Bookmarks back issues from November 2006:
Letter from the editor.
Nov 01, 2006; ... PAUL CLAYTON WROTE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR that we've included in this issue. He uses a quotation from one of our book-group profiles--a funny and innocuous line--as a jumping-off point to question whether many readers have become too politically narrow-minded--or liberal--in their ...
Narrowed perspective?(letters)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2006; ... AS SOMEONE WHO IS GROWING MORE CONSERVATIVE in his old age, a quote from your piece on the book group Dick and the Bibliotarts got me thinking: "We are six rabid Democrats and one Republican. (We do try to let the Republican speak from time to time!)." I know the comment was made in jest, ...
Digital books? Never!(letters)
Nov 01, 2006; ... I NORMALLY DON'T WRITE notes to magazines or papers, only when something really bothers me [see Jon's Letter from the Editor, Sept/Oct 2006]. We have too many gadgets in our lives now that we cannot live without: pagers, cell phones, iPods, and Blackberries. Enough--some things need to ...
But maybe audio ...(letters)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2006; ... I JUST READ YOUR LETTER about the digital books and losing the romance of touching and feeling a book as we read it. I spend a lot of time on the road, and I use my iPod to listen to books while on the way to work, waiting at the dentist's office, or at the gym. It's a great way to keep up ...
Thank goodness it's winter.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2006; ... I'M JUST NOT "WITH IT" when it comes to summer reading. Thrillers and mysteries have never been my taste, and I would hate to spend three months of the year's valuable reading time bored and frustrated. During my college summers, I chose books that were classics or were mentioned in ...
Lit at large: current and upcoming books worthy of your attention.
Nov 01, 2006 ... COMING IN NOVEMBER 2006 INES OF MY SOUL | ISABEL ALLENDE ... EMPIRE | ORSON SCOTT CARD ... ON TRUTH | HARRY G. FRANKFURT ... THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK | ALICE MUNRO ... POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION A Memoir | GORE VIDAL ... THE AENEID | VIRGIL, TRANSLATED BY ROBERT FAGLES ... THE ...
Hugo Award 2006.
Nov 01, 2006 ... The Hugo Award, also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award, is given by the World Science Fiction Society. The Winner SPIN | ROBERT CHARLES WILSON: One day, 10-year-old Tyler Dupree and his friends watch the stars go out. As they grow up, a space probe ...
Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006.(Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss')
Nov 01, 2006 ... NOW IN ITS 37TH YEAR, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction is one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes, awarded to the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland. Last year's winner was The Sea by John Banville. The longlist of ...
Hospital for special care transforming lives: New Britain, Connecticut.(book group: A unique profile of readers together)(Organization overview)
Nov 01, 2006; ... How did the group get started? Hospital for Special Care (HSC) is a long-term acute-care hospital, which means that many of our patients reside here for extended periods of time. Many are technology-dependent, so they are limited in the variety of activities in which they can ...
Have you read? Readers recommend their favorite books.(Recommended readings)
Nov 01, 2006 ... STAYING POWER Natalie Quick lives in Canada. I am a school teacher with a passion for literature. Unfortunately, the students in my class are only seven years old, so I can't press any of these titles on them--but maybe there are some simple retellings of these new ...
Landmark court cases.(what one book: Expert recommendations on a selected topic)(Recommended readings)
Nov 01, 2006 ... THE U.S. SUPREME COURT convened for the first time in 1790. Since then, various plaintiffs and defendants in the United States have tested the boundaries of law--and society. The following scholars recommend the best fiction and nonfiction books on landmark court cases. Kevin ...
Now in paperback: previously reviewed, available for less.(Bibliography)
Nov 01, 2006 ... OCTOBER SHALIMAR THE CLOWN By Salman Rushdie **** SELECTION LITERARY--While religious extremism destroys Kashmiri villages, jealousy has global consequences. (Nov/Dec 2005) THE WORLD TO COME By Dara Horn **** LITERARY--Chagall, a ...
Year in review: a look back at our favorite books.(Bibliography)
Nov 01, 2006 ... Each issue of Bookmarks features our Selections--staff favorites from among the books reviewed. Below is a round-up of our Selections from earlier in 2006. LITERARY CELLOPHANE By Marie Arana A plague of truth descends in the rain forest. (Sept/Oct 2006) ...
Rereading revisited.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2006; ... DURING WORLD WAR II, I was the army kid who, when the other guys were enjoying a 10-minute cigarette break, would pull out one of those little paperbacks and read a few pages written by James Thurber. I first read The Catcher in the Rye more than 50 years ago, and I loved it ....
Dostoevsky in translation.
Nov 01, 2006; ... THANK YOU FOR THE EXCELLENT SECTIONS on classic authors. I especially enjoyed the recent review of Dostoevsky. I enthusiastically recommend a new translation of The Brothers Karamazov by David McDuff, published reading Katamazov for the fourth time, this ...
Anne Tyler.(Biography)
Nov 01, 2006; ... "People have always seemed funny and strange to me, and touching in unexpected ways. I can't shake off a sort of mist of irony that hangs over shake off a sort of mist of irony that hangs over whatever I see .... It just seems to me that even the most ordinary person, in real life, will ...
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006).(Obituary)
Nov 01, 2006; ... "The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition." Naguib Mahfouz, Aramco World Magazine, March-April 1989. ON OCTOBER 14, ...
New books guide.(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2006 ... We read hundreds of book reviews each month to select the works to include in each issue. We seek a balance among three categories: highly-rated books that received many reviews, highly-rated books that received less comprehensive coverage, and lower-rated books that were widely reviewed ...
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman 24 Stories By Haruki Murakami Variations of intimate surrealism. Jazz fan Haruki Murakami presents a number of bebop literary improvisations in what he calls his "first real short story collection" since 1991's The Elephant Vanishes ....
Kafka on the Shore 2005.(Book review)(Brief review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... KAFKA ON THE SHORE 2005: The story of a teenage runaway runs parallel to ...
All Aunt Hagar's Children.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** 1/2 All Aunt Hagar's Children Stories By Edward P. Jones Navigating the tremulous urban landscape. This 14-story collection, set in the author's native Washington, D.C., sifts through an impressive range of African-American experiences in the 20th century. Many ...
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Brief Encounters with Che Guevara Stories By Ben Fountain Lessons learned in very foreign lands. Set in countries avoided by most Western tourists--Myanmar, Colombia, Haiti, and Sierra Leone--this debut collection stars fishermen, aid workers, cynical government ...
Moral Disorder.(Moral Disorder and Other Stories )(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Moral Disorder and Other Stories By Margaret Atwood Family development. In 11 interconnected stories that span six decades, Margaret Atwood explores a Canadian woman's life in relation to her parents, friends, siblings, an English teacher, even a ...
Half of a Yellow Sun.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... ***** 1/2 Half of a Yellow Sun By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A personal history of 1960s Nigeria. In 1967 the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria, one of the largest single ethnicities in Africa, broke away from the country to form the independent nation of Biafra. A bloody ...
After This.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 After This By Alice McDermott A family affair. There is nothing particularly notable about the Keane family. Mary and John met when she was about to resign herself to spinsterhood and he'd become accustomed to limping through life on a leg injured in World ...
The Road.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** 1/2 The Road By Cormac McCarthy The triumph of evil. In a postapocalyptic America, an unnamed man and his sickly young son, among the few survivors of a devastating holocaust, traverse a "barren, silent, godless" wasteland devoid of life and cloaked by gray ash ....
The Brambles.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 The Brambles By Eliza Minot A tale of family drama. The three Bramble siblings have lost their mother to a plane crash; now their affectionate father, 76-year-old Arthur, is dying of cancer. Margaret, the oldest sibling and herself the ultracapable mother of ...
Gallatin Canyon.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 Gallatin Canyon Stories By Thomas McGuane Middle-aged men getting a grip on life. In ten stories set in Michigan, Florida, and Thomas McGuane's trademark Big Sky Country, ordinary men light out in search of themselves and their destinies. In the title story, a ...
The Inhabited World.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 The Inhabited World By David Long A tale of two lost souls. Before Evan Molloy committed suicide in 1992, he had had no inkling he'd be marooned in the very Seattle-area home where he put a bullet to his head. When a single, 30-something woman, ...
Death of a Writer.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Death of a Writer By Michael Collins A literary murder mystery. E. Robert Pendleton, an English professor at an exclusive liberal arts in the Midwest, is less than thrilled when best-selling author, former friend, and rival Allen Horowitz visits campus for ...
The Keep.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 The Keep By Jennifer Egan The haunted past. A childhood prank left cousins Howard and Danny estranged. Twenty years later, they reunite in Germany when Howard, a high-school misfit who's now a millionaire, invites hipster New Yorker Danny to assist him in ...
The Law of Dreams.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 The Law of Dreams By Peter Behrens A Homeric journey, of sorts. The Irish Potato Famine of the mid-1840s killed an estimated half a million people and dislocated a million more. The Law of Dreams, inspired by the author's family history, puts a human face on ...
The Emperor's Children.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** The Emperor's Children By Claire Messud A Manhattan fairytale, 9/11 style. In a social satire for the 21st century, Claire Messud follows three friends, all Brown University graduates approaching 30, looking to make their mark as the cultural elite of a new ...
Paint It Black.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 Paint It Black By Janet Fitch Los Angeles, 1980s style. Josie Tyrell, abused and neglected as a child in Bakersfield, California, nonetheless kept her wits about her when she ran away to Los Angeles and joined the punk-rock scene. There she meets her exact ...
Thirteen Moons.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** Thirteen Moons By Charles Frazier One man's 19th-century odyssey. As he sits on his porch and observes signs of progress all around him, the aging Will Cooper reflects back on nearly nine decades of an event-filled life in the Great Smoky Mountains and environs ....
Pound for Pound.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 Pound for Pound By F. X. Toole A cut man's swan song. Dan Cooley isn't exactly washed up, but he's long past his days in the boxing ring. He has forged a living by training fighters in his Los Angeles gym, but that quickly unravels when a tragic ...
The Gloves.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... THE GLOVES A Boxing Chronicle | ROBERT ANASI: **** Summer 2002. At age 33, with only one year of ...
Rise and Shine.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 Rise and Shine By Anna Quindlen Fame is fleeting but family is forever. When renowned morning talk-show host Meghan Fitzmaurice, flustered by her husband's recent and unexpected departure, snaps out an expletive with her microphone still live on the air, her ...
Blessings 2002.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... BLESSINGS 2002: *** 1/2 Jan/ Feb 2003. A baby is left on 80-year-old Lydia Blessing's doorstep and found by the wealthy widow's caretaker, ...
Special Topics in Calamity Physics.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 Special Topics in Calamity Physics By Marisha Pessl A campus murder mystery. The itinerant Blue van Meer and her widowed academic father spend no more than a semester at any university. During her senior year, they settle down at a small elite school in ...
Happiness Sold Separately.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Happiness Sold Separately By Lolly Winston A tender, realistic tale of complicated love. When Silicon Valley attorney Elinor Mackey, 40, learns that her husband, Ted, is having an affair, she feels "pity ... and fatigue" rather than anger. Their marriage has ...
A Spot of Bother.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 A Spot of Bother By Mark Haddon A British suburban family slowly falls apart. While trying on trousers, aging patriarch George Hall discovers a large purple lesion on his hip. He immediately assumes the spot to be cancer and himself to be doomed. As he ...
Forgetfulness.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Forgetfulness By Ward Just When forgiveness is out of the question. Thomas Railles, a well-known American expatriate painter, once did some insignificant work for the CIA. That connection may have led to the death of his beloved wife, Florette DuFour, at the ...
An Unfinished Season.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... AN UNFINISHED SEASON (2004): **** Sept/Oct 2004 * PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST. Ward shows the gritty side of the 1950s in a Chicago defined by rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and ...
Echo House.(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2006 ... ECHO HOUSE (1997): * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST. This political ...
When Madeline Was Young.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** 1/2 When Madeline Was Young By Jane Hamilton Forever young. Soon after her marriage in the late 1940s, Madeline Maciver suffers a brutal brain injury while on a bike ride with her husband Aaron. The accident leaves her with the mental capacity of a child. Aaron ...
The Light in the Piazza.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA | ELIZABETH SPENCER 1960: An American woman and her daughter vacation in Italy. When the ...
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... ** 1/2 The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters By Gordon Dahlquist A weighty Victorian thriller. When Celeste Temple receives a terse "Dear Jane" letter from her beau, Roger Bascombe, she doesn't just get mad: she gets curious. Her quest to discover Roger's reasons for ...
Coronado: Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Coronado Stories By Dennis Lehane Plumbing the depths of violence. With these five short stories and play, Dennis Lehane dredges up the same surreal noir he exhibited in his best-selling Mystic River. In "Running Out of Dog," two Vietnam vets fight over a car ...
Mystic River.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... MYSTIC RIVER (1991): A blue-collar Boston neighborhood experiences a grisly murder, and ...
The Dead Hour.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** The Dead Hour By Denise Mina Getting wiser. In Mina's A Field of Blood (*** 1/2 Nov/Dec 2005), young cub reporter Paddy Mehan got involved in a grisly murder. This sequel, next in a planned five-part series, opens with Paddy, now 21 and working the night shift ...
The Messenger.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** The Messenger By Daniel Silva Fighting Saudi terrorism. Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon would rather just restore fine art, but he can't seem to retire from espionage. In Prince of Fire (2005), Allon returned to work when a Palestinian ...
The Kill Artist.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... THE KILL ARTIST 2000: Art restorer and former Mossad agent Gabriel Allon comes out of ...
Deception.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... DECEPTION (2004): **** Nov/Dec 2004. Mina has written plenty of stand-alone works; Deception is a strong one. When a psychiatrist is accused of murdering a serial killer, ...
Fear of the Dark.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Fear of the Dark By Walter Mosley The new detective is back. The third installment of Walter Mosley's Fearless Jones series (after Fearless Jones and Fear Itself) takes place in 1956 South Los Angeles, where trouble once again finds bookseller Paris Minton and ...
The Ruins.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** The Ruins By Scott Smith A multicultural, horticultural horror story. Four disaffected American twentysomethings attempt to escape the tensions and irritations of their everyday lives by going on vacation to Cancun. On a whim, they join two other tourists, a ...
A Simple Plan.(Movie review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... A SIMPLE PLAN (1993): When three men find a wrecked plane containing a dead pilot and $4 million, they devise a foolproof plan for stealing the ...
End in Tears: A Wexford Novel.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** End in Tears A Wexford Novel By Ruth Rendell The rough side of love. When two young teenage mothers are brutally murdered in Kingsmarkham with chunks of concrete, Chief Inspector Wexford, as ever, is on the case. However, there are troubles closer to home that ...
The Night Gardener.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** The Night Gardener By George Pelecanos Murder, redux. In 1985, patrol officers Dan Holiday, T. C. Cook, and Gus Ramone investigate the death of a teenage girl in a community garden in Washington, D.C .... one of several deaths at the hands ...
The Mission Song.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** The Mission Song By John le Carre After the fall of Communism, can le Carre come in from the cold? Bruno "Salvo" Salvador, 29, the orphaned son of an Irish Catholic missionary and a Congolese woman, has a gift for language. Salvo's parentage marks him in society, ...
The Prisoner of Guantanamo.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** The Prisoner of Guantanamo By Dan Fesperman Each war leads to the next. The Prisoner of Guantanamo is the fourth thriller penned by Baltimore Sun reporter Dan Fesperman, whose books often take place within the setting of war. His protagonist in his latest book is ...
A Separate War: and Other Stories.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** A Separate War and Other Stories By Joe Haldeman Three decades of SF writing. In these 15 works written over the last three decades, SF master Joe Haldeman reflects on the best and the worst of our humanity in an apathetic, strange world. The title story returns ...
The Forever War.(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... THE FOREVER WAR (1975): HUGO AND NEBULA AWARDS. Private William Mandella is drafted into a war with the alien ...
Three Days to Never.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... **** Three Days to Never By Tim Powers Manipulating time and distance. Frank and Daphne Marrity, father and daughter, are part of a magical family--a realization that Frank fully comprehends only after his grandmother has died. Through letters he reads after her ...
Throne of Jade: Temeraire, Book 2.(Book review)
Nov 01, 2006 ... *** Throne of Jade Temeraire, Book 2 By Naomi Novik The prodigal dragon. In the first book of the Temeraire trilogy, His Majesty's Dragon (*** 1/2 Mar/Apr 2006), Captain Will Laurence of the British Navy captures a French ship that holds an egg. Though the novels are ...