The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I very rarely ever re-read a book.  When this book was picked by my bookclub, I knew I wanted to re-read it as I enjoyed it so much the first time (4 years ago!)  Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen (definitely not for anyone too young) and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative and I am SO glad that I picked it up again.

Recommend: 4.8 Definite Recommend!

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

This is a wonderfully told story of 1930s Budapest and starts out just as a young Hungarian Jew, Andras Lévi, departs for the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. He hones his talent for design, works backstage in a theater, and allies with other Jewish students in defiance of rising Nazi influence. And then he meets Klara, a captivating Hungarian ballet instructor nine years his senior with a painful past and a willful teenage daughter.

The historic presentation of the book is as forceful and gripping as it is chilling and haunting.  Orringer's ability to translate into words the shattering horror of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust and World War II is masterful storytelling of wrenching emotional intensity.

The first 1/3rd is light and builds the reltionships between Andras, his brothers, his college friends and his lover, before it switches to be more focused on the horrific experiences of WWII.  I learned a lot of historic events from this is a beautifully researched old fashioned love story.  They could have been a bit more judicious in the editing but, other than that, this is a wonderful book.

Rating: 4.6 Recommend

Room by Emma Donoghue

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I anticipated and I have even gone so far as to include it in my "Best of" for this year.  I don't typically enjoy books in the vernacular and Room is written completely from 5 year old Jack's perspective.  Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary.  Don't read too much else about this book or it will spoil it for you.

Rating:  4.7 Recommend

Father of the Rain by Lily King

This novel captured me and held me right from the start.  I love Lily King's writing style and the effortless way she brings the characters to life where you know and care about them.  Daley is an acute and attentive witness to her parents' divorce.  Daley's father, Gardiner, is a jovial but an alcoholic whose behavior is increasingly erratic and punishing to the point that Daley finally breaks away--in spite of how much she loves him--for much of her adult life. She is resilient, a woman you can respect but also challenge, and her love is (ultimately, amazingly) uncomplicated and true.  She makes some very difficult decisions.  Lily unfolds the story so effortlessly and draws you in.  An extremely enjoyable read.

Rating: 4.8  Recommend

Friend of the Family by Laura Grodstein

Peter Dizinoff, a successful New Jersey doctor, is struggling to adjust to the aftermath of his actions as the foundation of his personal and professional life crack beneath his feet. At the center of his troubles is his beloved son Alec, who deflates his father's high expectations when he drops out of college after just three semesters and moves into the apartment above their garage. And when his son begins seeing Laura, the troubled daughter of Peter's best friend who is ten years older than Alec and lives in the tainted shadow of being acquitted for an unspeakable crime when she was 17, Alec's ambivalence to his father's hopes in living a good life turn into a simmering rage. Dizinoff, a man with a clear definition of right and wrong, flips back and forth in time as he narrates the history of events that build their way to a layered, emotionally wrenching climax.

This story is laid out extremely well.  It weaves the complex layers of the two families so you understand their history together and feel the emotions.  She does all of this effortlessly so it feels like a light easy read.

Rating: 4.8  Recommend

Open by Andre Agassi

I am not a lover of memoirs, preferring fictional reads, don't know much about tennis and don't care for sports yet I loved this book.  It starts in the present day and goes back.  In 1992, when Andre "burst" (he tells the many years of gruelling effort that led up to that) onto the world sports stage by winning the Grand Slam at Wimbledon, he looked like a deer in headlights. Nobody seemed more surprised and upset by his big win that day than he did. For good reason, too. Agassi hated tennis. This is the biggest revelation in his very revealing autobiography. Agassi has hated tennis from early childhood, finding it extremely lonely out on the court. But he didn’t have a choice about playing the game because his domineering aggressive father drove him to become a champion, like it or not. Mike Agassi, a former Golden Gloves fighter who never made it professionally, decided that his son would become a champion tennis player. I almost cried at how beautifully he expressed how much he loves his wife and children and, at other moments in the book, I openly laughed out loud.  This is an easy enjoyable read that feels very "open" and real.

Rating: 4.8 Recommend

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

This is the story of an adolescent girl, Lia, suffering from anorexia.  Lia and Cassie had been best friends since elementary school, and each developed her own style of eating disorder that leads to disaster. Now 18, they are no longer friends. Despite their estrangement, Cassie calls Lia 33 times on the night of her death, and Lia never answers. As events play out, Lia's guilt, her need to be thin, and her fight for acceptance unravel in an almost poetic stream of consciousness in this startlingly crisp and pitch-perfect first-person narrative. The text is rich with words still legible but crossed out, the judicious use of italics, and tiny font-size refrains reflecting her distorted internal logic. All of the usual answers of specialized treatment centers, therapy, and monitoring of weight and food fail to prevail while Lia's cleverness holds sway. This is an amazing book that I inhaled in <24 hours.  It is real, haunting and I know it will stay with me.  I would caution parents to read/screen it before allowing their young adults to read it as it does broach intense heavy subject matter in a straightforward manner.  Thanks Liz for introducing me to this amazing author.  I can't wait to read her other works.

Rating: 4.9 Recommend

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Lindsay escapes from a New Zealand jail and arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.

Lin is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Shantaram brings out the humane side of the Lin who couldn’t help but fall in love with innocence of people and led his life in abandon savoring each and every tide of life in his own stride.  I have fallen in love with Prabaker and his optimistic ways and constant smile.

Do not let the fact that this is almost 1,000 pages deter you - it flies by! Consider it "more for your money" :-)  This is amongst my list of top books of all time.  A definite must read!

Rating: 5 DEFINITE Recommend

My Only Story by Monica Wood

Rating: 4.6 

Rita, an unconventional hair stylist, has a dream, and she is determined to find and help that lonely soul. He soon appears in the form of John Reed, an unassuming, dejected thirtysomething hovering at the back of an Alanon meeting. As their friendship blossoms into romance, John reveals that his brother brutally murdered his wife and then killed himself, leaving their three-year-old daughter, Aileen, orphaned. Aileen was, and still is, very precious to John, but the three maternal aunts who became her legal guardians will have nothing to do with him because he so closely resembles his homicidal brother. Assertive and persistent, Rita helps John win over his aunts, but as their acceptance of John grows, so does a chasm between John and Rita.

This is a light and easy read and I especially loved the eccentric and quirky Rita and her big heart.  I found myself chucking over lines like: "Either people shrink with age, or short people live longer" and how she collects various people's hair snippets, and stores them in a glass jar, creating "a mix of love and betrayals and partings and death."  This is the first time I have rated a book as both a "Beach Read" and a "Best of" category but, this was a thoroughly enjoyable light little book.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

This hauntingly beautiful novel will stay with me.  The story revolves around three characters - Helen, Darrow and Linh - whose lives are affected by the Vietnam War. Helen Adams is a photojournalist in Vietnam - one of the only women covering actual combat, recon, and rescue assignments. She comes to Vietnam as an idealistic college student, determined to make a name for herself, tell the story of the war - and discover the truth of her brother's death in country. She immediately attracts the attention of the male journalists in the region, and quickly falls into an affair with the grizzled but darkly charismatic war photographer Sam Darrow. As Helen starts to make her own way as a photographer in Vietnam, drawing as much attention for her gender as for her work, Darrow sends her his Vietnamese assistant, Linh, a reluctant soldier who deserted the SVA in the wake of his wife’s death. While Linh wants nothing more than to escape the war, Darrow and Helen are consumed by it, unable to leave until the inevitable tragedy strikes.

The strength of this novel is in Soli’s vivid, beautiful depiction of war-torn Vietnam, from the dangers of the field, where death can be a single step away, to the emptiness of the Saigon streets in the final days of the American evacuation.  You will become as addicted to the life in Saigon and the thrill of action as the photographers who stay there long past when most think that they should leave.  This book will pull you across the miles and the decades so you are walking the war torn streets of Vietnam.

Rating: 4.9  Highly Recommend

Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg

This is a luscious little book that captures a by growing up in rural Wyoming.  It is both a sweet book about this wonderful little boy and a wonderful story of how every boy should be raised - with horses and in the wilderness and allowed to have solitude and discover who he is.

Mark Spragg learned early to read the stars, at 11 he was instructed to quit dreaming, and he went to work for his father on the land. "I was paid thirty dollars a month, had my own bed in the bunkhouse, and three large, plain meals each day." The ranch is a sprawling place where winter brings months of solitude and summer brings tourists from the real world--city types who want a taste of the outdoors and stare at the author and his family as if they were members of some exotic tribe: "Our guests were New Jersey gas station owners, New York congressmen, Iowa farmers, judges, actors, plumbers, Europeans who had read of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and came to experience the American West, the retired, the just beginning." By the age of 14, he and his younger brother are leading them on camping trips into deep woods. "No one ever asked why we had no televisions, no daily paper. They came for what my brother and I took for granted. They came to live the anachronism that we considered our normal lives."

I don't generally like auto-biographies and would never have picked this up were it not for a friend raving about it.  I lovied this book - thanks Luce!

Rating: 4.8 Recommend

The Disappeared by Kim Echlin

At first, I found the lack of quotations around the speech was offputting.  I kept reading and it wasn't long until I was lost in the sparse an beautiful prose.  This is an easy page turning read that makes you remember that wonderful mix of deep pure love and being young and not needing money to have so much enjoyment.

Canadian novelist Echlin (Elephant Winter) derives a powerful, transcendent love story from the Cambodian genocide. Anne Greves, a motherless 16-year-old student, meets a Cambodian refugee, Serey, working as a math instructor amid the heady music scene of late-1970s Montreal, and they fall irredeemably in love. Serey's family got him out of Pol Pot's Cambodia, although he is waiting to be able to return and find them; Anne's father, a successful engineer of prosthetics, does not approve of Anne's exotic, older boyfriend, and when, as her father predicted, Serey leaves her, disappearing for 11 years, Anne journeys to Phnom Penh to find him. There she comes face to face with the terrible fallout of the collapsed Khmer Rouge dictatorship. The beautifully spare narrative is daringly imaginative in the details, drawing the reader deep inside the wounded capital city. Anne's single-mindedness drives the action, although her insistence on Western values of accountability knocks hollowly against the machinery of a ruthless military state. This is a book with such beautiful prose that I frequently found myself rereading sentences.

Rating: 4.9 Highly Recommend

The Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

The 1612 Lancashire, England, witch trials that resulted in nine executions inspired Sharratt's gorgeously imagined novel that wonders if some of the accusations of witchcraft might be true. This book focuses on the Southerns family of Pendle Forest. Widowed mother Bess Southerns tries to save her family from bleakest poverty by healing the sick, telling fortunes, and blessing those facing misfortune, conjuring charmes that combine forbidden Catholic ritual, medicinal herbs, and guidance provided by her spirit-friend, Tibb.

Though Bess compassionately uses her powers, her granddaughter, Alizon, unwittingly endangers her family while under the interrogation of a conniving local magistrate. Sharratt crafts her complex yet credible account by seamlessly blending historical fact, modern psychology, and vivid evocations of the daily life of the poor whose only hope of empowerment lay in the black arts. Set in forests and towers, farms and villages, deep in a dungeon and on the gallows, this novel grows darker as it approaches its inevitable conclusion, but proves uplifting in its portrayal of women who persevere, and mothers and daughters who forgive.

This is not the type of book I ever would have picked up were it not for Andrea picking it for our book club.  Gotta love book clubs and their exposing you to new genres/authors.

Rating: 4.7 Recommend

The Blue Notebook by James Levine

I started reading this book on my Kindle and between the strange "fantasy" imagination of the girl and the Indian language, I just couldn't appreciate it.  I am glad that I gave it another chance on audio.  Levine, a doctor at the Mayo clinic, was inspired to write this heartbreaking and terrifying novel when he was interviewing homeless children in Mumbai as part of his medical research. In the "Street of Cages" where child prostitutes ply their trade, literally encaged by their neglectful and abusive overseers (who pocket all the profits), Levine was struck by the sight of a young girl sitting outside her cage writing in a notebook.  Thus was born The Blue Notebook.

Batuk is a 15 year old girl who was sold to Mamaki Briila by her father when she was 9. Forced to service up to ten men a day from her "nest," and subject to deplorable treatment by the men who pay for her services, she's even abused by the doctor who examines her; her friend Puneet, meanwhile, nearly dies after being sexually assaulted by two policemen and is castrated at the first signs of puberty. Batuk tells her story matter-of-factly, in a voice reminiscent of The Color Purple's. While painful to read, Batuk's story puts a face on the mistreatment and disregard for children worldwide, as well as a testament to the hopefulness and power of literacy.  The writing is wonderful and Batuk and her spirited soul comes to life as a real survivor.  This was not an easy story to hear knowing all of these atrocities are true and go on today but, it was definitely worthwhile.  As long as you are aware that there are many attrocities that will make you uncomfortable, this is a very well written and enjoyable book that will stay with me for quite a while.  FYI, the author donates all proceeds to helping exploited children.

Rating: 4.8 Recommend

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

I had so many friends recommend this book to me my only question is, why didn't I listen and read it sooner?! The book begins when a five-year-old boy is being sent off to boarding school. He's small for his age, white and of English descent. His name is Peekay and he lives in South Africa. Up to this point in his life he's known only his family and his beloved black Nanny. Now, he's forced to take care of himself and survive under the most brutal of circumstances. The time is World War II and Peekay spends years in a boarding school where he's the only English student among Afrikaners who are sympathetic to the Nazi cause. He's beaten, tortured and treated as a "prisoner of war" by the older boys. The Afrikaners are the descendents of the Dutch and there has been a great deal of conflict between them and the English settlers who came to South Africa at a later period of time.

When I first started reading this novel, I wasn't sure if I could handle the passages about the brutal treatment of this sweet little boy. However, I quickly learned that Peekay is a spirited survivor and would make it through that horrible period of his life. He battles through adversity and every challenge and refuses to let it dampen his will to accomplish his ultimate goal. First with the head and then with the heart...!!  On his vacations from school, he meets several people, both black and white who really influence him and teach him to work hard in order to fulfill his dreams.

After leaving boarding school, Peekay encounters a man who teaches him about some of the essentials of what he believed was the power of one, and from this man (a Boer) he discovers his love of boxing, which became his obsession, becoming Welterweight Champion of the World became his goal and his life. This is just the idea behind the power of one, and the introduction of the story. From there, the book tells about the many people Peekay encounters throughout his life and the influence they had upon him and what he believed was the power of one. But what struck me was really how beautifully written the novel is and the way it combines wit, humor, drama, and the everyday troubles of life, and still manages to get its message across and entertain the reader. You also can feel the tenderness that so many people feel for this boy.  Just an absolutely incredible novel that sets across a striking vision of South Africa before and during the terror that was Apartheid.  I found an uplifting joy in every success that Peekay experienced and couldn't wait to get back to this gem of a book.  Absoloodle.

Rating: 4.5 Recommend

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safety deposit box.  There she records the truth about her life and her marriages, while turning her Red Diary - into a manipulative farce.  Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an  eerily gripping read.  From the minute I read the first page, I was riveted -- similar to how you have to look as you pass a car accident.  This story is so dysfunctional and yet, so raw and honest.  This was a very well written book and I am still reflecting back on it and appreciating it but, I am not recommending it as it is so different that it depends on your taste.  It will stay with you, long after you wish it wouldn't.

Update - Iniitally I rated this lower but, with recent discussions with other book club members, I realized how much I enjoyed this book - both the writing and the warped mindgames as well as the fact that as dysfunctional as it is, you just can't look away.  That is an incredible author who keeps you coming back for more when the book is so messed up  I realize that I tempered my previous rating as, although I loved this book, it may not be for everyone.  I have raised my rating to what I feel this book deserves and will let you do research yourself to see if it is a book that you want to read.

Rating: 4.6 Recommend but disturbing

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

First, a HUGE thank you to Dasima for sending me this book!  This is the first book to make it to my "Best of 2010" list.  She knew I would love the way this story unfolds in a quiet Asian way, and it transported me into the lush rainy landscape of Malaysia.  It has beautiful language, history, suspense, big themes of torn loyalty and self-discovery....not to mention it is set in Penang.  Thank you Dasima :-) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tan_Twan_Eng says the author Tan Twan Eng ranks in the top 3 best writers writing today and, I have to agree.

Starting in 1939, the novel tells the story of young Philip Hutton and his friendship with Hayato Endo. Philip, born to a British father and a Chinese mother, finds himself drawn to a mysterious Japanese diplomat and aikido master, and soon becomes his devoted student.  This book varies between modern day with Philip as an old man reflecting back on his life and then seemlessly shifts back to the time he is talking about in 1939 with the Japanese invading Malaysia.

This is an amazing novel for any author but, especially a first time novelist and it is reminding me of Cutting for Stone.  I can see why many felt that this should have won the Man Booker Prize or at least been on the short list (vs. just being on the long list).  If the dreamlike depictions of the lush Malay landscapes don't draw you in, the engaging narrative will. I enjoyed this book a lot and found it easy to lose myself in it's pages for hours.  Despite the beautiful writing, this is not a light book and it is not to be read in short bursts but, rather consumed when you have an hour or more to devour it.  I was sad to finish it and yet felt such a satisfaction and respect for all of the decades of events that had unfolded.  Truly an amazing story that enlightened me about a period of history I was unaware of.

Rating: 4.9 Definite Recommend