This is NOT the regular TUE 8PM ET R&BLers newsletter you're used to. Remember last week when I told you that aravir had stepped into the breech of my lightning induced woes with a replacement diary in case I couldn't go on? I know you do. Well prepare to pull your chair up to it tonight when it will be published in the accustomed slot.
This post is for fans of the e-Readers and Book Lovers Club. I am posting candidate books for our next read in the poll below. Please vote for your favorite, and I'll announce the selection in this THU 2:00 PM ET regular e-Readers & Book Lovers Club diary when we'll wrap up our discussion of Dava Sobel's Latitude.
Please turn the page.
Without ado, here's the list. Please note that only prices for editions that fit our criteria are given:
Agaat by Marlene Van Niekirk (fiction) Kindle $3.99, used PB $7.54, marketplace $2.99.
"Set in apartheid South Africa, Agaat portrays the unique relationship between Milla, a 67-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat." Review.
The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life by Robert Goolrick (memoir) Kindle $3.99, marketplace $1.99, Powell's used HC $5.50. Review.
(By the author of A Reliable Wife. Review.)
Peeling away the family's carefully constructed facade like the layers of an onion, this brave memoir tells of a childhood marred by alcoholism and an adulthood mired in loneliness, substance abuse and self-mutilation. The son of an indolent college professor and an unfulfilled, Valium-placated housewife, Goolrick grows up in a 1950s home where lavish cocktail parties and false bourgeois airs are sacred, and disclosing the family's slightest imperfection is sinful. Publisher's Weekly
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff (fiction) Kindle $3.99, Powell's $4.50 and $3.50, marketplace $1.99.
"A witty, sensitive boy observes the darkly humorous goings-on in his Orthodox Jewish family in 1970s New Jersey. Jacob Green idolizes his older brother, Asher, and misses his withdrawn mother, Claire, but his father, the charismatic, tyrannical Abram, dominates the family." -- from Publisher's Weekly.
Requiem for a Lost Empire by Andrei Makine (fiction) Kindle $2.99 and Amazon from $6.00, Barnes & Noble PB and HC from $1.99.
From a Russian book lover's website: Take a look.
This luminous, beautifully crafted new novel by much-praised Russian émigré author Makine (Dreams of My Russian Summers, etc.) takes as its subject three generations of a Russian family, caught in the violent political struggles of the 20th century. Publisher's Weekly
The General of the Dead Army: A Novel by Ismail Kadare (fiction) Kindle $1.99 and HC from $4.99, other editions. Review.
When is Kadare going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
"Ismail Kadare's meditation on the consequences of war, is a hugely moving account of duty and loss. It is 20 years since the end of World War II and an Italian army general is sent to Albania to search again for the bodies of those who lost their lives in the campaign."
Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan ( autobiographical novel) Kindle $3.99 and used PB from $2.61, Abe Books from $1.00, B&N used PB from $1.99, Powell's used TPB from $1.50.
Nolan won England's Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1987 at the age of 21 for this book and died in 2009 at age 43.
Reviewed twice by the NYT here and here.
One of the abiding pleasures of the book, in fact, is that while the reader is never allowed to forget Joseph's extreme disability and physical dependence, the story reads like an adventure, not a meditation. It is busy, active - and young even when it is wise.
This is a rich field of ethnic books and one "WASP-ish" one thrown in for variety (heh heh). Subjects of the books are wide ranging and highly political from apartheid to the collapse of the Soviet "empire," to anti-war sentiment, to disabilities. None of these is going to be an easy read like Longitude is. Choosing which one to read won't be easy, either, as they all sound intriguing.
Remember! See you THU 2:00PM for the concluding discussion of Longitude. You still have time to read it -- it's short and easily consumed if you haven't -- and can chime in with your opinions and observations on the very interesting John Harrison, clockmaker extraordinaire.
Kindle: $2.99
Amazon paperback from $5.00; hardcover used from $5.52
Powell's $3.95
See you then!