 Bill
went on vacation, but he didn't forget to bring a couple
good books with him. Some of the choices are pretty
interesting; "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
and "Memoirs of Hadrian". Others are a little
more predictable; a Bobby Kennedy book and a book exposing
that 'far right conspiracy' Hillary had mentioned.... |
|
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique
Bauby, Jeremy Leggatt (Translator)
- We've all got our idiosyncrasies when
it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit
in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must
use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique
Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left
eye--with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter
by letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old
editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke
to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped
damage. Rather than accept his "locked in" situation
as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination
under himself and lived his last days--he died two days
after the French publication of this slim volume--spiritually
unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic
places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable
gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything's
ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he
describes how it feels to see reflected in a window
"the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a
vat of formaldehyde." |
 |
|
 |
| |
TOP
TEN BOOKS NEWLETTER
If you can read this...JOIN OUR MAILING LIST! Be informed
of the hottest books and our special selections.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
The Last Patrician : Bobby Kennedy and the End of
American Aristocracy by Michael Knox Beran
- Part biography, part cultural retrospective,
Michael Beran's work is a somewhat controversial reassessment
of Robert Kennedy's public and private life. Thirty
years after Kennedy was murdered, he is still remembered,
along with other great liberal contemporaries such as
Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, as a tragic
crusader for liberalism. To liberals, Bobby Kennedy
was their last champion of social reform and civil rights;
when he died, their pursuit of these aims took a mortal
blow. So when Beran intimates that on the day Kennedy
was killed, it wasn't a Rooseveltian idealist who died,
but rather a man who was essentially a conservative
practitioner of liberal politics, it is bound to create
controversy amongst his staunchest supporters.
|
A Clearing in the Distance : Frederick Law Olmsted
and America in the Nineteenth Century by Witold Rybczynski
- Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
is best remembered today as a landscape designer, well
known for his plans for New York's Central Park and
Prospect Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington,
D.C., and the campus of Stanford University, among other
noteworthy sites. But, writes urban studies professor
and accomplished author Witold Rybczynski, Olmsted was
an American original, a 19th-century success story who
packed many careers and wide learning and travel into
a long life. |
|
|
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner
- In his 15th novel, Wallace Stegner tells
a story of richness and beauty, centering on the lifelong
friendship between two couples. He explores the alchemy
of their friendship and turns what could have been a story
of broken dreams and shattered lives into one of acceptance
and affirmation. |
Prayers for Rain : A Novel by Dennis Lehane
- Prayers for Rain is Dennis Lehane's
fifth installment in his intricately plotted, beautifully
written, and much underacknowledged Boston mystery series.
Lehane's books reflect our morally complex times, when
the borders between right and wrong are somewhat blurry.
Private investigator Patrick Kenzie is in the middle of
a personal crisis--he's lost his passion for the profession,
and is tired of people with their "predictable vices,
their predictable needs and wants and dormant desires."
Angie Gennaro, his occasional sweetheart, lifelong friend,
and fellow investigator has quit the business. She's still
deeply resentful about Patrick's handling of the Amanda
McCready case, the focus of Gone, Baby, Gone. Without
Angie, private investigating has lost its fizz. But the
suicide of a former client, Karen Nichols, gives Kenzie
his investigative itch back. --Naomi Gesinger |
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, Grace Frick
(Translator)
From the Merriam Webster Encyclopedia
of Literature - Historical
novel by Marguerite Yourcenar, published in 1951 as Memoires
d'Hadrien. In the book, Yourcenar creates a vivid and
historically accurate portrait of the 2nd-century Roman
Empire under Hadrian's rule. The work is a fictional first-person
narrative in the form of Hadrian's letters--mostly to
his nephew Marcus Aurelius--written shortly before his
death. Contemplative and analytical recollections of his
accomplishments, his hopes for Rome, and his personal
relationships, the letters reveal Hadrian to be a highly
intelligent, often wise man, conscious of the great power
he wields. |
Cold Hit by Linda A. Fairstein
- When Linda Fairstein describes the route
Alexandra Cooper takes from the district attorney's office
to NYPD headquarters, you know she's walked that way many
times herself. "I took the shortcut over to One Police
Plaza, cutting behind the Metropolitan Correctional Center
and alongside the staggeringly expensive new federal courthouse,
which made our digs, complete with oversized rodents and
roaches that obviously thrived on Combat, look like judicial
facilities in some third world country." Like her fictional
counterpart, Fairstein is a Manhattan assistant district
attorney in charge of a sex-crimes unit. As she did in
Final Jeopardy and Likely to Die, Fairstein mires her
somewhat unlikely heroine (a beautiful 35-year-old blond
with an Ivy League education, a house in Martha's Vineyard,
and an affection for betting on quiz shows at cop bars)
in a wealth of procedural detail. The "cold hit" of the
title, for example, refers to a computer match between
DNA samples from a recent rape case with evidence from
an older crime. |
Dark Lady : A Novel of Suspense by Richard North Patterson
- Dashiell Hammett, a master of big city
crime fiction, would have enjoyed Richard North Patterson's
latest thriller, set in a fictional Midwestern city called
Steelton. This burnt-out burg is located on the shores
of Lake Erie--and is a place bitterly divided by politics.
The construction of a $275 million baseball stadium threatens
to be Steelton's downfall rather than its redemption.
Arthur Bright is the prosecutor of Erie County, but he
wants to become mayor. His campaign attacks the new ballpark
as a boondoggle, "a shameful diversion of public financing
from such pressing needs as better schools, better housing,
and safer streets." His protégé, Assistant County Prosecutor
Stella Marz is 38, ambitious, and has been dubbed "the
dark lady" by various defense lawyers. If Arthur wins
the mayoral race, she intends to become prosecutor herself.
But two murders involving drugs and twisted sex threaten
her future. |
Just Revenge : A Novel by Alan M. Dershowitz
- In his first courtroom drama, The Advocate's
Devil, Alan M. Dershowitz introduced us to defense attorney
Abe Ringel as he represented a rapist. That book probed
a controversial legal issue--what happens when a defender
doubts his own client's innocence? In Dershowitz's second
legal thriller--Abe (along with the whole judicial system)
is confronted with a still bigger dilemma: Is a Holocaust
survivor entitled to seek revenge on the perpetrator who
butchered his family some 50 years earlier? |
|
|
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
This site has been visited by
Clintonians!
|
