Thursday, February 19, 2009, at 7 p.m.
Peace Like a River
By Leif Enger
"Dead for 10 minutes before his father orders him to breathe in the name of the living God, Rueben Land is living proof that the world is full of miracles. But it's the impassioned honesty of his quiet, measured narrative voice that gives weight and truth to the fantastic elements of this engrossing tale. From the vantage point of adulthood, Rueben tells how his father rescued his brother Davy's girlfriend from two attackers, how that led to Davy being jailed for murder and how, once Davy escapes and heads south for the Badlands of North Dakota, 12-year-old Reuben, his younger sister Swede and their janitor father light out after him. But the FBI is following Davy as well, and Reuben has a part to play in the finale of the chase, just as he had a part to play in his brother's trial. It's the kind of story that used to be material for ballads, and Enger twines in numerous references to the Old West, chiefly through the rhymed poetry Swede writes about a hero called Sunny Sundown. That the story is set in the early '60s in Minnesota gives it an archetypal feel, evoking a time when the possibility of getting lost in the country still existed. Enger has created a world of signs, where dead crows fall in a snowstorm and vagrants lie curled up in fields, in which everything is significant, everything has weight and comprehension is always fleeting. This is a stunning debut novel, one that sneaks up on you like a whisper and warms you like a quilt in a North Dakota winter, a novel about faith, miracles and family that is, ultimately, miraculous."
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 7 p.m.
Dreams from My Father
By President-Elect Barack Obama
Selected as we usher in America's first African-American president this month. No matter your politics or religious beliefs, it's good to know about the man who will lead us over the next four years. This book, written while he was president of the Harvard Law Review was written before he ever publicly considered running for the highest office in the land. And so, it offers particularly candid insight into the man and his upbringing.
"Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation. He gets you to agree with him, and then he brings in a counternarrative that seems just as convincing. Son of a white American mother and of a black Kenyan father whom he never knew, Obama grew up mainly in Hawaii. After college, he worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. Then, finally, he went to Kenya, to find the world of his dead father, his 'authentic' self. Will the truth set you free, Obama asks? Or will it disappoint? Both, it seems. His search for himself as a black American rooted in the particulars of his daily life; it also reads like a wry commentary about all of us. He dismisses stereotypes of the 'tragic mulatto' and then shows how much we are all caught between messy contradictions and disparate communities. He discovers that Kenya has 400 different tribes, each of the with stereotypes of the others. Obama is candid about racism and poverty and corruption, in Chicago and in Kenya. Yet he does find community and authenticity, not in any romantic cliche, but with 'honest, decent men and women who have attainable ambitions and the determination to see them through.'"
- Hazel Rochman, From Booklist
Available at Amazon.com for $8.97
Other Books We're Considering for 2009
This is a tentative list so if you have other ideas or if you want to look at the reviews of these at Amazon.com and tell me what you think, please let me know.
In no particular order:
Hometown Favorite -- A modern retelling of the story of Job
By Chip Arnold [son of Buddy Arnold] and Bill Barton
The Year of Living Biblically
By A. J. Jacobs
The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems
By Billy Collins [Former U.S. Poet Laureate]
The Hour I First Believed
By Wally Lamb
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana
By Ann Rice
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, followed by The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
A Prayer for Owen Meany
By John Irving
The Time Traveler's Wife
By Audrey Niffenegger
The Book of Lies
By Brad Meltzer
Frankland
By James Whorton Jr.
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