April Polls
Voting will end on Thursday and results posted Friday.
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
Unanticipated pregnancy makes liars out of young women, this thoughtful first novel shows, as they try to rationalize, explain, and accept what is happening to them. When she arrives at St. Elizabeth's, a home for pregnant girls in Habit, Kentucky, Rose Clinton seems as evasive and deceptive as the other unwed mothers. But Rose is different: she has a husband whom she has deserted. Unlike most St. Elizabeth's visitors, she neither gives up her baby nor leaves the home, staying on as cook while her daughter grows up among expectant mothers fantasizing that they, too, might keep their infants. The reader learns from Rose how she came to St. Elizabeth's, but it is her doting husband and rebellious daughter who reveal her motives and helpless need for freedom. Together, the three create a complex character study of a woman driven by forces she can neither understand nor control.--
The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro
Notaro, who writes a weekly humor column for the Arizona Republic, has collected some of those columns into her first book. Notaro is "everywoman" not quite pretty enough, not the popular one, not good at holding a job or a man. She tells her stories about public bathrooms and high school reunions with a wicked edge that keeps us laughing at her and, of course, at ourselves. On the dreaded reunion: " 'It's time for your high school reunion!' the letter shrieked, and then went on to inform me that 546 of the people I hated most in the world were coming together at some lah-de-dah resort for the entire weekend to talk about the good old days." In "Suckers," she recalls the gym class where the girls got "the talk." "It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it." Ahhh...the good old days. This is a great, funny read that women will love. Recommended for most humor collections.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
In the small midwestern city of Zenith, George Babbitt seems to have it all: a successful real-estate business, a devoted wife, three children, and a house with all the modern conveniences. Yet, dissatisfied and lonely, he’s begun to question the conformity, consumerism, and competitiveness of his conservative, and ultimately cultureless middle-class community. His despairing sense that something, many things are missing from his life leads him into a flirtation with liberal politics and a fling with an attractive and seemingly “bohemian” widow. But he soon finds that his attempts at rebellion may cost more than he is willing to pay.
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
For his fourth novel, two-time Booker Prize finalist Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, etc.) turns to material most writers plumb in their first: the semiautobiographical, first-person coming-of-age story. And after three books with notably complex narrative structure, far-flung settings, and multiple viewpoints, he has chosen one narrator, 13-year-old Jason Taylor, to tell the story of one year (1982) in one town, Worcestershire's Black Swan Green. Jason starts with the January day he accidentally smashes his late grandfather's irreplaceable Omega Seamaster DeVille watch and ends with Christmas, which, because of intervening events, becomes the last he spends in this sleepy Midlands hamlet. The gorgeously revealed cast includes Jason's brilliant older sister, sarcastic mother, blustering dad and a spectrum of bullies and mates. Jason's nemesis is an intermittent, fluctuating stammer: some days he must avoid words beginning with N; other days, S. Once he is exposed, the bullies taunt him mercilessly; there is no respite for the weak or disabled in Black Swan Green nor, as the realities of Thatcher's grim reign begin to take their toll, in England writ large. How Jason and his family navigate this year of change is the emotional core of this rich novel, but the virtuoso chapter is "The Bridle Path," wherein Jason, alone for one delicious day, searches for a tunnel fabled to have been dug by the Romans in order to rout the Vikings. What he finds along the way captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy and brings to mind adventures shared by Huck and Tom.
Kings of Infinite Space by James Hynes
Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the General Services Division of the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this world of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins to reach out to the office's comely and sharp-tongued mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. There are sounds coming from the air-conditioning vents, bulges in the ceiling, and a corpse in the next cube. There are the strange men lurking about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors.
A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
Singular, compelling and courageously honest, this book is more than just a poignant memoir of a harrowingly abusive childhood. It relates the extraordinary journey of one man striving to save his own spirit and our planet's. Comparing his physically and sexually abusive father's destruction of his family with humankind's systematic destruction of civilization, New York Times Magazine contributor Jensen (Listening to the Land) tells a story about the hope for regeneration in a landscape of human and natural desolation. Throughout, Jensen mobilizes his experiences as student, teacher, environmentalist, beekeeper, high jumper, abused child and survivor to delve deeper inside his own wounded psyche while condemning the constrictions of a culture that fosters abuse. In lyrical prose, Jensen calls for accountability and urges people "to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world." Rather than na vely proposing an answer to the ills of modernity, he demonstrates the complexity of the problems by examining an array of environmental and sociopolitical atrocities, including the Holocaust, and what he sees as the reckless production of plutonium to further space exploration and the maltreatment of indigenous peoples by self-serving neighbors. His visceral, biting observations always manage to lead back to his mantra: "Things don't have to be the way they are." Jensen's book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader's heart.
Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity.
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
A group of English visitors want to see the “real” India, and in Dr. Aziz they find a highly civilized companion. During a visit to the Marabar caves, one of the women accuses Dr. Aziz of sexually assaulting her, triggering a chain of events that will change the lives of people on both sides of this complex conflict. Arguably Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India transforms the personal into the political and actor Sam Dastor brilliantly evokes the mood, setting, and accents of this Forster classic.
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
Unanticipated pregnancy makes liars out of young women, this thoughtful first novel shows, as they try to rationalize, explain, and accept what is happening to them. When she arrives at St. Elizabeth's, a home for pregnant girls in Habit, Kentucky, Rose Clinton seems as evasive and deceptive as the other unwed mothers. But Rose is different: she has a husband whom she has deserted. Unlike most St. Elizabeth's visitors, she neither gives up her baby nor leaves the home, staying on as cook while her daughter grows up among expectant mothers fantasizing that they, too, might keep their infants. The reader learns from Rose how she came to St. Elizabeth's, but it is her doting husband and rebellious daughter who reveal her motives and helpless need for freedom. Together, the three create a complex character study of a woman driven by forces she can neither understand nor control.--
The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro
Notaro, who writes a weekly humor column for the Arizona Republic, has collected some of those columns into her first book. Notaro is "everywoman" not quite pretty enough, not the popular one, not good at holding a job or a man. She tells her stories about public bathrooms and high school reunions with a wicked edge that keeps us laughing at her and, of course, at ourselves. On the dreaded reunion: " 'It's time for your high school reunion!' the letter shrieked, and then went on to inform me that 546 of the people I hated most in the world were coming together at some lah-de-dah resort for the entire weekend to talk about the good old days." In "Suckers," she recalls the gym class where the girls got "the talk." "It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it." Ahhh...the good old days. This is a great, funny read that women will love. Recommended for most humor collections.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
In the small midwestern city of Zenith, George Babbitt seems to have it all: a successful real-estate business, a devoted wife, three children, and a house with all the modern conveniences. Yet, dissatisfied and lonely, he’s begun to question the conformity, consumerism, and competitiveness of his conservative, and ultimately cultureless middle-class community. His despairing sense that something, many things are missing from his life leads him into a flirtation with liberal politics and a fling with an attractive and seemingly “bohemian” widow. But he soon finds that his attempts at rebellion may cost more than he is willing to pay.
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
For his fourth novel, two-time Booker Prize finalist Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, etc.) turns to material most writers plumb in their first: the semiautobiographical, first-person coming-of-age story. And after three books with notably complex narrative structure, far-flung settings, and multiple viewpoints, he has chosen one narrator, 13-year-old Jason Taylor, to tell the story of one year (1982) in one town, Worcestershire's Black Swan Green. Jason starts with the January day he accidentally smashes his late grandfather's irreplaceable Omega Seamaster DeVille watch and ends with Christmas, which, because of intervening events, becomes the last he spends in this sleepy Midlands hamlet. The gorgeously revealed cast includes Jason's brilliant older sister, sarcastic mother, blustering dad and a spectrum of bullies and mates. Jason's nemesis is an intermittent, fluctuating stammer: some days he must avoid words beginning with N; other days, S. Once he is exposed, the bullies taunt him mercilessly; there is no respite for the weak or disabled in Black Swan Green nor, as the realities of Thatcher's grim reign begin to take their toll, in England writ large. How Jason and his family navigate this year of change is the emotional core of this rich novel, but the virtuoso chapter is "The Bridle Path," wherein Jason, alone for one delicious day, searches for a tunnel fabled to have been dug by the Romans in order to rout the Vikings. What he finds along the way captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy and brings to mind adventures shared by Huck and Tom.
Kings of Infinite Space by James Hynes
Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the General Services Division of the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this world of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins to reach out to the office's comely and sharp-tongued mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. There are sounds coming from the air-conditioning vents, bulges in the ceiling, and a corpse in the next cube. There are the strange men lurking about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors.
A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
Singular, compelling and courageously honest, this book is more than just a poignant memoir of a harrowingly abusive childhood. It relates the extraordinary journey of one man striving to save his own spirit and our planet's. Comparing his physically and sexually abusive father's destruction of his family with humankind's systematic destruction of civilization, New York Times Magazine contributor Jensen (Listening to the Land) tells a story about the hope for regeneration in a landscape of human and natural desolation. Throughout, Jensen mobilizes his experiences as student, teacher, environmentalist, beekeeper, high jumper, abused child and survivor to delve deeper inside his own wounded psyche while condemning the constrictions of a culture that fosters abuse. In lyrical prose, Jensen calls for accountability and urges people "to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world." Rather than na vely proposing an answer to the ills of modernity, he demonstrates the complexity of the problems by examining an array of environmental and sociopolitical atrocities, including the Holocaust, and what he sees as the reckless production of plutonium to further space exploration and the maltreatment of indigenous peoples by self-serving neighbors. His visceral, biting observations always manage to lead back to his mantra: "Things don't have to be the way they are." Jensen's book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader's heart.
Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity.
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
A group of English visitors want to see the “real” India, and in Dr. Aziz they find a highly civilized companion. During a visit to the Marabar caves, one of the women accuses Dr. Aziz of sexually assaulting her, triggering a chain of events that will change the lives of people on both sides of this complex conflict. Arguably Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India transforms the personal into the political and actor Sam Dastor brilliantly evokes the mood, setting, and accents of this Forster classic.