Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
by Mary Roach W W Norton & Co Inc
Our Price: $25.95
One of my first jobs in high school was working at the gift shop in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville AL. I hated my uniform but I loved learning about space travel, especially the daily lives of the astronauts. In the early days of the Gemini project, you would be stuck in what amounts to the front seat of the car for several days. In the shuttle, you at least had some room to maneuver, but what did you do all day when you weren't doing science stuff? And what if we ever send people to Mars? That's a three year trip in a cramped cabin. Sure, lots of people think about the bravery and heroism of astronauts. But I wanted to know how bad they smelled after a week wearing the same space suit. And how did they go to the bathroom in space? Or wash their hair? And why was their food so gross?
Mary Roach shares my fascination apparently. In Packing for Mars, she goes on board with space monkeys, watches video of astronaut auditions, reads archives of isolation experiments and studies of what happens when you put three people in a small room for a week and don't let them change their clothes. She eats meals designed by veterinarians for minimal excretory output. And yes, she visits the center where astronauts train to use the space-commode.
As with Stiff and Bonk, her earlier books about death and sex, Roach answers questions most of us aren't quite brave enough to ask. The story is a combination of amazing, hilarious, and amazingly hilarious. The chapter on space bathroom technology alone is worth the price of admission.
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D. H. Lawrence
by Geoff Dyer Picador USA
Our Price: $15.00
If you only read one book on attempting to write a biography of D.H. Lawrence this year, make it this one! I constantly found myself reading bits of it aloud to my husband. Dyer's play with language and genre subvert the standard literary criticism tomes. How he even got this book in print is beyond me. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind when I think about Dyer's writing process.
But it's so much fun to read! In this wonderful book, I discovered some of my favorite sentences: "To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf." Mind you, he's talking about not being interested in theater. If you're interested in literature -- that is, feel anxiety about its health, its trends, its quality -- then Dyer's work should reassure you that it's alive and well.
Amsterdam’s debut features nine stories linked by a single narrator, related over several increasingly difficult decades of post-apocalyptic life. But instead of focusing on the pain and awfulness of the situation, Amsterdam has produced a series of original, dense stories about the canniness it takes to overcome adversity.
Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
by Peter Hessler Harpercollins
Our Price: $27.99
China now buys more cars, builds more highways, and emits more carbon dioxide than any other country in the world. What does that mean for the average Chinese person? What does that mean for you? In Country Driving (as in his previous two books) Hessler provides a clear-eyed, unbiased, on-the-ground look at China’s changing relationship with itself and with the west. He visits bra factories, highway security checkpoints, farming villages and urban factories in his journeys around the country and comes away with a fascinating and informative portrait of a nation undergoing rapid and hugely influential changes.
Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays
by Eula Biss Graywolf Pr
Our Price: $15.00
You probably know that the telephone changed the world. But did you know that telephone poles were the primary instrument of lynching? Eula Biss will make you think twice about everything you’ve ever known. Growing up as a white girl in a mixed-race household, teaching in poor urban elementary schools, and working as a journalist for an African-American newspaper in Los Angeles, Eula Biss has the perspective and experience to make you doubt, and doubt again, and change the way you look at everything from apartment rentals to educational policy.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze: A Novel
by Maaza Mengiste W W Norton & Co Inc
Our Price: $24.95
Maaza Mengiste’s debut novel opens on the cusp of the revolution in Ethiopia. After a television program reveals the true devastation the drought had on rural regions, Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime begins to crumble. Hailu, a skilled doctor in the capital, must shepherd his family through this rough era. His older son Yonas, a university professor, feels impotent against the violence, trying to protect his wife and daughter. The younger son Dawit meanwhile feels the fiery convictions of the college age. When soldiers request Hailu treat an obvious torture victim–she must not die, he is told–he makes a decision that will change his family’s fate. Their tragic story makes Mengiste’s debut novel both powerful and gripping.
Seven Days in the Art World
by Sarah Thornton W W Norton
Our Price: $24.95
I knew that the art world wasn’t all paint, charcoal, and inspiration, but it took Thornton’s illuminating book to give me such a well rounded portrait. Approaching the task from a sociological point of view, she follows seven different aspects of the art world: the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the Basel Art Fair, behind the scenes at Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, a crit session at the California Institute of the Arts, and the Venice Biennale. Thornton spent 5 years researching and writing this book and though it might seem slim to the casual eye, it’s erudite, well-written, and most importantly a fascinating read.
Sea of Poppies
by Amitav Ghosh Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Our Price: $26.00
I love, love, love this book. This is a tale of coolies, cross-dressing merchants, stowaways and sailors on a boat sent from India to China during the Opium Wars. The passengers on the ship make themselves into a family of sorts, and in the times of upheaval that follow the journey they follow strange new paths with only each other to rely upon. After I finished the book, I learned that it's the first part of a trilogy - and I'm thrilled that I can keep following this story!
If the intense cover alone doesn’t draw you to this book, perhaps knowing that this novel features one of the greatest female protagonists I’ve ever come across will. It’s 1929, and George Pemberton returns to the North Carolina mountains with his new wife Serena where they plan on creating a timber empire. She’s no meek flower. She rides horses like men and even trains an eagle to kill the rattlers that plague the crews. Letting nothing get in their way, they ride roughshod over everyone who crossed paths with them including partners, sheriffs, and Pemberton’s former mistress. With echoes of Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, this story of ambition and greed and revenge has haunted my dreams for weeks.
The tears and whiskey that stain my copy of Edgar Sawtelle attest to how great this book is. I’d be hard pressed to name a more masterful debut novel. If you had told me that a story about a family that raises dogs, with elements of Hamlet, would make me sob, I would have said you were crazy. But it happened, and I want to run out and force everyone I know to read this amazing book.
Daughters of the North
by Sarah Hall Harper Perennial
Our Price: $13.95
Even if you don’t think you like dystopian fiction, you should read Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North. It calls to mind Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, not just in subject matter but also in how skillfully both women write. Global warming has caused massive flooding in the UK. Women’s reproductive rights are strictly controlled by the “Authority”; the government fits every woman of childbearing age with a contraceptive coil. The narrator, Sister, has fled her city to a utopian all-female commune called Carhullan. It’s scary, powerful, relevant, and a must read for everyone.
How the Dead Dream: A Novel
by Lydia Millet Counterpoint
Our Price: $24.00
This dreamlike tale of a young man with an unraveling life really touched a nerve with me. As a child, T. discovers that he has a gift for making money; Money and the world of finance provide him with a sense of balance and purpose. He becomes a real estate developer in L.A., but lives a lonely life until he meets Beth. Soon his world begins to unravel—his dog disappears, his mother begins to breakdown after his father leaves her, his beloved girlfriend is taken away suddenly. T. finds solace by breaking into zoos to spend time with the animals in their cages. Ultimately, he goes to the jungle in a journey reminiscent of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Millet's combination of lyrical prose and flashes of humor really worked for me.
Refresh, Refresh: Stories
by Benjamin Percy Graywolf Press
Our Price: $15.00
A short story should grab your attention from the get-go only letting you free at itsrnend. Percy's marvelous stories got me with just his titles, such as 'Refresh, Refresh', 'The Caves in Oregon', 'The Killing', 'Meltdown'. I read the entire book on a plane, forgoing the usual peanuts and soda even, so absorbed was I in these stories.
Another bio of people behaving bravely during WWII, you say? Aren't there enough of those? I can't speak for all the rest, but this book definitely deserves readers. This story about zookeeper Jan Zabinski in Warsaw and his wife Antonina reads like a novel. Ackerman writes descriptive passages about life in Warsaw both the idyllic urban life before war breaks out and the harrowing existence during the occupation. We meet the guests hiding inside the Zabinski's villa on the zoo grounds and the Polish resistancernwho sometimes hide out in the empty animal cages, all trying to stay alive in a world gone mad.
Do you want to read a smart, dark, literary thriller that will keep you reading late into the night? Do you want to read about a self-destructive photographer who hasn’t done anything since the 70’s, who has spent the years since drinking, doing drugs, and alienating everyone around her, who goes to Maine to interview legendary photographer Aphrodite, but then gets caught up in a case of a missing girl and also discovers a photographic genius who might also be crazy? Do you want to read about how dark a person can go before they get to that invisible line and what might tempt you to cross it? Well, here’s your book.
This spare and intense memoir kept me up late reading into the night. Danielle Trussoni writes not just about her own life, but also about her father, who was a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam. When he returns, the trauma he endured during the war takes its toll on him and his family. When her parents divorce, she goes to live with her father, while her two younger siblings go with her mother. She spends a lot of time on a bar stool at the local watering hole. Trussoni writes so candidly about growing up with this difficult man, but she never feels sorry for herself. She instead seems to always want to get past the gruff exterior and know the man underneath. This is a very powerful memoir. PS: The New York Times named this one of their Top Ten Books of 2006.
I’m probably not going to do this book justice in this small space, but I’ll go on record saying that this is the best book I’ve read this year. Set sometime in the future, Jamestown chronicles a group of settlers rnfrom Manhattan traveling South in a large bus/tank to establish an rnoutpost in southern Virginia. The settlers encounter the Indians, who aren’t technically Indians (there are none left) but white people rnimitating what they’ve read in books. Their 90 SPF sunscreen doesn’t rnprotect them from the sun well enough, you see, hence the red skin. Suffice it to say that Sharpe’s masterful writing goes beyond just rnverbal pyrotechnics into a deeper metalanguage of misunderstandings and what happens when two groups who speak the same language still cannot rnunderstand one another .
Reading this book, I felt like I was entering into a part of the world I had never seen before. The book, set in the upper-crust African-American society of Martha's Vineyard, New York, and Washington, takes us through one family's entanglements and chicanery. The death of a wealthy and infamous judge thrusts his son into a treacherous puzzle concerning a deep dark family secret. Although Stephen Carter wrote a mystery, I found his treatment of the interactions of the family one of the most intriguing parts of the novel. The Emperor of Ocean Park is full of energy and the 600 some odd pages flew by.
I didn't think it was possible, but Richard Powers has followed his masterful novel The Time of Our Singing with an even better, more thought-provoking book. Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident and wakes up with Capgras' Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder wherein he doesn't recognize those closest to him. This includes his sister Karen who has returned reluctantly to their hometown in Nebraska. Set against the Platte river's massive spring migration, this book examines identity, recognition, and most of all, connections. This is one of the best novels I've read this year.
Manga master Tatsumi’s stories are unlike anything else---he invented
the genre of comics exploring everyday life. With black and white
drawings, he can bring out the subtle nuances of the Japanese streets as
well as the elusive qualities of men and women caught up in their inner
lives. The story remains the focus rather than the art and the Everyman
quality makes each one resound. Some are disturbing and some sad, but
you’ll be thinking about them long after you’ve finished reading.
Love in a Fallen City
by Eileen Chang New York Review of Books
Our Price: $14.95
Readers will devour each of these six short stories as if they were their last meal. Chang, said to have transformed Chinese literature in the 30s and 40s, writes about men, women, and the ways even the smallest actions or words can transform relationships. The cultural divide in Chinese society between ancient patriarchy and the tumultuous modernity
forms the vivid background. I’m so glad that her wonderful stories are finally being translated so everyone gets a chance to read them.
This memoir might seem short, but don’t let the size fool you. The author receives a phone call one day in 1990 from the woman who had left him two years previous. She’s not calling to discuss what happened or apologize, no, she’s calling to invite him to a party for a woman he’s never met. In each of the four parts—phone call, preparation, the party,
the aftermath—Bouillier uses a combination of earnestness and hyperbolic
prose to examine each moment. Witty and absurd, I savored each page of this book.
Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China (P.S.)
by Peter Hessler Harper Perennial
Our Price: $15.95
Not quite a memoir, nor travel literature, nor cultural study, Oracle Bones manages to be a bit of all these things. Hessler moved to China for the Peace Corps (he details those 2 years in his excellent River Town) and stayed behind after completing his tenure. He moves through China not as a tourist, but as one who wants to understand the everyday details of a culture. I loved his intimate portraits of the people he encountered as well as the bigger painting of the landscape of a country opening its borders to the West. I found myself enraptured with this book’s details of the contrast between past and present. It’s simply a great read.
An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
by Paul Rusesabagina Penguin (Non-Classics)
Our Price: $14.00
How does one review a memoir that details living through the Rwandan genocide in 1994? Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Hotel Milles Collines, writes about his experience during that dark time in his new memoir. If you've seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, which is based on his life, you've seen some of the most visceral, awful, blood filled parts. His memoir deals with the more personal aspects, rather than focusing on scenes that must have been too mind-boggling for the human mind to comprehend.
I worried when picking this book up for the first time that Paul Rusesabagina would come across as self-important, but instead he just sounds sincere. As he says, "I am a hotel manager who was doing his job. That is really the best you can say about me." In just 100 days, over 800,000 people were slaughtered, many hacked to death by machetes, which had been imported for this strict purpose. He writes about the events that led up to this atrocity as well as weaving in the story of his childhood. We hear about his wise father, who taught him the verbal skills and help infuse him with the wiseness that would save himself, his family, and 1,268 people later on in 1994.
The tone of this book is incredibly personal. You can almost hear Rusesabagina telling you his story in one ear as you read. He refuses to believe that everyone is either good or evil. Each person has a bit of both inside and that's what enabled him to live day to day. He believed that as long as he could find the soft part of a person, he could win any negotiation. He sat with some of the main men behind the genocide, and even though he was harboring wanted Tutsis, was able to keep the hotel as a safe haven for several months. He dismisses the criticism from those who wonder how he could be friendly with such killers. He was only thinking about saving the people in his hotel. Evil men or not, they had the power to let the killers in or to keep them outside at the gate. Rusesabagina's sincerity paints this entire memoir. How any man could survive let alone with such humility leaves one feeling pretty humble.
Black Swan Green: A Novel
by David. Mitchell Random House Trade Paperbacks
Our Price: $13.95
The first book from David Mitchell where his own voice may be heard,
Black Swan Green follows thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor over the course
the year 1982. Each chapter tells a tale of its own, with recurring
characters as Taylor struggles to find his own place. Rather than big
and bold and full of literary tricks, Mitchell has written a quiet and
thoughtful book that might seem simplistic were it not for Taylor's
strong, brilliant voice. Completely different from his previous novels,
Mitchell has proved to me at least that he is one of the best writers
around today.
Regular readers of Sarah Waters might be disappointed to learn that her
new book does not take place in Victorian England, but rather in WWII
England. They shouldn’t be. She brings her same exhilarating writing to
this new novel. Told in three parts backwards in time, the cast of
characters include young women and men, some gay, some straight, whose
lives have been touched by the war in many ways. In the first section,
we see them reeling from the after effects of the war, in the second,
the drama and heartache of the war in full swing, and in the third,
before the war has even begun. Somehow, this scheme works beautifully as you slowly discover the secrets revealed. Waters ability to bring to life an era that has slipped by through her beautiful writing makes her
one of my favorite writers living today.
Rose of No Man's Land
by Michelle Tea Harvest Books
Our Price: $14.00
Michelle Tea’s new book is not your typical coming of age novel---for
starters, it doesn't revolve around boys. Though she's only 14, Tea's
protagonist Trisha Driscoll stands on the brink of adulthood. Already an
alcoholic, she has no friends and rarely leaves the house. She finds it
difficult to relate to her older sister, who so wants to flee their
hometown of Mogsfield, MA that she's trying to get a spot on MTV's The
Real World. Her mother spends all day on the couch watching daytime
television, complaining about mysterious ailments and her loser
boyfriend Donnie is no better. After Trisha gets abruptly fired on her
first day at Ohmigod! at the mall, she finds herself becoming friends
with Rose, another mallrat who works at the carnival food eatery Clown
in the Box. I loved Trisha's brashness mixed with naivety. Tea captures
the feeling of being old enough to know, but not old enough to know
better. It's a great book.
Electric Michelangelo
by Sarah Hall Harper Perennial
Our Price: $13.95
Sarah Hall's carefully crafted novel follows Cy Parker, the electric "Michelangelo" of the title, as he becomes a tattoo artist. She pays careful attention to how each word sounds and fits together, writing a lyrical novel with ease it seems. We see Cy Parker grow up in a seaside English town at the turn of the century, apprenticing with foul-mouthed binge drinker Eliot Riley, and eventually moving to Coney Island. We see him become a wonderful artist as well as a pseudo-therapist as his customers reveal their stories once under his needle. Hall's long, energetic sentences and imaginative power make this a beautiful, engaging novel about pain and beauty and I loved reading it.
Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China (P.S.)
by Peter Hessler Harper Perennial
Our Price: $15.95
Memoirs can be tricky things; people often feel that their lives are a lot more interesting than they really are. Julia Scheeres’ life on the other hand is one definitely worth reading about, not only for her graceful writing. The title of her book comes from a sign the author stumbled across when she moved to rural Indiana with her parents and two adopted brothers, who are African-American. It’s the mid-80s, the same era in which I grew up, but our lives could not be more different. Her dismissive, extremely religious mother and abusive father do nothing to soften the harshness of the intolerance and cruelty the children suffer. Rather, they add more suffering to an already difficult life. Eventually, Julia follows her brother David to the Dominican Republic to a reform school, where life does not get any easier. This is no tell-all about an unjust childhood. Rather Julia Scheeres' candor and lovely writing make this memoir seem like more of a catharsis for her and I found it difficult to put down.
This hypnotizing, creepily dystopian novel captures your attention from the first chapter. Taking the tradition of what-might-happen-novels a step in what seems at first like a silly direction, Thomson imagines the UK divided into 4 quarters, each corresponding to one of the medieval humors -- the Red Quarter for the sanguine, Blue Quarter for the phlegmatic, Yellow Quarter for the violent cholerics, and Green Quarter for the melancholics. It sounds far-fetched at first, but gets terrifyingly more realistic as the novel speeds forward. I found Thomson's writing rich and vivid in detail. Divided Kingdom stunned me when I finished it -- I had to sit for a while thinking about all the possible messages in this wonderful book. It's one of the best books I've read this year.
