Novels Now

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. [...]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
2008, 465 pp.

The original Swedish title of this book means Men Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and [...]

The Story of a Marriage
by Andrew Sean Greer
2008, 195 pp.
Rating: 1/5
It seems this story has polarized readers. Some love it, while others intensely dislike the book. I fall into the latter camp. I thought I was really going to like it initially, but then the story went way over the top into unbelievability for me. [...]

The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry
2008, 300 pp.
Booker Prize Shortlist
I’d be happy if this book won the Booker Prize. Yeah, I would, and I haven’t read any of the other contenders yet! Sebastian Barry is a magnificent writer, and I will definitely be reading more of his work.
Roseanne McNulty is almost 100 years old, [...]

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Against Medical Advice: A True Story by James Patterson and Hal Friedman
Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan
American Prince: A Memoir by Tony Curtis with Peter Golenbock
The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William I. Hitchcock
Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher
Bones: An Alex [...]

The Activist: John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and the Myth of Judicial Review by Lawrence Goldstone
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Aphrodisiac by Allyson Roy
Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors
Blood Memory [...]

I was first introduced to Clyde Edgerton when I read and enjoyed Walking Across Egypt (4 stars) last year, so I was really looking forward to reading this book.  Henry Dampier is a young man determined to make his fortune by door-to-door Bible selling; although, truth be told, he gets the Bibles for free.  Still, [...]

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Although I haven’t yet read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies, after reading Unaccustomed Earth, I can understand why the committee was so impressed with her writing. Her stories of the Bengali immigrant experience were very well developed, and they had closure to them, something I’ve noticed is often times lacking in [...]

Daughters of the North, known as The Carhullan Army in the UK, is a dystopian novel set in an environmentally and economically ravaged Britain. Citizens are forced to be registered in cities where they are assigned work for the good of the state. Contraception is mandated and every female is fitted with a device [...]

Reviews of books published in 2007 can now be found here:
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The winner of The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber, chosen using random.org, is Devourer of Books! Congrats, and I’ll be contacting you by email for your mailing address. Thanks to all who entered, and be on the lookout in a month or so for another giveaway!

Chaz Wilmot is (by choice) an unsuccessful painter doing primarily commercial work. He obviously has more talent than what he’s using, and this fact is a constant source of frustration for his ex-wife and others around him. As part of a medical study, Chaz starts taking Salvinorin A, a drug being tested for its effects [...]