Novels Now

The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry
2008, 300 pp.
Booker Prize Shortlist
I’d be happy if this book won the Booker Prize. Yeah, I would, and I haven’t read any of the other contenders yet! Sebastian Barry is a magnificent writer, and I will definitely be reading more of his work.
Roseanne McNulty is almost 100 years old, […]

Popularity: 28% [?]

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Rich Details and Decadence of 17th-Century Court
This is the story of real life Louise de la Vallière, mistress to France’s King Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King. At a young age, Louise, lovingly nicknamed Petite by her father, uses bone magic to tame a wild stallion.
Though of minor nobility, her family doesn’t have […]

Popularity: 27% [?]

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The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and her Granddaughter’s Search for Home by Bibi Gaston
Pages: 335
First Published: June 10, 2008
Genre: nonfiction, memoir, biography
Rating: 3/5
First sentence:
For forty-three years, all I knew was that Rosamond was beautiful and that she had killed herself.
Comments: This is the story of Rosamond Pinchot told through […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

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558 Pages
Michael Grant
Sam Temple is sort of reserved but he is cool in a crisis. Two years ago, when his school bus driver had a heart attack, Sam’s quick thinking and a quiet calm helped him to save everyone on the bus. Ever since then, other kids have looked up to him.
While sitting in history […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

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321 pages
Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Dead and the Gone is the companion book to Life As We Knew It which I read earlier this year.
The disaster in this book is the same as in Life As We Knew It. An asteroid has hit the moon and knocked it closer to earth which affects the tides, volcanoes, […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

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Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22 000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own by Doreen Orion
Pages: 289
First Published: June 10, 2008
Genre: Travelogue, Memoirs
Rating: 4/5
First sentence:
When my long-dreaded thirtieth birthday arrived, I really wasn’t as upset as I imagined […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

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I slept with close to forty boys and men before I figured out doing so was not serving me well. [pg 1]
Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity by Kerry Cohen
Hyperion, 2008
Nonfiction (Memoir); 210 pgs
Kerry Cohen was nothing like me; or was she? While she was vying for men’s affections and slipping under the […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

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The visions conjured from the old woman’s tale - the evocation of a Havana filled with music and life - had left her with an odd sensation of dislocation. She felt like one of those saints that can be in two places at the same time. -from The Island of Eternal Love, page 10-
And that […]

Popularity: 19% [?]

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Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim: A Visual Novel by Tom Corwin
Illustrated by Craig Frazier
Pages: 101
Finished: July 18, 2008
First Published: June, 2008
Genre: graphic novel, fantasy, magical realism
Rating: 4/5
First sentence:
Mr. Fooster has a long list of things he likes to do.
Comments: Rather than starting this review with a summary of the plot I will be starting […]

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts
Contemporary Fiction
2008 Grand Central Publishing
Finished on 6/29/08
Rating: 2.5/5 (Fair)
Fate sometimes thought that God was looking out for him and Lutie. The notes left for them, and the food they found on the hood of the car and in the library. All of that came from someone. And if it […]

Popularity: 23% [?]

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