BookieMonster » 2009 August

Book Spotlight: Lucky : A Memoir by Alice Sebold

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Aug 312009

Book Spotlight: Lucky : A Memoir by Alice Sebold

Description : In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold (author of The Lovely Bones) reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold’s indomitable spirit – as she struggles for understanding (“After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes”); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker’s arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” Reading Lucky, which I did in a [...read more...]

What’s BookieMonster Currently Reading? The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

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Aug 272009

Description: Balram Halwai is the White Tiger – the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. BookieMonster: First up, let me say that I enjoyed this book. I thought it was well-written, witty, interesting and overall a good read. It continues what has become a fantastic tradition of English-language Indian literature beginning from mid last century. But I have to honestly [...read more...]

Book Spotlight: In the Cockpit – 50 History Making Aircraft

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Aug 262009

Book Spotlight: In the Cockpit - 50 History Making Aircraft

by Dana Bell, Eric F. Long, Mark A. Avino and foreword by John Travolta Description: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum holds the country’s premier collection of historic aircrafts, but visitors must view these impressive structures at a distance. In the Cockpit captures the feeling of helming these historic craft with big, gorgeous four-color photographs that will give flight enthusiasts a true pilot’s eye view of many of history’s most important domestic and military airplanes, jets, and helicopters. Each entry includes archival images of the craft and authoritative text that places each one in the context of the development of aviation technology and world history. BookieMonster says: This would make a fabulous gift book – the photographs are stunning and the overall look of the book is wonderful – the cover is made to look like aged leather. Beautiful! For a limited time Father’s Day Special you can [...read more...]

Book Spotlight : Michael Palin – The Python Years, & a Great Father’s Day Deal!

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Aug 252009

Book Spotlight : Michael Palin - The Python Years, & a Great Father's Day Deal!

Michael Palin Diaries 1969 – 1979 : The Python Years Description: Michael Palin’s diaries begin the late 1960s when, he began writing for hugely popular programs. And Monty Python was just round the corner… Here he recounts how Python emerged and triumphed. From the success and cult status brought by Monty Python, Palin shares stories from their world tours, their stay at hotels recently trashed by Led Zeppelin, their battles over censorship, and how, individually, the Pythons went their separate ways. Yet at the same time they were working on the now celebrated series of films, including The Holy Grail, many of whose lines are known by heart to a considerable portion of the English-speaking world. The birth and childhood of his three children, learning to cope as a young man with celebrity, his friendship with George Harrison, and all the trials of a peripatetic life are also essential ingredients of [...read more...]

You will never take our books…

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Aug 252009

Just wanted to draw your attention to a really good piece by Sophie Heawood in The Independent about indie bookshops in LA and their enduring popularity. Loved it, particularly the bit about reading calming the babbling brain… we all have that, right? RIGHT?? And thanks to Beattie’s Book Blog for drawing my attention to this piece.

BookieMonster’s Unappreciated Classics No. 7: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

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Aug 242009

BookieMonster’s Unappreciated Classics No. 7: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Carnys, flipper boys, siamese twins, bald albino hunchback dwarves… welcome to Geek Love. First up I’m going to give you the publisher’s description, because there’s no point me paraphrasing (you’ll see why): Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of [...read more...]