One of the most striking images used by Julian Barnes in this book about memory is the Severn Bore. This phenomenon is a wave that occurs in the tidal basin of the Severn River when the river runs upstream because of a tide. The largest bores occur in the spring when the water is at the highest levels. Here's a link to a website about the Severn Bore. Tony Webster, now in...
Audiobook. What a perfect book for listening. Thanks to this book and the subsequent movie, people are aware of this amazing horse. It is interesting that such a media phenomenon in his time (1936-1942) was forgotten until the 2001 book caught on. He received more coverage in the late 30s than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Perhaps this means that in a few years...
Recommended by Molly. William Kowalski bravely takes on the big questions in his ambitious first novel and is pretty successful. The narrator is the bastard himself, who was delivered in a basket on the doorstep of his alcoholic grandfather, the only remaining member of once rich Mann family. The family was quite proud of its success in this little community, having built the...
These are books I read in 2011, not necessarily published this year. What a great year of books this was for me. An Object of Beauty. Steve Martin's second novel, a well-crafted book with a fun setting (the art market at the Sotheby level), and intriguing characters. The central figure is Lacey who never hesitates to do whatever it takes to further her career. Wolf...
Having read the enthusiastic New York Times review of 1491, I thought surely I would like it, though I was leary of a book that "radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Europeans in 1492." The claims include that there were more people in the Americas than in Europe at the time, that some cities had greater technological advances than European...
Audiobook. This is the first in a planned triology. Hearing about the second book, the recently published River of Smoke, moved me to listen to this one. I had enjoyed The Glass Palace years ago. From an interview I heard I knew that the trilogy is about the imposition of opium by the British East India Company on China. Sea of Poppies is set in India, where the...
Stephen, the narrator of this tale of a tiny village in the wilds of Canada early in this century, has returned at age 40 with his wife and three daughters. Sawgamet began with a gold boom when Stephen’s grandfather Jeannot happened on a nugget of gold after his dog would not move. Stephen ruminates on the stories of the three generations of his family and the village during the night as...
This is the first book written by this Canadian journalist and film-maker. I'm not sure how a journalist who was the pop music critic for a time for the Montreal Gazette came to fall so completely in love with Bach's cello suites, but I am very happy it happened. The subtitle is J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece; the author savors the...
Audiobook. I read this book after I heard the author speak at the community college here. She was brought through the efforts of Linda, the adviser of PVCC's student book club. The book has two narrators; the first is Lavinia who we meet when she arrives at a Virginia plantation sometime in the 1780s as a 6-year-old indentured servant. She tells us the story from...
Audiobook. Binx Bolling is the narrator of this novel published in 1960; he tells us in a most charming way about his life and views. He is a successful 30 year old man who lives in Gentilly, a suburb of New Orleans, chosen for its ordinariness. It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name...