Staff Review of New Releases
The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (publication date: October 3)
Goodreads Summary:
When Ada’s clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she’s not what her mother said she was—damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically. She’s not a daughter anymore, either. What is she?
World War II continues, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, are living with their loving legal guardian, Susan, in a borrowed cottage on the estate of the formidable Lady Thorton—along with Lady Thorton herself and her daughter, Maggie. Life in the crowded cottage is tense enough, and then, quite suddenly, Ruth, a Jewish girl from Germany, moves in. A German? The occupants of the house are horrified. But other impacts of the war become far more frightening. As death creeps closer to their door, life and morality during wartime grow more complex. Who is Ada now? How can she keep fighting? And who will she struggle to save?
Tirzah's Review:
(4 out of 5 stars) I actually like this one better than The War That Saved My Life, so you can imagine how good this book is! Ada has left her horrible life with her mother behind, but war with Germany and the war in Ada's heart is still raging. Readers are again swept into Ada's story of trust, forgiveness, and acceptance as she comes to terms with who she is, her new life, and how she fits into that life. I recommend to fans of the first book and to those who enjoy historical fiction.
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty (publication date: October 3)
Goodreads Summary:
Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette- smoking, wish- granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved- ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning— including a glowing- Buddha columbarium in Japan and America’s only open-air pyre— and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.
Mason's Review:
(2.5 out of 5 stars) I've been a fan of Ms. Doughty's web series, "Ask a Mortician," for years, and I devoured her first book, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." For this book, she traveled the world exploring burial rites and how different cultures face the grieving process. Unfortunately, she seems to not have packed her characteristic sense of humor. Being neither amusing nor a serious anthropological study, I had to schedule a lot of laundromat time to finish this one.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (publication date: October 3)
Goodreads Summary:
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
Jill's Review:
(4 out 5 stars) It’s difficult to rate a collection of stories when some appeal to me so much more than others. The first two were my favorite, but there were also flashes of brilliance in the others.
Unfortunately, the longest story in the book (About SVU) lost my attention completely, because I had no idea what was going on.
Even considering that, I’d rate the collection at 3.5 and am rounding to 4 for the first 2 stories and the amazing part in The Resident when the narrator tells Lydia off! “ It is my right to reside in my own mind. I have no shame. I have felt many things in my life, but shame is not among them. You may think that I have an obligation to you but I assure you that us being thrown together in this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never had less of an obligation to anyone in my life, you aggressively ordinary woman.” Excellent.
The Player King by Avi (publication date: October 17)
Goodreads Summary:
From Newbery Award–winning author Avi comes the gripping and amazingly true tale of a boy plucked from the gutter to become the King of England.
England, 1486. King Henry VII has recently snatched the English Crown and now sits on the throne, while young Prince Edward, who has a truer claim, has apparently disappeared. Meanwhile, a penniless kitchen boy named Lambert Simnel is slaving away at a tavern in Oxford—until a mysterious friar, Brother Simonds, buys Lambert from the tavern keeper and whisks him away in the dead of night. But this is nothing compared to the secret that the friar reveals: You, Lambert, are actually Prince Edward, the true King of England!
Tirzah's Review:
(2.5 out of 5 stars) This book was based on a true, lesser-known story during the time when treachery was rampant in 15th century England, so don't expect there to be a lot of characters with redeeming qualities. The one person I did empathize with was Lambert, the narrator of the story for reasons I cannot explain without giving any spoilers. This is probably my least favorite of Avi's historical fiction books, but it was still interesting as I think he does a good job combining historical and fiction elements and keeping readers engaged. I would recommend to readers who are interested in this specific time of England's history and also to teachers who could use it as a resource for their classroom.
Tell Tale Stories: Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer (publication date: October 24)
Goodreads Summary:
Nearly a decade after his last volume of short stories was published, Jeffrey Archer returns with his eagerly-awaited, brand-new collection TELL TALE, giving us a fascinating, exciting and sometimes poignant insight into the people he has met, the stories he has come across and the countries he has visited during the past ten years.Find out what happens to the hapless young detective from Naples who travels to an Italian hillside town to find out Who Killed the Mayor? and the pretentious schoolboy in A Road to Damascus, whose discovery of the origins of his father’s wealth changes his life in the most profound way.
Revel in the stories of the 1930’s woman who dares to challenge the men at her Ivy League University in A Gentleman and A Scholar while another young woman who thumbs a lift gets more than she bargained for in A Wasted Hour.
These wonderfully engaging and always refreshingly original tales prove not only why Archer has been compared by the critics to Dahl and Maugham, but why he was described by The Times as probably the greatest storyteller of our age.
Vani's Review:
(4.5 out of 5 stars) These are stunning short stories with unexpected twists.
Artemis by Andy Weir (publication date: November 14)
Goodreads Summary:
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.
Katherine's Review:
(3.5 out of 5 stars) For those of you who think this book is going to be exactly like "The Martian" you need to know that they are very different but there are some similarities. Both books have many scientific explanations so everything feels very real and both are definite page-turners. This book has a female protagonist who is in her twenties. I really wanted to like her, but her character annoyed me too much. I felt like many of the things she said were not what a woman of her age would say. Additionally, it was hard to feel the same level of tension as in "The Martian" at the beginning of this book when the main character is not trying to survive but trying to sabotage equipment. Of course things change later in the book. I loved the city Weir creates on the Moon as well as learning how it was built and how it was governed. An overall enjoyable book with a main character I had frustrations with.
City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty (publication date: November 14)
Goodreads Summary:
Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles.
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass?a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.
No comments:
Post a Comment