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Thank you very much no3putts1, I really appreciate your kind words. It makes my day to hear from the "lurkers".
All the best to you and yours (including the lurkers) in 2008.
Thanks for all you do originunknown!
On behalf of all the "lurkers" here @ iHub, wish you a
Healthy, Happy New Year!
Whodunnit best
Top mysteries of 2007
Oline H. Cogdill
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Laura Lippman's storytelling skills have been evident since her first award-winning novel, Baltimore Blues (1997), introduced private investigator Tess Monaghan. That debut showed the author's acute ability to deliver sturdy tales that push the edges of the traditional private eye novel. Her nine-novel series examines contemporary life through a witty, unconventional heroine who is intrinsically part of Baltimore's unique vagaries.
But her stand-alone novels are just as excellent and among the best is her most recent. What the Dead Know (Morrow) is typical of the author's keen plotting skills -- taking a realistic situation, in this case the disappearance of two girls, and elegantly spinning it into a treatise on contemporary society. In this superbly plotted mystery, two girls disappeared from a busy Baltimore mall 30 years ago. Now a woman claims to be one of the girls. An emotional story that elegantly traces the dissolution of a family whose hidden fragility breaks under the weight of this destructive event.
Lippman pulls out all the emotional stops constructing a novel that straddles several genres: It succeeds as a mystery, a thriller, a police procedural and that most undefinable genre, women's fiction. What the Dead Know has a tough edge, but also a gentle touch, and Lippman's fresh approach makes it the top mystery of 2007.
The other great books of the year:
Magic City by James W. Hall (Minotaur/St. Martin's Press). Hall delivers the quintessential Florida novel with a plot that starts in 1964 -- a time when Miami and America were on the cusp of change -- and ends in 2007. Each description, each reference of the contemporary Miami intersects with old Miami, giving a complete view of the past and present.
The Watchman by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster). Crais's usual hero Elvis Cole becomes the sidekick to his partner -- the laconic, lethal and quite enigmatic Joe Pike. Inspired action, a solid plot and crisp dialogue are woven into an affecting story about two adults trying to reconcile with their fathers.
Down River by John Hart (Minotaur/St. Martin's Press). Hart's second novel surpasses last year's stunning debut, The King of Lies. With keen appraisals of human foibles and an emphasis on North Carolina history and flavour, Down River is in a league with the best of Southern novels. A compelling look at greed, power, cruelty and the strength and fragility of families.
The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown). Rankin's melding of Edinburgh's history with its contemporary concerns through the actions of police detective John Rebus is superbly evident in the series' 18th novel. With Edinburgh in chaos over a world leaders summit, Rebus takes a case of a murdered sex offender. A maze of human emotions seen against the backdrop of the Scottish landscape proves, once again, Rankin's considerable talent.
Mr. Clarinet by Nick Stone (HarperCollins). Stone delves deep into every aspect of Haiti -- its fractured politics, chaotic social strata and legends -- in a gritty, fascinating story. Stone's noir works equally as an international thriller, an intimate family portrait, a regional view of a country under siege and an old-fashioned detective story.
A Pale Horse by Charles Todd (Morrow). Todd's emotionally penetrating series is set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, but these novels, distinguished for their superior plots, transcend any era. In the series' 10th novel, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge's investigation revolves around a guilty scientist, his estranged family and the atrocities of the war.
Hard Row by Margaret Maron (Warner Books). A hallmark of Maron's novels is her skill at gracefully integrating hard-hitting, topical themes into stories about family and domestic life. Hard Row couldn't be more timely with its focus on immigration, migrant workers and people who make their living off the land.
City of Fire by Robert Ellis (St. Martin's/Minotaur). In his third novel, Ellis takes the police procedural and makes it a tale of personal corruption and desire, where right and wrong overlap.
Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber (Norton). Best known for her novels and non-fiction about Middle Eastern culture, Abu-Jaber delivers a rousing, psychological thriller that expounds on questions of identity and the fragility of love. At the plot's core is a reclusive fingerprint specialist who's often given cases involving children.
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain (Minotaur/St. Martin's Press). Cain comfortably strides into Hannibal Lecter territory with a charismatic female serial killer. But it's her focus on two damaged people, a Portland, Oregon, police detective and a savvy reporter, which elevates Heartsick to a nuanced novel about surviving what threatens to destroy us.
A Person of Interest by Theresa Schwegel (St Martin's Press). A family disintegrates while a cop's investigation puts him and his loved ones in danger in this character-driven police procedural.
Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Morrow). An Icelandic attorney's case serves as an insight into the country's changing landscape and culture.
Best debuts
Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (Morrow). Campbell breaks new ground in a legal thriller that explores the alchemy of the law and truth. Set in 1973 Phoenix, Missing Witness is a searing look at the law on the cusp of change and of idealism churning into corporate greed. Not since Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent has a legal thriller been so enthralling.
In the Woods by Tana French (Viking). Utilizing the police procedural, French balances intense characters with a look at Ireland's changing landscape and a psychological study of the effects of a childhood trauma. An intelligent, atmospheric thriller blends the gothic novel with the modern mystery.
Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover (Morrow). Chercover refreshes the private detective genre as he looks at Chicago, its past and present, movers and criminals, beauty and chaos. His hero is a former journalist turned p.i., both jobs that bring him in contact with Chicago's best and worst residents.
The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey (Minotaur/St. Martins). This Chicago-based author crafts a tension-laden plot to sharply examine a man rebuilding his life. Centring on two lifelong buddies whose lives take a fateful turn during a botched break-in, this is an insightful look at the circumstances that make each of us who we are.
BEST SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Akashic's Noir series, edited by various authors and Chicago Blues, edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann (Bleak House).
Akashic publisher's dozen or so Noir anthologies focus on a different city, including New Orleans, Miami, Baltimore, San Francisco, Havana and more, and act as a mini-guide to each area. For Chicago Blues, Libby Fischer Hellmann has assembled 21 Windy City authors whose view of Chicago is anything but typical, capturing its neighbourhoods, history and atmosphere.
BEST REVIVAL
The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator by Ross Macdonald. Edited by Tom Nolan (Crippen & Landru Publishers). This fine collection makes us remember what a master Macdonald was, and the timelessness of his Lew Archer stories. Macdonald biographer Nolan also contributes an insightful sketch of the private detective.
The best part about reading books is that you will never live long enough to run out of good books to read.
The Child by Sarah Schulman
... I gave up half way.
The Child by Sarah Schulman
... not a very pleasant book to read even if it means well.
The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone is an excellent book.
Slow to start and very weird at first, but well worth reading to the end. And what an end! Even though the author is virulently anti-Canadian, just his description of road trips through the SouthWest USA makes reading the book worthwhile.
... but not that good unless you like Harlequins ... not that there is anything wrong with reading them.
lol, to enjoy Koontz, I guess you have to let go of reality just a bit...... He does come up with some crazy ideas..
as far as Kellerman... I started back with the first Delaware novel, "When the Bough Breaks".... pretty good book... so I looked around on amazon and elsewhere, just to see if kellerman or koontz had ever had their books made into movies..
well, apparently Koontz has had a couple made into movies, but apparently not very good ones..lol
I did find only one Kellerman movie... "When the Bough Breaks" a 1986 made for TV movie with Ted Danson as Alex...lmao! Danson couldn't be further from how I pictured Delaware
http://www.amazon.com/When-Bough-Breaks-Jane-Alden/dp/B0002GLWPO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1197336567&sr=1-3
So I ordered it... lol
OMG, did Danson ever overact... The best part of the movie is at the end (a great scene in the book, but won't give details) and Danson starts screaming like a little girl...LMAO!! I just about spit out my drink laughing....
Good book, but a crappy movie unless you were an MST3K fan...
HeartStopper by Joy Fielding is much better.
A Killing Gift by Leslie Glass
AWFUL!!!!!!!!! I lasted about 6 pages ...
I have read several Kellerman books (Alex Delaware). They are usually pretty good.
I tried Koontz but did not work for me.
Seems he has a couple more Odd Thomas books in the pipeline..
http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Hours-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553807056/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197332017&sr=1-7
http://www.amazon.com/Odd-We-Trust-Dean-Koontz/dp/0345499662/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197332076&sr=1-5
yes have read a dozen or so of his books. Next to the "king" man, he my favorite in that genre.
Odd thomas was excellent.
So anybody here read Dean Koontz or Jonathan Kellerman?
http://www.deankoontz.com
http://www.jonathankellerman.com
I was travelling in september to one of our plants, and in one of the labs there, there were a couple books. I picked them up to pass the time on my trip at the lab, and in my hotel..
they were "Phantoms" by Dean Koontz, and "Silent Partner" by Jonathan Kellerman (one of his Alex Delaware series books)
I finished them both in about two days, couldn't put them down.. Been alternating reading one Koontz book and one Kellerman book (the Alex Delaware series, starting at the beginning) ever since, about one or two books a week.... lucky that Koontz has about what 30 some books, and there's about 18 in the Alex Delaware series...
so, anybody else read these authors? I liked Koontz's Odd Thomas series, and his Frankenstein series, though I was pissed when I finished the second one, and hadn't realized there was a third one, but he hasn't released it yet.... DOH!
Australian author Kate Forsyth http://www.kateforsyth.com.au/
Her Witches of Eileanan series [6 books] are flooded with wonderful writing of a wiccan nature continuing an epic series of books ending with 3 more on Rhiannon's Ride for a total of 9.
I've read all nine books, she is a very captivating writer and hooks you into the storyline right after the first page.
Persuader by Lee Child
I am risking overdose but so far so good ....
Echo Burning is the follow-up (sorta) novel after Running Wild and just as good if not better. Definitely a different flavour to this one.
Enjoy your day off Chu!
I'm currently reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown which I find fascinating...and came across this...
US author to unveil Washington's Masonic past by Virginie Montet
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A sequel to the blockbuster thriller "The Da Vinci Code" is set to lift the veil on mysterious Freemason symbols carved into the very fabric of the historic streets and buildings of the US capital.
Novelist Dan Brown has set the new adventures of his hero, scholar-adventurer Robert Langdon, right in the heart of Washington, which could reveal some astonishing facts for history buffs.
Brown "had a contact with us but then cut it short. We are all sitting around waiting for his book to come out but nobody knows what he's going to say," Akram Elias, grand master-elect of Washington's Grand Lodge, told AFP.
According to the pre-publicity, the book -- working title "The Solomon Key" -- will feature Langdon hero of the mass-selling "The Da Vinci Code" and who was played by Tom Hanks in the hit film version.
"For the first time, Langdon will find himself embroiled in a mystery on US soil. This new novel explores the hidden history of our nation's capital," Brown wrote in a posting on his official website.
Washington has strong historic roots in Freemasonry -- an old and widespread fraternity which traditionally practised secret rituals.
Despite its reputation for secrecy, the Freemason community is noticeably open in the United States: lodges are advertised in the phone book and their signs are prominently displayed.
The first US president after whom the city is named, George Washington, was a Mason, as were his fellow founding fathers James Madison and Benjamin Franklin, plus James Hoban, the architect of the White House.
The broad steps, stone sphinxes and colonnades of a Masonic temple dominate a corner of 16th Street near the city center -- one of a number of Masonic lodges in the capital -- and just a stone's throw from the White House.
Elias cites theories that the city's streets themselves are laid out in the shape of secret Masonic signs. "It may be a coincidence, but there are indications that are difficult to ignore," he said.
Establishing the nation's capital, George Washington is said to have demanded that it be laid out in a symbolic square.
"It's fascinating. If you take an aerial view of Washington, you cannot but see the perfect square and the compass which are the universal symbols of Freemasonry ... meaning rectitude and equality," he said.
"Was it on purpose? I don't know, but I think it's difficult to ignore those mysterious aspects," he added. "It adds another level of mystery to the city of Washington."
The shape of a square and compass is also formed by drawing a line on the map between two of the city's major landmarks, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and along the walls of the White House and the Jefferson Memorial.
At the center of these stands the George Washington monument, a vast brick obelisk whose dimensions themselves are symbolic: 555 feet high by 55 wide (170 meters by 17).
The number five is said to refer to the traditional five orders of architecture, which in turn relates to the Freemasons' regard for geometry as a symbol of order, and of "the great geometrician" -- the supreme being.
Inside the Capitol building, the heart of US lawmaking which sits at the dead center of the square city boundaries, lies a cornerstone laid by George Washington himself, dressed in his ceremonial apron, in a Masonic ritual in 1793.
"Here goes Washington heading a ceremony in order to lay the cornerstone of the Capitol, using corn, oil and wine to send a very powerful message to those who will be working in the parliament," Elias said.
"Their mission should be to work in achieving prosperity, peace and happiness for the American people."
Some play down the perceived prominence of Masons and their symbology, for fear of encouraging conspiracy theories which may be harmful to Freemasons.
"Freemasonry has a very important role in the history of the US and the early American republic," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the Washington Masonic memorial in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and author of the book "American Freemasons."
"But that role is not based on any kind of political or religious construct."
Tabbert offers an alternative to claims of Masonic design in Washington's city plan.
"The design of the US capital is based more on neo-classical style, more related to the attempts to create a new republic based on an ancient Roman republican model than anything that related to freemasons," he said.
Codes and secret signs were Brown's stock-in-trade for the staggering success of "The Da Vinci Code" however.
"I'm nervous about it because I don't think he does very good research," Tabbert said of Brown and his new book. "But fiction writers are fiction writers."
Running Wild by Lee Child is his best ever in my opinion. Awesome plot twist and great characterization of his love interest.
lol..that is great!
Then this is definitely a must read for you....
HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN’T READ. By Pierre Bayard.Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. (Bloomsbury, $19.95.) A French literature professor wants to assuage our guilt over the ways we actually read and discuss books.
lol.
I have not read one of those books, so I will mark this post for future reference.
100 Notable Books of the Year
December 2, 2007
Holiday Books
The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 3, 2006.
Fiction & Poetry
THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER. By Tom Perrotta. (St. Martin’s, $24.95.) In this new novel by the author of “Little Children,” a sex-ed teacher faces off against a church bent on ridding her town of “moral decay.”
AFTER DARK. By Haruki Murakami. Translated by Jay Rubin. (Knopf, $22.95.) A tale of two sisters, one awake all night, one asleep for months.
THE BAD GIRL. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated by Edith Grossman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) This suspenseful novel transforms “Madame Bovary” into a vibrant exploration of the urban mores of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
BEARING THE BODY. By Ehud Havazelet. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) In this daring first novel, a man travels to California after his brother is killed in what may have been a drug transaction.
THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS. By Dinaw Mengestu. (Riverhead, $22.95.) A first novel about an Ethiopian exile in Washington, D.C., evokes loss, hope, memory and the solace of friendship.
BRIDGE OF SIGHS. By Richard Russo. (Knopf, $26.95.) In his first novel since “Empire Falls,” Russo writes of a small town in New York riven by class differences and racial hatred.
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. By Junot Díaz. (Riverhead, $24.95.) A nerdy Dominican-American yearns to write and fall in love.
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. By André Aciman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) Aciman’s novel of love, desire, time and memory describes a passionate affair between two young men in Italy.
CHEATING AT CANASTA. By William Trevor. (Viking, $24.95.) Trevor’s dark, worldly short stories linger in the mind long after they’re finished.
THE COLLECTED POEMS, 1956-1998. By Zbigniew Herbert. Translated by Alissa Valles. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $34.95.) Herbert’s poetry echoes the quiet insubordination of his public life.
DANCING TO “ALMENDRA.” By Mayra Montero. Translated by Edith Grossman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Fact and fiction rub together in this rhythmic story of a reporter on the trail of the Mafia, set mainly in 1950s Cuba.
EXIT GHOST. By Philip Roth. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.) In his latest novel Roth brings back Nathan Zuckerman, a protagonist whom we have known since his potent youth and who now must face his inevitable decline.
FALLING MAN. By Don DeLillo. (Scribner, $26.) Through the story of a lawyer and his estranged wife, DeLillo resurrects the world as it was on 9/11, in all its mortal dread, high anxiety and mass confusion.
FELLOW TRAVELERS. By Thomas Mallon. (Pantheon, $25.) In Mallon’s seventh novel, a State Department official navigates the anti-gay purges of the McCarthy era.
A FREE LIFE. By Ha Jin. (Pantheon, $26.) The Chinese-born author spins a tale of bravery and nobility in an American system built on risk and mutual exploitation.
THE GATHERING. By Anne Enright. (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14.) An Irishwoman searches for clues to what set her brother on the path to suicide.
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. By J. K. Rowling. (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, $34.99.) Rowling ties up all the loose ends in this conclusion to her grand wizarding saga.
HOUSE LIGHTS. By Leah Hager Cohen. (Norton, $24.95.) The heroine of Cohen’s third novel abandons her tarnished parents for the seductions of her grand-mother’s life in theater.
HOUSE OF MEETINGS. By Martin Amis. (Knopf, $23.) A Russian World War II veteran posthumously acquaints his stepdaughter with his grim past of rape and violence.
IN THE COUNTRY OF MEN. By Hisham Matar. (Dial, $22.) The boy narrator of this novel, set in Libya in 1979, learns about the convoluted roots of betrayal in a totalitarian society.
THE INDIAN CLERK. By David Leavitt. (Bloomsbury, $24.95.) Leavitt explores the intricate relationship between the Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy and a poor, self-taught genius from Madras, stranded in England during World War I.
KNOTS. By Nuruddin Farah. (Riverhead, $25.95.) After 20 years, a Somali woman returns home to Mogadishu from Canada, intent on reclaiming a family house from a warlord.
LATER, AT THE BAR: A Novel in Stories. By Rebecca Barry. (Simon & Schuster, $22.) The small-town regulars at Lucy’s Tavern carry their loneliness in “rough and beautiful” ways.
LET THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ERASE YOUR NAME. By Vendela Veda. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $23.95.) A young woman searches for the truth about her parentage amid the snow and ice of Lapland in this bleakly comic yet sad tale of a child’s futile struggle to be loved.
LIKE YOU’D UNDERSTAND, ANYWAY: Stories. By Jim Shepard. (Knopf, $23.) Shepard’s surprising tales feature such diverse characters as a Parisian executioner, a woman in space and two Nazi scientists searching for the yeti.
MAN GONE DOWN. By Michael Thomas. (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14.) This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.
MATRIMONY. By Joshua Henkin. (Pantheon, $23.95.) Henkin follows a couple from college to their mid-30s, through crises of love and mortality.
THE MAYTREES. By Annie Dillard. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) A married couple find their way back to each other under unusual circumstances.
THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES. By Nathan Englander. (Knopf, $25.) A Jewish family is caught up in Argentina’s “Dirty War.”
MOTHERS AND SONS: Stories. By Colm Toibin. (Scribner, $24.) In this collection by the author of “The Master,” families are not so much reassuring and warm as they are settings for secrets, suspicion and missed connections.
NEXT LIFE. By Rae Armantrout. (Wesleyan University, $22.95.) Poetry that conveys the invention, the wit and the force of mind that contests all assumptions.
ON CHESIL BEACH. By Ian McEwan. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $22.) Consisting largely of a single sex scene played out on a couple’s wedding night, this seeming novel of manners is as much a horror story as any McEwan has written.
OUT STEALING HORSES. By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. (Graywolf Press, $22.) In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.
THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST. By Mohsin Hamid. (Harcourt, $22.) Hamid’s chilling second novel is narrated by a Pakistani who tells his life story to an unnamed American after the attacks of 9/11.
REMAINDER. By Tom McCarthy. (Vintage, paper, $13.95.) In this debut, a Londoner emerges from a coma and seeks to reassure himself of the genuineness of his existence.
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES. By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.
SELECTED POEMS. By Derek Walcott. Edited by Edward Baugh. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) The Nobel Prize winner Walcott, who was born on St. Lucia, is a long-serving poet of exile, caught between two races and two worlds.
THE SEPTEMBERS OF SHIRAZ. By Dalia Sofer. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.95.) In this powerful first novel, the father of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran is arrested shortly after the Iranian revolution.
SHORTCOMINGS. By Adrian Tomine. (Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95.) The Asian-American characters in this meticulously observed comic-book novella explicitly address the way in which they handle being in a minority.
SUNSTROKE: And Other Stories. By Tessa Hadley. (Picador, paper, $13.) These resonant tales encapsulate moments of hope and humiliation in a kind of shorthand of different lives lived.
THEN WE CAME TO THE END. By Joshua Ferris. (Little, Brown, $23.99.) Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.
THROW LIKE A GIRL: Stories. By Jean Thompson. (Simon & Schuster, paper, $13.) The women here are smart and strong but drawn to losers.
TIME AND MATERIALS: Poems, 1997-2005. By Robert Hass. (Ecco/Harper-Collins, $22.95.) What Hass, a former poet laureate, has lost in Californian ease he has gained in stern self-restraint.
TREE OF SMOKE. By Denis Johnson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.
TWENTY GRAND: And Other Tales of Love and Money. By Rebecca Curtis. (Harper Perennial, paper, $13.95.) In this debut collection, a crisp, blunt tone propels stories both surreal and realistic.
VARIETIES OF DISTURBANCE: Stories. By Lydia Davis. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, paper, $13.) Dispensing with straight narrative, Davis microscopically examines language and thought.
THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK: Stories. By Alice Munro. (Knopf, $25.95.) This collection offers unusually explicit reflections of Munro’s life.
WHAT IS THE WHAT. The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel. By Dave Eggers. (McSweeney’s, $26.) The horrors, injustices and follies in this novel are based on the experiences of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
WINTERTON BLUE. By Trezza Azzopardi. (Grove, $24.) An unhappy young woman meets an even unhappier drifter.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION. By Michael Chabon. (HarperCollins, $26.95.) Cops, thugs, schemers, rabbis, chess fanatics and obsessives of every stripe populate this screwball, hard-boiled murder mystery set in an imagined Jewish settlement in Alaska.
Nonfiction
AGENT ZIGZAG: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal. By Ben Macintyre. (Harmony, $25.95.) The exploits of Eddie Chapman, a British criminal who became a double agent in World War II.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE: A Life. By Hugh Brogan. (Yale University, $35.) Brogan’s combative biography takes issue with Tocqueville’s misgivings about democracy.
ALICE: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker. By Stacy A. Cordery. (Viking, $32.95.) A biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s shrewd, tart-tongued older daughter.
AMERICAN CREATION: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. By Joseph J. Ellis. (Knopf, $26.95.) This history explores an underappreciated point: that this country was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them.
THE ARGUMENT: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. By Matt Bai. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) An exhaustive account of the Democrats’ transformative efforts, by a political reporter for The New York Times Magazine.
ARSENALS OF FOLLY: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. By Richard Rhodes. (Knopf, $28.95.) This artful history focuses on the events leading up to the pivotal 1986 Reykjavik summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev.
THE ART OF POLITICAL MURDER: Who Killed the Bishop? By Francisco Goldman. (Grove, $25.) The novelist returns to Guatemala, a major inspiration for his fiction, to try to solve the real-life killing of a Roman Catholic bishop.
BROTHER, I’M DYING. By Edwidge Danticat. (Knopf, $23.95.) Danticat’s cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an undercurrent of melancholy in this memoir of her Haitian family.
CIRCLING MY MOTHER. By Mary Gordon. (Pantheon, $24.) Gordon’s deeply personal memoir focuses on the engaged and lively Catholicism of her mother, a glamorous career woman who was also an alcoholic with a body afflicted by polio.
CLEOPATRA’S NOSE: 39 Varieties of Desire. By Judith Thurman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95.) These surgically analytic essays of cultural criticism showcase themes of loss, hunger and motherhood.
CULTURAL AMNESIA: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts. By Clive James. (Norton, $35.) Essays on 20th-century luminaries by one of Britain’s leading public intellectuals.
THE DAY OF BATTLE: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy. By Rick Atkinson. (Holt, $35.) A celebration of the American experience in these campaigns.
THE DIANA CHRONICLES. By Tina Brown. (Doubleday, $27.50.) The former New Yorker editor details the sordid domestic drama that pitted the Princess of Wales against Britain’s royal family.
THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCE: A Historical Geography From the Revolution to the First World War. By Graham Robb. (Norton, $27.95.) Robb presents France as a group of diverse regions, each with its own long history, intricate belief systems and singular customs.
DOWN THE NILE: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff. By Rosemary Mahoney. (Little, Brown, $23.99.) Mahoney juxtaposes her solo rowing journey with encounters with the Egyptians she met.
DRIVEN OUT: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. By Jean Pfaelzer. (Random House, $27.95.) How the Chinese were brutalized and demonized in the 19th-century American West — and how they fought back.
DUE CONSIDERATIONS: Essays and Criticism. By John Updike. (Knopf, $40.) Updike’s first nonfiction collection in eight years displays breathtaking scope as well as the author’s seeming inability to write badly.
EASTER EVERYWHERE: A Memoir. By Darcey Steinke. (Bloomsbury, $24.95.) A minister’s daughter confronts her own spiritual rootlessness.
EDITH WHARTON. By Hermione Lee. (Knopf, $35.) This meticulous biography shows Wharton’s significance as a designer, decorator, gardener and traveler, as well as a writer.
THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam. By Tom Bissell. (Pantheon, $25.) Bissell mixes rigorous narrative accounts of the war and emotionally powerful scenes of the distress it brought his own family.
THE FLORIST’S DAUGHTER. By Patricia Hampl. (Harcourt, $24.) In her fifth and most powerful memoir, Hampl looks hard at her relationship to her Midwestern roots as her mother lies dying in the hospital.
FORESKIN’S LAMENT: A Memoir. By Shalom Auslander. (Riverhead, $24.95.) With scathing humor and bitter irony, Auslander wrestles with his Jewish Orthodox roots.
GOMORRAH: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System. By Roberto Saviano. Translated by Virginia Jewiss. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) This powerful work of reportage started a national conversation in Italy when it was published there last year.
THE HOUSE THAT GEORGE BUILT: With a Little Help From Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty. By Wilfrid Sheed. (Random House, $29.95.) A rich homage to Gershwin, Berlin and other masters of the swinging jazz song.
HOW DOCTORS THINK. By Jerome Groopman. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.) Groopman takes a tough-minded look at the ways in which doctors and patients interact, and at the profound problems facing modern medicine.
HOW TO READ THE BIBLE: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. By James L. Kugel. (Free Press, $35.) In this tour through the Jewish scriptures (i.e., the Old Testament, more or less), a former professor of Hebrew seeks to reclaim the Bible from the literalists and the skeptics.
HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN’T READ. By Pierre Bayard.Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. (Bloomsbury, $19.95.) A French literature professor wants to assuage our guilt over the ways we actually read and discuss books.
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. (Knopf, $25.95.) The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.
THE INVISIBLE CURE: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS. By Helen Epstein. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Rigorous reporting unearths new findings among the old issues.
LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA. By Tim Weiner. (Doubleday, $27.95.) A comprehensive chronicle of the American intelligence agency, from the days of the Iron Curtain to Iraq, by a reporter for The New York Times.
LENI: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. By Steven Bach. (Knopf, $30.) How Hitler’s favorite director made “Triumph of the Will” and convinced posterity that she didn’t know what the Nazis were up to.
LEONARD WOOLF: A Biography. By Victoria Glendinning. (Free Press, $30.) Glendinning shows Virginia Woolf’s accomplished husband as passionate, reserved and, above all, stoical.
A LIFE OF PICASSO: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932. By John Richardson. (Knopf, $40.) The third, penultimate installment in Richardson’s biography spans a dauntingly complicated time in Picasso’s life and in European history.
LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. (Bantam, $22.) Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.
LONG WAY GONE: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. By Ishmael Beah. (Sarah Crichton/-Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22.) A former child warrior gives literary voice to the violence and killings he both witnessed and perpetrated during the Sierra Leone civil war.
THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. By Jeffrey Toobin. (Doubleday, $27.95.) An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.
THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A Woman in World History. By Linda Colley. (Pantheon, $27.50.) Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.
PORTRAIT OF A PRIESTESS: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By Joan Breton Connelly. (Princeton University, $39.50.) A scholar finds that religion meant power for Greek women.
RALPH ELLISON: A Biography. By Arnold Rampersad. (Knopf, $35.) Ellison was seemingly cursed by his failure to follow up “Invisible Man.”
THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century. By Alex Ross. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.
SCHULZ AND PEANUTS: A Biography. By David Michaelis. (Harper/ Harper-Collins, $34.95.) Actual “Peanuts” cartoons movingly illustrate this portrait of the strip’s creator, presented here as a profoundly lonely and unhappy man.
SERVICE INCLUDED: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter. By Phoebe Damrosch. (Morrow, $24.95.) A memoir about waiting tables at the acclaimed Manhattan restaurant Per Se.
SOLDIER’S HEART: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. By Elizabeth D. Samet. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) A civilian teacher at the Military Academy offers a significant perspective on a crucial social and political force: honor.
STANLEY: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer. By Tim Jeal. (Yale University, $38.) Of the many biographies of Henry Morton Stanley, Jeal’s, which profits from his access to an immense new trove of material, is the most complete and readable.
THE STILLBORN GOD: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. By Mark Lilla. (Knopf, $26.) With nuance and complexity, Lilla examines how we managed to separate, in a fashion, church and state.
THOMAS HARDY. By Claire Tomalin. (Penguin Press, $35.) Tomalin presents Hardy as a fascinating case study in mid-Victorian literary sociology.
TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton. By Sara Wheeler. (Random House, $27.95.) The story of the man immortalized in “Out of Africa.”
TWO LIVES: Gertrude and Alice. By Janet Malcolm. (Yale University, $25.) Sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography in this study of Stein and Toklas.
THE WHISPERERS: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. By Orlando Figes. (Metropolitan, $35.) An extraordinary look at the gulag’s impact on desperate individuals and families struggling to survive.
THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. By Saul Friedländer. (HarperCollins, $39.95.) Individual testimony and broader events are skillfully interwoven.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/notable-books-2007.html?ei=5070&em=&en=d3f175766e9b6e72&ex=1196053200&pagewanted=print
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
as a back-up for more intellectual moments ... lol
Running Blind by Lee Child
I really look forward to reading this book, as I absolutely love the author and his hero REACHER.
BARRY EISLER ... looks like you read one and you have read them all!
Barry Eisler's THE LAST ASSASSIN is not as good as Killing Rain so far after 100 pages.
I loved his book Executioner's Song:
Biographer: Norman Mailer dead at age 84
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for
decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur
with such books as "The Naked and the Dead," died Saturday, his
literary
executor said. He was 84.
Mailer died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital, said J.
Michael Lennon, who is also the author's biographer.
From his classic debut novel to such masterworks of literary
journalism
as "The Armies of the Night," the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always
got credit for insight, passion and originality.
Some of his works were highly praised, some panned, but none was
pronounced the Great American Novel that seemed to be his life quest
from the time he soared to the top as a brash 25-year-old "enfant
terrible."
Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious,
streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six
times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken
party.
He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York,
produced five forgettable films, dabbled in journalism, flew gliders,
challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for
reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and
crusaded against women's lib.
But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, "in the end it
is
the writing that will count."
Mailer, he wrote, possessed "a superb natural style that does not crack
under the pressures he puts upon it, a talent for narrative and
characters with real blood streams and nervous systems, a great
openness
and eagerness for experience, a sense of urgency about the need to test
thought and character in the crucible of a difficult era."
Author Joan Didion, tearful and struggling for words after learning of
Mailer's death, said, "Obviously, he was a great American voice."
Norman Mailer was born Jan. 31, 1923 in Long Branch, N.J. His father,
Isaac, a South Africa-born accountant, and mother, Fanny, who ran a
housekeeping and nursing agency, soon moved to Brooklyn — later
described by Mailer as "the most secure Jewish environment in America."
Mailer completed public schools, earned an engineering science degree
in
1943 from Harvard, where he decided to become a writer, and was soon
drafted into the Army. Sent to the Philippines as an infantryman, he
saw
enough of Army life and combat to provide a basis for his first book,
"The Naked and the Dead," published in 1948 while he was a
post-graduate
student in Paris on the G.I. Bill.
The book — noteworthy for Mailer's invention of the word "fug" as a
substitute for the then-unacceptable four-letter original — was a
best-seller, and Mailer returned home to find himself anointed the new
Hemingway, Dos Passos and Melville.
Buoyed by instant literary celebrity, Mailer embraced the early 1950s
counterculture — defining "hip" in his essay "The White Negro," allying
himself with Beat Generation gurus Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and
writing social and political commentary for the leftist Village Voice,
which he helped found. He also churned out two more novels, "Barbary
Shore" (1951) and " Deer Park" (1955), neither embraced kindly by
readers or critics.
Mailer turned reporter to cover the 1960 Democratic Party convention
for
Esquire and later claimed, with typical hubris, that his piece,
"Superman Comes to the Supermarket," had made the difference in John F.
Kennedy's razor-thin margin of victory over Republican Richard M.
Nixon.
While Life magazine called his next book, "An American Dream" (1965),
"the big comeback of Norman Mailer," the author-journalist was
chronicling major events of the day: an anti-war march on Washington,
the 1968 political conventions, the Ali- Patterson fight, an Apollo
moon
shot.
His 1968 account of the peace march on the Pentagon, "The Armies of the
Night," won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was
described as the only person over 40 trusted by the flower generation.
Covering the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago for Harper's
magazine, Mailer was torn between keeping to a tight deadline or
joining
the anti-war protests that led to a violent police crackdown. "I was in
a moral quandary. I didn't know if I was being scared or being
professional," he later testified in the trial of the so-called Chicago
Seven.
In 1999, "The Armies of the Night" was listed at No. 19 on a New York
University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the
century.
Mailer's personal life was as turbulent as the times. In 1960, at a
party at his Brooklyn Heights home, Mailer stabbed his second wife,
Adele Morales, with a knife. She declined to press charges, and it was
not until 1997 that she revealed, in her own book, how close she had
come to dying.
In 1969, Mailer ran for mayor on a "left conservative" platform. He
said
New York City should become the 51st state, and urged a referendum for
"black ghetto dwellers" on whether they should set up their own
government.
Mailer had numerous minor run-ins with the law, usually for being drunk
or disorderly, but was also jailed briefly during the Pentagon
protests.
While directing the film "Maidstone" in 1968, the self-described "old
club fighter" punched actor Lane Smith, breaking his jaw, and bit actor
Rip Torn's ear in another scuffle.
Years later, he championed the work of a convict-writer named Jack
Abbott — and was subjected to ridicule and criticism when Abbott,
released to a halfway house, promptly stabbed a man to death.
Mailer had views on almost everything.
The '70s: "the decade in which image became preeminent because nothing
deeper was going on."
Poetry: A "natural activity ... a poem comes to one," whereas prose
required making "an appointment with one's mind to write a few thousand
words."
Journalism: irresponsible. "You can't be too certain about what
happened."
Technology: "insidious, debilitating and depressing," and nobody in
politics had an answer to "its impact on our spiritual well-being."
Mailer's suspicion of technology was so deep that while most writers
used typewriters or computers, he wrote with a pen, some 1,500 words a
day, in what Newsweek's Sokolov called "an illegible and curving hand."
When a stranger asked him on a Brooklyn street if he wrote on a
computer, he replied, "No, I never learned that," then added, in a
mischevious aside, "but my girl does."
In a 1971 magazine piece about the new women's liberation movement,
Mailer equated the dehumanizing effect of technology with what he said
was feminists' need to abolish the mystery, romance and "blind,
goat-kicking lust" from sex.
Time magazine said the broadside should "earn him a permanent niche in
their pantheon of male chauvinist pigs." Mailer later told an
interviewer that his being called sexist was "the greatest injustice in
American life."
Two years later, he wrote "Marilyn" and was accused of plagiarism by
other Marilyn Monroe biographers. One, Maurice Zolotow, called it "one
of the literary heists of the century." Mailer shot back, "nobody calls
me a plagiarist and gets away with it," adding that if he was going to
steal, it would be from Shakespeare or Melville.
In "Advertisements for Myself" (1959), Mailer promised to write the
greatest novel yet, but later conceded he had not.
Among other notable works: "Cannibals and Christians" (1966); "Why Are
We in Vietnam?" (1967); and " Miami and the Siege of Chicago" (1968),
an
account of the two political conventions that year.
"The Executioner's Song" (1979), an epic account of the life and death
of petty criminal Gary Gilmore, whom Mailer never met, won the 1980
Pulitzer Prize for fiction. "Ancient Evenings" (1983), a novel of
ancient Egypt that took 11 years to complete, was critically panned.
"Tough Guys Don't Dance" (1984) became a 1987 film. Some critics found
"Harlot's Ghost" (1991), a novel about the CIA, surprisingly
sympathetic
to the cold warriors, considering Mailer's left-leaning past. In 1997,
he came out with "The Gospel According to the Son," a novel told from
Jesus Christ's point of view. The following year, he marked his 75th
birthday with the epic-length anthology "The Time of Our Time."
Mailer's wives, besides