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  & 2 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Ursula Hegi

2010-04-27

  & 1 users

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: to read

Author: Tyler Cowen

Description: Interesting exploration by an economist of the different meanings of cultural diversity --Interesting exploration by an economist of the different meanings of cultural diversity -- within vs. across societies -- and how cultural heterogeneity and homogeneity go hand in hand (not in opposition) -- and how cultural exchange both disrupts and encourages cultures. His examples of African music and of Navajo textiles were very interesting -- and detailed....

2009-08-01

  & 2 users

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: to read

Author: Alain de Botton

Description: Another thought-provoking and enjoyable read from de Botton. Not as good as his book on travelAnother thought-provoking and enjoyable read from de Botton. Not as good as his book on travel or Proust, but still interesting. A meditation on architecture and how the material evokes -- and confirms -- our internal values and philosophy of life....

2009-08-01

  & 6 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Richard Yates

Description: The early sixties... the suburbs... and how a couple dreams of escaping them, e.g., to Europe.The early sixties... the suburbs... and how a couple dreams of escaping them, e.g., to Europe. Dysfunctional families.... barely parenting... ends with a fatal home abortion... ...

2009-08-01

  & 1 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: to read

Authors: Ryunosuke Akutagawa G. H. Healey Geoffrey Bownas

Description: First-person narrative by an inmate in a mental institution -- telling of how he went hikingFirst-person narrative by an inmate in a mental institution -- telling of how he went hiking on a mountain, the mist rolled in, and then he spied a kappa -- a mythical creature in Japanese folklore -- looking at him. He gives chase and ends up falling down a hole to a world where many things are the reverse of his society (written in the late 1920s). [Could be compared to Alice in Wonderland in many respects...] [Also reminds me of Gogol's Diary of a Madman] [Now going to read Murakami's book Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which also features kappa creatures...]...

2009-08-01

  & 23 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: favorite

Author: Ray Bradbury

Tags: fantasy scifi classic

2006-12-01

  & 10 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Gregory Maguire

2006-12-01

  & 35 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Authors: Sue Kidd Sue Monk Kidd

Tags: fiction coming of slavery age south

Description: In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic....

2006-12-01

  & 70 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Ayn Rand

Tags: fiction

2006-12-01

  & 15 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Tracy Chevalier

Tags: historical

Description: This book was written in an easy-to-read style: no double entendre, no pondering and confoundedness,This book was written in an easy-to-read style: no double entendre, no pondering and confoundedness, but it was well written. While I did not think any of her sentences were pearls, Chevalier managed to craft overall the pearl of a novel. I would recommend this book to those people that like reading different versions of old fairytales, and other related books, for this has a similar quality....

2006-02-12