http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2013/10/the-joy-of-reading-3.html
The New York Times Sunday Book Review’s Notable Books of 2013
Thought I'd share the NYT's list of notable books of 2013. I've just read one: Kate Atkinson's Life after Life. But have a few of these on my list. Thanks, Kris and Joannah, for sharing this. Image: John Kelly
Fall of Giants and Winter of the World
Give me Herman Wouk any day. Now I definitely want to reread "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance". --Kamakshi
Wild—From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail: Cheryl Strayed
Published by Thorndike Press / Penguin Random House, 2012, 315 pages. This is an amazing book about a woman’s journey to heal herself. Cheryl Strayed’s world collapses when she loses her beloved mother to cancer. Her marriage to a man she loves breaks up. And without her mother to hold them together, her family drifts …
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The Casual Vacancy: J.K. Rowlings
Published by Little, Brown, 2012, 512 pages. This is about as far as you can get from the magical world of Harry Potter. There are no Dumbledores or Hagrids here, much less any wizardry. The book takes you to a small unmagical town (Pagford), with small self-absorbed people who lack empathy or wisdom. Depite this, …
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Review by Kamakshi BalasubramaniamPublished by Atlantic Books, 2008, 304 pages. Terse and lyrical, Galloway’s novel about the siege of Sarajevo shows with deep poignancy how war shortens lives but expands to the point of unbearable pain each moment lived in anticipation of tragedy. A man’s life consists of fetching drinking water daily for his family …
Desultory reading
The Story of Beautiful Girl: Rachel Simon Review by Usha RamanPublished by Random House, 2011, 252 pages. One of the things about travel is that it affords the opportunity to read—especially when one is on a plane without a personal video screen and movies on demand! A couple of weeks ago on one such flight …
Various Pets Alive and Dead: Marina Lewycka
Review by Joannah CabornPublished by Penguin, 2012, 367 pages One of the best things about this book are the dedications. The first one:“To quietly flowing Don”. The second is a Gogol quote, from Dead Souls (1842):“We live in new times – the age of the hero is past – now is the time of the …
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The Black Sheep: Honoré de Balzac
Review by Kamakshi Balasubramanian Translated from the French by Donald AdamsonPublished by Penguin, this edition published in 1976, 202 pages. Original version published in 1842. More than forty-five years have passed between my first acquaintance with Balzac and this renewal. Of that first work I read (Pere Goriot) I carry a strong impression, mainly of the …
Reading challenge!
My dear reading compatriots: I would like to propose something of a challenge. While I don't know the range of linguistic abilities among us, having never met the majority of you, I wonder if it would be possible for us as a group to undertake the same sort of challenge as BBC's Ann Morgan. Would …
Talking About Books 