Choose Your Own Adventure

Change of Heart - Jodi Picoult

2009-04-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

Picoult bangs out another ripped-from-the-zeitgeist winner, this time examining a condemned inmate's desire to be an organ donor. Freelance carpenter Shay Bourne was sentenced to death for killing a little girl, Elizabeth Nealon, and her cop stepfather. Eleven years after the murders, Elizabeth's sister, Claire, needs a heart transplant, and Shay volunteers, which complicates the state's execution plans. Meanwhile, death row has been the scene of some odd events since Shay's arrival—an AIDS victim goes into remission, an inmate's pet bird dies and is brought back to life, wine flows from the water faucets. The author brings other compelling elements to an already complex plot line: the priest who serves as Shay's spiritual adviser was on the jury that sentenced him; Shay's ACLU representative, Maggie Bloom, balances her professional moxie with her negative self-image and difficult relationship with her mother. Picoult moves the story along with lively debates about prisoner rights and religion, while plumbing the depths of mother-daughter relationships and examining the literal and metaphorical meanings of having heart. The point-of-view switches are abrupt, but this is a small flaw in an impressive book.

Review:
I love how Jodi Picoult looks at the story from every character's perspective. While this was a good book, it was extremely predictable.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time - Greg Mortenson

2009-04-07T18:03:00.001-07:00

Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse's unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson's efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers' hearts.
http://www.threecupsoftea.com/

Review:
It took me a while to get through this book, I even put it down for a while. I've since gone back to it and loved it! It was a very honest account of the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

2007-07-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil.

The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child.

Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation.

Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law.

Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.

Review:
I couldn't put this book down. I would have read it in hours if I was that fast. It is possibly the best book I've read in years.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah

2007-03-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces.

Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives.

Review:
This book was wonderful. It gives great insight as to why a perfectly "normal" child would turn around and live a life of violence and murder. I had the honour of meeting Ishmael and listening to him speak. He is a delightful young man with a spirit and shine that not even the violence he's endured could erase. He makes you realise that there could still be hope.

Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra

2007-01-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

Cops on the take, slums patrolled by mobsters, whores turned Bollywood starlets, headboards in million-dollar co-ops that slide away at the touch of a button to reveal hundreds of thousands in hidden rupees - this is how Vikram Chandra describes Bombay in his new novel Sacred Games.

The central story revolves around Ganesh Gaitonde, an existentially confused Hindu don with an aptitude for erasing people, and Sartaj Singh, a divorced insomniac Sikh police inspector first introduced by the author in his acclaimed 1997 short-story collection, Love and Longing in Bombay.

Like spices in an Indian auntie’s grinder, the book mixes English with Hindi, Urdu, Marathi and mobster vernacular.

Summary taken from the New York Times

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

2007-01-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbour's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbours--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists.

Review:
"Here's a book you have to go out today and buy if you haven't already. I know you will love, love, love it. " Jeff

The Girls - Lori Lansens

2007-01-09T06:22:00.000-08:00

Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are linked at the side of the head, with separate brains and bodies. Born in a small town outside Toronto in the midst of a tornado and abandoned by their unwed teenage mother two weeks later, the girls are cared for by Aunt Lovey, a nurse who refuses to see them as deformed or even disabled. She raises them in Leaford, Ontario, where, at age 29, Rose, the more verbal and bookish twin, begins writing their story—i.e., this novel, which begins, "I have never looked into my sister's eyes."

Showing both linguistic skill and a gift for observation, Lansens's Rose evokes country life, including descriptions of corn and crows, and their neighbours Mrs. Merkel, who lost her only son in the tornado, and Frankie Foyle, who takes the twins' virginity. Rose shares her darkest memory (public humiliation during a visit to their Slovakian-born Uncle Stash's hometown) and her deepest regret, while Ruby, the prettier, more practical twin, who writes at her sister's insistence, offers critical details, such as what prompted Rose to write their life story.

Through their alternating narratives, Lansens captures a contradictory longing for independence and togetherness that transcends the book's enormous conceit.

Review:
"AMAZING. Loved it." Tamara

Certainty - Madeleine Thien

2007-01-06T14:58:00.000-08:00

Gail Lim, a producer of radio documentaries in present-day Vancouver, finds herself haunted by events in her parents’ past in wartorn Asia, a past which remains a mystery that fiercely grips her imagination. As a child, Gail’s father, Matthew Lim, wandered the Leila Road and the jungle fringe with his lovely Ani, a girl whose early bond with Matthew will affect his life always. As children, they found themselves together under the terrifying shadow of war in Japanese-occupied Sandakan, Malaysia. The war shatters their families and splits the two apart until years later, when they re-meet only to be separated again.

The legacy of their connection is later inherited by Matthew’s wife, Clara, in unexpected ways. Gail’s journey to unravel the mystery of her parents’ lives takes her to Amsterdam, where she meets the war photographer Sipke, who tells his story of Ani and their relationship, which began in Jakarta, a story that will bring Gail face to face with the complications in her own life and lead her closer to the truth.

Review:
"I love stumbling into a great 'debut novel' and this is one to sink your teeth into. This kind of sweeping tale that spans two generations, takes several character perspectives (each gets her/his story told in independent chapters). The characters are beautifully rendered, touching in how their choices give meaning to Bertrand Russell's quote in the novel - upon which the book is titled: "Philosophy was a means to teach one how to live without certainty and yet live without being paralyzed by limitations." I cried a couple of times while reading it." Leslie

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons - Lorna Landvik

2007-01-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

Five friends live through three decades of marriages, child raising, neighborhood parties, bad husbands and good brownies.

When Faith Owens' husband is transferred from Texas to the "stupid godforsaken frozen tundra" of Freesia Court, Minn., in 1968, her life looks like it's going to be one dull, snowy slog-until the power goes out one evening and a group of what appear to be madwomen start a snowball fight in her backyard. These dervishes turn out to be her neighbors: antiwar activist Slip; sexpot Audrey; painfully shy Merit; and widow Kari.

They become fast friends and decide to escape their humdrum routine by starting the Freesia Court Book Club, later given the eponymous name by one of their disgruntled husbands. As the years pass, Audrey and Merit get divorced, Kari adopts her niece's illegitimate baby, all five of the women find work outside their homes and they even smoke a joint together. Their personal dramas are regularly punctuated by reflections on political milestones ("First Martin Luther King, Jr., then Bobby Kennedy.)

Review:
I know it may seem like I read a lot of sappy books about female friendships, but I don't. But if I had to recommend just one, I would recommend this one. It's been a few years since I've read it, but I do remember loving it.

The Future Homemakers of America - Laurie Graham

2007-01-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

A wry portrait of six women friends from WWII to the 1990s, as well as of America's changing social mores and attitudes.

Peggy Dewey, wife of Air Force pilot Vern, meets Audrey, Gayle, Lois, Betty and Kath, all Air Force wives, while Vern is on assignment in England during WWII. Though these women would most likely never have been friends under other circumstances, friends they become, and over the years Peggy is their linchpin, keeping in contact with everyone through good times and bad.

Review:
A great book about the female bond.

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

2007-01-05T11:17:00.000-08:00

14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother.

Review:
A good, quick read. Worth the time.

Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

2007-01-05T11:12:00.002-08:00

"Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria"- thus begins Eleven Minutes. (The title of the book refers to the hypothetical average duration for an act of coitus.)

We meet Maria when she is still a young girl living in Brazil's unsophisticated interior. Maria's girlhood experiments with romance convince her that love is a delusion, or at least it is for her. Attaining her majority, she becomes a shopgirl with limited prospects. But after a vacation to Rio makes the ill-advised decision to leave Rio on a Swedish stranger's promise of fame and fortune.

Great Quotes:
"It's risky falling in love, it's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person and you become completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget about him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love."

"I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives there are certain things that could have happened but didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything."

"The gods throw the dice and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don't care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don't care whether you have it all, whether it seems your every desire can be met through hard work, perseverance. The gods don't want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they're throwing the dice and you are chosen. For them winning or losing is only a question of luck."

Review:
I love this book. It spoke honestly about sex and relationships from a female perspective.

The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

2007-01-05T11:12:00.001-08:00

The charming tale of Santiago, a shepherd boy, who dreams of seeing the world, is compelling in its own right, but gains resonance through the many lessons Santiago learns during his adventures. He journeys from Spain to Morocco in search of worldly success, and eventually to Egypt, where a fateful encounter with an alchemist brings him at last to self-understanding and spiritual enlightenment.

The story has the comic charm, dramatic tension and psychological intensity of a fairy tale, but it's full of specific wisdom as well, about becoming self-empowered, overcoming depression, and believing in dreams.

The Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon

2007-01-05T08:15:00.007-08:00

The Outlander series tells the story of Jamie Fraser, a Scottish Highlander from the 18th century, and his time-traveling wife, Claire, a strong-willed and sensual woman who leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another.

While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn't all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she's never known before.

Review:
Please don't let the "time-travelling wife" portion of the summary scare you off. I tell you, Diana Gabaldon is one of the best writers around. I LOVE her books. She is so descriptive it makes you feel like you personally know the people she is writing about.

Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood - Rebecca Wells

2007-01-05T08:15:00.005-08:00

A classic Southern tale of hilarity set in a sleepy Louisiana parish, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood follows a group of lifelong friends who stage a rather unorthodox intervention to help a young playwright unravel the truth about her complicated, eccentric mother, find forgiveness and acceptance, and let go of her painful past.

Review:
This book is close to my heart. It's such a free spirited, fun book about girls and friendships.

The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

2007-01-05T08:15:00.003-08:00

The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob's daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah--all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery.

Review:
Don't think of this as a religious book or a feminist book, just a good book - one about history and the relationship between a mother and a daughter.

We Are All The Same - Jim Wooten

2007-01-05T08:15:00.001-08:00

Nkosi, born in 1989 in the former Zululand, was infected with HIV by his poverty-stricken mother, Daphne. As Wooten recounts, Daphne moved heaven and earth to insure that her son would be provided for after her own death and agreed to his adoption, at age three, by Gail Johnson, a white South African, who had met Nkosi at a hospice.

A hero in her own right, Johnson nourished Nkosi's strong spirit, which gave out only when he died at the age of 12. Before then, Johnson and Nkosi traveled internationally to gain support for Nkosi's Haven, a home for women and children with AIDS in South Africa.

Looking at the larger picture, Wooten points out that Nelson Mandela refused to deal with the AIDS crisis because he was embarrassed to speak publicly about sex (a position he later said he regretted). Mandela's successor, Thabo Mkebi, has also hampered attempts to get antiretroviral drugs to AIDS victims, absurdly denying that the virus HIV exists. According to Wooten, 20% of South African girls are currently infected with HIV and 7,000 infants die of AIDS each month.

Review:
Such a beautiful book that speaks to the incredible innocence of childhood and the sad realities of adulthood.

Child's Play - Silken Laumann

2007-01-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

From one of Canada’s most inspiring and gifted sports heroes, this is an urgently needed guide to getting our kids active and healthy. Like many of us, Silken Laumann’s fondest childhood memories are of play: staying outside until that final call for dinner, neighbourhood-wide games of Capture-the-Flag and road hockey that went on for hours. But as a parent, Silken knows the world has changed.

We are afraid to let our children out of sight, our streets don’t feel safe, neighbours don’t know and rely on each other like they used to. While we recognize the need for our kids to be active, our fears, along with our busy lives and the enormous societal pressure to (simultaneously) make athletes, academics, and artists out of our children, have led us to schedule their every activity, driving them to and from soccer practice, piano lessons, tutorials. We have forgotten just how important unstructured play is for our children’s development and well-being: It keeps kids healthy, creative and active; it teaches them valuable life skills and, most importantly, it lets our kids be kids, worry-free, unfettered.

Child’s Play is a call for action, a guide to reconnecting with our kids, and a blueprint for building safe, supportive communities and healthy schools. Above all, it’s a book of simple ideas for parents desperate for change.

Review:
I liked this book. It not only tells us what’s wrong with society today (as so many books do), but it gives us simple ways to change things. It would be a great read for parents, teachers and childcare givers.

The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman

2007-01-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)

Review:
I loved this book. A little tip for anyone who has difficulty reading "businessy" books, I listened to this one on CD as I went through the airport. It made it easier to understand and I moved through it a lot quicker. Although now I wish I had it in print version so I could highlight and go back to certain parts.

Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

2007-01-04T13:55:00.005-08:00

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.

Review:
I personally read this book and loved it. It was heart-wrenching at times and often challenging to understand the cultural differences, but definite worth it.

Songs of the Humpback Whale - Jodi Picoult

2007-01-04T13:55:00.003-08:00

As Picoult uses five voices to tell a complex tale of love, friendship and a Faulknerian family history, her mastery of language strongly individuates her characters. The primary voice in this accomplished first novel belongs to Jane Jones, a speech pathologist living in San Diego, California. Other narrators are her daughter Rebecca; her husband, Oliver, a marine biologist renowned for his research on the songs of humpback whales; her brother Joley; and her lover, Sam.

When an argument between Jane and Oliver culminates in her striking him, Jane is shattered. A childhood victim of physical and sexual abuse, Jane has tried to submerge her memories, but this outbreak of violence causes her to reexamine her life. On a cross-country automobile trip, Jane and Rebecca travel to Stow, Massachusetts., where Joley is living and where each woman meets the man she believes is her destiny. Jane relates the events that occur from San Diego to Stow, while Rebecca tells the story in reverse, flashing back from the climax. Their stories intersect in an Iowa cornfield that still bears the wreckage of the airliner on which then-three-year-old Rebecca was being sent back to her father during her parents' earlier separation; she was one of five survivors.

This powerful and affecting novel demonstrates that there are as many truths to a story as there are people to tell it.

Great Quotes:
"Let me tell you something about love. It's different every time. It's nothing more than a chemical reaction, an arrow over an equation, but the elements change. If you introduce a new element, you never know how stable the original bond is."

"The deciding factor is how it all fits together. Your love, I mean, and your life. And sometimes, most of the time, you fall really hard for someone who you just can't squeeze into the limits of your life. The bottom line is: when your heart sets its sight on someone, it doesn't consult with your mind."

Reviews:
I read this book because someone gave it to me. I probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise. The book was OK, nothing special. But the ending did bring it all together in a nice way that makes you think about your own life and the people in it - what and who you're willing to compromise for.

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

2007-01-04T13:55:00.001-08:00

The difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and understanding in this 11th novel by Picoult (Second Glance, etc.). The author, who has taken on such controversial subjects as euthanasia (Mercy), teen suicide (The Pact) and sterilization laws (Second Glance), turns her gaze on genetic planning, the prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical and moral fallout that results.

Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned.

Review:
Everyone I have spoken to LOVES this book. It provides a harsh look at the realities of not only having a sick child, but being the sibling of a sick child.
Warning - be alone when you read the ending or risk people thinking you're having a nervous break down.

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

2007-01-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

The story opens in London on New Year's Eve, when four desperate people—Martin, a publicly disgraced TV personality; Maureen, a middle-aged woman with no life beyond caring for her severely disabled adult son; Jess, the unstable, punked-out daughter of a junior government minister; and JJ, an American rocker whose music career has just ended with a whimper—meet on the roof of a building known as Toppers' House, where they have all come to commit suicide.

Bonded by their shared misery, the unlikely quartet spends the night together, telling their stories, getting on each others' nerves even as they save each others' lives. They part the following morning, aware of having formed a peculiar sort of gang.

What follows is predictable in the broadest sense—as the motley crew of misfits coalesces into a kind of surrogate family, each individual takes a halting first step toward creating a tolerable future—but rarely in its particulars.

Review:
I was disappointed in this book because I thought it would be about the thought process one takes when choosing to commit suicide, instead it was about the life after failing to commit suicide. It was OK, just not what I expected.

"I really liked it. I like the way he writes. He is not sappy, no Disney Endings and I love how he writes his characters. They are not really archetypes, not these black and white characters you get in a lot of books they are grey. They are not even that loveable, but in the end you understand where they are coming from." Claudia

JPod - Douglas Coupland

2007-01-04T13:52:00.001-08:00

Young Ethan Jarlewski works long hours as a video-game developer in Vancouver, surfing the Internet for gore sites and having random conversations with co-workers on JPod, the cubicle hive where he works, where everyone's last name begins with J. Before Ethan can please the bosses and the marketing department (they want a turtle, based on a reality TV host, inserted into the game Ethan's been working on for months) or win the heart of co-worker Kaitlin, Ethan must help his mom bury a biker she's electrocuted in the family basement which houses her marijuana farm; give his dad, an actor desperately longing for a speaking part, yet another pep talk; feed the 20 illegal Chinese immigrants his brother has temporarily stored in Ethan's apartment; and pass downtime by trying to find a wrong digit in the first 100,000 places (printed on pages 383–406) of pi.

Review:
"Highly HIGHLY recommend jpod by Coupland, loved it...much like his Microserfs book a while back but great nonetheless." Heather

"Already dubbed Microserfs 2.0 by some pundits--a winking allusion to Douglas Coupland's previous novel Microserfs, which similarly chronicled pop-culture-damaged twentysomething misfits flailing, foundering, and occasionally succeeding in the high-tech sector--JPod is, like all of Coupland's novels, a byproduct of its era and yet strangely detached from it. " Amazon.com

Londonstani - Gautam Malkani

2007-01-04T13:51:00.011-08:00

Malkani's debut novel is set among the South Asian rudeboys of London's Houndslow section. Aimless, middle-class 19-year-old Jas is adopted by a small gang headed by Hardjit, a Sikh bodybuilder, that includes sexual braggart Ravi and Hindu nationalist Amit. The crew, with Jas in the backseat, ride around a lot in a Beamer and say things like, "Dat bitch b trouble, u get me?" To make money, they unblock stolen cell "fones." This attracts Sanjay, a Desi entrepreneur who hires them and organizes their activities. Briefly, the money rolls in, and Jas, taken under Sanjay's wing, makes the more hazardous move of courting the beauteous but Muslim Samira Ahmed. Hardjit's feeling about Muslims and Samira's brothers' feeling about Hindus mean that disaster starts mounting for Jas before you can hum a chorus of West Side Story.

Review:

Water - Bapsi Sidhwa

2007-01-04T13:51:00.009-08:00

Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow’s ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the widows’s lives. When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram’s delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption.

Review:
I've only seen the movie, but LOVED it! Again, it defies all western cultural ideals, but it makes you think about the world outside of your small little portion of it.

The Attack - Yasmina Khadra

2007-01-04T13:51:00.007-08:00

Khadra, the pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, an exiled Algerian writer celebrated for his politically themed fiction (The Swallows of Kabul), turns his attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this moving novel unlikely to satisfy partisans on either side of the issue. Dr. Amin Jaafari is a man caught between two worlds; he's a Bedouin Arab surgeon struggling to integrate himself into Israeli society. The balancing act becomes impossible when the terrorist responsible for a suicide bombing that claims 20 lives, including many children, is identified as Jaafari's wife by the Israeli police. Jaafari's disbelief that his secular, loving spouse committed the atrocity is overcome when he receives a letter from her posthumously. In an effort to make sense of her decision, Jaafari plunges into the Palestinian territories to discover the forces that recruited her. Khadra, who nicely captures his hero's turmoil in trying to come to terms with the endless violence, closes on an appropriately grim note.

Review:
I haven't read this yet, but after reading the summary above, it reminded me of why I put it on my book list to begin with.

The Birthdays - Heidi Pitlor

2007-01-04T13:51:00.005-08:00

On a rainy summer weekend, the Miller clan gathers, for the first time in four years, at their summer house on an island off the coast of Maine to celebrate patriarch Joe's 75th birthday.

Daniel, the eldest, is a recent paraplegic, still coming to terms with his personal tragedy. His wife, Brenda, is pregnant through the services of a sperm donor, and Daniel is obsessed about who he is, what he looks like, and any detail he can imagine about him. Jake, the middle child, at whose home the festivities take place, is a roaring success in the world's eyes: great houses, lots of money, good job, the respect of his peers--but his wife needed in vitro fertilization to conceive and now she is pregnant with twins. His childhood neediness has never disappeared, despite his accomplishments. Hilary, the youngest, still a flower child at 35, is six months pregnant and has no clue who the father is. Her brothers are not unaware of how easy it was for the irresponsible, non-planner, barely able to care for herself, to conceive a child.

As everyone straggles in, Joe's wife, Ellen, is filling her time fantasizing about their friend, MacNeil, over whom she has created such a personal and intimate scenario that she goes to the telephone and calls him, much to his confusion.

An event takes place which saddens everyone and changes the dynamic of the event and of all the people involved. Arrangements are made that were unthought of at the beginning of the birthday celebration, most of which are more authentic than the roles they brought with them.

Review:

The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards

2007-01-04T13:51:00.003-08:00

Edwards' assured but schematic debut novel hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter.

A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well.

Review:

Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna

2007-01-04T13:51:00.001-08:00

Acclaimed memoirist, Forna, glides into fiction with this sweeping portrayal of the lives of five Sierra Leonean women.

Abie—a young woman born and raised in Sierra Leone, who now lives in London with her Portuguese-Scottish husband and their children—receives a letter from her aunts informing her they're bequeathing her the family coffee plantation. When Abie returns, her aunts offer her another gift: their stories.

A native of Sierra Leone, Forna unpacks Abie's family history (and that of Sierra Leone) using the alternating points of view of Abie's four aunts—Asana, Mary, Hawa and Serah. Asana outlives two husbands and eventually opens her own store, "relinquishing the birthright of womanhood in exchange for the liberty of a man." Mary addresses the changes brought to Africa by the Europeans (prominent among them, the mirror she uses to examine her disfigured face). Hawa trades her gold earrings for bus fare in order to see the sea just once in her life. And Serah opens a voting station during corrupt national elections.

Though it's a stretch to call this a novel (each chapter is a self-contained story), Forna's work sheds light on the history of a long-struggling nation.

Review:

The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud

2007-01-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

Marina Thwaite, Danielle Minkoff and Julian Clarke were buddies at Brown, certain that they would soon do something important in the world. But as all near 30, Danielle is struggling as a TV documentary maker, and Julius is barely surviving financially as a freelance critic. Marina, the startlingly beautiful daughter of celebrated social activist, journalist and hob-nobber Murray Thwaite, is living with her parents on the Upper West Side, unable to finish her book"titled The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes (on how changing fashions in children's clothes mirror changes in society).

Two arrivals upset the group stasis: Ludovic, a fiercely ambitious Aussie who woos Marina to gain entrée into society (meanwhile planning to destroy Murray's reputation), and Murray's nephew, Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, an immature, idealistic college dropout and autodidact who is determined to live the life of a New York intellectual. The group orbits around the post"September 11 city with disconcerting entitlement"and around Murray, who is, in a sense, the emperor.

Review: