Novels Now

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
2008, 465 pp.

The original Swedish title of this book means Men Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and […]

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Powerful!
The Gargoyle is a difficult book to review and summarize. The plot crosses many genre lines and deals with many issues. That said, here is my attempt.
The novel begins with the narrator getting in a car accident after bingeing on liquor and cocaine. He has a bottle of bourbon between his legs at the […]

Popularity: 20% [?]

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From medieval times, Guernica was a crossroads of the old Roman Way and the Fish and Wine Route that wound through the hills inland from the sea. Intersecting them both was the pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela. For centuries, representatives of the region met under the Guernica oak to shape laws that outlawed torture […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

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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: 24% [?]

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
277 pages
In 1946, Juliet Ashton is a London-based writer who has gained some degree of fame writing fictional accounts of wartime under an assumed name. Now, as London begins to rebuild and recover, Juliet is casting about for new material with which to continue her […]

Popularity: 20% [?]

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Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery by Susan Juby
Pages: 339
First Published: Sept. 19, 2008 (CAN), Sept. 30, 2008 (US)
Genre: YA, realistic fiction
Rating: 4/5
This book came as an extra. I had requested two YA books from the publisher and they were packaged together with this one as a boxed set of […]

Popularity: 16% [?]

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The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Pages: 468
First Published: Aug. 5, 2008
Genre: Magical realism
Rating: 4.5/5
First sentence:
Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love.
Comments: I think that is an amazing opening line. How could you not read on after that? The process of reading the book was pure joy from the first page. The writing exquisite and […]

Popularity: 15% [?]

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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: 16% [?]

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Contemporary Fiction - Epistolary
2008 The Dial Press
Finished on 7/23/08
Rating: 4.75//5 (Fabulous!)
ARC - Release date of July 29th
“Here’s who will love this book—anyone who nods in profound agreement with the statement,’Reading keeps you from going gaga.’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

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The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Memory and Murder by Sharon Butala
Pages: 260
First Published: March, 2008
Genre: memoir, True Crime
Rating: DNF
First sentence:
One soft spring evening in 1962 a young nurse named Alexandra Wiwcharuk wasmurdered and an entire city came to a stop: Alexandra’s murder was all anyonecould talk about.
Comments: With that promising first sentence, I […]

Popularity: 19% [?]

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