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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Highly Recommended: Cutting for Stone

Posted in Books, tagged , on March 12, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is exactly why we recommend books to one another. Here, for whatever reason, is a book I doubt I ever would have read if it hadn’t been for a couple of friends (whose opinion in books I value) raving about it. A [...]

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Starting this Year as I Ended the Last, With Another Excellent Book by Stewart O’Nan

Posted in Books on March 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Eight years have passed since we last met Emily Maxwell in Wish You Were Here. In that leisurely book, author Stewart O’Nan took twice the length to tell the story of the family’s final week-long vacation at their Chautauqua summer home, bouncing the narration [...]

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My List of the Best Books Read in 2011

Posted in Books, tagged , on February 12, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Every year since 1993, I’ve compiled a list of favorite books read during the year to share with friends. This year’s list solidly falls under the “better late than never” category. So here, in no particular order, is my nineteenth annual recommended reading list. Happy reading! The Hunger Games series  Suzanne Collins Started Early, Took [...]

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Highly Recommended: Game of Thrones

Posted in Books, tagged , on February 10, 2012 | 1 Comment »

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (1996) My rating: 5 of 5 stars I would never have chosen to read this book–despite the raving popularity of the HBO mini-series adaptation–had it not been recommended to me by someone whose opinion I trust, and boy, am I glad I did. This first installment of [...]

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Recommended (With Reservations): Bossypants

Posted in Books, tagged , on February 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011) My rating: 3 of 5 stars Usually, I’m not one for contemporary memoirs. The history buff in me prefers to wait at least a hundred years before reading about anyone, historical or celebratory. But when I saw that Tina Fey, the creator of one of my current favorite TV shows [...]

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Recommended: Wish You Were Here

Posted in Books, tagged , on January 31, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O’Nan (2002) My rating: 4 of 5 stars Stewart O’Nan is one of my favorite authors. I’d read anything by him, sticking it out to the last page, no matter how difficult it was to get through. Not that Wish You Were Here was a drudgery to read; it [...]

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Recommended: My Life in France

Posted in Books, tagged , , on January 30, 2012 | 1 Comment »

My Life in France (2005) by Julia Child My rating: 5 of 5 stars The formidable chef’s memoir of her travels through France and awakening to the fine food and wine of her adopted country is pure pleasure to read. Wonderfully written, she recalls in delectable detail her discovery of delicious dishes and her struggle [...]

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It’s Easy to See Why Sinclair Lewis Was Disowned by His Hometown After He Published “Main Street”

Posted in Books, tagged , on January 29, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Main Street (1920) by Sinclair Lewis My rating: 3 of 5 stars At times, reading this felt positively Sisyphean; for every one page read, two would regenerate on the back end. Lewis makes his point repeatedly until you feel as trapped in Gopher Prairie as his central character, Carol Kennicott. Lewis’ fine writing kept me [...]

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Recommended: One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

Posted in Books, tagged , on January 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Jim Fergus  (1998) Told as a series of journal entries, this work of fiction takes the premise that in 1875, when Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf proposed assimilating his culture with the whites by having a thousand white women “marry” into the tribe, President Grant agreed. The narrator, May Dodd, joins a trainload of women from [...]

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Recommended: Started Early, Took My Dog

Posted in Books, tagged , on January 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Kate Atkinson (2010) This most recent entry in the Jackson Brodie series is one of my favorites. Jackson’s life continues to be a fractured mess as he tracks down the biological parents of an Australian client, all the while grappling with the ambivalence about his own second-go at fatherhood. PI Brodie shares center stage with [...]

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