Short story collections generally don’t circulate well. I’m not sure exactly why, but I can certainly theorize. Personally, I enjoy immersing myself in a detailed, involved story, with well-thought out characters and vivid settings, but the very nature of short stories (They’re short!) seems counterintuitive to achieving those lofty goals. Honestly, [...]
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Posted in Adventure, Bluesocks' Picks, Books, Characters, Coming of Age, Literary fiction, Neil's Picks, Quick read, Sense of place, Sports, Subculture on June 16, 2008 | No Comments »
It’s a sign of a good book when an author can take subject matter that is completely alien and render it in a way that immerses you, fascinates you, moves you. The Australian Tim Winton did that for me with Breath, a coming-of-age tale about surfing and other extreme adventures.
In Breath, two boys in their early teens [...]
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Minnesota’s Jon Hassler, who died this past month, is noted for his thoughtful, well-drawn characters, his realistic settings, and his clear prose style. Hassler writes of people living ordinary lives who in some moment are caught up in events that change them in a variety of ways that they never expected. There is a sense [...]
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Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow continues his tales of the Port William membership, which he began in Nathan Coulter in 1960. Berry’s writing is marked by a strong sense of place. He captures the beauty of the upland Kentucky farms, the forests, and the small towns along the Ohio River and tributaries. A farmer himself, [...]
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I know, I know, librarians are always singing the praises of books about books and reading. I think that for many of us, these sorts of titles remind us of why we chose to become librarians in the first place; we have a passion for the printed word and a belief that books can effect [...]
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It’s four unkind years after the events of Chocolat, and the vivacious, nonconformist Vianne Rocher of Harris’s previous bestseller has fallen on hard times. Dressed in drab colors, suppressing her talent for magic, and worst of all, selling factory chocolates from her Montmartre storefront, she’s close to selling out for financial stability by marrying a [...]
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Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is a narrative by a former student at Hailsham, a peculiar boarding school in England. An adult now, Kathy H. describes scenes from her early childhood, adolescence, and the year immediately after graduation, when the students were moved to “the cottages” before they requested intensive training for their [...]
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The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, includes a novel-within-the-novel, “The Blind Assassin,” by Laura Chase. Laura’s novel is about two lovers who meet secretly. The male is a working-class writer and the female a privileged young woman who worries about getting caught much of the time. They meet at first so the writer can tell [...]
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Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, was an international best seller, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003, and the summer 2007 pick for Oprah’s Book Club. Many people have read the fascinating story of Callie/Cal, an intersex [aka, incorrectly, hermaphroditic] adolescent. But there are other readers out there who have not yet read [...]
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Most of us are introduced to John Steinbeck through his darker works, assigned to traumatize us in junior high or high school. I was required to read “The Pearl” first, and I promise you, the pearl costs the people who find it an awful lot. I won’t give away the plot of Of Mice and [...]
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