Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
by Robert K. Massie
2012/ 625 pages
Rating: 7.5
I wanted to read this book since I saw the ads for it – since before it came out. Well… as usual, there’s a certain amount of disappointment when I hype something to myself. (Perhaps I might not have been so disappointed had I more carefully noted the subtitle – “Portrait of a WOMAN.”)
The bad news >>>MORE>>>
Doctor Zhivago – x3
by Boris Pasternak
1958 / 592 pages
translated by John Hayward
rating – 9.5
Well, this is the third time I’ve read Doctor Zhivago – this time was a very slow and thorough read, careful (I hate the word “close”) and I think I finally “got it.”
Pasternak lived through the Russian Revolution >>> MORE>>>
A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway
1964 / 211 pages
Rating 8
There are two versions of A Moveable Feast, which was a series of unorganized memoir-essays intended for a book at the author’s death. The first version (1964) was put together by Mary Hemingway, his 4th and last wife. The second edition, (“Restored” – 2009) was edited by >>>> MORE>>>>
The Gods of Gotham
by Lindsay Faye
2012 – 432 pages
Narrated by Steven Boyer – 12 h. 19 m.
Rating: A-
This is a rather literary historical mystery set in New York City in 1845 – the days of the Irish immigrants, fleeing from the potato famine. That was also the year NYC established a real police force. >>>>MORE >>>>
Father Goriot
by Honore Balzac
1835 –
Rating 10
Jean-Joachim Goriot, a widowed and retired wheat dealer who sold his business, lives alone in a pension in Paris. Since the death of his wife Father Goriot has doted on his daughters, Anastasie and Delphine, >>>>MORE>>>>
Gardens of Water
by Alan Drew
2008 / 352 pages
Rating – 6
In 1999 in a small town near Istanbul there is a devastating earthquake which disrupts an already disrupted community. Sinan, fundamentalist Muslim and Kurdish shop owner – a refugee from a rural area in the Kurdistani province where the fighting >>>MORE>>>
From Eternity to Here
by Sean Carroll
2010 / 448 pages
Rating – 8
Whew! This could have been a very difficult book – the concepts are difficult but Connelly writes well, it’s organized fairly well and so he does make it as easy as possible. Still, although I read it – most of it very carefully – I’m not sure I “get it.” (sigh) >>>>MORE>>>>
Creole Belle
by James Lee Burke
2012 – 544 pages
read by Will Patton – 18h 11m
rating – 8 / Patton rating – 10
This is Burke’s 19th novel about detective Dave Robicheaux, New Orleans area detective in a very gritty underworld. As beautifully as Burke writes, and as lush as the setting, that’s how really horrific the criminal element >>> MORE >>>>
The Cat’s Table
by Michael Ondaatje
2011 / 269 pgs
Rating – 8.5
An 11-year old boy is sent from family in Ceylon to his mother who is in London. He travels alone aboard the cruise ship Oronsay, but there are people he knows on board including two other young boys, Cassius and Ramadhin, who, >>> MORE >>>
The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather
1915 / classic
8.5
This is a very fictionalized version of the life of Olive Fremstad (Anna Olivia Rundquist), an opera star of the times – Cather was a good friend. >>>MORE>>>
The Brothers K.
by David James Duncan
1992 / 636 pages
Rating – 8
This book feels dated but it’s still good in it’s own way – I would have loved it in my 20s, it came out in my 40s. I kept having the feeling I’d read it before but I don’t think so. I did read the author’s The River Why and really liked that book >>> MORE >>>
How It All Began
by Penelope Lively
2011 / 220 pages
Rating 8.5
I truly enjoyed this book. I think it’s about the interrelatedness of things and other issues, especially language. “It’s about accidents.” (page 121) Or “circumstance” as Henry notes later. (161) >>> MORE>>>>
Dr. Zhivago – the movie
Produced 1965 – David Lean
Video 2005 / Turner
Yes, I’m very familiar with the book – overly familiar, perhaps. It’s a good book.
BUT! I’d never, ever, seen the movie. (There’s no good reason for this – I was 17 when it came out – I could have gone – I didn’t.) So today, after reading Dr. Zhivago probably 4 times, within 6 months, I watched the movie. _ FIrst off , it’s a good thing I’d read the book or I would have been left more than a bit puzzled. >>>> MORE>>>>
Sacred Hunger
by Barry Unsworth
1992 / 640 pages
Rating 9
In the mid-17th century there was, as now, an almost all-consuming passion to make money. This greed was acceptable to the Church as well as the state. A man’s social worth was his net worth. And because making money was sacred, greed was a sacred hunger. But was greed a human function only in that circumstance? Hence the title. >>>>> MORE >>>>>
The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick de Witt
2011 / 336 pages
narrated by John Pruden 7h 42m
rating – 8
This book is totally hilarious – Eli Sisters, the first person narrator is a dirty, merciless killer of the wild west circa 1851-2 on a job to hunt down an enemy of his boss. Eli and his brother Charlie are everything a bad guy >>>> MORE >>>>
Candide
by Voltaire
1759/ 95 pages –
rating 9
Written in 1759 (the same year as Tristram Shandy) this Enlightenment inspired satire is basically a statement in opposition to “”Therefore this is the best of all possible worlds,” a statement supposedly made by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz (1646 – 1716) >>>>MORE >>>>
The Age of Miracles
by Karen Thompson Walker
2012/ 268 pages
narrated by Emily Janice Card 9h. 3m.
rating – 7.5
I don’t believe I’ve ever read a dystopian novel in which the emotional content is quite so interwoven with the sci-fi aspect. In Walker’s debut novel she manages to incorporate the effect of the earth’s >>> MORE >>>
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