To Tony, who almost lost her husband and jeopardized her academic career, Zenia is 'a lurking enemy commando.' To Roz, who did lose her husband and almost her magazine, Zenia is 'a cold and treacherous bitch.' To Charis, who lost a boyfriend, quarts of vegetable juice and some pet chickens, Zenia is a kind of zombie, maybe 'soulless'" (Lorrie Moore, New York Times Book Review). In love and war, illusion and deceit, Zenia's subterranean malevolence takes us deep into her enemies' pasts. (From www.goodreads.com)
Sarah - Darling Jim by Christian Moerk
When two sisters and their aunt are found dead in their suburban Dublin home, it seems that the secret behind their untimely demise will never be known. But then Niall, a young mailman, finds a mysterious diary in the post office’s dead-letter bin. From beyond the grave, Fiona Walsh shares the most tragic love story he’s ever heard—and her tale has only just begun. Niall soon becomes enveloped by the mystery surrounding itinerant storyteller Jim, who traveled through Ireland enrapturing audiences and wooing women with his macabre mythic narratives. Captivated by Jim, townspeople across Ireland thought it must be a sad coincidence that horrific murders trailed him wherever he went—and they failed to connect that the young female victims, who were smitten by the newest bad boy in town, bore an all too frightening similarity to the victims in Jim’s own fictional plots.
The Walsh sisters, fiercely loyal to one another, were not immune to “darling” Jim’s powers of seduction, but found themselves in harm’s way when they began to uncover his treacherous past. Niall must now continue his dangerous hunt for the truth—and for the vanished third sister—while there’s still time. And in the woods, the wolves from Jim’s stories begin to gather. (From www.goodreads.com)
Amanda - And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
More than sixty years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac sat down in New York City to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. The two authors were then at the dawn of their careers, having yet to write anything of note. Alternating chapters and narrators, Burroughs and Kerouac pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence. The manuscript, called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks after a line from a news story about a fire at a circus, was submitted to publishers but rejected and confined to a filing cabinet for decades. This legendary collaboration between two of the twentieth centuries most influential writers is set to be published for the first time in the fall of 2008. A remarkable, fascinating piece of American literary history, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is also an engrossing, atmospheric novel that brings to life a shocking murder at the dawn of the Beat Generation.
Bryan - Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask--but Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life--from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing--and his conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. The authors show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives--how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In this book, they set out to explore the hidden side of everything. If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. (From MORE Online Library Catalog)
Nancy - What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science edited by Max Brockman
Will climate change force a massive human migration to the Northern Rim?
How does our sense of morality arise from the structure of the brain?
What does the latest research in language acquisition tells us about the role of culture in the way we think?
What does current neurological research tell us about the nature of time?
This wide-ranging collection of never-before-published essays offers the very latest insights into the daunting scientific questions of our time. Its contributors—some of the most brilliant young scientists working today—provide not only an introduction to their cutting-edge research, but discuss the social, ethical, and philosophical ramifications of their work. With essays covering fields as diverse as astrophysics, paleoanthropology, climatology, and neuroscience, What's Next? is a lucid and informed guide to the new frontiers of science. (from www.goodreads.com)
Carol - True Compass by Ted Kennedy
In this historic memoir,Ted Kennedy takes us inside his family, re-creating life with his parents and brothers and explaining their profound impact on him. or the first time, he describes his heartbreak and years of struggle in the wake of their deaths. Through it all, he describes his work in the Senate on the major issues of our time--civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the quest for peace in Northern Ireland--and the cause of his life: improved health care for all Americans, a fight influenced by his own experiences in hospitals. (from www.goodreads.com)
April - When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.
Least Favorites
Amanda - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Like many others, around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. Although she had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want, including a husband, a home, and a successful career as a magazine writer, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. This is an account of her yearlong worldwide pursuit of pleasure, spiritual devotion, guidance, and what she really wanted out of life. (from the MORE Online Library Catalog)
Sarah - Sand Daughter by Sarah Bryant
It is the time of the Crusades. The Islamic world is divided and the Franks have captured the Holy Land. As the mighty Saladin struggles to unite the warring clans of Arabia against the invaders, Khalidah, a young Bedouin woman of no obvious importance finds herself a pawn in a deadly plot involving her own feuding tribe and the powerful Templar Knights. Faced with certain death, she runs away with a man she barely knows, towards adventure and the echoes of a past that somehow connect her to the Jinn - the mysterious Afghan warriors who may hold the key to the coming battle for the Holy Land. (from www.goodreads.com)
Nancy - The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
Elegant in exposition, vast in implication, this groundbreaking work of ecological philosophy compellingly argues the necessity for restoring humanity's lost connections with the sensuous world. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as phenomenology and sleight-of-hand magic, Abram explains how the processes readers think of as "mental" actually derive from a deeply physical interaction with the rest of nature. (from www.goodreads.com)
Reading Now
Karen - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by MC Beaton
Putting all her eggs in one basket, Agatha Raisin gives up her successful PR firm, sells her London flat, and samples a taste of early retirement in the quiet village of Carsely. Bored, lonely and used to getting her way, she enters a local baking contest: Surely a blue ribbon for the best quiche will make her the toast of the town. But her recipe for social advancement sours when Judge Cummings-Browne not only snubs her entry-but falls over dead! After her quiche's secret ingredient turns out to be poison, she must reveal the unsavory truth...Agatha has never baked a thing in her life! In fact, she bought her entry ready-made from an upper crust London quicherie. Grating on the nerves of several Carsely residents, she is soon receiving sinister notes. Has her cheating and meddling landed her in hot water, or are the threats related to the suspicious death? It may mean the difference between egg on her face and a coroner's tag on her toe... (from www.goodreads.com)
Sharon - Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
As the new term gets under way at the elite St. Oswald's School for Boys, a number of increasingly devastating incidents occurs, leaving the unraveling school in the hands of the only person who can save it, long-time eccentric Classics teacher Roy Straitley. (from the MORE Online Library Catalog)
Amanda - The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past than she could ever have imagined. (from the MORE Online Library Catalog)
Sarah - Phoenix Unchained by Mercedes Lackey
For a thousand years, since the time of the heroic Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy and the Blessed Saint Idalia, the world has known peace. Humans live side by side with centaurs and brownies; elves and dragons abide together in their own lands, far from the fleeting lifetimes of humankind. Wild Mages appear only rarely and in times of great need, for the world is balanced between Light and Dark. When Bisochim, a Wild Mage of the desert, finds that the balance has shifted too far toward the Light, he knows he has discovered his life's mission--he will return Darkness to the world. To his shock, his first attempt is thwarted. Bisochim now has not only a mission, but an Enemy. Tiercel Rolfort is the eldest son of an Armethalian noble, destined to study Ancient History before settling into a predictable life helping run the City of the Golden Bells. Until his reading reveals a system of High Magic Tyr has never heard of before. Harrier Gillain is Tyr's best friend. Son of the Harbormaster, Harrier has been hauling Tyr out of scrapes since he was three years old. When Tyr decides to try to find the Elves and see what they know about High Magic, Harrier knows he'll have to go along. (from the MORE Online Library Catalog)
Bryan - Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity’s Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce’s Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force. (from www.goodreads.com)
Nancy - Immoral by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of deja vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota - gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn't be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen, and now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hound Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. Stride also finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. (from MORE Online Library Catalog)
Carol - African Queen by C.S. Forester
This novel is about an action in WW I between German forces and what might be called British irregulars. Rose Sayer, sister of an English missionary in German Central Africa, seems an unlikely heroine until her brother dies and she takes responsibility for her own life. With a gin drinking engineer, Allnutt, the indomitable Miss Sayer sets out on the African Queen, a leaky 30-foot river boat, to strike a blow for England and avenge her brother's death. (from www.goodreads.com)
April - Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs by Molly Harper
It looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame a series of murders on Jane Jameson, an out-of-work, small-town librarian-turned-vampire. And her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. What's a nice undead girl to do? (from the MORE Online Library Catalog)
Quotes Quorner
(when speaking of Hootie and the Blowfish)
I'm not a Hootie person either, but you can't tell me when that shit's playing your toe's not tapping.
-Amanda
(when talking about drinks)
Bryan: "Flaming Volcano" was my nickname in high school.
Amanda: Gross.
Bryan: It really was.
(when talking about westward expansion)
"Cow Boom" was my nickname in high school.
-Amanda
Quiche is the cheesecake of the working class.
-Bryan
(when talking about dog earing books)
Oh, because it's sooooo hard to find a bookmark!! *tears off a corner of the place mat, holds it up, then casts it back down to the table in disgust*
-Peter
Awesome! Best blog ever!
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