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Away: A Novel
Amy Bloom
Random House, 2007
Adventures Unlimited
+ Intimiate character study
I can hear my creative writing teacher and probably Amy Bloom's, "When you don't know what to do next with your character, throw rocks at her."
Lillian Leyb, the heroine of Bloom's "Away," is constantly bruised, but never broken. She endures a pogrom that wipes out her entire family, the good ...
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Peony in Love: A Novel
Lisa See
Random House, 2007
Loved this book.
+ Wonderfully Heart Wrenching
+ A beautiful get-away
I loved this book. I found it fascinating...tragic...hauntingly beautiful. I recommended it to a friend and she also loved it. It's a story that stayed with me for many weeks after I finished it. It was not at all what I expected as a "love story" in the traditional way, and thank goodness, ...
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Love Walked In
Marisa de los Santos
Plume, 2006
Delightful!
+ Remarkable Debut Novel
Marisa de los Santos is an exceptional writer. Her style captivated me from page one. A great story. Wonderful.
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DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 2
Darwyn Cooke, Dave Stewart
DC Comics, 2005
a must
+ A rousing close to "The New Frontier"
+ Still Bearing That "New Frontier" Smell!
+ Great Service & Great Product
+ Graphic SF Reader
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The Choice
Nicholas Sparks
Grand Central Publishing, 2007
The Reality in Making Choices
+ 2 Choices
+ What a choice!
+ One of the toughest choices anyone can face
+ Another good one!
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O My Darling: A Novel
Amity Gaige
Other Press, 2005
Happy Ever After....Gad To Be Married
+ original and beautifully written
+ A truly wonderful, humanistic portrayal of love
I found O My Darling, Amity Gaige's first novel hard to finish: I would read a few paragraphs then call my friend Gerry and read him a half dozen gems. How long could you keep this sentence to yourself: "After being dead for awhile i guess you just have to accept it." Finally I bought Gerry his ...
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Playing For Pizza: A Novel
John Grisham
Doubleday, 2007
This Book Should be Savored
+ Actually Italy is very much like this
+ While not the usual, it was enjoyable nonetheless
The main story in this book is interesting and enjoyable, but the best part of this book is that most of the chapters are self contained stories about various parts of Italian culture such as food, opera, or history. The reader feels the excitement and fear associated with foreign travel such as ...
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Where the River Runs
Patti Callahan Henry
NAL Trade, 2005
Another keeper!!
+ Awesome book :]
+ Exceptional Read and An Outstanding Newer Author
I will be the first to admit that I just love these Fiction For the Way We Live series ~~ and this one is definitely one of the best books of this fall!! I have been in a reading slump for a long time ~~ and this book really took me out of it and into a different world. I just love it!!
This ...
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The Maytrees: A Novel
Annie Dillard
HarperCollins, 2007
Deeply Beautiful
+ Is is possible to have a love/hate relationship with a book?
+ A Poetic Essay on Love
It's very hard to describe The Maytrees in a few sentences. What is this novel about? I suppose it is, as many others have said, a love story. But to my mind it is as much about love of place as it is about love of a spouse or of a family.
There's not much action in the conventional sense, ...
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Bridge of Sighs
Richard Russo
Knopf, 2007
Life: It is what it is (4.5 *s)
+ Rich and velvety
+ brilliant writing
The author has created yet another melancholic and sympathetic, multi-generational story of a middle-aged man, his family, and relevant others in a small town in New York. The story is told from the perspective of Louis C. Lynch (called Lucy much to his chagrin), now sixty, as he is writing a ...
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The Closed Circle
Jonathan Coe
Knopf, 2005
Excellent sequel to "The Rotters' Club"
+ At loose in the world of the overprivileged and underdisciplined
This excellent 2004 novel is the sequel to Coe's even better 2001 novel "The Rotters' Club". The first novel covered a group of schoolmates and their families in 1970s Birmingham, England: this second one features most of the same characters but is set in the 1990s. It is filled with references ...
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Diamond Sky
Ken Douglas, Jack Stewart
Bootleg Press, 2003
Greed gets people into trouble
+ It Doesn't Get Much Better than this!
+ Adventure in the Caribbean
+ Non-Stop, Not-Put-Downable Book!
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Wild Girl, The: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932
Jim Fergus
Hyperion, 2005
Not completely original, but an awesome remix
+ I was sucked in
+ A helluva good yarn, but a "journal'?
+ Native American life
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One Sunday Morning: A Novel
Amy Ephron
William Morrow, 2005
A gem of a novel
+ Not What I expected, pleasant surprise
+ A Great Sunday Read...
+ An Interesting Little Story
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Run
Ann Patchett
Harper, 2007
This is a Story You'll Remember
+ RUN To Get this Book
+ Not as simple as it looks.
+ 24-hour story
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