 | Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | John Irving |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1998 |
If you like John Irving, I think you'll find The Cider House Rules and Hotel New Hampshire much more interesting. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Widow for One Year | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | John Irving |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Sophisticated readers |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 1999 |
Complex, heavily plotted, John Irving disquisition on how official rules/laws and unwritten norms are unequally enforced based on gender, social status, and other factors. In other words, it's about the politics and the realities of Making Hard Choices. | |
Unlike Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, orphans in The Cider House Rules are routinely well cared for and frequently give in to temptation (for good causes, of course). Irving bravely compares himself to these two, and to Dickens, and bravely proclaims the utility and necessity of lying (aka creation of fiction) in the face of unfair rules. Once you finish reading The Cider House Rules, you will feel compelled to (re)read David Copperfield and Jane Eyre. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Cider House Rules, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Helen DeWitt |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | Fiction, parenting |
| Year of publication: | 2000 |
This hilarious novel starts as a not-quite-five year old's mother gets so sick of answering his questions that she promises to teach him Japanese after he's read the Odyssey in the original Greek. Which he does. Should be required reading for parents of gifted toddlers, but parents of gifted toddlers probably wouldn't have the time. An excerpt. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Last Samurai, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Nicholson Baker |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | Sophisticated readers |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | Sophisticated readers |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2003 |
One of the best books "about nothing" that we've ever come across. A gentle family man describes his philosophy of life in a diary format. | |
Features highly opinionated disquisitions on topics such as:
Suitable for: Mature high school level readers (others are likely to be bored out of their minds rather than amused) and adults. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Box Full of Matches, A | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Kate Chopin |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1899 |
Hard to believe that these stories were written more than a century ago. Although they are firmly rooted in the bayous of Lousisiana just before the turn of the 20th century, the women in these stories face choices heartrendingly similar to those of women today. | |
My favorites this week are Regret, in which a childless woman, set in her ways, is obliged to care for a some of her neighbors' children for a while. And, The Awakening itself, a novella about a woman who seems to have it all, but does not. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Awakening and Selected Stories, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Marianne Wiggins |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 1999 |
Intense story about how ordinary people cope (or fail to cope) with witnessing horrors, both natural and man-made. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Almost Heaven | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Anita Diamant |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction, historical |
| Year of publication: | 1997 |
Riff on life of biblical woman, Dinah | |
A passage in the book of Genesis refers to Dinah, the only daughter of Joseph. Dinah's brothers "avenged" her by killing her husband and all his men. Diamant's novel gives voice to Dinah, who is granted only this one passage in the Bible. In so doing, Diamant muses on the way the roles of women changed as Abraham's descendants' allegiance to the single God, El, became stronger. Contrasts in an interesting way with The King Must Die, which also describes a transition from a culture where women were acknowledged to possess some divinity to one in which male deities were ascendent. -- Emily Berk | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Red Tent, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Mark Costello |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2003 |
Authors of novels like to think that they create civilizations using words alone. And so do computer programmers. In The Big If, secret service people guarding the Vice President of the United States do the same. Could it be that everyone does this to survive. (Except maybe not everyone is self-aware enough to know they are doing it.) | |
The recursion is dizzying. This involving novel draws us in to all three worlds:
| |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Big If, The | |
| Tweet |
| Tell friends about this blog entry | |
| Author: | Louise Erdrich |
| Reading Level (Conceptual): | For grown-ups |
| Reading Level (Vocabulary): | For grown-ups |
| Genre: | fiction |
| Year of publication: | 2001 |
Woman is mistaken for a priest, and ends up adopting his identity and ministering to an Indian reservation in the early twentieth century. It's interesting to learn the background of some of the characters we met in Love Medicine. | |
| Similar books | |
If you found this review helpful and/or interesting, consider supporting our book habit: Buy this book!: Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse | |