November 18, 2008
New Books - Non-Fiction
Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat - Jack Loeffler
This is an insightful and timely compilation that will appeal to readers interested in environmental issues in the American West. The book developed out of interviews of key figures (historians, environmentalists, lawyers, Native Americans, etc.) in the land usage rights movement.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
“Traditional without seeming stale, and romantic without being naïve” (San Francisco Chronicle), this epistolary novel, based on Mary Ann Shaffer’s painstaking, lifelong research, is a homage to booklovers and a nostalgic portrayal of an era. As her quirky, loveable characters cite the works of Shakespeare, Austen, and the Brontës, Shaffer subtly weaves those writers’ themes into her own narrative. However, it is the tragic stories of life under Nazi occupation that animate the novel and give it its urgency.
The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality - Jerome R. Corsi
From the publisher: In this thoroughly researched and documented book, the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry explains why the extreme leftism of an Obama presidency would leave the United States weakened, diminished and divided, why Obama must be defeated—and how he can be.
Fleeced - Dick Morris and Eileen Mcgann
In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American tax-payers are routinely fleeced—by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions and American public opinion; by Washington lobbying firms that are pushing the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators on Capitol Hill; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS.
New Books - Fiction
The Turnaround - George Pelecanos
In yet another gem of urban noir, bestseller Pelecanos (The Night Gardener) explores the possibility of making the turnaround, of starting over and building a new life, regardless of the past.
Divine Justice - David Baldacci
Near the start of bestseller Baldacci's less than compelling fourth Camel Club thriller (after Stone Cold), former CIA assassin Oliver Stone (aka John Carr) boards a New Orleans–bound train at Washington's Union Station after shooting to death a well-known U.S. senator and the nation's intelligence chief, the two men responsible for his wife's murder. Ever the Good Samaritan, Stone intervenes in a fight on the train, but when the Amtrak conductor asks to see his ID, he gets off at the next station, knowing his fake ID won't withstand scrutiny. So much for Stone's vaunted ability as a resourceful planner. This sudden detour takes Stone to Divine, Va., a mining town where he becomes enmeshed in corruption and intrigue. –Publishers Weekly
New Books for Children
Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke
Recommended for Ages 9 -12.
A monumental third installment brings the Inkheart trilogy to a grueling, blood-spattered, mortality-obsessed close. The Inkworld is in disarray: Its author, Fenoglio, has lost his ability to write and, therefore, shape events; the odious Orpheus, however, has taken to recycling Fenoglio's words to control the narrative/world himself.
November 11, 2008
New Books – Non-fiction
Patterns of Exchange: Navajo Weavers and Traders – Teresa Wilkins
The Navajo rugs and textiles people admire and buy today are the result of many historical influences, particularly the interaction between Navajo weavers and the traders who guided their production and controlled their sale. John Lorenzo Hubbell and other late-nineteenth-century traders were convinced they knew which patterns and colors would appeal to Anglo-American buyers, and so they heavily encouraged those designs. In Patterns of Exchange, Teresa J. Wilkins traces how the relationships between generations of Navajo weavers and traders affected Navajo weaving.
The 29% Solution – Ivan Misner and Michelle R. Donovan
This guide to networking by Misner, the founder and chairman of BNI (Business Network International), is an invaluable roadmap for businesspeople seeking to develop or fine-tune a necessary and often overlooked skill. Misner and Donovan's title stems from a study that spawned the six degrees of separation theory, which actually revealed that only 29% of the population is connected to this extent. The authors say that despite its proven necessity, networking is scarcely taught in business schools, and their self-study course aims to fill the void with a self-assessment test and 52 weeks of assignments to beef up networking skills. – Publishers Weekly
Double Your Income Doing What You Love – Raymond Aaron and Sue Lacher
Double Your Income Doing What You Love breaks life down into six pathways, and then sets out a simple but highly effective system for you to set goals in all six categories every month. Using his MTO system, author Raymond Aaron teaches you how to set each goal at three levels—Minimum, Target, and Outrageous—so that you can begin to move ever closer to fully creating, and then living, the life of your dreams.
Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao – Dr. Wayne Dyer
In this book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer has reviewed hundreds of translations of the Tao Te Ching and has written 81 distinct essays on how to apply the ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu to today’s modern world. This work contains the entire 81 verses of the Tao, compiled from Wayne’s researching of 12 of the most well-respected translations of text that have survived for more than 25 centuries. Each chapter is designed for actually living the Tao or the Great Way today. Some of the chapter titles are “Living with Flexibility,” “Living Without Enemies,” and “Living by Letting Go.” Each of the 81 brief chapters focuses on living the Tao and concludes with a section called “Doing the Tao Now.
The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose –Janet Bray Attwood and Chris AttwoodCo-founders of the online magazine Healthy Wealthy 'n' Wise, husband and wife team Bray and Attwood have produced a self-help guide with a simple test at its core, requiring readers to list and prioritize their goals, wants and desires, weeding and striking until they have just five "passions" listed; those are then held against one's life to determine how close one is to each (readers are encouraged to retake the test every six months). A full life steeped in passion is achievable, the authors assert, through the application of three concepts: intention, attention and "no tension."
November 4, 2008
New Books - Fiction
Brisingr - Christopher Paolini
Following the colossal battle against the Empire’s warriors on the Burning Plains, Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have narrowly escaped with their lives. Still there is more at hand for the Rider and his dragon, as Eragon finds himself bound by a tangle of promises he may not be able to keep.
The English Major - Jim Harrison
It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't." With these words, Jim Harrison sends his sixty-something protagonist, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds to overcome the banal names men have given them. Cliff's adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high school-teacher days twenty-some years before, to a "snake farm" in Arizona owned by an old classmate; and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer in San Francisco.
The English Major is the map of a man's journey into—and out of—himself, and it is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit.
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron and Brett Witter
Her first thought upon hearing a strange sound coming from the book drop one frigid January morning was "this can't be good." In fact, for both the tiny kitten found shivering in the metal box's corner and for Myron, director of the Spencer Public Library, the discovery was the best thing that ever happened to either of them, and to the tiny Iowa farming community beset by an unrelenting string of economic challenges. Filthy and frostbitten, the kitten was in dire need of massive doses of TLC; fortunately, the library staff, patrons, and townspeople had plenty to spare. The story of how a bedraggled orange fur ball became "Dewey Readmore Books," an enchantingly irresistible library mascot capable of bringing international attention to a small Midwestern town and melting the heart of even the most curmudgeonly visitor, is uplifting enough; but woven among the cute-cat anecdotes are Myron's own inspirational stories of enduring welfare, the abuses of an alcoholic husband, breast cancer, and single motherhood. Myron's beguiling, poignant, and tender tale of survival, loyalty, and love is an unforgettable study in the mysterious and wondrous ways animals, and libraries, enrich humanity. --Booklist--Starred Review
Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
The fact that America is still a place where the rest of the world comes to reinvent itself–accepting with excitement and anxiety the necessity of leaving behind the constrictions and comforts of distant customs–is the underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri’s sensitive new collection of stories.
Beet – Roger Rosenblatt
The politically correct, rigorless American university is by now an easy comic target, one that cultural critic Rosenblatt (Lapham Rising), longtime contributor to Time and PBS's NewsHour, hits amusingly. Rosenblatt's Beet College is an old money New England university where students can major in such disciplines as Postcolonial Women's Sports and Little People of Color. But dear ol' Beet is going bust.
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Not quite novel or novella, McEwan's masterful 13th work of fiction most resembles a five-part classical drama rendered in prose. It opens on the anxious Dorset Coast wedding suite dinner of Edward Mayhew and the former Florence Ponting, married in the summer of 1963 at 23 and 22 respectively; the looming dramatic crisis is the marriage's impending consummation, or lack of it.
The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaeman and Dave McKean (Illustrator)
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coralline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.
Sweet smoke – David Fuller
"Sweetsmoke is a fascinating and gripping novel about the Civil War. The slave, Cassius Howard, is a great fictional character, and his story is part mystery, part love story, and a harrowing portrait of slavery that reads with the immense power of the slave narratives. A tour de force for David Fuller." --Pat Conroy, author of Beach Music and South of Broad
Izzy and Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey, and Me – Jon Katz
After a half-dozen books about the dogs and other animals that live with him on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York (Dog Days, A Good Dog, Katz on Dogs), Katz's gentle, folksy style and intuitive connection to the world around him work a familiar but comforting vein, entirely suitable to his subject: "I cherish the considered predictability of these creatures, their sociability, their contented acceptance of life. I wish I possessed even one of those traits. I'm working on it." The latest features his adoption of Izzy, a sensitive border collie who inspires Katz to take up volunteer work with hospice patients. Whether meeting Timmy, a young boy dying of brain tumor, or Glen, a terminal patient who recollects his own beloved dog, Katz evokes vividly the hospice environment and the deep meaning its patients find in Izzy. Unfortunately, the balance of the book, concerning a black lab named Lenore and Katz's own struggle with depression and a painful past, suffers from a lack of detail and leaves little impact. Fans will be happy to return to the farm, but newcomers may want to start with his first dog volume, 2002's A Dog Year. Photos. – Publishers Weekly
Devil Bones - Kathy Reichs
Dr. Temperance Brennan's quest to identify two corpses pits her against citizen vigilantes intent on a witch-hunt in bestseller Reichs's exciting 11th thriller to feature the forensic anthropologist (after 2007's Bones to Ashes). While working in Charlotte, N.C., Brennan investigates remains unearthed during a housing renovation and discovers disturbing clues possibly pointing to voodoo or Santeria. She must determine if the bones, including the skull of a teenage girl, are linked to an unidentified headless torso found in a nearby lake. Intent on using the deaths as the cornerstone of his crusade against immorality, fundamentalist preacher turned politician Boyce Lingo claims that the bodies bear the mark of devil worshippers. With the help of Det. Erskine Skinny Slidell, Brennan unearths a tangled web of dirty politics, religious persecution and male prostitution. Reichs, whose work inspired the hit TV series Bones, once again expertly blends science and complex character development. -Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
New Books - Non-Fiction
The Life of the Skies – Jonathan Rosen
In this eloquent book, Rosen—a novelist and editorial director of Nextbook, which promotes Jewish culture and literature—meditates on the fact that technology enables us to preserve wildlife and at the same time contributes to its demise. He laments that no sooner had he discovered bird-watching than he realized that nature has become a diminished thing, as Robert Frost put it in his poem The Oven Bird. Everywhere he looks—from a Louisiana swamp to the Israeli desert—he finds a paradox: we are attempting to preserve nature at the same time that we are destroying it. Cars, trains and planes, Rosen writes, have enabled us to find the birds of America for ourselves, even as these inventions have contributed to the fragmentation that endangers them. Birds sing back to us an aspect of ourselves, Rosen says, harking back to Audubon, and he confesses that this is why he came to bird-watching, making it even more poignant that so many birds are close to disappearing forever. Rosen's wide-ranging intellect (he is also the author of The Talmud and the Internet) flits gracefully from nature to history to poetry, and gentle meditations can be spiked with barbs (‘Collecting’ is the ornithological euphemism for killing). This beautifully written book is an elegy to the human condition at a time when wilderness is becoming a thing of the past. – Publishers Weekly
The Heirloom Tomato - Amy Goldman
From the world-class garden of acclaimed food writer Amy Goldman, a gorgeously illustrated guide to the world’s most beautiful and delicious tomatoes. Every year, renowned grower Amy Goldman produces an amazing 500 varieties of tomatoes on her farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. Here, in 250 gorgeous photos and Goldman’s erudite, charming prose, is the cream of the crop, from glorious heirloom beefsteaks – that delicious tomato you had as a kid but can’t seem to find anymore – to exotica like the currant tomato, a pea-sized fruit with a surprisingly big flavor. Along with the photos are profiles of the tomatoes, filled with fascinating facts on their history and provenance; a section of more than 50 delicious recipes; and a master gardener’s guide to growing your own. More than just a loving look at one of the world's great edibles, this is a philosophy of eating and conservation between covers — an irresistible book for anyone who loves to garden or loves to eat.
Dog Body, Dog Mind – Dr. Michael W. Fox
With extraordinary insight and vision, veterinarian and animal behaviorist Dr. Fox explores the minds and hearts of dogs. Dogs, and all animals, have much to teach their human companions, if only humans knew how to listen. In Dog Body/Dog Mind, Fox seeks to enhance readers’ understanding and communication with their canine companions. He helps readers become more fluent in “dog speak,” and to understand what dogs feel, think, and want, strengthening the dog-human bond. Better communication leads to happier dogs and people. Fox also offers a holistic approach to companion animal care and preventive medicine, as well as behavioral advice and training tips that will help guarantee a healthy and happy animal.
The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship– Sara James and Ginger Mauney
As teenage girls are wont to do, James and Mauney first bonded over shared dreams of lives that would take them far from their hometown, lives that would combine challenging careers with travel to exotic locations, where they would court danger, and fall in love with men who carried well-worn passports and spoke with foreign accents. Such dreams, of course, are typical of young girls everywhere, yet James and Mauney made good on their promises, though the paths they took were not always smooth and straight. James would live in the lap of urban comfort in Manhattan, where she would become an award-winning journalist for NBC News, while Mauney eked out an unsparing existence in desolate African outback base camps as a wildlife documentary filmmaker. Through 30 years, they would see careers explode and relationships implode, and though they often experienced life's sweetest successes and harshest tragedies separately, emotionally they were always together. With candor, insight, and wisdom, James and Mauney joyfully celebrate the inspiring essence of friendship. -Carol Haggas, American Library Association.
Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American Revolution, 1650-1757 – J. Revell Carr
A narrative history of the largely unexplored events—starting almost a century before—that inspired the colonists to launch the American Revolution. The causes of the American Revolution are most often defined as the Stamp Act and other repressive actions by the Crown against its colonies in the years following the French and Indian War. While these are the direct causes, J. Revell Carr takes a longer view, and in Seeds of Discontent, he locates the roots of the Revolution a century earlier, and argues that “the cumulative effect of more than one hundred years of British disrespect, mismanagement, and exploitation prepared the minds of the colonists for revolution.”
Nothing to Be Frightened Of - Julia Garnes
In this virtuosic memoir, Barnes (Arthur & George) makes little mention of his personal or professional life, allowing his audience very limited ingress into his philosophical musings on mortality. But like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole, readers will find themselves granted access to an unexpectedly large world, populated with Barnes's daily companions and his chosen ancestors (most of them dead, and quite a few of them French, like Jules Renard, Flaubert, Zola). This is not 'my autobiography,' Barnes emphasizes in this hilariously unsentimental portrait of his family and childhood. Part of what I'm doing—which may seem unnecessary—is trying to work out how dead they are. And in this exploration of what remains, the author sifts through unreliable memory to summon up how his ancestors—real and assumed—contemplated death and grappled with the perils and pleasures of pit-gazing. If Barnes's self-professed amateur philosophical rambling feels occasionally self-indulgent, his vivid description delights.- Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.)