Road Angels: Searching For Home On America's Coast of Dreams
by Kent Nerburn
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (19 June, 2001)
list price: $24.00
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Reviews (11)

A One Sitting Read!
A great read -- one of those one sitting books.

Nerburn lives in Minnesota but in mid-life gets a hankering to re-explore the west coast he remembers from his college years.

Some similarities to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Makes me want to read some of the other things he's written.

A Poetic, Gripping Journey
Kent Nerburn's latest book is not only a road trip but a mind trip. It was a genuine pleasure to join Kent on his trek of re-discovery, and such are his descriptive and narrative talents, that the reader feels like a traveling companion -- as if Kent were telling you the story while you rode along in his car, or hoofed a trail beside him. His insights into American culture, human nature, and spirituality are keen and rewarding. This is a well-crafted book by an author who knows readers.

hard to figure
I read this book twice.It is either very confused or very brilliant.On the second reading I decided it was brilliant.This is a very penetrating analysis of some very big issues about what it means to be an American.Very poetic, too.Elusive and hard to categorize. Kind of travel, kind of cultural criticism. Weird religious overtones.This is a good writer, maybe a great one. ... Read more

Isbn: 0060698683
Sales Rank: 485222
Subjects:  1. 20th Century Description And Travel    2. Customs & Traditions    3. Description and travel    4. Essays & Travelogues    5. General    6. Nerburn, Kent,    7. North America    8. Pacific Coast (U.S.)    9. Pacific States    10. Social life and customs    11. Travel    12. Travel - General    13. United States - West - Pacific (General)    14. Biography & Autobiography / General    15. Nerburn, Kent    16. Philosophy   

To Be Someone : A Novel
by LOUISE VOSS
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (02 October, 2001)
list price: $23.00 -- our price: $23.00
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Reviews (11)

Worth your time (and money!)
Helena Nicholls was once a successful and well known rock star. Now in her early thirties, her star has faded a bit since her glory days and she's working as a morning DJ in London and creating quite a buzz with her all-request format highlighting important glimpses into her listeners lives. While Helena's working life seems to be in order her emotional life is quite another story. After meeting up with a former band member at an awards ceremony Helena is coerced into temporarily mending her woes with a dose of cocaine. This poor choice leads to a horrifyingly stupid and very public accident that leaves her badly disfigured and makes all the tabloids. Her weaselly boss visits her hospital bed with news that he intends to give her plenty of time to heal and that she can come back to work doing the graveyard shift (what a guy, eh?). She's furious and terribly depressed and comes up with "The Plan". "The Plan" will be her ultimate goodbye to the world in which she'll write up a request list of her own. Each song she plays during her final show will remind her of a special memory from her past which she'll share with her listeners.

This book tackles some weighty subjects; serious illness, imperfect selfish parents and suicidal thoughts but it is also just witty enough to keep one from feeling thoroughly depressed. 30ish Helena is a broken, jaded, lonely and emotionally drained young woman who, being on the road for a good chunk of her life, never took the time to form close friendships outside of her male bandmates and her childhood friend Sam. As she's recovering from her accident she meets Toby, a cute guy with a young daughter and a comatose wife. Toby and Helena make an immediate connection, becoming fast friends and nearly falling in love (all while Toby's wife lies helpless just a few doors away). If this were the only version of Helena I'd have put the book away in disgust.

Fortunately, Helena's life is doled out chapter by chapter (alternating between current day and the past) and we get to know her intimately. We watch her suffer all of life's little and much larger hurts as she stumbles through life. Helena is easy to relate to as a chubby heartbroken youngster pulled ruthlessly away from her best friend Sam when her parents relocate from London to America. Her awkwardness and desire to fit in are realistically described and are often painfully funny. Eventually Helena finds her own niche in the world as she discovers her passion, bass guitar, and meets up with and becomes bandmates with Justin (an unlikely match since he's the school hunk and she's still chubby and thought of as a bit odd). The two begin a band called "Blue Idea" and become incredibly famous but Helena's life is filled with an impending sense of doom when Sam becomes ill. The band eventually breaks up and when Helena doesn't quite know what to do with herself and wallows in complete self-despair it is easy to sympathize with her pain and feelings of hopelessness.

Helena's playlist for the "The Plan" highlights the most important points in her life and once I started I found it extremely difficult to put the book down. "To Be Someone" is often painful to read (I dare you to get through this without wetting a few tissues) but it's very real and filled with life, emotion and humor. I'm nearly as jaded as Helena (but not nearly as famous!) and very few books move me to tears or laughter these days but this book involved me emotionally from beginning to end and I'm very glad I took the time to read it.

The Best story i have ever read
To be someone is one of greatest story that I have every read. I must say that I bought this story cause the title of the book took my interest. Then when I read the whole story I thought that it was worth reading, it tells you the story of a woman from her childhood, teenage and being a pop star till her mid age and deals with all issues and problems that she faced in the life. I felt that this story was written very well that I could imagine it as a movie.
I really loved it and I am waiting for more books from Louise Voss.

If you love music, read this
This is an impressive debut from Louise Voss and will appeal to all those thirtysomethings who love music and who still remember well the agonies of growing up.

The novel is cleverly constructed, the characters are well drawn and there are some great jokes. This is a moving evocation of the struggles ofcoming of age and achieving self-acceptance; it contains many poignant moments that chime powerfully with this reader's own experiences. To Be Someone will get you humming along. Enjoy it; I did. ... Read more

Isbn: 0609608924
Sales Rank: 1279520
Subjects:  1. Accident victims    2. Disfigured persons    3. English First Novelists    4. Fiction    5. Fiction - General    6. General    7. Hospital patients    8. Psychological    9. Women rock musicians    10. Fiction / General   

Pygmalion (Enriched Classics)
by George Bernard Shaw
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (15 November, 1989)
list price: $5.50 -- our price: $5.50
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Editorial Review

This bold 1938 production of George Bernard Shaw's famous play about a linguist who turns a Cockney flower peddler into a princess was codirected by Anthony Asquith (The Browning Version) and star Leslie Howard, who brings a calculated coldness to the character of Henry Higgins. There's no My Fair Lady sugarcoating here: Higgins is a brute using language as a weapon of class war and patriarchal subjugation of women. He's a likable brute, mind you, but a bully nonetheless, and his molding of poor Eliza (Wendy Hiller) into a Cinderella story is not a pretty sight. Everyone in the cast is in perfect accord with this production's take on Shaw's tale, and while this Pygmalion is a fairly radical enterprise, it is also very funny and handsomely realized. Hiller and Howard have never been better, and the rest of the cast, including Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr, Scott Sunderland, and Jean Cadell, can't be improved upon. Edited by David Lean, who eventually directed Brief Encounter and Lawrence of Arabia. --Tom Keogh ... Read more

Reviews (64)

~Professor Higgins vs. Eliza Doolittle~ A Review...
Pygmalion is the predecessor to the musical My Fair Lady, but saying that, it undoubtedly rings true as the best version of the popular George Bernard Shaw play. This 1938 film version stars Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins, a teacher and hobbyist of phonetics. Engrossed in this trade, he stumbles across a "cockney guttersnipe," flower peddler Eliza Doolittle (played by Wendy Hiller in her film debut). He takes on a bet with his new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering, and proclaims that in a short time, he can transform her into a proper lady and pass her off as "The Queen of Sheba."
What follows is rigorous training in dialogue and etiquette. From the famous `Marbles in Mouth' exercise ("I swallowed one!") to the final test at the Transylvanian Ball, hilarity and poignant antics ensue. The film shows us a budding friendship between teacher and pupil, even though said characters come within inches of striking the other down in tense moments of their relationship. Pygmalion shows "how deliciously low" Professor Higgins is. There is only one fault in his seemingly perfect facade (besides his swearing): his unsuccessful attempt to see Eliza not just as a guinea pig, but as a human being under her yowling dialect and uncouth manners. Henry's mother couldn't have put it more perfectly, saying that not once has he praised, petted, or admired Eliza for her work. Because of his lack of feeling towards Eliza, he gets a taste of his own medicine when Eliza threatens to forget and leave him.
Traditionally put in the Romance genre, Shaw never intended Pygmalion to be so. In an epilogue for the play that never came into the light, he writes that Eliza and Freddy do get married. He won an Oscar for the film's screenplay, and although in public he loathed having received the award, it was told that he proudly displayed it and showed it off to his friends in private.
Pygmalion is one of Howard's great masterpieces. His facial expressions can't be beat, his silvery voice cannot be overlooked, and his physical magnanimity is priceless. Shaw personally picked Hiller to play Eliza and it's crystal clear why he did. She is a treat to watch as a poor flower girl-turned-duchess. Other praiseworthy performances include Wilfrid Lawson as Alfred Doolittle, Marie Lohr as Mrs. Higgins, and Scott Sunderland as Colonel Pickering (Oh, do be reasonable!)
DVD wise: Classic black and white. I did find troubles with the closed captioning because on default, my DVD played viewed them. I had to consult my player manual to try and see how to take them off because the DVD itself doesn't offer an option. Comes with chapters and a Color Bar menu (don't know what that's all about!)
Pygmalion is a classic! Do not pass up the opportunity to place this in your collection. Whether you're a Howard fan or not, Pygmalion is a movie the whole family will enjoy.

The true version of "My Fair Lady."
If you are a true, non-musical theater preservationist like me, I advise you to skip "My Fair Lady," and read this first. This captures Shaw's characters in all of their original, deliciously sadistic glory. With Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe's musical you get half-backed clones of these characters, not to mention a changed ending that completely insults your intelligence and totally contradicts what the characters of Shaw's play are all about. However, if you are one of those wimpy "TV and Movie Generation"musical enthusiasts who only likes happy endings, ignore this wonderful piece of theater literature and rent the movie starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. You won't be disappointed.

A bit didactic but full of fun, gaiety, humor & Shavian wit
Published as a play in 1916, 'Pygmalion' is one of Shah's play
not heavy on philosophy. I, personally feel that his plays heavy
on philosophy are his best - 'Man and Superman', 'St.
Joan', 'Androcles and the Lion' et al. Among his plays of 'not
heavy on philosophy' genre, I rate 'Pygmalion' as one of the
best. It is full of fun, gaiety, humor, Shavian wit and is a wee
bit didactic. As Shaw wrote in the preface of 'Man and
Superman', that all good, great writing should be didactic. So,
even in the mildly didactic 'Pygmalion', Shaw had more than one
axe to grind so to say.

The central theme of Pygmalion is the gift of speech in human
beings. Shaw has tried to depict as to how a person speaks
affects their own personality and the people around. As a
corollary to this theme, Shaw hoped to popularize the science of
phonetics. In the short preface of the play, Shaw also makes a
plea for enhancement of the English alphabet (with it's too few
vowels and few consonants) to make English reading pronunciation
rational. Both his wishes of popularizing phonetics and getting
the English alphabet enlarged remain unfulfilled even today,
perhaps a measure of how much ahead of the times he was or still
is!

The locale is London's Covent Garden vegetable market. The time
is late night. It is pouring heavily, everybody is seeking the
shelter of a church's portico. Among the shelter seekers is an
impoverished, bedraggled flower girl Liza with a terrible
cockney accent. Liza is trying to peddle her flowers to the
crowd of shelter seekers. A middle- aged gentleman, professor
Higgins is taking down her speech (in Bells Visible Speech) in
his notebook. Professor Higgins is an eccentric phonetician,
expert on London accents and can place a person by their accent
to the street they originate from. One other shelter seeker is
an ex-military man, Colonel Pickering (also middle aged) with a
deep interest in phonetics. As professor Higgins Colonel
Pickering get talking, Higgins bemoans the terrible accent of
Liza (most depressing and disgusting sounds) and boasts that if
given a chance to teach and train her to speak for three months,
he could pass her off as a duchess on the basis of her fine way
of speaking! It comes about that Colonel Pickering is willing to
bear the expense of teaching Liza to speak by Higgins. The rest
of the play is about Liza 'the live doll' learning to speak like
a Duchess from two confirmed bachelors Higgins and Pickering and
whether they are able to pass her off as a duchess.

The woman protagonist character of the play Liza like all Shaw's
woman protagonist character is strong willed and assertive.
Having to endure during her learning the overbearing ways,
domineering mien, downright bullying from a socially superior
Higgins her teacher, she manages to hold her own. In the latter
stages of the play, she even manages to get the better of him
and Higgins has to tamely acknowledge that he has made a 'woman'
of her after all. (a lame defence) Although there is a romantic
angle, (Liza and Freddy) the relationship between Liza vis-à-vis
Higgins and Pickering are pivotal, focal relationships of the
play. The Liza, Freddy romance is a relegated affair. I feel
only Shaw could do this i.e. make a non-romantic relationship so
interesting over the other. But then Shaw loved debunking
popular notions. All in all a much readable play. ... Read more

Isbn: 0671704966
Subjects:  1. English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh    2. General    3. Plays    4. Plays / Drama    5. Drama / General   

Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 April, 2001)
list price: $8.99 -- our price: $8.09
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Editorial Review

Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis." What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors' big end-of-summer party? Or maybe it's because her parents' only form of communication is Post-It notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why she's been struck mute...

Laurie Halse Anderson's first novel is a stunning and sympathetic tribute to the teenage outcast. The triumphant ending, in which Melinda finds her voice, is cause for cheering (while many readers might also shed a tear or two). After reading Speak, it will be hard for any teen to look at the class scapegoat again without a measure of compassion and understanding for that person--who may be screaming beneath the silence. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert ... Read more

Reviews (847)

Public high school as microcosm of world
The narrator of this book, Melinda, is a 9th grader at a high school in Syracuse, New York.She is an only child who lives with her parents, toward whom she shows about an inch of love, if that.

Well, you can't blame her.She was raped at the age of 13, after she got drunk at a house party.No wonder she seems so negative about everything.

This book goes fast.There's lots of dialogue and many lines where Melinda simply indicates that she says nothing, by putting "Me:" followed by blank space.Easy reading for high school students.

It was funny, but so true, about the class systems that develop in high school.They reflect the classes in the world at large.Melinda speaks from the heart about her boredom with certain courses, certain teachers, and "Principal Principal."

The author, Anderson, puts forth the idea that Melinda is maladjusted because she was raped.It was a tragedy that she was raped, but she seems to be otherwise better adjusted than many of the other students.She has adapted, basically by being quiet and not saying anything, thus the title, "Speak."She finally wants to open up, to her art teacher, at the end of the book.

This book supports the notion that high school should not be forced on young people.Puberty rites occur when a child reaches age 12, and that's when they used to become adults.Not anymore.People in high school are treated like babies, and most of them respond in kind.

This dynamic is quite evident at Merriweather High School, the Blue Devils, or Hornets, or..........?

Being pushed around, not only by Andy the Beast, her attacker, but also by her peers and her parents, poor Melinda has to retreat into a fantasy world, in a janitor's closet at the school.Melinda is an adult, not because she was raped, but because she's old enough to make her own decisions.But do we let her?Heck, no!Kids are kids until they're 21, anymore, and even then it's questionable sometimes.

No wonder public high schools are so messed up.This book will help you to see that.I was a school teacher once, and this book describes most of the reasons I disliked the job intensely.Teachers, for the most part, are simply surrogate parents.Thank goodness for those few rebels, like Melinda's art teacher, Mr. Freeman, who can go against the tide and actually let young people be the decision-makers they can be.

Diximus.

Peer Presser
I enjoyed this book very much. It was a little slow moving, but it still caught my interest because of the overall moral.

This book is about a freshmen girl in high school, Melinda. She was the average teenager, but during an at-the-end-of-summer party something horrible happened. Even though something bad had happened to Melinda, people wouldn't talk to her and made her feel bad for calling the cops. They did this because Melinda never told anyone. She kept this big secret to herself, and lost all of her friends over calling the cops. Through out this story Melinda deals with kids that don't understand, and an Art project in which she must draw a real tree. She does make some friends and even finds a hid-away in a janitor's closet. But overall, she gets through a horrible experience in her life.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the realness of a summer ending party. Melinda had a big secret that she kept hidden. I still don't know why she did keep it hidden, but for some reason she must have thought that she was responsible for what had happened. Melinda was a character I could relate to, and maybe this is why I loved this book so much. 2 thumps-up to Laurie Halse Anderson. I loved this book, and I hope you do too.

Review
Melinda busted an end of the summer party by calling the police. The night of the party something happened to her (something she can never forget). Since she called the police her old friends will not talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her. On the first day of school a boy that was sitting behind her on the bus, unwrapped his breakfast then shot the wrapper at the back of her head. One of the basketball players hit her square in the face with mash potatoes and gravy. The whole lunchroom laughed at her. Her ex-best friend Rachel and some kids were sitting behind her and they just laughed at her. Rachel was the person in the whole galaxy that Melinda was dying to tell her what really happened. The person Melinda hated, because of the night at the party was Andy Evens.
I would recommend Speak to anyone who, because it was a good story. You will not want to put this book down, because you will want to know what comes next.


... Read more

Isbn: 014131088X
Subjects:  1. Children's 12-Up - Fiction - General    2. Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12)    3. Emotional problems    4. Fiction    5. General    6. High schools    7. Juvenile Fiction    8. Rape    9. Schools    10. Social Situations - Adolescence    11. Social Situations - Physical & Emotional Abuse    12. Juvenile Fiction / General   

Olivia and Jai
by Rebecca Ryman
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (01 August, 1990)
list price: $19.95
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Reviews (24)

Superb historical love story fiction
I can't say enough about this book.It is one of my absolute favorites. My favorite historical fictions alway seem set in India.I call it a love story because one of the central themes is love but its not very "romancy."This novel is set in 1848, prior to the Sepoy Mutiny.Olivia is an American girl sent to Calcutta for 1 year in the hopes of her Aunt to find a proper husband.Of course, Olivia being a brash American is not at all interested in that but in the India that none of the English want to know.

She meets the engimatic Jai Raventhorne, who is of mixed blood, an "Eurasian".He has pulled himself out of the gutter to become a wealthy, yet bitter, businessman.She soon falls in love while secretly meeting him.I don't think I'll give much away by saying there is a huge betrayal that sets the tone for the rest of the book.Revenge is probably an even more important theme than romance.

The book is one that you don't want to end.You really fall for the characters.The book does have a sequel, "Veil of Illusion" which is good (because you love the characters so much) but not nearly as good as "olivia and Jai."

If you like this type of book, my other absolute favorites in the Indian historical fiction that are first rate include "Zemindar" by Valerie Fitzgerald and "Shadow of the Moon" by M.M. Kaye.Those do revolve around the Sepoy Mutiny of the late 1850s.

Rebecca Ryman is a penname for someone who has been born, raised, and lives in India.The background touches really make India come alive for me.

Highly recommend this book!!!

An amazingly leading novel
I keep this book deeply in my heart, as many parts of it I have read over and over again. Never have I read a book so full of passion and intelligently paced for the reader. I have finished this book faster than any book I have ever read.

I have deep interest in romance and history and this book was certainly a great mix of both, with joys and sorrows embedded throughout the pages of Olivia and Jai.

Rebecce Ryman IS a very, very talented author and I , myself would not be able to put in words as how she described Jai Raventhorne, with just the amounts of details necessary , making it an unforgettable and my favourite novel of all times.

I recommend this book to any one who will not be offended in manners of some very tastefully put romance material.

The rhythmic pace of this book, will drive any reader to a point of understanding where your heart will melt into the book itself.

The Best Hard-to-Find Book
Olivia and Jai opened a new world for me.I found the book while I was working at a library, while in high school.Someone had misshelved the book on the children's level where I worked.Curious, I picked it up and did not put it down until I finished it.I was suddenly in love with India.After checking it out from the library several times, I decided I had to have my own copy. But it was the hardest book to find.The used bookstore where I finally found it actually burned down a few months after I bought the book.I guess time was on my side. So to sum it all up-Olivia and Jai is my favorite book and it's the one I most often recommend.It also sparked an interest in the history and culture of India that will always be a favorite subject of mine. ... Read more

Isbn: 0312041462
Sales Rank: 171813
Subjects:  1. 19th century    2. English First Novelists    3. Fiction    4. Fiction - Historical    5. Historical    6. Historical fiction    7. History    8. India    9. Love stories   

Talking to Addison
by Jenny Colgan
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (03 January, 2002)
list price: $23.95 -- our price: $23.95
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Editorial Review

Jenny Colgan's second novel, Talking to Addison, arrives with a flourish following the success of her debut, Amanda's Wedding. Sharp, quirky one-liners complement merciless observations of human foibles and the London scene to make this romantic comedy a cut above the rest.

The story opens with the modern-day heroine Holly trapped in the flat-share from hell with members of Scary Clean Freaks Incorporated, ruled by the obnoxious Carol who "dispensed ... Robert de Niro-to-doomed gangster stares." Even when Holly escapes the suburban inquisition, life still isn't a bed of roses--she's an unemployed florist, in love with a recluse, and being bullied. She's in good company, though, when she moves in with a bunch of equally maladjusted misfits: Josh, a terminally nice boy, has issues; Kate, the high-flying, no-nonsense career girl, wilts every time a married man comes along; and then there's Addison, the drop-dead-gorgeous lodger ("Johnny Depp in geek form") who never leaves his room, already has a girlfriend (albeit over the Internet), and is a certified Star Trek fan.

With Talking to Addison, Colgan ties together her comedic talents and her flair for storytelling to create an offbeat, hilarious tale about an ordinary girl's search for Mr. Right--with the inevitable Mr. Oddballs getting in the way. --Nicola Perry, Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Reviews (24)

Funny Until It Falls Off The Rails
"Talking to Addison" begins as a very quirky, funny, British read, with its protagonist, Holly Livingstone, spewing one liners about and insults to her insane flatmates, coworkers, and the world in general. The author does well in establishing the novel's place and in creating Holly's voice and, to a certain extent, her friends. However, the characters and the subject are all things we've seen and read before, in more successful ways. Holly and her cohorts remain two-dimensional, underemployed, disillusioned twentysomethings. As for the plot, it carries along nicely until the final third where it completely goes off into a far-fetched farce. While the last act holds a few smiles, all I could do was wonder where Addison's mother was in all of this mess, as she completely disappears at the most crucial time. The novel becomes unbelievable and loses any of its earlier charm.

Tremendously funny!
After reading and enjoying Amanda's Wedding, I wasn't sure how Talking to Addison would measure up.I was hoping for a fun, light novel, which I did get, but then there was a bonus -- Talking to Addison was HYSTERICAL!

This book probably has the most real comedy in it that I've ever read.I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.The timing was perfect!The characters were so fantastic and goofy.I loved every second of this book.I hope there is more to come from Jenny Colgan.

Talking to Addison begins with Holly Livingstone living in the land of nightmares.Her roommates are crazy clean freaks, and Holly just can't take it anymore!So she begs her best friend, Josh, to let her move in with him and his roommates.This is where the story really begins.Living in the flat are Kate, a neurotic career-woman, and the ever elusive Addison, who holes up in his cavern of a room instant messaging his agoraphobic girlfriend 3000 miles away.Holly is determined to make him hers, which leads to some very funny scenarios.

I recommend this one very highly.I rarely give chick-lit 5 stars because for the most part they are good, but not earth-shattering.Well, I couldn't help myself on this one!Talking to Addison is super-funny and I think well deserving of the highest praise.

Not You're Typical Chick Lit
Another winner from Jenny Colgan! This book was so fun to read. It was part screwball comedy, part love story. The heroine is not your typical couture loving girl about town. In fact she's practically hopeless in social situations. ... Read more

Isbn: 0446526614
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. Friendship    4. Geeks (Computer enthusiasts)    5. General    6. Humorous    7. Roommates    8. Fiction / General   

Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh
by Mo Yan
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (August, 2001)
list price: $23.95 -- our price: $23.95
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Reviews (2)

His Muses Were Hunger and Loneliness
This is a short story collection that ranges from the prosaic to the poetic. The title story ("Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh") is a delightful tale of an unemployed factory worker who gets incredibly creative and makes out like a bandit until he meets some clients that are out of this world. The Chinese director Zhang Yimou made turned this story into a film called HAPPY DAYS.

Other than the opener, my favorite stories are "Abandoned Child," which makes a strong statement about the continuing practice of female infanticide; "Love Story," about an unlikely love affair set in the countryside; the strange fantasty "Iron Child" about a possible outcome of over-industrialization; and the incredibly poetic "Man and Beast," which the author claims is a sequel to his novel RED SORGHUM (although I missed some of the references, I was enthralled).

In his preface, Mo Yan (which, by the way, is Chinese for "Don't Speak") says his muses were hunger and loneliness. In fact, the author has a unique rapport with the lives of peasants and workers, as opposed to many more intellectual writers in exile such as Gao Xingjiang. I have already read THE GARLIC BALLADS and plan to read more of this fascinating writer.

Simply marvelous
I'm afraid I have nothing intelligent to say about this book. However, this is not a reflection on the quality of the book, which certainly was not lacking, but rather a reflection of my extreme fatigue. In any case, this book is certainly worth a read or two and perhaps even more. ... Read more

Isbn: 1559705655
Sales Rank: 403630
Subjects:  1. Asian - General    2. Fiction    3. Fiction - General    4. Short Stories (single author)    5. Short stories    6. Fiction / General   

Waiting : A Novel (Vintage International)
by HA JIN
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (19 September, 2000)
list price: $13.00 -- our price: $10.40
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Editorial Review

"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin's masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula--and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths about the human heart. Lin Kong is a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage that embarrasses and repels him. (Shuyu has country ways, a withered face, and most humiliating of all, bound feet.) Nevertheless, he's content with his tidy military life, at least until he falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his hospital.Regulations forbid an army officer to divorce without his wife's consent--until 18 years have passed, that is, after which he is free to marry again. So, year after year Lin asks his wife for his freedom, and year after year he returns from the provincial courthouse: still married, still unable to consummate his relationship with Manna. Nothing feeds love like obstacles placed in its way--right? But Jin's novel answers the question of what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet had their romance been stretched out for several decades. In the initial confusion of his chaste love affair, Lin longs for the peace and quiet of his "old rut." Then killing time becomes its own kind of rut, and in the end, he is forced to conclude that he "waited eighteen years just for the sake of waiting."

There's a political allegory here, of course, but it grows naturally from these characters' hearts. Neither Lin nor Manna is especially ideological, and the tumultuous events occurring around them go mostly unnoticed. They meet during a forced military march, and have their first tender moment during an opera about a naval battle. (While the audience shouts, "Down with Japanese Imperialism!" the couple holds hands and gazes dreamily into each other's eyes.) When Lin is in Goose Village one summer, a mutual acquaintance rapes Manna; years later, the rapist appears on a TV report titled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," after having made thousands in construction. Jin resists hammering ideological ironies like these home, but totalitarianism's effects on Lin are clear:

Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.

Ha Jin himself served in the People's Liberation Army, and in fact left his native country for the U.S. only in 1985. That a non-native speaker can produce English of such translucence and power is truly remarkable--but really, his prose is the least of the miracles here. Improbably, Jin makes an unconsummated 18-year love affair loom as urgent as political terror or war, while history-changing events gain the immediacy of a domestic dilemma. Gracefully phrased, impeccably paced, Waiting is the kind of realist novel you thought was no longer being written. --Mary Park ... Read more

Reviews (271)

wait out and chill out, then found out
the life itself is just a cycle, a dog-chasing-its-own-tail marry-go-around. looking for love when you are young, but once all the fire and lust die down, the commonly simpler, the more plain, the not-so-attractive ones are the ones you want to live with.
the only bad thing in your life in the once-upon china was that you have to get the approval of your marriage, either getting into or getting out. and you have to wait out the waiting period to get thenods. but time would play a very subtle trick on you, what goes around turns around, you'd find in the end that you were just running in a circle and would inevitably return to where you've started. so sometimes, chill out might be the better option for you to cool down the blind urge, mentally or physically.

A long-simmering love triangle
This is a well-written story that describes an unconventional love triangle stretched out over two decades.

The protagonists are Lin Kong, a Chinese physician serving his Communist masters faithfully; Shuyu, his peasant wife from an arranged marriage; and Manna Wu, a nurse at Mr. Kong's hospital.

The central drama of the book revolves around Mr. Kong's repeated attempts to divorce his childhood bride so that he can marry Manna Wu.Lin Kong himself is conflicted. On the one hand, he feels shame and guilt over even trying to divorce his wife, as she has done nothing worthy of divorce, faithfully serving both him and his entire family without a single complaint over the years. On the other hand, he longs to be with Manna, a much better match for him by intellect and by temperament -- so his repeated failures at finalizing the divorce fill him with a mild case of self-loathing.

One of the beauties of this book is that it stretches the narrative over nearly 20 years. You live with these characters for twenty years, seeing them change, age, and grow. This kind of story-telling is the antithesis of the whirlwind courtship followed by "and they lived happily ever after" (a la Bridget Jones' Diary).

The backdrop to this story is China, which itself changes dramatically from the 1960s to the 1980s. For a very different sense of China during the same period, I recommend reading the non-fiction "Gang of One" by Fan Shen.

The writing is astounding for someone who didn't learn to write in English until so late in life. I found the external events more dramatic and compelling than Lin's internal conversations with himself, which sometimes felt a little stilted.Still, overall, this is a compelling read and a remarkable achievement for a non-native writer.

Great!
There is no need for me to go into detail what this book is about. I just have to say that this is one of the best books I have read in a while. I love reading books that teach me about different cultures and what goes on in other parts of the world. I am not saying that agree with what went on- with Lin being in love with another womam while being married, but I understand that other cultures look at marriage different than I am use too, I thought what happen to Manna, with the attack was terrible and wish it would have been left out of the storyline. I must say that I loved Lin's brother in law's role in the book-looking out for his sister and all. This is one of the better books out there, I have already ordered more books from this author. GREAT! ... Read more

Isbn: 0375706410
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. Literary    4. Fiction / Literary    5. Reading Group Guide   

The Vine of Desire : A Novel
by CHITRA DIVAKARUNI
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (15 January, 2002)
list price: $23.95 -- our price: $23.95
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Editorial Review

The Vine of Desire is peopled by Indian immigrants and--just as palpably--by their hopes and dreams. As one character says, "All immigrants are dreamers, but they're practical about it. They know what's OK to dream about, and what isn't." Though it's a sequel to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Sister of My Heart, the novel stands alone as an exploration of the contemporary immigrant experience. Anju and Sudha, cousins and best friends since their Calcutta girlhood, find themselves in the Bay Area, Anju with a husband and Sudha with a baby daughter. Each covets what the other has until finally their relationship collapses. Anju finds solace among her fellow Berkeley students, while the beautiful Sudha learns, for the first time, what it's like to pay her own way. Digressive and overwritten, The Vine of Desire can try your patience, but it's so well plotted and compassionately told that you can't help but care about these immigrant dreams. --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Reviews (40)

good material for one episode...
...of a daytime soap opera.
I have to confess I read the book in a fraction of the time I read "Sister of my heart". Almost nothing new has been added to the story. Yet it fills up so many pages. Feelings, ramblings, letters from one character to another. That's the kind of stuff I don't really care about. It adds nothing and makes it difficult to read. This is a pathetic sequel to "Sister of my heart".

Sad story about recovery from grief, finding the right path.
Vine of Desire continues the story of Anju and Sudha whom we met in Sister of My Heart.Even though Sudha and her daughter Dayita had already arrived in California at the end of the previous book, this book begins before they arrive in America to live with Anju and her husband Sunil.I suppose it was to reorient us and to provide insight into Anju's state of mind after the loss of her child.Sudha's visit was meant to help Anju recover from her grief while providing Sudha the time to think about her future now that she is a divorced single mother.But the hurt and desires of the 3 adults living together is not a recipe for healing and they struggle to find the right path.While America allows many personal freedoms they would not have in India, they are bound by the duty, tradition and honor that their heritage teaches.The obvious love triangle - Sunil is married to Anju, but in love with Sudha - adds a great deal of tension.

The author uses several creative writing techniques in this book that were not present in Sister of My Heart.For the most part, they helped me understand the inner conflicts of the characters.In addition to the alternating chapters which show you the point of view of Sudha and Anju (that I was so fond of in Sister of My Heart) there are first person accounts from several of the men in the book including Sunil and chapters narrated in third person.There are also letters back and forth between the mothers in India, the people in America, Sudha's suitors etc.But several of the writing techniques were annoying.The author frequently lists current events with special focus on the O.J. Simpson murder trial.I understood the point of including these newsflashes, but I found it distracting.She also has a tendency to overwrite a moment by repeating the characters feelings or continuing with descriptions of their feelings for longer than I would have liked.

I have a great deal of respect for the way that the author successfully expanded her writing style and in turn expanded the reading experience.It is essentially successful in spite of the minor flaws.But all the characters are drowning in sorrow and confusion and although the end provides a ray of hope, the book is overall very sad.I do recommend it, but don't read this if you are looking for the charming story about the bonds between women that I found in Sister of My Heart.The bonds are still there, but they are sorely tested.

A sequel to THE SISTER OF MY HEART
THE VINE OF DESIRE by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The sequel to her popular SISTER OF MY HEART, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's THE VINE OF DESIRE follows the story of the two "sisters" Anju and Sudha from India to America.While SISTER OF MY HEART focused a lot on their past family history and Indian culture and folklore, THE VINE OF DESIRE centers more on the present, and the relationship of the two sisters which is put into a precarious state by a third person, Anju's husband Sunil.

Anju invites her sister Sudha to live with her and Sunil in America.Sudha is divorced with a baby, and with a shaky future ahead of them both, Anju knew that the only means of survival for Suhda would be to come to America.Sudha leaves behind the love of her life, Ashok, whom she gave her heart to when she was a young girl, but for some reason she refuses to return to him after her failed arranged marriage.And Anju, with her new life in America and her new husband Sunil, is looking for something beyond being just a wife and future mother.While Anju looks for life outside the household, Sunil finds himself distracted by the presence of his sister-in-law, who he has always loved in secret since before he married his wife.And Sudha is fully aware of this.

It's a complicated mess and life does not get any better for Sudha, and gets only worse for Anju and Sunil.Although THE VINE OF DESIRE was not as good a novel as the original book, I still found myself wanting to finish this book to find out whether Anju and Sudha find the happiness they are seeking in America.Is it true that the grass is greener on the other side?Should Sudha have stayed in India and returned to Ashok?The reader is left to find out what happens to both sisters.I recommend THE VINE OF DESIRE to those who have enjoyed SISTER OF MY HEART.For more by Divakaruni, I would suggest reading THE MISTRESS OF SPICES, which is by far her best novel yet. ... Read more

Isbn: 0385497296
Subjects:  1. East Indian American women    2. Female friendship    3. Fiction    4. Fiction - General    5. Literary    6. Romance - General    7. Single mothers    8. Women immigrants    9. Fiction / Literary   

Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!
by Michael Moore
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (19 February, 2002)
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Editorial Review

Stupid White Men, Michael Moore's screed against "Thief-in-Chief" George Bush's power elite, hit No. 1 at Amazon.com within days of publication. Why? It's as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any right-wing bestseller, as irreverent as The Onion, and as noisily entertaining as a wrestling smackdown. Moore offers a more interesting critique of the 2000 election than Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party (he argued with Nader, his old boss, who sacked him), and he's serious when he advocates ousting Bush. But Moore's rage is outrageous, couched in shameless gags and madcap comedy: "Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.... Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!... We are no longer [able] to hold free and fair elections. We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops." Moore's ideas range from on-the-money (Arafat should beat Sharon with Gandhi's nonviolent shame tactics) to over-the-top: blacks should put inflatable white dolls in their cars so racist cops will think they're chauffeurs; the ever-more-Republicanesque Democratic Party should be sued for fraud; "no contributions toward advancing our civilization ever came out of the South [except Faulkner, Hellman, and R.J. Reynolds]," because it's too hot to think straight there; Korean dictator Kim Jong-il "has got to broaden himself beyond porn and John Wayne" by watching better movies, like Dude, Where's My Car? (which contains "all you need to know about America"). Whatever your politics, Stupid White Men should make you blow your stack. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Reviews (1150)

9 in 10 SWM Agree: Moore Has Yet To Be Laid Once In Life!!!!
Boor imposes double-standards. He mocks males as "the weaker sex", yet after citing degrading statistics about more women being under the poverty rate, men are instantly backslid to positions of subjecting women. Boor prevaricates "women still earn less", despite Census Bureau statistics affirming women at record highs in earnings and bachelor-degree holdings, and comprising 45% of executive/managerial occupations in 2002. Women attempt suicide three times greater, and endure depressive, anxiety and eating disorders furiously more, while Boor conceals these to scorn males as "going extinct"!!!! This disparagingly illustrates Boor's nuisance-sickness of misallocating data bent to his agendas to allegedly "support" his one-sidedness.

Moore's comprehensive research uncovered things that are hard to find elsewhere in the media.What especially impressed me were all the connections between members of the Bush administration and large corporations, or the extended Bush family members in power around the nation.Moore is so determined to give non- "stupid white men" their power that he includes a cut out, wallet-sized excerpt from the Federal Voting Rights Act.
I was occasionally thrown off by certain things, like Moore's lengthy argument on why Bush's history with drinking makes him unfit for the white house, or how talk about a decline in the stock market is a diversion created by rich people to cover up the fact that their success is at the expense of lower-wage earners.However, I still consider Moore a credible, insightful writer who has enligthened me, at least.

He's zealous.. i'll give him that!
Ahh Michael Moore... the last angry man!
A man raging violently in his verbal abuse for the system and who in so doing raises many valid points and brings many disregarded facts to the spotlight.
But also a man who in so doing ignores many counter arguments. When you read anything of Moore's you must always remember that though 9 times out of 10 hes probably on to something.. the one time he does screw up.. he screws up. ... Read more

Isbn: 0060392452
Subjects:  1. 1993-2001    2. 2001-    3. American wit and humor    4. Government - U.S. Government    5. Humor    6. Political Process - General    7. Political Process - Political Parties    8. Politics - Current Events    9. Politics and government    10. Topic - Business and Professional    11. Topic - Political    12. United States    13. Political Science / General   

The Blind Assassin
by MARGARET ATWOOD, MARGOT DIONNE
Average Customer Review:
Audio Cassette (05 September, 2000)
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Editorial Review

The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom diesunder ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be:

What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain.

Meanwhile, Atwood immediately launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase's novel, The Blind Assassin, posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fictional parables. Complicated? You bet. But the author puts all this variegation to good use, taking expert measure of our capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to--or prefers to--overlook what's in plain sight. And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters. On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her. --Darya Silver ... Read more

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Reviews (309)

A story of secrets and betrayals.
One thing I absolutely love about Margaret Atwood's novels are the elements of surprise in them. Just when you think you have the story figured out, another plot twist comes along and changes everything you thought you knew.

The Blind Assassin is no different. It's the story of two sisters, Iris and Laura, who are each other's best friends. After their Mother's death and Father's neglect, they take comfort in each other. Both feel responsible and bound to the other one. Just like most sisters, they have secrets they share with each other...and secrets they keep from each other. One secret will have devastating effects on both their lives. An excellent book, and one that will have you reading well into the night to see how things turn out.

Her Best!
The Blind Assassin was the first M. Atwood book I read.I liked the book so much I ran out and bought two of her earlier books (Alias Grace and The Robber Bride), neither of which I liked at all.Read this book if you want to read a great story with terrific writing.Not to be missed.

The Blind Assassin
The Blind Assassin opens with death, the young Laura Chase plunging off a bridge to her doom, which is ruled as an accident, but possibly a suicide. Her sister Iris discovers a collection of notebooks in her possession, notebooks that Laura had left specifically for her to find. Inside these notebooks is, among other things, a novel. Posthumously published, it creates a strong reputation for the deceased woman, critics considering it a tragedy of letters that Chase died so young.

From here, we wander through several chapters of Laura's novel, interspersed with excerpts from newspapers cataloguing other family member's deaths. Laura's novel concerns two young lovers, doing what young lovers do, but between that, the man - nameless for a very long time, an author of pulpy science fiction, and a clear, obvious story-link 'enigma' hook - tells the woman - also nameless - a story about the people of Zycron, a fictional planet. He outlines the customs, beliefs, habits, inserting the details she wants - zombified women, for one - and embellishing upon his own ideas. The story is much, much more interesting than the relationship between the two people, which is hardly understandable. It deals with a blind assassin and a mute young girl, the assassin sent to kill the girl, the girl sentenced to death in a grisly annual ritual to appease the many Gods of Zycron. This fantasy/science fiction blend is quite interesting, and is told through the voice of the male lover, which works to great effect. Rather than slogging through pointless side-story exposition, he and the woman banter, joke, discuss the particulars of the story, enjoying the creating as much as the creation.

Most of the novel is Iris' autobiography, and at the time of narration, she is an old woman. 'The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighbourhood children regard with derision and a little awe; to let the hedges and the weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthen and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet.' She feels helpless, tired and useless, or thoughtful and curious and, in many ways, jealous of her dead sister whose memory taints everything in her life. Far from being Iris, she is Laura's sister, a title which chaffs, even at eighty years old. She is a bitter old woman, bitter and alone, which can sometimes be annoying to read - twenty pages of anger directed at the world is quite tiresome to read - but for the most part is enjoyable, the language 'historical' in a sense, and sad.

Unfortunately, the next 80 pages or so are wasted on a history of Iris's family, from her grandfather
down. This is an interesting section, it is true, but after the intriguing opening, it feels like a robbery. Why would I care about such things when my appetite for the fictional story of Laura has been growing? Perhaps if this section was placed later, or earlier, it would have been more warmly received, but as it is, the insertion seems a mistake.

We are then taken through the particulars of Iris' life, and the reason for the preceding history becomes clear. Clear, but still not appreciated. It is a shame that, with such an interesting opening, we are then forced to ignore and forget about it while a hundred, two hundred pages of family history go by. Happily, this sensation leaves us two hundred or so pages in, as the 'Blind Assassin' chapters come back with great regularity. If this had been kept up for the entirety of the novel, perhaps the problem of the Chase family history would not have existed.

The novel is filled with trite little one-liners to keep us reading, keep us guessing. A shame, because Atwood's writing and plotting is perfectly functional without this. Why do I need to read lines like, 'Aimee's death was not my fault', or 'Compared to where he might be, it's a palace'. The answer is: I don't. And yet there they are, right in the text. It's unfortunate that she felt it was necessary to insert these meaningless foreshadows. As a literary technique, foreshadowing is fantastic, and she uses it often in subtle and clever ways. But keep-me-guessing lines such as these are simply not good enough, and were probably the biggest disappointment of the novel.

But the writing is, for the most part, simply enjoyable to read. Who could not appreciate this: 'We pass a few more franchises - smiling chickens offering platters of their own fried body parts, a grinning Mexican wielding tacos.', or . But then there are less pleasant lines such as: Did I snore? ...I couldn't bring myself to ask. In case you're wondering, vanity never ends.' I hadn't asked; I don't care. But then a passage like this comes along: 'Why is a honeymoon called that? Lune de miel, moon of honey - as if the moon itself is not a cold and airless and barren sphere of pockmarked rock, but soft, golden, luscious - a luminous candied plum, the yellow kind, melting in the mouth and sticky as desire, so achingly sweet it makes your teeth hurt.', and Atwood is well and truly forgiven.

The novels moves along, chronicling Iris' life. It is unfortunate that the young Iris is presented as so vapid, so unaware so - stupid. Thankfully, the older Iris realises this, it is something for which she is quite apologetic and sad. She never fully understood the implications other people had on her life, or the lives of her sister and father. By the time she did, it was far too late. The older Iris is bitter and sad, but she never really descends into angst or insincere emotion - there are times when she chides herself for being melodramatic. This is an interesting way of presenting the story, because frankly, I had no sympathy for the young Iris - whatever happened to her was her own fault, and as the pampered, never-worked-a-day-in-her-life lazy wife of a rich man, the reasons for being 'on her side' are few - but the older Iris is very sympathetic, a sad, sorry woman who demands - and deserves - respect and caring. ... Read more

Isbn: 0553527568
Subjects:  1. Audio - Fiction (Unabridged)    2. Audio Adult: Books On Tape    3. Audiobooks    4. Fiction    5. General    6. Fiction / General   

Snow Falling on Cedars
by DAVID GUTERSON, B.D. WONG
Average Customer Review:
Audio Cassette (26 September, 1995)
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Editorial Review

Fighting the distrust and prejudice of his neighbors on a remote island in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American man who spent time in an internment camp during World War II, finds himself on trial for murder. The histories of the accused and the victim, both fishermen and residents of the small town of San Piedro, unfold as newspaperman Ishmael Chambers embarks on a quest for the truth. Lonely and war-scarred, Chambers strives for justice and inner strength, while coming to terms with his ill-fated love for Hatsue Miyamoto, the wife of the accused. Evocative and beautifully written, Snow Falling on Cedars won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. ... Read more

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• Abridged

Reviews (650)

Everything You Could Want
If you have a short attention span, this book is definitely not for you. Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson is the detailed account of the trial for the murder of a local fisherman. The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, is a quiet, respectful Japanese American. Though the trial is taking place in 1954, you are often taken back to World War Two, and realize how those events affect the story. The characters are easy to identify with, and you find yourself wanting to read more to find out what happens to them. The twists and turns of the plot are captivating, also... for a minute. Then you lose interest in the annoyingly extensive descriptions. Sometimes you find yourself wondering if the end is even worth it. Well, take my word for it- it is. Snow Falling on Cedars has everything you could want to read- comedy, drama, romance, history, gore, etc. It does tend to get slightly graphic at times, but it's humorous. If you aren't a patient person, just put this one down. However, if you like to take your time with a good mystery, this novel is right up your alley.

Multi-layered , absorbing tale.
This novel unfolds from a tight bud to rose in full bloom. It begins with a two-dimensional snapshot of a courtroom scene, and expands with great depth as each person's personal story is unwrapped, like a gift in many layers of tissue paper. I read the "Acknowledgements" only after reading the book. I was very impressed by the amount of research done by the author to create this time and place so vividly and with so much detail.

The cover art of the copy I read truly depicts the colors that ran through my head as I read: icy grays and whites tinged with oily black, cold and dark black-blue seas, the grey of sea gulls, the bluish-gray shadows of the courtroom, muted foggy whites, even the initial somber-colored `auras' of the main characters. You almost need to read this book while wrapped in a quilt by a warm, cheerful fire.

The Island of San Piedro, where most of this story is set, brought me into contact with a lifestyle and place I know nothing about: the seclusion and closeness of a small, island, fishing/farming community and the harshness of life lived in proximity to cold, northwest seaside. The story centers around a murder trial. An islander of Japanese descent is accused of killing another member of the small, remote San Piedro fishing community: a neighbor with whom there was a history of tension between both of their families. The time period is the 1940s and 50s. The small island of San Piedro has not only been affected by WWII but its community had been badly scarred by the incarceration of the U.S. Japanese during the war years. The wounds had never really fully healed.

There is a lesson here in how we judge each other, how little we really know about the inner workings of our closest neighbors, and how quick we are to presume based on outward appearance, especially if someone's cultural heritage is imprinted on their features, and it is different from ours. We learn one thing: war teaches us to hate and the lesson stays with us long after the heads of State have decided to stop the fighting. We also learn, though, that love, real love, can bring out the best we have to give.

Beautiful
This beautifully written book escapes categorization.It is at once a historical novel, a love story, and a murder mystery.Snow Falling on Cedars takes place on an island in Puget Sound.When a white fisherman dies, suspicion is cast upon a Japanese-American fisherman, whose wife, Hatsue, had a childhood romance with Ishmael, the story's narrator and the editor of the local paper.As the trial unfolds, it takes the island back to the trauma it experienced in the 1940s when much of its population was taken away to the Japanese internment camps.

I loved this book because it pulled together so many different elements in such a beautiful way.The characters are true to life and I found myself completely invested in their history and their future.As a lover of history, I really enjoyed the portrayal of the effect the Japanese internment camps had on this small island community, even decades after all its residents had returned.I was taken in by Ishmael's story and engrossed in the trial and its outcome.A beautiful story.

Highly recommended. ... Read more

Isbn: 067944775X
Subjects:  1. Audio - Fiction - General    2. Audio Adult: Books On Tape    3. Fiction    4. Japanese Americans    5. Journalists    6. Literary    7. Suspense    8. Trials (Murder)    9. Washington (State)    10. Fiction / General   

The Journey Home : A Novel
by OLAF OLAFSSON
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (30 October, 2001)
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Editorial Review

Holed away in lush British farm country, Disa runs a small inn with her friend Anthony. They're both past middle age, eccentrics who understand each other too well. Their life consists of early mornings, chores, twilight walks down to the reflecting pool. Guests descend on the place in spring, full of noise and expectation. Disa runs the kitchen, serving up gourmet dinners that have become famous among savvy food critics and tourists.

Olaf Olafsson's The Journey Home is constructed in tight succinct fragments, like journal entries. Shuttling between past and present, it's about reckoning with grief and bad memories in the face of death. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, Disa knows she needs to make a journey back to Iceland, a place that reflects the past back to her: a mother who abandoned her, a fiancé eventually killed by the Nazis.

Although not much directly happens in this novel, great tension develops between the pull of memory and the push of the moment. In Disa, Olafsson (Absolution) has created a vibrant character who wants to overcome sadness by plunging into the sensual. She's always cooking up fantastic meals, and the descriptions of food are truly mouthwatering: trout "fried with a sprinkling of ground almonds," apples "which I love to bake after they have soaked in port for a long, quiet afternoon." The powerful smells and sights of life rescue Disa from fear--if she doesn't quite believe in God, she believes in the immediacy of the world. This is the novel's subtly redemptive tendency, laid out piece by piece in Disa's soothing melancholy voice: "Sometimes you have to get a grip on yourself to keep your thoughts under control, but it's worth it. The reward is just around the next corner, whether it is a clutch of perfect eggs in a basket or the sound of birdsong on a still day. The soul can take delight in small things if one's dreams only leave it in peace long enough." --Emily White ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Familiar, no?
If you enjoy the prose of this book, you will no doubt enjoy the literary craftings of MFK Fisher as well.It is no cooincidence; passages from this text are lifted directly from the late Ms. Fisher's works, with no more than a name here or there altered to make it seem "original."Read the true original instead.

You can go home again, and you must.
In the tiniest of vignettes, most only a page or two long, Olafsson creates a pointillist portrait of Disa, a middle-aged Icelandic woman, and the people and events from her past over which she still feels guilt and distress.She is on her way back to Iceland from England, where she and her friend Anthony have run a country hotel for many years, and where she has acquired a reputation as a fine chef.Her trip "home" is an attempt to find peace and to achieve the satisfaction of knowing her life has had meaning.This is an urgent quest--Disa has only twelve to eighteen months to live, and her life is full of unresolved traumas.

Olafsson uses the diary Disa keeps on her journey to intersperse sensitive, often powerful, memories from the past with her recollections from her more recent life in England.She is an intense and independent woman who sometimes reacts more sensitively toward the natural world around her than to the people with whom she has had relationships.We relive her estrangement from her mother and sister, her heartache in love, her love for her father and her secret life in Iceland, her protectiveness for her partner Anthony, her relationships with her employers and later with her employees, and her desperate romantic fling during a particularly vulnerable time.As in our own daydreams, we relive Disa's memories and the feelings they evoke in random order, not always knowing why they are important until later memories provide the keys to understanding.As her memories and nightmares intensify, the suspense grows.As Disa says, "The soul can take delight in small things if one's dreams only leave it in peace long enough."

Although Disa probably has enough traumas in her life for three novels, Olafsson avoids some of the usual pitfalls of romances by spacing out the details and requiring the reader to draw the conclusions.He tempers sensational revelations by including repeated images or symbols within them--apples, thrushes, storms, views from windows, music, the color red, the cold--to make us think.By the time the real reason for the trip to Iceland is revealed, most readers will have guessed it, but we sympathize with the unfortunate Disa and her journey, nevertheless.This is an emotion-packed rollercoaster of a novel, with a multitude of period details, sure to keep readers on edge.Mary Whipple

Very good book
I enjoyed reading this book. Very nicely written. ... Read more

Isbn: 0385720416
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. Literary    4. Fiction / Literary   

The Intuitionist : A Novel
by COLSON WHITEHEAD
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (04 January, 2000)
list price: $12.95 -- our price: $10.36
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Editorial Review

Verticality, architectural and social, is the lofty idea at the heartof Colson Whitehead's odd, sly, and ultimately irresistible first novel. The setting is an unnamed though obviously New Yorkish high-rise city, the time less convincingly future than deliciously other, as it combines 21st-century engineering feats with 19th-century pork-barrel politicsand smoky working-class pubs. Elevators are the technological expression of the vertical idea, and Lila Mae Watson, the city's first black female elevator inspector, is its embattled token of upward mobility.

Lila Mae's good ol' boy colleagues in the Department of Elevator Inspectors are understandably jealous of the flawless record that her natural intelligence and diligence have earned, and understandably delighted when Number Eleven in the newly completed Fanny Briggs Memorial Building goes into deadly free fall just hours after Lila Mae has signed off on it, using the controversial "Intuitionist" method of ascertaining elevator safety. It is, after all, an election year in the Elevator Guild, and the Empiricists would do most anything to discredit the Intuitionist faction. Everyone on both sides assumes that Number Eleven was sabotaged and Lila Mae set up to take the fall. "So complete is Number Eleven's ruin," writes Whitehead, "that there's nothing left but the sound of the crash, rising in the shaft, a fall in opposite: a soul." Lila Mae's doom seems equally irreversible.

Whitehead evokes a world so utterly involving to its own denizens that outside reality does not impinge on its perfect solipsism. We the readers are taken hostage as Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself in this urgent adventure full of government spies, underworld hit men, and seductive double agents. Behind the action, always, is the Idea. Lila Mae's quest reveals the existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, a giant of vertical thought, whose fate is mysteriously entwined with her own.If she is able to find and reveal his plan for the Black Box, the perfect, next-generation elevator, the city as it now exists will instantly be obsolescent. The social and economic implications are huge andthe denouement is elegantly philosophical.Most impressive of all is the integrity of Whitehead's prose. Eschewing mere cleverness, resisting showoff word play, he somehow manages to strike a tone that's always funny, always fierce, and always entirely respectful of his characters and their world. May the god of second novels smile as broadly on him as did the god of firsts. --Joyce Thompson ... Read more

Reviews (68)

Up and Out
The story is told of an unemployed actor who finally gets a role as the gravedigger in a production of "Hamlet".Asked to describe the play, he says, "It's about a gravedigger who meets a prince."

Parts of "The Intuitionist" might strike you as being similarly self-absorbed, except that the whole world of the novel takes that attitude, not just one person.While it may be normal to write a novel about an elevator inspector in an environment where people have other jobs and interests, it is quite unusual to write a novel about an elevator inspector who meets no one but other elevator professionals.This is an obsessed protagonist in an obsessed world.

Her name is Lila Mae Watson, the first black woman to earn an elevator inspector's badge, and the daughter of an elevator operator in a department store.She graduated from the elevator inspector's academy, evidently an enormous compound of impressive buildings.Her love interest works as a waiter for a professional association of inspectors.All of this association's members are, like Lila Mae, intuitionists; when inspecting an elevator, they intuit any problems in a sort of meditative trance rather than by examining the elevator's workings, as the Empiricists do.And Lila Mae's love interest has a connection to Intuitionism's philosophical founder, as well.She meets one reporter in her travels - he works for "Lift" Magazine, available at every newsstand.She meets a number of underworld figures - they obtain most of their money from corruption among elevator maintenance men.

The story opens with Lila Mae Watson learning that a brand-new elevator, inspected and passed by her, has crashed just when the Mayor was dedicating the building.She believes that this is a coincidence even less than you do, and goes about to discover what actually happened.She's in trouble, even perhaps to the extent of a threat to her life, and she realizes this.Nevertheless, she neither panics nor complains, but remains cool and effective throughout.In other words, she behaves in a manner that leaves the Empiricists no chance to get at her, which drives them and the Intuitionists right up the wall.

Are you starting to get the idea?The inhabitants of the city described here are surrounded by elevators the way you and I are surrounded by sex - and yes, there is a certain amount of eroticism involved in the relationship.(I'll leave the dirty jokes to your imagination.)Mostly, though, this is a noir murder mystery, complete with crime, cover-up, hardboiled investigator, implications that go all the way to the highest levels of government, and shameful secrets from the past.The only difference is that this time the victim is - you guessed it - an elevator.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about "The Intuitionist" is that Colson Whitehead invented this lift-happy world, and endowed it with a plausible story, without getting satirical or cute.You know the kind of thing I'm talking about, where the author turns every other word into a pun based on the central idea so everyone will know how clever he is?Or decides that because the book is an allegory it doesn't have to have an actual story to it?Not here.This is a genuine, effective thriller with some rather inspired fantasy elements thrown in.

All of this works just right from start to finish.One element that works less well is the novel's theme of racism.On the one hand, Lila Mae Watson's color - the necessity of contending with bigotry and condescension - adds to her growing isolation as the story progresses.On the other hand, it yanks the story out of Whitehead's carefully-constructed fantasy world and into real history.The racism that Lila Mae must face in "The Intuitionist" is blatant, overt and straight out of the Jim Crow age.It is therefore anachronistic; today's real-world racism is a much subtler and slimier animal.I, for one, found the whole subtext distracting; I can't possibly object to an author's decision to deal with real social evils in a fantasy, but I do object if an author decides to deal with former social evils in a fantasy.If the Harry Potter books tried to deal with the nineteenth-century issue of child labor rather than the twenty-first-century issue of child abuse, I would ask the same question: "What's the point?"

Well, "The Intuitionist" is a first novel, and evidently Colson Whitehead wanted to deal with racism, so he shoehorned it into his book when it doesn't really belong there.It's not fatal, but it is a pity, because actually the issue of racial differences does add something to his plot.Without giving too much away, it turns out that racial tension and elevator theory do share one characteristic; the desire to escape.

And here we come to the thing that elevates "The Intuitionist" above simple entertainment and makes it a genuine achievement.If it were just a murder mystery with an elevator as the victim, the book would be a curiosity, nothing more.Turns out, though, because of that theme of the desire to escape, that this is really a study of the struggle between living by rules and living by improvisation.Lila Mae Watson's entire character, as it exists at the story's beginning, hews so very closely to a rule system that she's barely human.Through her encounters with people and things that long for escape, for the opportunity to invent their own existences, Lila Mae comes awake.At the end of the book, she has no strict guidance anymore, but she is content.

That's why "The Intuitionist" is a good use of your reading time.It goes down smoothly, but like most good pulp literature it can make an important difference in your life without being too obvious about it.Now, if I said that this sounds like an average ride in an elevator, would you say I was getting obsessed?

Benshlomo says, Life is a balance between obedience and invention

An Interesting Experiment into Genre-Crossing
I thought this was a good book mainly for its scope and ambition.The author created a remarkable world and the rendering of that world in all its minutiae was my favorite aspect of the novel.However, the book did run into platitude city at times, which I think is attributable to the confines of the detective novel form.There are also very typical characters that you would expect in a crime story in here and they even talk like the staple 1930's gansters.I only wished the author had not relied so much on the conventions of the crime/detective genre and instead tried to get a little more creative with what could have been done with the plot.But this is a great first novel that had many passages of dazzling prose that really demonstrated the author's love of language.It's detective meets sci-fi and it's an interesting and ambitious experiment but it probably isn't for everyone.

plus for creativity, minus for character and plot
there are a lot of genuinely creative ideas in the book, but it's not enough for a novel - either you have to care about the characters or you have to be driven along by the plot. i was continually on the verge of putting it down because i didn't care about the characters OR the plot. ultimately the ceaseless iterations around the elevator metaphor dragged it down as well. i was also hoping it would be more experimental in style - the central ideas lend themselves to a kafka or lem or cortazar-like treatment, but the writing isn't there. the best written parts are the more conventional dramatic sections. on the whole, disappointing. ... Read more

Isbn: 0385493002
Subjects:  1. African American women    2. African Americans    3. Elevators    4. Fiction    5. Fiction - General    6. General    7. Inspection    8. Fiction / General   

Asleep
by Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (09 August, 2001)
list price: $12.00 -- our price: $9.60
(price subject to change: see help)
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Reviews (18)

Ugh
The works of Banana Yoshimoto have long been an important feature of my bookshelf. I tell everyone I know to pick one of her works up and read it, to experience the sheer captivation that is reading her fabulous stories. I cried for all different reasons through Kitchen and N.P., and Goodbye Tsugumi is also wonderful. I even tried reading Lizard in Japanese. They all have the ability to transport the reader into a new, but familiar world and delve deep into the human psyche.

Then I read "Night and Night's Travelers" in the Asleep collection. At the completion of this story I wanted nothing more than to throw the book to the ground and jump on it with all possible force. Perhaps this piece was not quite as compelling in English as in the original, but it nonetheless left a taste of disappointment in my dry, cynical mouth. The death in the story was not handled well, and the overuse of hyperbole and cliche is something to cry into one's brandy over. I hope the rest of this book proves to be back to her original, interesting self.

Somnambulism
Slumber, Drunkenness, Death and Love are the topics explored in Banana Yoshimoto's "Asleep."As with "Kitchen," there are three novellas linked thematically but not by characters or plot.Three women, all in love with someone emotionally of physically dead, all troubled sleepers, all drinkers, try to find rest and quietude that is not found in sleep.Each aspect is a metaphor for the unconscious, where perhaps the answers lie.For in this sleep of death, who know what dreams may come?Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know it's really serious.Drink, don't think.Seeking answers, the women look to their friends, their family, magical dwarfs or anyone who can help.

"Asleep" is told in Yoshimoto style, like a story overheard with half-open eyes while drifting off to sleep.It is semi-magical and dreamy, but still in touch with the real world.The pacing, the narrative are all influenced by classical Japanese literature.Her writing is very gentle, very feminine.And poetic.

An enjoyable, lazy book.Good for seekers of love and those who cannot sleep at night.

A Poignant, Intimate and Playful Collection
"Asleep" was my introduction to the work of Banana Yoshimoto. After reading this book, I'm compelled to seek out her other books, as this collection of novellas was a beautifully written, dreamy and engaging read. This book can be read within a few hours, as the language isn't as sophisticated as that used in most other literary works (because this book is translated from Japanese to English), but it is descriptive and evocative..not merely "simple" as Yoshimoto is too often described.

The protagonists in all three of the short stories in this collection are mysterious, and as they vividly describe their thoughts, it's as if Ms. Yoshimoto is allowing the reader to be privy to the very private, intimate world of her characters. This collection as a whole is imbued with sensuality, mystery and magic. The stories have open endings, and the effect of these stories resonates long after you've read them.

My favourite novella was the second of the three, "Love Songs", as its interesting subject matter (a woman's romantic desire for a deceased woman she hated in life), meshed with the candid reality of alcoholism, made for a gripping read. Novellas 2 and 3 both deal with addiction, as it completely consumes the two protagonists it affects.

I found the third short story, "Asleep", to be the least engaging of the three, but it is nonetheless an inspiring story about a young woman's rise from a life of stagnant ennui, to her courageous leap into the workforce.

This is an enchanting, irresistable collection that makes a refreshing change from anything you've ever read before. Here, Banana Yoshimoto puts a surreal twist on the mundane, and the results are shimmering. ... Read more

Isbn: 0802138209
Sales Rank: 398476
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. General    4. Literary    5. Fiction/Literature