The
Art of Racing in the Rain, author Garth Stein pages
321
Enzo
knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly
human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated
himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very
closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming
race car driver.
Through
Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition,
and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast.
Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully
navigate all of life's ordeals.
On
the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all
that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has
made to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's
wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoë, whose maternal
grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite
what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to
preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny
will become a racing champion with Zoë at his side. Having learned
what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise
canine can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he
will return as a man.
A
heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of
family, love, loyalty, and hope, The
Art of Racing in the Rain
is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and
absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.
The
Nightingale, author Kristin Hannah
pages
449
#1
New
York Times
bestseller
Named
a top five book of the year by Amazon
Named
a best book of the year by: Buzzfeed, iTunes, Library
Journal,
Paste,
self.com, The
Wall Street Journal,
The
Week
In
love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.
FRANCE,
1939
In
the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her
husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that
the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of
marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that
fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German
captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live
with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as
danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one
impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
Vianne's
sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching
for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands
of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan,
a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within
France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. But
when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks
back, risking her life time and again to save others.
With
courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin
Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate
part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells
the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by
ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous
path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn
France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the
resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a
novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
The
Twelve Tribes of Hattie author Ayana Mathis pages
256
A
New York Times
Notable Book
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Buzzfeed Best Book
of the Year
KIRKUS REVIEW
The legacy of the Great Migration
from the 1920s to the 1980s infuses this cutting, emotional
collection of linked stories.
The central figure of Mathis’
debut is Hattie, who arrived in Philadelphia in the 1920s as a
teenager, awed by the everyday freedoms afforded blacks outside of
her native Georgia. But the opening story, “Philadelphia and
Jubilee,” is pure heartbreak, as pride and poverty keep her from
saving her infant twin children from pneumonia. Though Mathis has
inherited some of Alice Walker’s sentimentality and Toni Morrison’s
poetic intonation, her own prose is appealingly earthbound and
plainspoken, and the book’s structure is ingenious: It moves across
the bulk of the 20th century, with each chapter spotlighting one of
Hattie’s nine surviving children. (The title’s “twelve tribes”
are those nine children, plus the infant twins and a granddaughter
who’s central to the closing story.) Each child's personal struggle
is a function of the casual bigotry and economic challenges in the
wake of Jim Crow. Floyd is a jazz trumpeter and serial philanderer
who awakens to his homosexuality; Six is a tent-revival preacher who
comes at his profession cynically, as a way to escape his family;
Alice is the well-off wife of a doctor with a co-dependent
relationship with her brother, Billups; and so on. The longest and
most disarming story features Bell, who in 1975 starts a relationship
with one of Hattie’s former boyfriends, highlighting the themes of
illness and oppressiveness of family. Mathis will occasionally
oversimplify dialogue to build drama, but she’s remarkably deft at
many more things for a first-timer: She gracefully shifts her
narratives back and forth in time; has an eye for simple but resonant
details; and possesses a generous empathy for Hattie, who is
unlikable on the surface but carries plenty of complexity.
Pub
Date: Jan. 15th, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-35028-0
Page
count: 256pp
Publisher: Knopf
A
Man Called Ove, author Fredrik Backman
pages 369
Read
the New York Times
bestseller that
has taken the world by storm!
Meet
Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he
dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window.
He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People
call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter
just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his
face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story
and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple
with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally
flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and
heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the
ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one
cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very
foundations.
A feel-good story in the spirit of The
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
and Major Pettigrew’s
Last Stand, Fredrik
Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful
exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others.
“If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’
this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation
would win hands down” (Booklist,
starred review).
Cleopatra:
A Life,
author Stacey Schiff
pages 407
The
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing
woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of
Egypt.
Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but
was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else,
Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious
negotiator.
Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it
reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice,
each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the
first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately
she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and
assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had
sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius
Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day.
Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar
and--after his murder--three more with his protégé. Already she was
the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with
Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age.
The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance
that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our
imaginations ever since.
Famous long before she was notorious,
Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons.
Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo,
and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way,
Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances
have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy
Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic
queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic
in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of
a dazzling life.
Post
script: the name of the film about the fight for the right to die
with dignity is called ” The Sea Inside” (2004) is based on a
true story about Ramon Sampedro starring Javier Bardem. I highly
recommend it.
