|
Fiction:
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Paperback, $15.00. A day in the life of New York City. August 7, 1974. The day one Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope wire strung between the tops of the World Trade Center towers. Colum McCann brings vividly to life a small, fictional collection of New Yorkers from widely divergent backgrounds. Their stories intersect while they are amazed and touched by what is happening far downtown. A deep, affirming, beautifully written novel, the deserved winner of the 2009 National Book Award.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Paperback, $15.95. Verghese is an American doctor, from India by way of Ethiopia. He has written a beautiful, epic tale of orphaned twin brothers trying to find their way in the world. There's medicine, family, the kindness and harshness of strangers, exotic settings, and a memorable cast of characters. A book good enough to get lost in. Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett. Hardback, $26.00. A hard-driving investment banker, a New England spinster whose dogs talk to her, and a high school stoner who stirs up strong passions in both of them. It's hard to believe, but this prophetic book was written before last year's financial melt-down. Banker Doug Fanning could well be the Gatsby of our time. As the review on the web site bookslut puts it, "Haslett hasn't written a novelization of the nation's most recent economic debacle; this is, at its heart, a book about people...It's been years since a novel has captured the zeitgeist of contemporary America this well; it's been years since a new author has convinced us, with just two books, that there might be nothing he can't do." Union Atlantic is the Number One Indie Next List pick for February. And Adam Haslet will read at The Regulator on Tuesday March 16.
From our "Rave Reviews" display comes this review of Amy Bloom's new collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out. Hardback, $25.00. ``Terrible is terrible,'' thinks one of the characters in Amy Bloom's new collection. ``There's no comparing one bad thing to another. Whatever it is -- hands blown off in Angolan minefields, children in Chernobyl with tumors like softballs, a car accident right around the corner -- there's no measuring suffering.'' But perhaps, Bloom slyly suggests with her usual wisdom and direct, mesmerizing prose, the opposite is also true: Wonderful is wonderful. And there's no real point in overanalyzing private moments of joy. Just savor them, pay the price for them, and chalk the experience up as part of being fallably human. Where the God of Love Hangs Out is Bloom's third collection of stories, and one is tempted to say it's her best. -- Reviewed in The Miami Herald
Non-Fiction:
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Finest, Darkest Hour by Lynne Olson. Hardback, $28.00. A simply superb, fascinating, incredibly readable look at London during World War II, told through a focus on three Americans: the marvelous American Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, the straight talking journalist Edward R Murrow, and the ambitious young millionaire diplomat Averell Harriman. I thought I knew a lot about the war, but every chapter had new revelations for me. Amazing stories of an amazing time. Great reading.
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier. Hardback, $24.95. From one of the founders of virtual reality, a timely reminder that we should not allow ourselves to be defined by the constrained matrices of computer code. Smart, thoughtful, and full of insight into the ways "people degrade themselves to make machines seem smart." The "open culture" (information wants to be free..) of Web 2.0 comes under special scrutiny:
..."Wikipedia, for instance, works on what I call the Oracle illusion, in which knowledge of the human authorship of a text is suppressed in order to give the text superhuman validity. Traditional holy books work in precisely the same way and present many of the same problems."
..."one must remember that the customers of social networks are not the members of those networks. The real customer is the advertiser of the future..."
..."It is astonishing how much of the chatter online is driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media and that is now being destroyed by the net. Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases, and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock."
|
