bookshelf

Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Narrated Gwendoline Yeo , 9 hours, (c) 2005 Phoenix Audio, purchased via Audible. Read 05/03/09

A true Mother's Day extravaganza: four immigrant Chinese mothers and their American daughters disappoint, annoy and try to love each other.

Ordinary Horror by David Searcy

230 pgs (c) 2001, Broward Library Read: 02/20/08 Blog: 04/26/09

Told from the vantage point of an elderly reclusive widower this tale describes the quotidian eeriness of daily life, habitual terrors, and an ultimate unraveling.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine

15 tapes / 21 hours, Narrated by  Jenny Sterlin
Recorded Books, (c) 2000, Read: 04/09/09, Blog: 04/20/09

This tale of suspense concerns an international assortment of young people crashing in a top floor apartment and their adventures-some criminal, some not-on the roofs of London.

The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason

312 Pgs (c)  2004 Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder
Broward Library 04/04/09

A body, tethered to Cold War era Russian communications equipment, is revealed when an Icelandic lake is drained. Old memories and rivalries surface, involving socialist students studying in East German in the late 1950s.

The Averaged American by Sarah E. Igo

Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public
398 pgs (c) 2007, Harvard University Press
Broward Library 301.0720732 IG Read: 03/02/08

Today we take surveys for granted. This book examines the rise of surveys at the turn of the last century, their continued development, and their effect on society at large.

Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin

An Inspector Rebus Mystery Narrated by Samuel Gillies
7 tapes, 9 hours
(c)1992 Ian Rankin, 2001 W.E. Howes Ltd Read: 03/27/09

Inspector Rebus is called "south of the border" to London (disappointingly, there are no sombreros at all).

The Crazed by Ha Jin

7 tapes, 10 hours, Narrated by Norm Lee
2004 (c) Recorded Books, Read 02/07/08

Set in 1989 at the time of Tianamen Square uprising, most of the action takes place in a hospital room where a college student is nursing his professor. Shorter than Mann's Magic Mountain, it shares the burden of inactivity. Once the old main dies, things really pick up.

Ethiopian Murder Mystery by George S. Schuyler

Serialized novel published 1931
Ethiopian Stories © Boston : Northeastern University Press, c1994,
The Northeastern library of Black literature
Broward Library, Read: 02.02.08, Blog: 03/18//09

Wandering the stack, I found this volume of two serialized novellas by Schuyler, an early twentieth century African-American journalist. This story is a masculine detective story where a newspaperman solves the murder of an Ethiopian in NYC.

Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age by Kenzaburo Oe

259 pgs (c) 1986, Translated by John Nathan
Purchased (where?) Read: 01/29/08

This was the longest 259-page book I've ever read. It took me ages. It's so Japanese; it's like reading an Anthony Chambers translation of Tanizaki. But maybe I'm just a philistine.

Natives and Exotics by Jane Alison

236 pgs © 2005, Orlando: Harcourt; 2006 Mariner Books
Broward Library Read: 01/02/06

A lovely little book illustrated with 18th century illustrations of exotic flora. Episodic, loosely following an Australian family lineage through their voluntary and involuntary peregrinations of the globe across two centuries. Like the plants, they move or are moved without clear recognition of their predecessors or progeny.