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The MJS has an interesting take on books in the Sunday paper. They asked a "writers and other bibliophiles in Wisconsin" to recommend and old book and a new book. The title quest BY Geeta Sharma Jensen.
If they'd asked, here are my picks. Post yours.
Old: The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose Macaulay
This book has one of the most memorable opening lines in the history of the written word: "'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." The Towers of Trebizond is a mostly hilarious sendup of conventional society (primarily British, but others do not escape unscathed) in the form of a travelogue and memoir of a youngish upper middle-class English woman who travels to Turkey with her Aunt Dot and their High Anglican minister Hugh Chantry-Pigg. A camel, Billy Graham sightings, and a disappearance into Soviet Russia are involved in this wonderfully witty tale. Macaulay also sprinkles some philosophy along the way and a sudden and sobering twist at the end.
I first came across this book while on the New York Review Books - NYRB web site and more specifically while looking at NYRB Classics. The NYRB republishes wonderful classics with an "innovative list of outstanding fiction and nonfiction from all ages and around the world. Beginning in 1999 with the publication of Richard Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, more than 200 NYRB Classics have been published. They include new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Dante, Balzac, and Chekhov; fiction by modern and contemporary masters such as Vasily Grossman, Mavis Gallant, and Upamanyu Chatterjee; tales of crime and punishment by George Simenon and Kenneth Fearing; masterpieces of narrative history and literary criticism, poetry, travel writing, biography, cookbooks, memoirs, and unclassifiable classics on the order of J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy....Taken as a whole, NYRB Classics may be considered a series of books of unrivaled variety and quality for discerning and adventurous readers."
If you love books, you must check out NYRB Classics.
New: My first pick A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is a huge bestseller. It relates the tragic story of Afghanistan over the past three decades as told through the life stories of two women. The plight of Afghan women epitomizes what Aldous Huxley (Aldous Huxley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) called "the descending road of modern history". Hosseini sculpts a poignant and heart-breaking tale, if somewhat predictable at times.
BTW, I got my copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the EXPRESS Collection at the Monona Public Library. You can find these books on the shelves next to the self-checkout machine. I was on the 'hold' list at about number 438 when I scarfed it.
My second pick is the far less known Sword Song (The Saxon Chronicles, Book 4) a work of historical fiction by Bernard Cornwell. It's the 9th century in "England" (a country that does not yet exist) and Alfred's Anglo-Saxons are in the midst of the long struggle with the Danes. Plenty of battle action, but with the back story struggle between the "Christian nailed god" and the Norse gods, Odin in particular.
This title has not been released in the US yet ( but it will be on Jan. 22, 2008). I got an advance reader copy through Harper Collins First Look program.
Amazon link: Sword Song (The Saxon Chronicles, Book 4)
My final new pick is Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels) by John Mortimer. British barrister Horace Rumpole is one of my very favorite fictional characters. His views on society, law, justice, and marriage are nearly always hilariously funny, but insightful. He actually still believes in a fair trial for the criminally accused - even for the ones society despises. Given that Mortimer passed his 84th birthday this year I thought we had seen the last of new Rumpole adventures, but no, he's back for another 'hopeless case'. BTW, Mortimer is himself a Queen's Counsel or QC, an elevated status in the British courts that Rumpole hasn't reached and the members of which he refers to as 'queer customers' (meaning 'odd ducks').
If they'd asked, here are my picks. Post yours.
Old: The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose Macaulay
This book has one of the most memorable opening lines in the history of the written word: "'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." The Towers of Trebizond is a mostly hilarious sendup of conventional society (primarily British, but others do not escape unscathed) in the form of a travelogue and memoir of a youngish upper middle-class English woman who travels to Turkey with her Aunt Dot and their High Anglican minister Hugh Chantry-Pigg. A camel, Billy Graham sightings, and a disappearance into Soviet Russia are involved in this wonderfully witty tale. Macaulay also sprinkles some philosophy along the way and a sudden and sobering twist at the end.
I first came across this book while on the New York Review Books - NYRB web site and more specifically while looking at NYRB Classics. The NYRB republishes wonderful classics with an "innovative list of outstanding fiction and nonfiction from all ages and around the world. Beginning in 1999 with the publication of Richard Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, more than 200 NYRB Classics have been published. They include new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Dante, Balzac, and Chekhov; fiction by modern and contemporary masters such as Vasily Grossman, Mavis Gallant, and Upamanyu Chatterjee; tales of crime and punishment by George Simenon and Kenneth Fearing; masterpieces of narrative history and literary criticism, poetry, travel writing, biography, cookbooks, memoirs, and unclassifiable classics on the order of J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy....Taken as a whole, NYRB Classics may be considered a series of books of unrivaled variety and quality for discerning and adventurous readers."
If you love books, you must check out NYRB Classics.
New: My first pick A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is a huge bestseller. It relates the tragic story of Afghanistan over the past three decades as told through the life stories of two women. The plight of Afghan women epitomizes what Aldous Huxley (Aldous Huxley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) called "the descending road of modern history". Hosseini sculpts a poignant and heart-breaking tale, if somewhat predictable at times.
BTW, I got my copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the EXPRESS Collection at the Monona Public Library. You can find these books on the shelves next to the self-checkout machine. I was on the 'hold' list at about number 438 when I scarfed it.
My second pick is the far less known Sword Song (The Saxon Chronicles, Book 4) a work of historical fiction by Bernard Cornwell. It's the 9th century in "England" (a country that does not yet exist) and Alfred's Anglo-Saxons are in the midst of the long struggle with the Danes. Plenty of battle action, but with the back story struggle between the "Christian nailed god" and the Norse gods, Odin in particular.
This title has not been released in the US yet ( but it will be on Jan. 22, 2008). I got an advance reader copy through Harper Collins First Look program.
Amazon link: Sword Song (The Saxon Chronicles, Book 4)
My final new pick is Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels) by John Mortimer. British barrister Horace Rumpole is one of my very favorite fictional characters. His views on society, law, justice, and marriage are nearly always hilariously funny, but insightful. He actually still believes in a fair trial for the criminally accused - even for the ones society despises. Given that Mortimer passed his 84th birthday this year I thought we had seen the last of new Rumpole adventures, but no, he's back for another 'hopeless case'. BTW, Mortimer is himself a Queen's Counsel or QC, an elevated status in the British courts that Rumpole hasn't reached and the members of which he refers to as 'queer customers' (meaning 'odd ducks').
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