| |||||
Books: Subjects: Poetry
The Time Traveler's Wifeby Audrey Niffenegger List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $8.40 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry's foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from which Henry time-traveled as a child, to Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. The couple's daughter, Alba, inherits her father's strange abilities, but this is again handled with a light touch; there's no Disney cuteness here. Henry's foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills. Copyright 2003 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From AudioFile Although the title suggests that this is science fiction, Niffenegger's charming, emotionally charged novel is much more a love story. Told alternately from the viewpoints of time traveler Henry and his wife, Clare, it's highly enjoyable on audio. Readers Christopher Burns and Maggi-Meg Reed blend their respective chapters seamlessly. Each reader characterizes all roles within a chapter, and the depictions mesh beautifully. Both narrators characterize Korean friend Kimmy in a charmingly amusing voice and lend a light mood to the couple's daughter, Alba. Burns portrays the emotional chaos of Henry's life so genuinely as to cast the listener directly into his pain and joy. The abridged recording leaves one longing for more. J.J.B. 2004 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. |
In Cold Bloodby Truman Capote List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $8.40 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review "Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks. The New York Times Book Review, Conrad Knickerbocker The resulting chronicle is a masterpiece--agonizing, terrible, possessed, proof that the times, so surfeited with disasters, are still capable of tragedy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
|
The Devil Wears Prada: A Novel by Lauren Weisberger List Price: $13.95 Available from Amazon $8.37 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review It's a killer title: The Devil Wears Prada. And it's killer material: author Lauren Weisberger did a stint as assistant to Anna Wintour, the all-powerful editor of Vogue magazine. Now she's written a book, and this is its theme: narrator Andrea Sachs goes to work for Miranda Priestly, the all-powerful editor of Runway magazine. Turns out Miranda is quite the bossyboots. That's pretty much the extent of the novel, but it's plenty. Miranda's behavior is so insanely over-the-top that it's a gas to see what she'll do next, and to try to guess which incidents were culled from the real-life antics of the woman who's been called Anna "Nuclear" Wintour. For instance, when Miranda goes to Paris for the collections, Andrea receives a call back at the New York office (where, incidentally, she's not allowed to leave her desk to eat or go to the bathroom, lest her boss should call). Miranda bellows over the line: "I am standing in the pouring rain on the rue de Rivoli and my driver has vanished. Vanished! Find him immediately!" This kind of thing is delicious fun to read about, though not as well written as its obvious antecedent, The Nanny Diaries. And therein lies the essential problem of the book. Andrea's goal in life is to work for The New Yorker--she's only sticking it out with Miranda for a job recommendation. But author Weisberger is such an inept, ungrammatical writer, you're positively rooting for her fictional alter ego not to get anywhere near The New Yorker. Still, Weisberger has certainly one-upped Me Times Three author Alex Witchel, whose magazine-world novel never gave us the inside dope that was the book's whole raison d' etre. For the most part, The Devil Wears Prada focuses on the outrageous Miranda Priestly, and she's an irresistible spectacle. --Claire Dederer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
|
The Book of the Deadby Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child List Price: $25.95 Available from Amazon $14.27 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Bestsellers Preston and Child have come up with another gripping, action-packed page-turner in this concluding volume to a trilogy pitting their Holmesian hero, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast, against his Mycroft-turned-Moriarty—his younger brother, Diogenes. Picking up shortly after the events of 2005's Dance of Death, the book opens with the arrival of a package of fine dust at the Museum of Natural History; Diogenes has returned the diamonds he stole earlier. Meanwhile, Aloysius is in prison, having been framed for a number of murders. As his friends plot to spring him, his adversary lays the groundwork for a crowning criminal achievement. A mysterious benefactor funds the restoration of an ancient Egyptian tomb at the museum, but the work is beset by the mayhem Preston and Child's readers have come to expect—gory murders and suggestions of the supernatural. This entry, tying up many loose ends from its predecessors, is less likely to work as well for first-time readers, but followers of Aloysius Pendergast's previous exploits will find it a satisfying read with a tantalizing, ominous twist at the end. 10-city author tour. (June) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description DESCRIPTION: The New York Museum of Natural history receives their pilfered gem collection background down to dust. Diogenes, the psychotic killer who stole them in Dance of Death, is throwing down the gauntlet to both the city and to his brother, FBI Agent Pendergast, who is currently incarcerated in a maximum security prison. To quell the PR nightmare of the gem fiasco, the museum decides to reopen the Tomb of Senef. An astounding Egyptian temple, it was a popular museum exhibit until the 1930s, when it was quietly closed. But when the tomb is unsealed in preparation for its gala reopening, the killings--and whispers of an ancient curse--begin again. And the catastrophic opening itself sets the stage for the final battle between the two brothers: an epic clash from which only one will emerge alive. |
A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhymeby Calvin Trillin List Price: $12.95 Available from Amazon $9.97 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description Somehow, despite everything Calvin Trillin wrote about the Bush Administration in Obliviously On He Sails, his 2004 bestseller in verse, George W. Bush is still in the White House. Taking a philosophical view, Trillin has said, “We weren’t going to know whether you could bring down a presidency with iambic pentameter until somebody tried it.” Now Trillin is trying again, back at his pithy and hilarious best to comment on the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq (“Then terrorists could count on what we’d do: / Attack us, we’ll strike back, though not at you”), his religiosity (“He treats his critics in the press / As if they’re yapping Pekineses. / Reporters deal in mundane facts; / This man has got the word from Jesus”), and whether he was wearing a transmitting device in the first presidential debate (“Could this explain his odd expressions? Is there proof he / Was being told, ‘If you can hear me now, look goofy’?”) Trillin deals with the people around Bush, such as Nanny Dick Cheney and Mushroom Cloud Rice and Orange John Ashcroft and Orange John’s successor, Alberto Gonzales (“The A.G.’s to be one Alberto Gonzales– / Dependable, actually loyal über alles”). He tries to predict the behavior of the famously intemperate John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in poems with titles like “Bolton Chases French Ambassador Up Tree” and “White House Says Bolton Can Do Job Even While in Straitjacket.” Finally, in dealing with whether the entire Bush Administration, like the unfortunate Brownie, has done a heckuva job, he composes a small-government sea chantey for the Republicans: ’Cause government’s the problem, lads, Americans would all do well to shun it. Yes, government’s the problem, lads. At least it is when we’re the ones who run it. About The Author Calvin Trillin, who became The Nation’s “deadline poet” in 1990, has also written verse on the events of the day for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and National Public Radio. He says he believes in an inclusive political system that prohibits from public office only those whose names have awkward meter or are difficult to rhyme. |
District and Circle: Poemsby Seamus Heaney List Price: $20.00 Available from Amazon $13.00 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly The latest from the Irish Nobel laureate may be his best in more than a decade. Celebrations of everyday objects (a fireman's helmet, a sledgehammer, an anvil), homages to and elegies for other poets (George Seferis, Pablo Neruda, Czeslaw Milosz) and gleaming recollections from the author's rural youth dominate this lyrical volume, which stands out as well for its diversity of forms: the supple pentameters Heaney perfected in such 1990s volumes as Seeing Things rub shoulders with prose poems, rough-hewn quatrains and slower-paced free verse reminiscent of the 1970s poems that made his name. Many efforts strike a ground note of nostalgia: "A Clip" remembers the "one-roomed, one-chimney house" where Heaney got his first haircut, "Senior Infants" looks back at primary school. Yet for all his Irish rootedness, Heaney's newest work remains international (poems set in the London Underground, the Danish bog where he set famous earlier poems, and in a warm and pleasant Italy) and unboundedly global: one of the strongest short lyrics, "Hofn," wonders at a newly melting glacier, anxious about global warming, yet astonished by the ice's remaining immensities, its "grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon-scruff," "its coldness that still seemed enough/ To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath." (May) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Nobel laureate Heaney is a virtual archaeologist, digging deeply into the earth in search of civilization's foundation and mining the human psyche for what is immutable, archetypal, and quintessential in our collective unconscious. Identifying resonantly with the Irish landscape, Heaney is a poet of labor, praising hammer and anvil, trowel and blade. Many poets possess a painterly sensibility; Heaney's is sculptural, his materials clay, stone, and brick. This bard of the hand-hewn and the hard-won, the bog and the country road, builds poems out of quatrains, that sturdy form, and constructs rock-solid sonnets. Looking to the past with tenderness and bemusement, steeped in myths ancient and modern, he recalls when tinkers appeared in his home district, muses over the changes war and technology deliver, contemplates a melting glacier, and traces the lineage between catastrophes of old and today's crises: "Anything can happen, the tallest towers / Be overturned, those in high places daunted, / Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune / Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one, / Setting it down bleeding on the next." Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
Poetry Speaks to Children (Book and CD)by Elise Paschen, Dominique Raccah, Nikki Giovanni, and X.J. Kennedy List Price: $19.95 Available from Amazon $12.97 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page From School Library Journal Grade 3-8–A fine, basic collection. Approximately half of the 97 selections are read or performed on the accompanying CD. The book provides a mix of adult writers (Rita Dove, Seamus Heaney, and Billy Collins, among others) and those whose work is specifically for children, such as X. J. Kennedy and Mary Ann Hoberman. topics include childhood, animals, nonsense poems, and humor (including C. K. Williams's Gas, which dwells on the fact that FARTING IS FORBIDDEN!). The three illustrators have captured the different tones of the selections, from a comic portrait of the Jabberwock slayer wearing a colander and wielding a plunger and the wailing children in William Stafford's First Grade, to the moving paintings of a girl with flowers echoing the natural images of James Berry's Okay, Brown Girl, Okay. The CD gives children the opportunity to hear several of the poets, such as Robert Frost reading Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Langston Hughes reading The Negro Speaks of Rivers. They hear a variety of accents and dialects–an Irish lilt, New England inflections, or James Berry's lilting Jamaican-British voice. Readers of Roald Dahl's books will enjoy hearing him read The Dentist and the Crocodile, and fans of The Lord of the Rings books and movies will appreciate hearing Tolkien read Frodo's Song in Bree. Joy Harjo frames her Eagle Poem with a haunting vocalization that echoes its serious tone.–Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From AudioFile This diverse and appealing collection of poems for children includes poets contemporary (Nikki Giovanni, Billy Collins) and, thanks to archival recordings, not so contemporary (Robert Frost, J.R.R. Tolkien) reading their own work. There are also performances of well-known poems such as "Jabberwocky" and "Casey at the Bat." Some tracks feature the welcome bonus of the poet talking briefly about the background or genesis of a poem. The narrated poems are often unidentified and unattributed, and there are no page-turn signals, so listeners must follow along carefully with the book to keep track of poems and authors. Older children will certainly have a deeper understanding of the poems, but the illustrated picture-book format and lively soundtrack are sure to help hook even the youngest listeners on poetry at an early age. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine |
A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Childrenby Caroline Kennedy and Jon J. Muth List Price: $19.95 Available from Amazon $12.97 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From School Library Journal Starred Review. Grade 2 Up–From the cover photograph of Kennedy as a toddler reading to her teddy to the red linen-textured endpapers; from her thoughtful introduction and words of encouragement to children at the beginning of each section of carefully chosen poems to Muth's beautifully executed watercolors, this volume is a treasure. In compiling the collection, Kennedy passes on her own family's tradition of creating a scrapbook of poems chosen by the children in lieu of gifts to their mother and grandparents. Divided by topic into seven sections, the collection is, indeed, a treasury of beloved poems written in a variety of styles by poets from many lands and generations, some more familiar than others, some unknown. Most of the soft-focus illustrations fill whole pages. The wide variety of artistic styles–ethereal, realistic, comical, energetic, sweet, romantic–matches the mood of the poems themselves. The 10 translated selections appear at the end of the volume in their original languages. This well-balanced anthology should be a first purchase for school and public libraries. Recommend it as a gift book for parents to share with their children, as well.–Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com The commercially important publishing categories sometimes overlap: the non-book and the celebrity book. The non-book is an object, with contents of little or no importance. The celebrity book is supposed to profit from association with a name customers recognize. But sometimes that recognizable name comes with a real book. Caroline Kennedy's excellent new anthology (illustrated by Jon J. Muth) is an excellent book. The editor shows great respect for children by choosing real poems and including Edward Lear, A.A. Milne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter de la Mare -- the first-class poets for children. Kennedy also includes Emily Dickinson's " 'Hope' is the thing with feathers," Thomas Hardy's "Snow in the Suburbs," Wordsworth's "Daffodils," Shakespeare's song for Ariel, William Blake's "The Tyger," Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," Marianne Moore's "A Jelly-Fish," Theodore Roethke's "The Sloth," and William Butler Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," along with good jokes by the likes of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath and even Wallace Stevens's "The Emperor of Ice-Cream." Also, Antonio Machado's "Has My Heart Gone to Sleep," translated by Alan S. Trueblood: Has my heart gone to sleep? No, my heart is not asleep. The editor even includes, in an appendix, the text of this and all translated poems in their original languages. Kennedy intelligently avoids (mostly) the cloying or over-ingratiating contemporary juvenile authors and includes good, sound, anonymous nonsense such as: Moses Moses supposes his toeses are roses, Also included are some good folk-sick-jokes, for example: Careless Willie Willie with a thirst for gore Kennedy deserves credit for recognizing William Hughes Mearns with his famous four lines often supposed to be anonymous: The Little Man As I was going up the stair The book charmingly includes the Lord's Prayer along with Lewis Carroll's "The Crocodile," a parody that has outlived its original, moralistic target: How doth the little crocodile Reading such poems next to more ambitious work by Blake and Dickinson illuminates both kinds by making clear the element of song in the great poems and the element of meaning in the nonsense. This book is a gift for the adults who read it to or with children, as well as for the children. That fact is epitomized by the decision to close with Wallace Stevens's great, quiet poem "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm." "The quiet was part of the meaning," writes Stevens, "part of the mind." The quiet, impish, commanding voice of poetry can be heard in this selection of poems "for" children but -- happily -- not only for children. By Robert Pinsky |
Additional Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Other Shops:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
Poetry at Sduf
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
