Cormac McCarthy: The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food -- and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Customer Review: Masterpiece

The Road is simply one of the best stories I've ever read. And, I have hundreds in my collection. McCarthy deserves the recent accolades and honors. This is a fine piece of fiction, in every way - worthy of the 2006 Pulitzer.

In general, The Road is a story of a father's love that grabs you by the heart - via a pair of filthy, desperate, sweet hands - and squeezes until the very end and then clenches one last time for good measure. It's an emotive journey of desperation across a cruel and unforgiving landscape that is vaguely familiar, yet as barren as the surface of the moon.

It's a worn out advertising cliche to say it, but: If you only read one book this year, let it be The Road.

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Elizabeth Same: Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart
"Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life.
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West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier's Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet's relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them-the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom.
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Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier's Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life."



Customer Review: Short book with a big impact

A few weeks ago this author was on my local NPR station and I was intrigued by the idea of her book and then I got out of my car and walked into a book store and there it was on the new arrivals pile. I'm not sure if I would have noticed it if not for the story on the radio but I'm glad I did. As a former Army officer who has dealt with some of the issues in this book I was pulled in by her stories of teaching at West Point, an institution I did not attend but have visited and those visits made her descriptions that much more palpable. This book will be a jumping off point to explore more of the references the author describes. I rarely find books that I can't put down but this was one of them.



Customer Review: An Exceptional Book

Elizabeth Samet is a civilian professor of English at West Point. The increase in the number of civilians teaching there was one of the innovations of Fletcher Lamkin, during his term as the WP dean of the academic board. When I taught there, as a reserve officer, in 1967-9 there was only one civilian instructor in English, a woman who taught the plastic arts. Dr. Samet is a Yale Ph.D. and her (to some, curious) career choice of a position at West Point is one of the many stories which constitute this book.



She is able to accomplish several things here. She provides a vivid sense of the WP ethos, along with the `newer' ethos which includes women cadets, civilian professors, majors, minors, and a rich array of electives. She provides sketches and portraits of a number of her students and a number of her military colleagues. She reports on their communications with her as they move on in their careers, to and from war zones and, for some, to civilian life. The book is a mini-memoir and mini-autobiography. Most of all it is a long reflection on the relationship between literature and life, literature and the military, literature and war.



What is most impressive about the book is the fact that it is so accessible. Its materials are complex but they are presented in a manner that is instructive, moving and compelling. This is a book for everyone interested in literature, for everyone interested in soldiers and for everyone interested in West Point. I recommend it highly.

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The Navigator (NUMA Files)

The Navigator (NUMA Files)
Years ago, an ancient Phoenician statue known as the Navigator was stolen from the Baghdad Museum, and there are men who would do anything to get their hands on it. Their first victim is a crooked antiquities dealer, murdered in cold blood. Their second very nearly is a UN investigator who, were it not for the timely assistance of Austin and Zavala, would now be at the bottom of a watery grave.

What's so special about this statue? Austin wonders. The search for answers will take the NUMA team on an astonishing odyssey through time and space, one that encompasses no less than the lost treasures of King Solomon, a mysterious packet of documents personally encoded by Thomas Jefferson, and a top secret scientific project that could change the world forever.

And that's before the surprises really begin . . .

Rich with all the hair-raising action and endless invention that have become Cussler's hallmarks, The Navigator is Clive's best yet.

Customer Review: Pure Dross Instead of Escapist Fun

Years ago, I came to the conclusion that Clive Cussler had a totally tin ear, wrote the worst love scenes in the world, and wasn't so great at "page turning suspense" either but...I read The Navigator after I realized he had obtained a ghost writer.



The ghost can't write even worse than Cussler can't write. This particular plot, revolving around Phoenecians in Harrisburg, PA (yes, you read that right) failed to suspend disbelief. Forget the characters. They were so muscular, gorgeous, and wooden that they made the plot seem believable in comparison. See, it goes like this: the Queen of Sheba's descendant beds down with the NUMA operative in between her various kidnappings (the lady gets hit over the head more often than Wiley Coyote) by another of King Solomon's spawn and---



There was one odd thing about this amazingly bad book: Cussler, having managed to have Phoenecians hand-carry golden plates on which are supposedly written the supposed ten commandments all the way into the Endless Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, totally misses a trick. At this point, our ancient mariners aren't far from Hill Cumora. Since Cussler was already accounting for the first landing in the New World, solving the puzzles of Phoenecian navigation, addressing the importance of the Queen of Sheba, locating King Solomon's Mines, and solving the mystery of the disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant, why didn't his Phoenicians cross into upstate New York and bury the plates near the home of Joseph Smith?

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.

So begins Mildred Kalish's story of growing up on her grandparents' Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.

Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed--and valiantly tried to impose--all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.

Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world-s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.

Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a "hearty-handshake Methodist" family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish's memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like "quite a romp."


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Review: Sweet Read!

I just saw this Author at our local library. She was a doll and I wish I could sit down with her and chat all afternoon! The book was from the heart genuine and easy to read. I wish I could click my heals and travel back to life when it was simple and honest and people were REAL... What a neat time to grow up in...READ IT and dream!

Customer Review: Christmas Purchase

This purchase was made for the purpose of a Christmas gift. I had no difficulty locating the item and I appreciate the prompt delivery of a product in excellent shape. Thank you.

Warriors: Power of Three, Book 1: The Sight

Warriors: Power of Three #1: The Sight (Warriors: Power of Three, Book 1)
"There will be three, kin of your kin . . .

The wild cats have flourished in their new home on the banks of the lake for several seasons, and the Clans are growing strong and healthy with new kits. The time has come for three kits of ThunderClan to become apprentices.

Hollypaw, Jaypaw, and Lionpaw spring from a strong legacy: children of Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw, two of the noblest ThunderClan warriors, and grandchildren of the great leader Firestar himself. All three young cats possess unusual power and talent and seem certain to provide strength to the Clan for the next generation.

But there are dark secrets around the three, and a mysterious prophecy hints at trouble to come. An undercurrent of rage is rising against those who are not Clanborn, and the warrior code is in danger of being washed away by a river of blood. All the young cats' strength will be needed if the Clans are to survive.

. . . who hold the power of the stars in their paws."

Customer Review: Erin Hunter is losing her touch...

The first series of warriors were the best books i have ever read. Firestar made a very likable main character, with a wide variety of great characters throughout, either challenging him. Tigerstar was a chillingly evil villain, that really made the danger seem real. The second series saw almost all the remaining characters of the first series die, leaving us with some new and not very well developed characters. Brambleclaw was a cool main charcter, and the third person narrative around Bramblepaw in Twighlight and Dawn was almost like seeing what Tigerstar felt when he was trying to take over Thunderclan. But it still wasn't as good as the first series. Now we have another series of Warriors that has went another generation away from Firestar. Actually i was surprised by how much the style of this series was like that of the first one. i think that all of the Warriors books are worth a read, and if Erin Hunter continues to write this way, she may save her novels from coming to a very boring end.