Novels Now

He believed he had already lived long enough. He thought he was over the age of thirty - Jacob Howard was thirty, and they had been born around the same time - and Cassius looked that and more. He now studied the land as if he would never see it again, and tried to memorize […]

Popularity: 13% [?]

Read full story »

Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson
I believe Anne fans have been somewhat leery of this book. To attempt to write the before story, based on the small tidbits of her past that Anne let slip, was a huge undertaking for Wilson. People who love Anne would want the story to be true to LM Montgomery’s […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

Read full story »

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books. -From Isola Pribby to Juliet, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society-
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ first novel will certainly ruin you ‘for enjoying bad books.’ Set on the island of Guernsey (in the Channel Islands) in the months following the Second World […]

Popularity: 20% [?]

Read full story »

I am but one, yet to this day countless others lead lives even more destitute and enslaved than mine ever was. Perhaps my story is the exception because I escaped, at great risk, polygamy’s conjugal chains; and that my husband is the Mormon Church’s Prophet and Leader, Brigham Young, and I am his 19th and […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

Read full story »

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: 13% [?]

Read full story »

“Well from what you’ve told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You’ve got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything’s humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize ‘the other’ - it […]

Popularity: 28% [?]

Read full story »

Resistance
By Owen Sheers
Completed June 27, 2008

I think poets make great novelists. Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, even Shel Silverstein all embrace a stunningly descriptive way of writing that makes their stories and characters just flow through your mind. Like his poetic counterparts, Owen Sheers used this lyrical style in his debut novel Resistance.
Resistance is an […]

Popularity: 27% [?]

Read full story »

Like many of my generation I did not go to war gravely and soberly, as Lao-tzu tells us a wise man ought. But I returned from it that way. [pg 285]
Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield
Doubleday, 2008
Fiction; 295 pgs
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was one of the most respected generals of his time, not only by […]

Popularity: 27% [?]

Read full story »

Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher
By Lenore Hart
Completed May 29, 2008
I must admit that I am a sucker for a good companion novel. Last year, I read Finn by Jon Clinch, which was a story about Huck Finn’s infamous father. My latest read was the feminine side of this group of friends – […]

Popularity: 30% [?]

Read full story »

The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone
Pages: 342
Finished: May 17, 2008
First Published: Jan. 2008
Genre: historical fiction, forensic mystery
Rating: 3.5/5
Reason for Reading: Received a review copy from Random House Canada.
First sentence:
For days, clouds had hung over the frigid city, promising snow; an ephemeral late winter veneer of white, but the temperature had suddenly risen and a […]

Popularity: 31% [?]

Read full story »