One of my goals is to try to read all of the Man Booker Prize winners. Some years I do better than others. I'm happy to say that the 2008 winner, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga was worth every second I spent reading instead of weeding in my garden. It is a real page turner. The story is told by the protagonist, Balram, through a series of letters that he writes to the Premier of China, who is about to visit India on an official visit. Balram intends to counter what will be the Indian government's official stance on the state of poverty and progress in the country, which he does as he relates the story of his rise from the servant class to wealthy entreprenuer. The story of Balram's family and his life of servitude is at once tragic and laugh-out-loud funny. Highly recommended.
And while I'm at it, I also recommend these stories also set in India:
Sold by Patrcia McCormick,
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.
All of these books are available in the library. My favorite book set in India, A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry is not, but it soon will be.
Check them out, and happy reading!
~The Bloggers.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Summer Reading
Just finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Loved it. We, of course, have a copy available in the library, so you can check it out, but if you can't wait until September, and you'd like to have Mr. Gaiman read the book to you, then you can go to Neil Gaiman's Official Website for Young Readers to watch and listen.
The main character in The Graveyard Book is Bod, short for Nobody Owens. Bod lives in a graveyard. He is taken in by its residents when it is clear that he is in grave danger after all of the members of his family are murdered. He is granted the freedom of the graveyard and is protected by his new parents, the deceased Mr. and Mrs. Owens, and the mostly dead Silas. Bod is a typical boy: sensitive, curious, and sometimes impetuous. As he grows older, he longs for a normal life outside the graveyard, which is not possible until the mystery of his family's murder is solved.
Last year I was pleasantly surprised by Gaiman's novel Neverwhere, which I also thoroughly enjoyed, perhaps even more than The Graveyard Book. Neverwhere has a similar darkness, but also has an important underlying message about class and the "invisibility" of the those less fortunate in society.
I highly recommend all of Gaiman's work. If you'd like to learn more about him, check out his excellent web site. And stop by the library to check out more of his books.
Hope you are enjoying a summer of good reading.
The main character in The Graveyard Book is Bod, short for Nobody Owens. Bod lives in a graveyard. He is taken in by its residents when it is clear that he is in grave danger after all of the members of his family are murdered. He is granted the freedom of the graveyard and is protected by his new parents, the deceased Mr. and Mrs. Owens, and the mostly dead Silas. Bod is a typical boy: sensitive, curious, and sometimes impetuous. As he grows older, he longs for a normal life outside the graveyard, which is not possible until the mystery of his family's murder is solved.
Last year I was pleasantly surprised by Gaiman's novel Neverwhere, which I also thoroughly enjoyed, perhaps even more than The Graveyard Book. Neverwhere has a similar darkness, but also has an important underlying message about class and the "invisibility" of the those less fortunate in society.
I highly recommend all of Gaiman's work. If you'd like to learn more about him, check out his excellent web site. And stop by the library to check out more of his books.
Hope you are enjoying a summer of good reading.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Outstanding Books for the College Bound
Every five years the American Library Association comes out with an updated list of "Outstanding Books for the College Bound." The 2009 list is available here. Now, I confess that I am still working on a few titles from the 2004 lists, but that hasn't stopped me from picking up a couple books on the 2009 list. My first pick, from the Science and Technology list, was Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. It's fascinating, but disgusting.
To give myself a break from the decomposition discussions, I flew through Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, by Mark Dunn. This is an entertaining work of fiction about the love of language. Some folks on the small island of Nollop idolize their island's namesake, who just happens to be the creator of the saying "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." When the letters of this pangram, posted over a statue of Mr. Nollop, begin to fall down, the island's high council take this as a divine sign from Nollop that those letters are no longer to be used. Thus begins the increasingly difficult task of communicating as more and more letters become illegal with each passing week. It is a tale of oppression, much in the vein of Animal Farm. A fun read, and a great vocabulary builder.
The library already had about half of the books on the 2009 list when it came out. I am happy to report that we now have nearly all of them. The few that I could not find at Chaucer's are on our amazon wish list.
Now, back to the cadavers...
To give myself a break from the decomposition discussions, I flew through Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, by Mark Dunn. This is an entertaining work of fiction about the love of language. Some folks on the small island of Nollop idolize their island's namesake, who just happens to be the creator of the saying "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." When the letters of this pangram, posted over a statue of Mr. Nollop, begin to fall down, the island's high council take this as a divine sign from Nollop that those letters are no longer to be used. Thus begins the increasingly difficult task of communicating as more and more letters become illegal with each passing week. It is a tale of oppression, much in the vein of Animal Farm. A fun read, and a great vocabulary builder.
The library already had about half of the books on the 2009 list when it came out. I am happy to report that we now have nearly all of them. The few that I could not find at Chaucer's are on our amazon wish list.
Now, back to the cadavers...
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