Novels Now

You are browsing the archives of 2008 October.

221 pages
A couple of years ago(before I had a blog) I read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. While I learned a lot from that book and I enjoyed Ehrenreich’s sense of humor quite a bit, I was left feeling sad and a little irritated at the premise that [...]

The Impostor by Damon Galgut
Pages: 249
Finished: Oct. 28, 2008
First Published: Aug. 5, 2008 (6/1/08 in USA)
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Reason for Reading: Received a Review Copy from Random House Canada.
First sentence:
The journey was almost over; they were nearly at their destination.
Comments: Adam Napier lives in South Africa just after the abolition of Apartheid. He has always [...]

The Believers by Zoe Heller is the story of the Litvinoff family – led by Joel, a political activist and lawyer whose sudden collapse from a stroke put his family into chaos – compounded when a secret was revealed that rocked the family’s already fragile structure. Joel and his wife Audrey did not believe in raising a child-centric family. They were active in the worker’s movement in New York, and Joel was known for representing radical defendants. Audrey was “unmotherly” toward her two daughters, Karla and Rosa, but had a more tender side for her down-and-out adopted son, Lenny [...]

A child dies in this book: a baby. A baby is stillborn. You don’t have to tell me how sad that is: it happened to me and my husband, our baby, a son. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 6-
Author Elizabeth McCracken lived briefly in France, with her husband, [...]

My Name is Number 4: A True Story from the Cultural Revolution by Ting-Xing Ye
Pages: 230
Finished: Oct. 26, 2008
First Published: September 2008
Genre: YA, memoir
Rating: 4/5
Reason for Reading: Received a Review Copy from the publisher. Also qualifies for the Canadian Challenge.
First sentence:
The morning of my exile to the prison farm arrived, a characteristic November day in [...]

The Shadow of Malabron by Thomas Wharton
The Perilous Realm: Book 1
Pages: 385
Finished: Oct. 25, 2008
First Published: August 19, 2008 (Canada, Hardcover) Aug. 4, 2008 (UK & US, paperback)
Genre: YA, fantasy
Rating: 4/5
First sentence:
In a chamber high in a tower a young woman sits at a loom, weaving threads of many colours into a tapestry so large [...]

These were adults with too much time on their hands. And didn’t they know that the projector, sound system, and speakers were all Japanese? Their dancing shoes were probably from Mexico or China. America’s jobs were going elsewhere and Americans were just dressing up and playing like kids. Gas prices were high. General Motors [...]

Resistance: A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnes Humbert
Translated by Barbara Mellor
Pages: 270 + 100pgs of extraneous material (Afterward, index, etc.)
First Published: 1946, 1st English translation Sept. 2, 2008
Genre: memoir, WWII
Rating: 4.5/5
First sentence:
Rumours are flying, all flatly contradictory, but it seems clear that the Germans are advancing on all fronts.
Comments: [...]

422 pages
There is a reason that Michael Connelly has become one of my favorite authors after having only read three of his novels. He writes fast-paced crime novels that draw you in and hold your attention all the way through.
In The Brass Verdict, Micky Haller is thrust back into law practice literally overnight after his [...]

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson , 348 pages
Jackson Brodie, previous detective from Case Histories and One Good Turn, is back for Kate Atkinson’s newest novel. The title hints at the bad news following some characters that permeates this page turner. There are some desperately sad people in this book, and as [...]

Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Clients lie. Even jurors lie. There is a school of belief in criminal law that every trial is won or lost in the choosing of the jury. I’ve never been ready to go all the way to that level but I do know that there is probably no [...]

Jars line my cellar shelves. Some are filled with fists of yellow-veined tomatoes. Others hold small onions and chopped leeks, white pearls floating in an opaque sea. Sometimes the light falls on a jar of boiled quail or the slick, dark meat of a rabbit. There are unexpected moments when I see the slit [...]

Mike got up off the floor and sat on the sofa while he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, as if increasing the blog flow to the brain might help solve his problem. And it was then that the word containment entered his mind. And with that word, moral, [...]

Fractured by Karen Slaughter
Special Agent Will Trent, Book 2
Pages: 388
Finished: Oct. 18, 2008
First Published: July 29, 2008
Genre: thriller, mystery
Rating: 3.5/5
Reason for Reading: received a review copy from Random House Canada. Plus I’ve read all the author’s books, this is her latest.
First sentence:
Abigail Campano sat in her car parked on the street outside her own house.
Comments: [...]

The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
2008 Booker Prize winner
2008, 276 pp.

Hmmm, well, I happened to get this book from the library on the Saturday before the Booker Prize was announced “just in case.” When The White Tiger was revealed as the winner, I was really surprised. Not only did it have the longest [...]

Atmospheric Disturbances
by Rivka Galchen
Starred Reviews: Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus
2008, 240 pp.

It’s rare that a book gets starred reviews from all four major review publications. Was this book that good; does it really deserve that much attention? Yes, absolutely. I really, really loved it; so much, in fact, that [...]

Bookweird by Paul Glennon
Pages: 250
First Published: Aug. 19, 2008
Genre: YA, fantasy
Rating: 4.5/5
First sentence:
The weekend started out well for Norman Jespers-Wilnius.
Comments: Norman’s behaviour gets himself grounded from his computer for the weekend. Fortunately, he is also an avid reader so he starts the weekend off by picking up the umpteenth book in his favourite series (a [...]

Breath by Tim Winton
2008, 218 pp.
Ugh. I thought this was about a teen boy surfing in Australia. I wanted it to be about a teen boy surfing in Australia. And it was, for about 150 pages, then it goes off into a weird and extreme area that I will not mention here. [...]

Released on October 30th.

It’s the last summer before college for 18 year-old Kim Larsen. She and her friends spend their time at the lake and working at their various summer jobs. Being from a small town in Ohio makes them all ready to get on with the big adventure into adulthood but at the same time they are whiling away the last bits of the summer with the freedom of teens.

Everything changes when Kim disappears on her way to work one day and Songs for the Missing is a chronicle of the thoughts and emotions of those who know and love her [...]