Mar 30
We have a new contributor to our blog: Kate. Kate will be writing occasional reviews of non-fiction books in addition to a recurring feature dedicated to travels through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. She starts us off with her first review but we will be seeing much more from her in the future. You can read her bio on our “about” page. Read more
Mar 21
Our daughter is at the age when she is constantly asking us for the story behind things and whether things are “real.” Is Santa real? Unicorns real? Fairies? I haven’t quite figured out how to respond. Do I destroy her sense of wonder and fantasy or do I help her distinguish between fact and fiction? Usually I just mumble some noncommittal answer and try to change the subject. So imagine my pleasure when she asked if Winnie the Pooh was real and I actually had an answer for her — based on a book that had just been released. Read more
Mar 19
It’s time for our first update in what has been one of the craziest March Madness Tournaments in a while. Yesterday effectively killed any chance I had in winning. Scroll to the end for the scoreboard. Since books were matched to teams, here are how the books fared in the first round. Read more
Mar 17
Last chance to sign up for our book bracket challenge (full rules here)! I’ve created a pool over at CBS for anyone who wants to play along. You can find that here. Password is: book madness. Brackets lock around noon today so make your picks this morning or you will be shut out. Please note that only about half of our participants have created CBS brackets (some have emailed their spreadsheets directly to me) so the list of participants over at CBS represents about half of the entries.
The grand prize requires that you read books you pick from your bracket but one prize involves predictions only with no reading.
When you are picking your brackets, please note that Basketball teams are paired with books in the following way:
South (non-fiction)
1. Between the World and Me = Kansas
2. The Boys in the Boat = Villanova
3. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale = Miami
4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks = California
5. H is for Hawk = Maryland
6. Into Thin Air = Arizona
7. The Warmth of Other Suns = Iowa
8. The Hot Zone = Colorado
9. The Year of Magical Thinking = UConn
10. The Snow Leopard = Temple
11. See you Made an Effort = Wichita St
12. In Other Words = South Dakota State
13. Dark Money = Hawai’i
14. = Charles Bukowski = Buffalo
15. Archive Fever = UNC Asheville
16. The Great Spring = Austin Peay
East (fiction non-U.S.)
1. The Noise of Time = North Carolina
2. Half of a Yellow Sun = Xavier
3. Rebecca = West Virginia
4. Room = Kentucky
5. A God in Ruins = Indiana
6. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki = Notre Dame
7. I Capture the Castle = Wisconsin
8. The High Mountains of Portugal = USC
9. The Illegal = Providence
10. Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend = Pittsburgh
11. Snow = Michigan
12. The Heather Blazing = Chattanooga
13. Shylock is my Name = Stony Brook
14. Bone and Bread = Stephen F. Austin
15. Minister without Portfolio = Weber State
16. What Lies Between us = FGCU
West (science fiction/fantasy)
1. The Martian = Oregon
2. The Lions of Al-Rassan = Oklahoma
3. Neverwhere = Texas A&M
4. The Fifth Season = Duke
5. Station Elevan = Baylor
6. Never Let me Go = Texas
7. The Dispossessed = Oregon State
8. Hild = Saint Joseph’s
9. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams = Cincinnati
10. Ancillary Sword = VCU
11. The Library at Mount Char = Northern Iowa
12. New World Fairy Tales = Yale
13. All the Birds = UNC Wilmington
14. Uprooted = Green Bay
15. The Beautiful Bureaucrat = Cal St Bakersfield
16. The Traitor Baru Comorant = Holy Cross
Midwest (Fiction U.S.) ranks
1. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena = Virginia
2. Epitaph = Michigan State
3. Night Film = Utah
4. City on Fire = Iowa State
5. All the Light We Cannot See = Purdue
6. Lonesome Dove = Seton Hall
7. The Queen of the Night = Dayton
8. We Are Water = Texas Tech
9. Did you Ever have a Family? = Butler
10. Turner House = Syracuse
11. Euphoria = Gonzaga
12. Fates and Furies = Little Rock
13. Infinite Jest = Iona
14. The Edge of Lost = Fresno State
15. The Sellout = Middle Tennessee
16. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist = Hampton
Mar 16
This month’s featured author is an author who has 8 books on the 1001 list (across all editions): Ian McEwan. Keep reading to see our thoughts and let us know which are your favorite McEwan novels.
McEwan was born in 1948 in England to Scottish parents. His father worked his way up the army to rank of major and as such Ian and his family lived all over the world including East Asia, Germany, and North Africa. McEwan’s early works were characterized by their dark quality and as a result he was given the nickname Ian Macabre. The British Literature Council had this to say about his early works:
McEwan’s early pieces were notorious for their dark themes and perverse, even gothic, material. Controversy surrounding the extreme subject matter of the first four works, which are concerned with paedophilia, murder, incest and violence, was exacerbated by their troubling narrative framework, the way in which conventional moral perspectives are disrupted or overturned, the reader frequently drawn into prurient involvement with the characters. McEwan’s perpetrator-narrators draw us into complicity with their crimes, whilst his victims seem strangely collusive in their own exploitation and destruction.
His later works are considered to be considerably less dark but many explore the impact of extraordinary events in the lives of ordinary people.
His novels have received much critical acclaim. The Times featured him as one of the top 50 British authors since 1954 and he has won more awards that can fit in this brief bio. His books have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize six times, wining the prize in 1998 for his novel Amsterdam. The Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs, Chesil Beach, and Atonement were all shortlisted for the Man Booker Award and Saturday was longlisted for the award.
List of published novels (as of March 9, 2016):
First Love, Last Rites (1975)
In Between the Sheets (1978)
The Cement Garden (1978)
The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
The Imitation Game (1981)
Or Shall we Die? (1983)
The Ploughman’s Lunch (1985)
The Child in Time (1987)
Sour Sweet (1988)
The Innocent (1990)
Black Dogs (1992)
The Daydreamer (1994)
Enduring Love (1997)
Amsterdam (1998)
Atonement (2001)
Saturday (2005)
On Chesil Beach (2007)
For You: The Libretto (2008)
Solar: (2010)
Sweet Tooth (2012)
The Children’s Act (2014)
Jen’s Thoughts: I have only read two books by McEwan: Atonement and Saturday. I had been wary of his books precisely because I don’t love the macabre and I was turned off by some of the reviews I’d seen of books like The Cement Garden. However, I loved Atonement. In fact, I was the love it reviewer for a love it or hate it feature that we did on this book about a year ago. Unfortunately, I did not love Saturday. While brilliantly written and an excellent concept for a book, I personally found it somewhat dull. There were moments that were great but my main reaction to the book was one of boredom. Since I have only read two of his books, I don’t feel overly qualified to guide you through which books to read. So I will leave it to Book Worm to be your guide.
Book Worm’s Thoughts: I have read 6 books by McEwan and I can honestly say they have all been completely different from each other in terms of style and content. That is the sign of a gifted writer. Of the 6 I have read, my favourites were Atonement (just thinking about that ending still brings a tear to my eyes) and Enduring Love closely followed by The Child in Time and Amsterdam. Unlike Jen I actually enjoyed Saturday yes some sections dragged (how many pages do you need to devote to a game of squash) but overall I liked the concept of following a person for 24 hours to see what happened to them and how they reacted to it. My least favourite book is On Chesil Beach. I found the storyline to be slightly weird, the relationship to be unbelievable, and the ending just miserable. This is not one I would recommend.
McEwan has a real gift for storytelling and for capturing all the different aspects of a character and what it is that drives them and makes them who they are. He is also happy writing from multiple perspectives including different sexes and social backgrounds as well as different points in time.
As each of the books I have read are so different to the each other my advice to readers would be if you have read 1 McEwan book and not liked it try another one as you might love it.
We want to hear from you! Which books of his have you read? Which were your favorites and least favorites?
Mar 15
It’s been a while since both Book Worm and I have given the same book 5 stars. We are both fairly stingy with our 5-star ratings. So when a book comes along that gets 5 stars from both of us, we get very excited to share it with you. See why we thought it was so good and let us know if you loved it too! Read more
Mar 13
The list of basketball teams have been released so now we know which books and teams are matched together. It is the perfect time to join our challenge! See the challenge page for more details. Find out what prizes we will be offering and scroll to the bottom to see how teams and books are paired up. Read more
Mar 9
The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell
Published: March 1, 2016
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by Jen
Find it here:The Madwoman Upstairs: A Novel
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book from Netgalley and Simon and Shuster in exchange for an honest review.
The Madwoman Upstairs is Catherine Lowell’s debut novel and was released on March 1st by Simon and Shuster. It has been described as “a modern-day literary scavenger hunt” and centers on clues related to the Bröntes.
When Samantha Whipple’s father dies, she becomes the sole living relation of the Bröntes. Rumors surround Samantha about a mysterious Bronte estate. Many scholars speculated that her father had hidden away a vast fortune of unpublished works and Bronte memorabilia. Five years after her father’s death, Samantha travels to Oxford to study literature. She is housed in an old tower and when copies of her father’s old books (books she had presumed destroyed in the fire that killed her father) start appearing in her room, she starts to wonder if there is any truth to rumors of vast estate. What ensues is a sort of literary scavenger hunt where Samantha uncovers clues to her father’s life and a potential literary treasure. Read more
Mar 8
This morning the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist was announced. The Bailey’s Women’s Prize is one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes. It is annually awarded to a female author for the best original novel written in English and published in the U.K. in the preceding year. The award in 1992 began after a group of journalists, reviewers, agents, publishers, and booksellers realized that the 1991 Booker Prize shortlist did not include any female writers despite the availability of talented women writers. By 1992 only 10 percent of novelists shortslisted for the Booker Prize were women despite the ratio of books published by men to women being 60/40. The Bailey’s Women’s prize was a way of bring “outstanding writers to the attention of readers.”
Previous 10 winners:
2015: Ali Smith for How to be Both
2014: Eimear McBride for A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
2013: A.M. Homes for May we be Forgiven
2012: Madeline Miller for The Song of Achilles
2011: Téa Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife
2010: Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna
2009: Marilynne Robinson for Home
2008: Rose Tremain for The Road Home
2007: Chimamanda Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun
2006: Zadie Smith for On Beauty
Find out who made the first cut for this year’s prize. Read more
Mar 7
Our next stop in our world tour of literature is Egypt. Join us as we explore some of what Egypt has to offer in terms of literature and find out which book we selected. We hope you help us to add to the list of recommended reading for Egypt!
jenp27
Nicole Del Sesto
The Reader's Room 