bird artist. He makes a modest living drawing the native
species of the small fishing community where he resides, sketching
ibises, ospreys, sandpipers, kittiwakes, mallards, garganeys and even
his least favorite bird, the cormorant.
The second detail has a more confessional tone: “Yet I murdered
the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I
think of myself,” Fabian explains in the fifth sentence.
Few beginnings could be more enticing than this. What could have
possibly compelled this seemingly gentle bird artist with whom we’ve so
recently become acquainted to murder the lighthouse keeper? With this
question tingling in our brains, we read on, and Norman obligingly
unfolds the tale.
The story takes place in the early 1900s in Witless Bay, a
remote coastal village in Newfoundland. Twenty-year-old Fabian lives in
this town with his parents, Alaric and Orkney Vas. He works repairing
boats while fine-tuning his painting skills under the tutelage of famed
bird artist Isaac Sprague, with whom he exchanges letters.
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Written by Sarah LaChance
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 |
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by Slavoj Žižek
Picador, 272 pages
Trade paperback publisher Picador chose a
big personality to anchor “Violence,” the first entry in its “Big
Ideas, Small Books” series. Slavoj Žižek is referred to as the “Elvis
of Cultural Theory,” and like any good rock star, has a model for a
wife. A self-described Marxist Communist, Žižek has run for president
in his native Slovenia, written several books that marry sociological
theory with pop culture, and continues to teach and lecture all over
the world.
Žižek has been the topic of an eponymous documentary film, and
is one of several theorists to appear in “Examined Life,” which
recently played at The Music Hall in Portsmouth. One of his most
entertaining efforts has been the production of a BBC series, “The
Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,” in which Žižek discusses and inserts
himself into scenes spanning from Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”
through David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.” Viewers can see him rowing a
boat in “The Birds,” reacting to the demon in “The Exorcist,” and
refusing to choose the red or blue pill in “The Matrix.”
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 16 April 2009 |
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by Mark Dunn
208 pgs, 2001, Anchor Books
When Mark Dunn’s fresh and
fabulous little novel “Ella Minnow Pea” was first released, the title
was “Ella Minnow Pea: a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable.”
That’s quite a mouthful. So, for the paperback version, the title was
changed to “Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters.” Succinct, and also
clever, for in choosing the word “letters” it describes both the books
format and conditions. Confused? You’ll see.
It all starts with the letter “Z.” On the fictitious island of
Nollop there stands a monument to the island’s namesake, resident Nevin
Nollop, who created the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog.” (A pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the
alphabet, and is usually kept to 35 letters in length.) When the letter
“Z” falls from the cenotaph, an emergency meeting is called by the
townspeople. Should they replace the letter? Is it a sign from a higher
power that the letter “Z” is no longer needed?
The general consensus is, yes, it’s a sign, and so an ordinance
is passed banning the letter “Z” from all future use, whether written
or spoken. “On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and
discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing
the letter ‘Z’ constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean
Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter ‘Z’
should be utterly excised—fully extirpated—absolutely heave-ho’ed from
our communal vocabulary.”
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Friday, 13 March 2009 |
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by Cormac McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, 302 pages
Few modern American writers
are able to encapsulate the continent’s rugged southwestern
landscapes—and the human emotions imbued in those landscapes—like
Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s writing seems to rise from the country’s
pores like so much desert vegetation, stark and solitary against the
horizon, its canted shadows stretching over vast surfaces, its network
of roots groping for the core of things. His simple prose illustrates
the divinity of earth, horse and man, how each is endowed with equal
measures of beauty and pain, and how that beauty and pain is
inextricably linked.
The first volume of McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy,” “All the Pretty
Horses” follows 16-year-old Texan John Grady Cole (who returns as the
main protagonist of “Cities of the Plains” in the third volume).
Grady’s grandfather has just died, and his stage actress mother plans
to sell the Texas ranch his family has long operated. Grady cannot
convince his mother to let him take over the ranch, and his ailing
father, long since separated from his wife, offers little help.
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Written by Dave Karlotski
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Thursday, 05 February 2009 |
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by J.R.R. Tolkien, George Allen & Unwin, 1954, 479 pages
It’s
been more than 50 years since “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first
book of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, was initially
published. While any author would be honored to be remembered so well
after a half-century, surely Tolkien never foresaw that his life’s work
of imaginative literature would not only endure, but become indelibly
etched into the popular culture of the world like the fiery writing on
the One Ring itself.
The book is still a great read in its own right, an epic
adventure about a handful of home-loving hobbits who are swept up into
a dangerous world of evil and magic, power and war. From their quite
land of The Shire they are forced into a long journey across
Middle-Earth in the company of a dwarf, an elf, a wizard and men from
far-off kingdoms, first in flight from menacing Black Riders, and later
with a perilous mission to destroy a magical ring in an effort to
thwart the enemy, Sauron.
If it sounds like stock fantasy fare, it is, but that’s because Tolkien
unwittingly created the mold from which much of the next half-century
of fantasy writing would be cast. From Ursula K. Leguin to Robert
Jordan, it’s hard to find a fantasy series that can’t trace at least
part of its heritage back to the Ring trilogy. Tolkien didn’t just
inspire imitators, he helped spawn an entire section of the bookstore.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
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by Robertson Davies, Macmillan of Canada, 1970, 273 pages
“Those
roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor
Villain, but which are nonetheless essential to bring about the
Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama
and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player
who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.” —Thomas
Overskou, Den Danske Skueplads
Every decision we make, no matter how small, continues us on our course
through life. You might decide to ride your bike to work instead of
driving and get hit by a car—bad luck. You might choose to go out for
lunch one day and meet the love of your life—what are the odds? The
choices we make and the possible outcomes are unwritten and endless,
and while books are compiled of decision after decision, not many take
such a specific look at one small, conscious decision in particular as
“Fifth Business.”
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 19 November 2008 |
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by Doug Stanton
339 pages, 2001, Henry Holt and Company
For people born in the
last few decades, the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis is a mere pop
culture reference at most, having been briefly referenced in the 1975
classic, “Jaws.” As the men sit adrift in the middle of the ocean,
drinking and sharing battle scar stories, the wonderful Robert Shaw, as
Quint, delivers his monologue about being aboard a fictionalized
version of the doomed cruiser: “You know that was the time I was most
frightened... waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket
again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and
the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the
bomb…” Needless to say, Quint wins the tough guy contest.
The entire account of the ship’s sinking is unbelievable. The
Indianapolis had been assigned the task of delivering parts of the
atomic bomb “Little Boy,” which would later be used in the attack on
Hiroshima. After successfully completing its assignment, and headed for
home, the cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, killing 300
men instantly and pitching another 900 into the ocean.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 22 October 2008 |
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by Terry Pratchett
375 pages, 2003 Harper Collins
A precocious young girl, aided
by mythical creatures, must travel to another world to get her annoying
baby brother back after he is stolen by Elfen royalty. No, it’s not
“Labyrinth,” but it’s equally fun and twice as funny, thanks to the
zany imagination of Terry Pratchett. Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching lives
on a farm in The Chalk, a small town in the countryside, where she
helps with the chores and watches her candy-loving baby brother,
Wentworth.
“Anything could make Wentworth sticky. Washed and dried and left
in the middle of a clean floor for five minutes, Wentworth would be
sticky. But it didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He just got sticky.
But he was an easy child to mind, provided you stopped him from eating
frogs.”
Recently, frightening monsters have been turning up around the
farm, as well as little blue men hiding everywhere Tiffany goes. These
are the hard-drinking, thieving little pictsies, the Nac Mac Feegle or
the Wee Free Men. When Wentworth is kidnapped by the Queen of Fairies,
Tiffany thinks the Wee Men know what’s going on and implores them to
help her get him back.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
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by Charles Bukowski
307 pages, 1977, Black Sparrow Press
Charles Bukowski was an
ugly man. Every-branch-of-the-ugly-tree ugly. His lifestyle didn’t help
matters for his face. He was a boxer and was often involved in bar
fights. He drank and womanized in equally excessive quantities. But
writers aren’t actors or singers, and good looks aren’t necessary to
advance your career. Bukowski’s talent lay in his ability to take all
the grime, seediness, ugliness and realism of his day-to-day life and
transform it into beautiful works.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Friday, 04 April 2008 |
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by Ellen Raskin
1978, 185 pages, E.P. Dutton
“I, Samuel W. Westing, declare
this to be my last will and testament and do hereby swear that I did
not die of natural causes. My life was taken from me—by one of you!”
These are the final words, reaching from beyond the grave, of
multimillionaire Samuel Westing, paper company magnate and owner of the
luxury apartment building, Sunset Towers. Gathered to hear the reading
of Westing’s will are 16 of Sunset Towers’ residents and workers. The
group members were puzzled upon being invited to take up residence at
the apartment building when it first opened, and they are equally
perplexed to discover that one of them is the possible benefactor of
Westing’s $200 million fortune. (None of them had ever met the man.)
But, here they now sit, being told that they could conceivably be rich.
There’s just one catch: they have to solve Westing’s murder.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 20 March 2008 |
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by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
222 pages, William Heinemann Ltd., 1990
Few people like to be
preached at—especially when they have already taken it upon themselves
to read a book about a heavy subject, like endangered species, for
example. We already know the facts: Since our appearance on this
planet, humans have polluted and poached their way through all corners
of the world, destroying and eliminating thousands of different species
of animals, birds, insects and plants. In short, we suck. We know this.
But our simple little brains don’t want to feel guilty, they want to be
entertained. So why not take a man famous for writing funny books that
include aliens, the existence of which has yet to be proven, and let
him tell the story of creatures who may not exist much longer?
Enter Douglas Adams, most famous for his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy” series. In 1985, Observer Colour Magazine commissioned
Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine to travel to Madagascar and try to
glimpse a rare nocturnal lemur called an aye-aye, and then write an
article about their trip. Over a three-year period, their adventure
transformed into several journeys in search of endangered species,
which was subsequently documented for BBC radio and was later
chronicled in the book “Last Chance to See.”
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Written by Matt Kanner
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
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by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1986, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 106 pages
On Feb. 28, 1955, a
windy gale swept eight sailors over the side of a Columbian Navy
destroyer and into the Caribbean Sea. Seven of those sailors drowned
that day, but 20-year-old Luis Alejandro Velasco managed to fling
himself aboard a small life raft, which became his temporary home on
the surface of a vast and desolate sea. When he washed up on the
northern Columbian shore 10 days later, he was weak, emaciated and
blistered by the sun, having eaten nothing but a couple of bites of raw
fish and a mysterious root, and having drunk only a few swallows of
salty seawater. But he was alive. The account he later relayed to
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, then a young newspaper reporter in Bogotá,
offered thousands of eager and curious readers a taste of what it is
like to be lost and alone at sea.
But just as interesting as Velasco’s miraculous tale of survival
is the story behind the story. Originally published as a series of 14
daily installments in the El Espectador newspaper, Marquez wrote the
story from Velasco’s first person perspective and did not attach his
own name to it until some 15 years later. He had spent upwards of 120
hours interviewing Velasco, who had walked into the newsroom with an
offer to sell his story to reporters.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 14 February 2008 |
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by Jeanette Winterson
157 pages, 1987, Grove Press
It’s that time of year again.
You know, the one Hallmark invented to sell cards? That’s right,
Valentine’s Day, when people show their affection for one another with
confections and flowers, while the holiday’s spokesperson, Cupid,
supposedly flutters around with his bow poised, hoping to strike love
between two lucky people. Right. Because nothing induces romance and
makes someone feel all is right with the world like the idea of being
skewered with an arrow by an androgynous flying midget in a diaper.
In reality, love isn’t a store-bought creation. Love is more
like a fairytale. Not one of those Disney yarns, with singing bluebirds
and mice doing the laundry, but a Grimm fairytale, with blood and
torment and sometimes a happy ending, sometimes not. That’s a realistic
love story. Hell, things even end badly in the book version of “The
Princess Bride” (which is every bit as good as the film).
Jeanette Winterson’s “The Passion” is a phenomenal fairy tale.
It reads like a bizarre fable told by magical realism master Gabriel
Garcia Marquez through the eyes of surrealist painter Dali. Brazen,
outlandish and lusty, “The Passion” sweeps through the idea of romance,
upending everything in its way.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Friday, 01 February 2008 |
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by Jonathan Lethem
Vintage, 1997, 212 pages
In nearly every romance ever
portrayed on paper or screen, there is always something that threatens
to separate the happy couple—another person, a war, an illness, an
iceberg. But in Jonathan Lethem’s “As She Climbed Across the Table,”
never before has the threat been so real ... and yet so nonexistent.
Sociologist Philip Engstand is madly in love with his
girlfriend, Alice Coombs, a particle physicist. The book, narrated by
Philip, opens with the unveiling of an experiment Alice and her
coworkers at (fictional) Beauchamp University in California have been
working on. They have created a void in the universe, an actual little
black hole right in their lab, hovering over a table. Immediately,
Alice is drawn to the space, which the scientists have taken to calling
Lack. She starts spending late evenings at the lab with Lack, which
worries Philip. What he thought was an extreme interest in her work
turns into a rift in their relationship. Alice cancels all the classes
she teaches and starts spending all her time in the lab. Lack has
started showing hints of a personality, exhibiting an ability to make
choices, and Alice spends her days testing Lack’s choice in items. She
pushes things across the table, into Lack. Some pass right through to
the other end, but occasionally, something disappears inside.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 17 January 2008 |
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by Tom Robbins
Bantam Books, 1980, 277 pages
Of the 6 billion people on the
planet, 1 percent of them have red hair. Until recently (or possibly
still), redheads had been regarded in many cultures as evil or
other-worldly, quick to temper, afraid of the sun. So, it makes perfect
sense that Tom Robbins, himself a 1-percenter, would fuse redheaded
lore with the angst of love and teenagedom.
Lusty, busty, redheaded Leigh-Cheri could almost pass for a
normal teenager, were it not for the fact that she is a princess from
deposed European royalty under CIA-protection in suburban Seattle. She
lives with her mother, Queen Tilli, who is fond of opera and her
Chihuahua, and her father, King Max, who loves to gamble and has a
prosthetic heart. (“The noise that his heart valve produced sounded
like two mechanical mice making love in a spoon drawer.”)
Recently, Leigh-Cheri has been expelled from school for having inappropriate relations with the school jock.
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Written by Patrick Law
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
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by Ayn Rand
1943, 752 pages, Bobbs Merrill
Every once in a while, you
pull a novel from the stacks that unexpectedly delivers a philosophical
kick to the head. I didn’t know much about “The Fountainhead,” by Ayn
Rand, until my brother, an architecture student, handed it to me.
Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as a virtue was familiar, and I knew
the book had something to do with architecture, but I had no idea that,
in the midst of reading it, I would be forced to question some of my
deepest held convictions.
Comfortable Americans are often made to feel guilty because of
their positions in life. At times, the guilt is justified—we are a
greedy, consumptive lot. This guilt often motivates people to adopt a
life of self-sacrifice. They serve others instead of serving
themselves. But what is lost in this gesture of altruism? Everything,
according to Rand. The practice of self-sacrifice eliminates any chance
of individual, creative accomplishment, the kind of accomplishment that
pushes human progress forward. It’s a philosophy that shakes human
motivation—my own included—down to its foundation.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 20 December 2007 |
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by Tony Johnston
illustrations by Wallace Tripp
1974, 30 pages, Dell Publishing
One snowy day, Mole and Troll
decide that, with Christmas fast approaching, it would be a perfect
time to pick out a Christmas tree. So, they get all bundled up in their
coats, hats and scarves and set off into the forest to choose one. Mole
could hardly contain his excitement.
“‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘I will take that one and that one. No, wait! I want those three and that little one and that one, too!’”
Troll has to rein Mole in a little before he chops down all the
trees in the woods. So, Troll decides he will spin Mole around and
whichever tree Mole staggers into first, that will be the one they
pick.
“So Mole covered his eyes. Troll spun him around many times.
Mole planned on peeking through his fingers to make a good choice. But
he got too dizzy. He wobbled smack into a little tree. It was a fat
sugar pine with fluffy branches, a deep piny smell, and resin dripping
down the trunk.
“‘Perfect!’ cried Troll. ‘Good choice, Mole!’
“‘Thanks,’ said Mole, wobbling around in a big circle.”
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 05 December 2007 |
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by Julie Andrews Edwards
Harper Collins Children’s Books, 1974, 277 pages
Long before
Harry Potter was introduced, there were other Potters in
literature—Ben, Tom and Lindy, to be exact. Mary Poppins, aka Julie
Andrews Edwards, brought them into existence two decades before J.K.
Rowling had written a word about the boy wonder of Hogwarts. The
similarities between Harry and the other Potters are remarkable. They
are all young, restless children leading dull lives who learn that
there are, in fact, other places and creatures out there in the world,
unbeknownst to most adults. Wait, that’s almost every kids’ story ...
The Potter children of Edwards’ book learn about a giant
mythical creature when they knock on Professor Savant’s door while
trick-or-treating one Halloween, and he invites them inside to teach
them about Whangdoodleland. (Gosh, that sounds so much dirtier than it
was meant to be. And, oh yeah. Remember, children: don’t talk to
strangers.)
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 22 November 2007 |
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by Shirley Jackson
214 pages, Viking Penguin, 1962
When Shirley Jackson’s short
story “The Lottery,” about the evil underbelly of a normal, quaint,
American town, first appeared in the New Yorker in 1948, it shook the
literary world—and the country—to its core. Here was a seemingly normal
woman, living a quiet family life, raising a slew of kids in Vermont,
who turned out to be a housewife with fangs. People found it
fascinating … and unsettling. How could a woman, a mother, think such
evil things? Jackson’s refusal to answer the hundreds of queries that
poured in fueled the mystery.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 31 October 2007 |
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by Ian Frazier
1986, 123 pages, Picador
Don’t be put off by the title. Well,
certainly, we encourage you to be turned off by the title, but just
because it sounds like a how-to book authored by Oedipus, don’t let it
deter you from picking it up. “Dating Your Mom” is actually a hilarious
collection of essays by author and frequent New Yorker contributor Ian
Frazier.
Don’t be put off by the author photo, either. Plenty of cool
guys have ponytails. Well, OK, we can only think of one other (Jeremy
Heflin, we’re talking about you). But, there are always exceptions to
the rule. Ian Frazier happens to be one of them.
In the opening essay, “The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo (Liner
Notes from the New Best-Selling Album),” Frazier imagines the
personalities of the infamous English writers’ collective, which
claimed such luminaries as Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey,
performing a show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, not so much
as authors, but as rock stars. It’s a howlingly funny literary “Behind
the Music.”
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Written by staff writer
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Wednesday, 17 October 2007 |
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The Electrical League of Cleveland, 1931
Ok, so this isn’t really a book, but it’s a whole lot of fun.
From the introduction:
Living electrically is a modern art. It contributes at once to
the convenience and comfort, the pride and pleasure, the health and
happiness of the home and the family. It is an art in which every woman
should be well versed.
The woman who understands the Art of Living Electrically can become
truly a queen of the home, with the equal of an army of well-trained
servants at her command.
The booklet then goes on to describe the uses and value of 59
essential electrical appliances in quaint, sexist terminology, with
recipes.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 03 October 2007 |
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by Donna Tartt
1992, 503 pages, Ivy Books
Like any good book, “The Secret
History” begins with a conflict. Richard Papen feels he doesn’t belong
in California. Sure, it’s where he’s lived his whole life, but from a
young age, he’s felt that the sunshiny-polyestery-TV dinnerness of his
everyday existence belonged to someone else. He’s embarrassed by his
parents, moody and longing for escape. In short, he’s like every other
teenager. But Richard, having recently graduated high school, secretly
enrolls in Hampden College in Vermont. He’s been hiding a brochure for
the school in his closet, like porn, taking it out to stare at pictures
of the campus and the fall foliage. When he’s accepted, his parents
begrudgingly let him go.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007 |
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by William Monahan
223 pages, Riverhead Books
We know, we know—Tome Raider is
supposed to be about old books, and “Light House” was written in 2000.
While seven years may not seem like a long time (unless you’re
referring to milk or hamsters), if you’ve never encountered “Light
House” before, you’ve gone seven years too long without reading the
funniest book ever. William Monahan, who recently picked up an Oscar
for Best Screenplay for “The Departed,” has written a perverse and
hilariously disturbing novel.
Think “Fawlty Towers” meets “Scarface.”
Tim Picasso is an amazingly talented art student, but too
uncompromising to make it in the commercial art world. So, to make a
little money, he takes a job in Florida running drugs for Jesus Castro,
a Shakespear-quoting Spanish gangster. Tim’s dally with crime is brief,
and he soon decides instead to steal a huge amount of money from Jesus
and take off for New England to hide out.
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Written by Liberty Hardy
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Thursday, 06 September 2007 |
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by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1774, 167 pages
Love sucks. If you’re breathing, at some
point in your life, love has probably bashed you over the head ... and
then continued to kick you while you were down until you thought you
might die. While most people believe the torment they experience over
unrequited love is exclusive to them, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”
realistically attests to the fact that heartbreak began occurring way
before you confessed your love for someone, only to have him or her
remove you as a MySpace friend.
“Sorrows” is the dramatic tale of Werther, a passionate young
artist in Germany, told mostly through a series of letters written to
his friend Wilhelm. Werther travels through the country to better his
name and reputation in society by befriending people in higher
standing. But, not long after leaving on his journey, he visits the
town of Wahlheim, where he is immediately smitten with a girl named
Lotte. You can tell just by reading the title that things aren’t going
to go well for poor Werther.
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Written by Dave Karlotski
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Friday, 17 August 2007 |
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by Edgar Rice Burroughs
1913
Make no mistake: this is your grandfather’s Mars.
Or, maybe, your great-grandfather’s. Originally published
serially in All-Story Magazine in 1913, “The Gods of Mars” is the
second of 11 books that Edgar Rice Burroughs set on Mars—a Mars with
breathable air and peopled with warring civilizations using fantastic
technologies, both barbaric and advanced - written before anyone could
prove otherwise.
“The Gods of Mars” follows the adventures of Captain John Carter
of Virgina, a man who was transported to Mars by uncertain means and
for unknown reasons to find that the lesser gravity of the red planet
makes human muscles super-powered. He can out-run, out-jump and
out-fight any Martian he faces, even the 8-foot tall, four-armed green
warrior Martians.
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