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1.Drown by: Junot Díaz July 01, 1997
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $14.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $6.88
Junot Diaz has accomplished something rare in this collection of short stories: he's created an authentic voice for a cast of characters we desperately need to hear from but have previously been silent. More impressive, he does so without the cheap cynicism or affected posturing which characterizes so much "cutting edge" writing. He writes with sincerity, even pathos, while his unforgettable stories cut straight to the bone.

2.Unaccustomed Earth by: Jhumpa Lahiri April 01, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $25.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $16.50 You Save: $8.50 (34%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $15.00
It was definitely entertaining (I might have used "gripping" if it were a novel) enough to from cover to cover without a break. Even though it was about immigrant families from West Bengal (which I have never visited) living mostly on the East Coast of America (in cities and towns I have never heard of), she created a sense of association, call it connection, with the characters. The little girl torn between two different cultures at home and at school, the teenager struggling in college and thereafter to prove herself, the accomplished professional resigning to an arranged marriage "to fix it", the expectant mom of a toddler, the parents wanting their kids to have the best of both worlds... they all hit home for this particular audience. Not sure if it would be the same outside ... Read More

3.Tree of Smoke: A Novel by: Denis Johnson September 02, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $16.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $6.75
What a long-winded novel that has been falsely praised. These character are flat, poorly written, and offer no degree of complexity. I would hope this is not America's finest writer for we are in big trouble if it is. If you want a novel that reveals the complicated world of Vietnam, read The Things They Carried.

4.Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by: Per Petterson April 29, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $14.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $7.71
I don't read as much as I would like and that is usually my fault. Sometimes it is the book's fault for not pulling me in. This one had no trouble and the sparse prose is perfectly descriptive of the state of mind of both the man and boy in this novel. I felt I could almost smell the air in the book with barely a word to describe it, but somehow it comes across. The writing is simple yet leaves you touched by this character's experience. It is like wandering into a room you used to inhabit as a child. You can pinpoint the exact smell but something pulls a flood of emotion back into your consciousness that has been lost somewhere. This book feels like that throughout and is one of the best books I have read since "East of Eden". Like life, it is neither happy nor sad, but simply is what we make of it.

5.The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) by: Anne Enright September 10, 2007
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $14.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $1.84
`The Gathering' happens because Liam Hegarty dies suddenly. Through the words of his beloved sister Veronica who collects his body and organizes the funeral, we learn the tale of the Hegarty family and a terrible secret from the distant past which she shares with Liam. Collecting her thoughts, feelings and memories hopping through three generations I suppose reflects an intrinsic quality, a certain originality in this novel, but it still did not satisfy me. The display of thoughts and situations that flow and scatter chasing each other in almost every page is often too disjointed for my liking. This probably conveys Veronica's pain and state of mind in an authentic way -facing the irreversible past and struggling with grief, seeking redemption- but I found that past and present interchanging swiftly, ... Read More

6.Then We Came to the End: A Novel by: Joshua Ferris February 26, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $13.99 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $11.19 You Save: $2.80 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $2.89
Very rarely does a book inspire me to laugh out loud, much less gasp or start tearing up. This book did all of that (which led to some embarrassing moments on the train) and more. I read it several months ago and still think about it at least once a day - although I do work in an office in Chicago that is facing layoffs, so the parallels are undeniable. But I don't want to sell Ferris short - the book would be brilliant even if it didn't resonate with my real life. The book's real triumph for me (and perhaps the reason some people are so put off by it) is that so much happens by inference, subtext, and implication. With the single (startling, unexpected, heartbreaking) exception, we never really get inside the perspective of the characters. We see their actions, listen to their words, hear their perspective ... Read More

7.The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Oprah Book Club #62) by: David Wroblewski September 19, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $25.95 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $14.27 You Save: $11.68 (45%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $13.95
I am disappointed once again with a hyped-up book. I thought it would be a beautiful story about a mute boy and his beloved dogs, but it wasn't! The first part was all I'd hoped I'd be reading until the whole thing turned south. Instead of being a beautiful story, it rather quickly turned dark and ugly, and became a haunting tragedy. I don't like misery and disheartening sadness, and want to know ahead of time if that's what a book is. This one was represented to be something wonderful, and it was anything but that, apart from the wonderful way he gave the dogs personality. If he'd stayed with that, he would have written a spectacular novel. When people say they hated for it to end, what on earth were they enjoying? The author could have written such a marvelous story, as he started to in the beginning, but he certainly changed ... Read More

8.The Savage Detectives: A Novel by: Roberto Bolano March 04, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $15.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $8.85
The book is very well written, but I just kept asking myself what was the point of 500+ well-written pages about characters that I found to be fairly cliche, and not a lot happens. In other words, I found the overall book to be just self indulgent: "here - look how well I can write about nothing in particular!". Full disclosure: I grew up in Brazil and mostly studied there, so the characters in this book felt a lot like the middle class marxists that I met in high school and college. Maybe if you're meeting these characters for the first time through the book they'll be more interesting.

9.The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) by: Aravind Adiga October 14, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $14.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $8.40 You Save: $5.60 (40%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $7.40
This book was simply amazing. Adiga put together a fascinating portrait of a city, some beautiful dark comedy, but what absolutely made me unable to put down this book was the voice of the main character. This is a "told" story. In a letter to a Chinese official coming to visit Bangalore, Balram unfolds the story of his life, and it is just utterly perfect. I generally don't prefer this kind of story-telling, but Aravind Adiga did it without a single misstep, and the book reads so smoothly. This book was dark, it was funny, it addressed both great truths and small lies, and it offered the reader a peek at a different world. I can't recommend this book enough.

10.Lush Life: A Novel by: Richard Price March 04, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $26.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $17.16 You Save: $8.84 (34%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $4.13
I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out where he's going with the plot. There are too many characters to keep up with and it drags on and on and on.

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