Recently Purchased/Borrowed

After Tom edited said:

"Part John le Carré, part Elmore Leonard... Gabbay offers a stylish
thriller with an appealing hero."

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Actual quote said:

Mixing cynical world-weariness
with dead-pan humor and a refreshing lack of Bond-style omnicompetence (random mishaps include a nasty dog bite and a
disastrous attempt to shoot off a pair of handcuffs), Jack's story is part John le Carré and part Elmore Leonard.

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Stewart said:

Your last attempt at going against the membership agreement (re: advertising) was deleted.

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tartan_skirt said:

The Acid House - Irvine Welsh (£1.25)

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CattiGuen said:

oh you are in for a real treat, I just finished it. I only regret that I read the book straight through and didn't savor each single story as much as I wish I had. (Still kick-ass though !!!)

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Halo said:

I think you've set a new record there, tartan_skirt!

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tartan_skirt said:

Lucky - Alice Sebold (£2.00)
Falling Leaves - Adeline Yen Mah (£1.50)
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (£1.59)
Wild Swans - Jung Chang (£1.59)
Thirst - Pyotyr Kurtinski (£0.79)

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (£0.69)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey (£1.00)

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muggle said:

No one would give me a recommendation on which of the following 4 John Steinbeck books to buy so I bought them all.

The Pearl - Steinbeck
The Red Pony - Steinbeck
The Moon Is Down - Steinbeck
The Wayward Bus - Steinbeck

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Fraggle said:

From online also, received these Saturday and am in my element
John Wyndham-The Midwich Cuckoos

John Irving-Prayer for Owen Meany

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CDA said:

Two great books on your list there. I read Cuckoos a short time ago and loved it.

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Fraggle said:

Fannie Flagg-Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
Armistead Maupin-Tales of the City

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MonkeyCatcher said:

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

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MonkeyCatcher said:

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

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amazon.de said:

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham - an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there? It is only years later that Kathy, now aged 31, finally allows herself to yield to the pull of memory and try to make sense of the past. What unfolds is an extraordinarily powerful story in which Kathy, Ruth and Tommy slowly come to realise that it is their seemingly happy childhood that has haunted them ever since, even tainting their adult lives. Part love story, part mystery, "Never Let Me Go" is a uniquely beautiful and troubling novel, charged throughout with a profound emotional depth.

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amazon.com said:

All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure.

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amazon.com said:

Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal dæmon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:
As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had dæmons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.
Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey dæmon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.

In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end. Fortunately, its sequel, The Subtle Knife, will help put off that inevitability for a while longer.

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