Leighanne's Picks
I was born the year Sam Berenstain published the long-awaited Berenstain Bears Go to Camp and I ask you what child introduced to such high-minded literature wouldn't grow up loving books? By the age of five, I was reading the likes of Sesame Street's Nobody Loves Me all by myself...or very nearly.
Since that time I've voraciously read everything I could get my hands on: books, magazines, cereal boxes, billboards, etc. In college, I was an English Major-Nerd and read as a release from reading. What with all that practice under my belt, I am proud to say I can read Nobody Loves Me all by myself and in one sitting...or very nearly.
Octavian lives in a large, sumptuous house and is educated in the classics by scholars in Greek and Latin. Rarely does he go out and about in the town, but is rather encouraged to remain isolated, playing his violin. However, the background to his sonatas is the disquiet of revolution; the colonies of America have begun to rebel against the crown. At a time when Octavian is focused on learning rational philosophy, and measuring his own bodily waste in the name of science, he does not know what those murmurs might mean for him. Soon enought, however, a Pox Party in the country transforms his life forever. Anderson's ambitious novel introduces a new face to what we think we know about the Revolutionary war. Having wandered through the maze of The Museum of Jurassic Technology (www.mtj.com), I was prepared to believe anything about scientific theory of that era. This book is Solid History dipped in a steaming vat of Science Fiction.
Candlewick Press
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
The Somnambulist is Lemony Snicket for adults, complete with a cast of the most bizarre and entertaining characters ever seen outside a freak show: an angry, unreliable narrator who is shrouded in mystery; a nasy, scaly monster who pushes vile-types out of windows; a has-been magician turned private eye, with a hankering for circus ladies; a mute giant with a passion for guzzling milk; a sleeping poet; the end of the world; and two prep-boy assassins.
HarperCollins Publishers
What is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable edited by John Brockman
What is your Dangerous Idea? has got me thinking. It’s got me thinking about the ideas that we generally dismiss as taboo, politically incorrect, morally repugnant or just so darn dangerous that they could shake our very social structure. Or would they? John Brockman has asked the top thinkers in world to fess up to their dangerous ideas. What we have here is a collection of short essays that delve into such thoughts as “Religion is the hope that is missing in science,” or “We have no souls,” or “Groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments.”
HarperCollins Publishers
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
If you've ever begun a novel, with every intention of finishing it, but became waylaid after the first chapter by another equally alluring title, you'll really understand this book. We just can't read every novel that comes our way and turns our heads, and apparently, Calvino couldn't write each one that popped into his head. Therefore, we have this book which is a compilation of the first chapter's of ten books from various genres. Two Readers, male and female, search for the second chapter and become just about as frustrated as we do. This book makes even the laziest reader actively involved.
Harcourt
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Revenge, war, comic books, Harry Houdini and the American dream! What could be better than that?! This is the sotry of a great escapist and an amazing partnership. The language is so vivid and the story so gripping its easy to become completely lost in this epic novel and soon begin thinking of Super-hero names for yourself. There's nothing wrong with that!
St. Martin's Press
Considering our country's recent history wih school shootings, I think Hey Nostradamus! should be required reading for everyone who can read. This is an intense novel about four people whose lives are inexricably and forever tied to one event that occured in 1988. It's an exploration of faith and how, under certain circumstances, it can either flourish or shrivel. Inspirational, heartbreaking and full of humor and hope, Hey Nostadamus! is an absolute must read.
Bloomsbury USA
How to Kill a Rock Star by Tiffanie DeBartolo
Forgive this book its silly title. It's actually an incredibly well-written tale with a raw, beating heart at its center. Forty pages from the completely unexpected end, I moped around just waiting until I could get back to this book and find out how it ended! It's a great one to get lost in.
Sourcebooks, Inc.
Sophie's World is a fabulous combination of Alice in Wonderland and a Philosophy 101 text book. Gaarder helps his readers and his characters shift their perspectives so that where once they saw a wall now they see an open door. At its base, Sophie's World is about maintaining wonder with the world around us. Nothing ever is what it seems to be.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The love letter is not dead. It is not sleeping dormant through the winter. It is alive, vibrant and pulsing with possibilities. In this collection of invented love stories from a varied assortment of authors, we have a letter written from Mars to Earth, a letter which takes no prisoners; one from an internet stalker to her beloved; another from Kafka's girlfriend . . . Such fun to read. And as Jeffrey Eugenides said (I paraphrase), it's best to experience the joys and miseries of love from a safe and literary distance, tucked snugly in your single bed!
Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
Ok, ok, so, this book is over 800 pages long, but because you get so drawn into the story, the characters and the compelling moral quandaries, it feels like it's only 600 pages! Maybe that's because I skimmed the 100 pages in the middle where the grandfather soliloquizes (you can skim it, too). Anyhow, it's a really great book about identical twins and familial ties. Besides, Oprah liked it.
HarperCollins Publishers
Dolores Price is one of my all-time favorite heroines: she's caustically hilarious, deeply flawed, and so insecure she makes Sybil look steady as a rock. After a childhood and adolescence brimming with trauma, Dolores deliberately cuts herself off from life, finding solace and refuge in mallow bars, TV, and her expanding wall of fat. Hers is a message of hope and humor, of putting yourself back together after you thought your whole life had fallen apart at the seams.
Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing
If you've read The Power of One then you'll absolutely love Kaffir Boy. Through Matabane's eyes we see the appalling injustice of South African Apartheid from inside the confines of Alexandra, a shanty town of Johannesburg. Mathabane becomes the voice for the marginalized Black population of South Africa and, in time, an icon of resistance. Deeply powerful, very unsettling...keep Kleenex on hand.
The Free Press
Call it social satire, if you must; call it witty and subversive; call it daring and silly; call it God’s Gift to the written word. I merely call it a darn funny book of lists from our friends over at McSweeney’s. For instance:
SIGNS YOUR UNICORN IS CHEATING ON YOU
by Christopher Monks
Seems emotionally distant and uninterested
Wears fancier tail ribbons
Starts working out at the gym
Quickly closes its laptop when you walk into its enchanted den
Credit card bill full of charges to area elf lodges
The “three C’s”: confrontation, criticism, and complaints
Every time you say the word “magic” it sighs forlornly
Is making a movie with Angelina Jolie
Knopf Publishing Group
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
In this gorgeous, tragic novel (based in India, 1975), Mistry explores the fine line upon which humanity balances precariously. Against a backdrop of political corruption and rusted social justice, Mistry's flawed, lonely and, at times, desperate characters dip in and out of misery and happiness in a most Dickensian way. Each character's story unfolds like the unraveling of vividly-colored cloth. At first clashing, their stories are eventually sewn together into a stunning, interconnected quilt: seamless, timeless, and beautiful.
Knopf Publishing Group
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Not for the faint reader, Cloud Atlas is a big 'ol book that spreads across six totally different stories and genres. Each character is, in some way, reincarnated from a previous character, just as each story sprouts from the one before. It's like those crazy Russian dolls that are locked within one another: each one different but equally beautiful.
Random House, Inc.
There's something different about Jody. Last night she was assaulted and left for dead. Today she has superhuman strength and a jones for blood. E-gads, she's a vampire! But, how will she balance her evil impulses with her humane conscience? And what in the world does it have to do with Turkey Bowling?
HarperCollins Publishers
Oh, what a journey! Translated from the Japanese, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is an esoteric expedition through the history of World War II and the layers of the human pysche. When Toru Okada began searching for his lost cat, he had no idea it would take him beneath ground and into the heads of so many people. Written with the logic of dreams, it makes more sense if you don't try too hard to understand it.
Knopf Publishing Group
What begins as mere explanatory notes to the famous poem "Pale Fire," by one John Shade, expand into a narrative of political intrigue and professional envy. Shade's self-proclaimed biographer, Dr. Kinbote is completely insane and fails to see the irony in his every statement as he attempts to usurp Shade's fame.
Knopf Publishing Group
Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
This is the funniest book I've ever read. Seriously. It's as though Neilan took Camus' Stranger and inserted him in that show The Office. It's offensive. It's shocking. It's ridiculously sweet. It's completely unexpected and awesome!
St. Martin's Press
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Oh what a beautiful book this is, with characters you just love to love and a plot so well thought through you wonder, at times, just how this woman's head contained so much and so when. If you want to keep your mind sharp, push that sudoku aside and have a go at this!
Harcourt
Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin
The torrid love triangle of Henry Miller, his wife, June, and Anais Nin virtually explodes in this book. A very sexy, daring writer, Anais Nin is the poetic yin to Henry Miller’s masculine, prosy yang. The journal takes place in Paris, 1931 and explores not only the vista of the city, but also the intellectual climate of the era. Nin gracefully combines eroticism and intellectualism, and in so many other ways, passionately draws together reluctant opposites.
Harcourt
Imagine late 1800’s Arctic exploration with a sudden twist of the Sci-Fi and a garnish of theology and philosophy and you might just begin to understand the complex and wonderful world of The Golden Compass. Deeply imaginative and thoughtfully written, The Golden Compass, part one of the trilogy His Dark Materials, takes the reader into the heart of the mud wars of Jordan college, to the far north and into the realm of the armored bears, and eventually into another world beyond the sky, past witches and daemons and Texan aeronauts….an absolutely wonderful series worth reading and re-reading.
Random House Children's Books
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins, master of the absurd, takes us on an epic journey through time, religion, immortality and, of course, perfume. This book is the debaucher's bible and stoically, if not ridiculously, reminds us to Erlichda! Lighten up! Robbins' writing style is not for everyone; however, if you like insane metaphors and erratic similes, if you like a spicy meatball of a plot and seriously naughty and bizarre characters, if you like your theology mixed in with your mythology, then I guarantee you'll love Jitterbug Perfume.
Bantam Books
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Still Life With Woodpecker is a fantastically weird love story between an exiled cheerleader-princess and a wild-eyed environmental terrorist. This book reveals the purpose of the moon, the secret nature of redheads and the hidden messages gleaned from a pack of Camels. A classic. Well...of sorts.
Bantam Books
Set during the late 1940s, on a Laguna reservation, Ceremony is the story about a young man named Tayo who returns from war as emotionally and spiritually broken as a smashed clay pot. To help him heal he visits a wise man whose ceremony leads him on a path back to nature and himself. Ceremony is so lyrical and its story so profound that I found myself re-reading whole pages, lingering on passages and, after finishing it, wanting to begin it all over again.
Penguin Group
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
If I could tell you one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close. -From The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
Certainly the best book I've read in some time. A year or so ago a customer put the book in my hands and said, "Read this; it's amazing." I filed it away, so inundated was I with the pile of books to-be-read. Then a few weeks ago I attended a booksellers conference and a speaker on handselling referenced it, saying he loved the book so much that he and his bookstore sold 400 in hardcover and 1,100 in paperback. That is a lot of love. So, I sat down with Edgar Mint one afternoon and didn't move from that spot for three days. Ok, so that's a lie, but the sentiment is true. I have fallen in love with the brave, naive Apache kid who can't keep his head out of trouble. I followed behind him as he made each step in his tumultuous life. And at the end of the book I lived his joy with him. Isn't that why we read?
Knopf Publishing Group
Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant by John Warner
Now that this "writing guide" has been recognized by BookSense, I feel encouraged to come out with my praise and adoration of Fondling Your Muse. Here it is: this is a real surprise. I laughed heartily to myself while reading then made sure I really was alone...and then, laughed some more. If real writing guides make you feel inadequate and sad, then there's the book for you. It's probably a generational thing, but cynicism and irony are really in right now and this book, which is actually more satire than writing guide, is just that: in right now! The medium of "writing guide" is really a front for this outrageous, cynical, extraordinarily egotistical fellow to write himself an Ego-memoir. If you aren't familiar with this genre, see A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Pale Fire or Me Talk Pretty One Day.
F & W Publications, Inc.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carolos Ruiz Zafon
I cannot believe this book was only published in 2004, as it has the feel, the texture and the vision of a book a couple of centuries older. It snatches you up on the first page and whisks you through war-torn Barcelona's back alleys, crumbling family legacies, shady dealings and ill-fated love affairs.
Penguin Group
Everyone on staff who has had the pleasure of reading this amazing book has just raved about it. Set in Germany during WWII, it's told from the emotionally-devoid perspective of Death, who has taken notice of a little girl named Liesel. In Liesel's world are a host of endearing and layered characters who all, in their own way, are trying to steal a little something back from Hitler's regime.
Random House Children's Books