Books

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This Side of Paradise established F. Scott Fitzgerald as the prophet and golden boy of the newly dawned Jazz Age. Published in 1920 when Fitzgerald was just twenty-three, it is the story of Amory Blaine, a privileged, aimless, and self-absorbed Princeton student whose journey from prep school to college to the First World War is a prescient account of what Gertrude Stein would later call the Lost Generation. Fitzgerald memorably describes Amory and his contemporaries as "a new generation...grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." An exuberant pastriche of literary styles, this dazzling, virtuosic chronicle of youth remains recognizably relevant today.

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"If you're careful," Garp wrote, "if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane."

NARNIA....a land frozen in eternal winter...a country waiting to be set free.

Four adventurers step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia -- a land enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change...and a great sacrifice.

The classic tale of four curious children who wander through a dusty wardrobe into a magical land called Narnia. One of them discovers the portal on her own, but the others do not believe her. When she gets one of her brothers to venture through with her, they become separated and alone he is subject to the influence of the White Witch. It is up to the other three to save him and all of Narnia from the Witch's evil plans.

This is the quintessential childhood epic adventure. Whether or not you have read these books or seen any of the film adaptations, you always seem to know the story. In its recounting, it seems to grow ever-larger, though when I read the book now, it is so brief. I think that speaks volumes about how magical C.S. Lewis's Narnia truly is. I look forward to the rest of the series, with which I am unfamiliar.

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Mr. Hartsfield did his best to give us a tool to do our work. "Ladies and gentlemen, you must learn deductive reasoning!" He caught Roy Lee ogling the girl next to him and threw a perfect chalk strike to the boy's head. "Now, sir, let me put a general statement to you," he said to Roy Lee. "All human beings have brains, that's my major premise. Do you not agree?" Roy Lee rubbed his head, chalk dust sticking to his lacquered D.A. "Yes, sir." Mr. Hartsfield stood and balanced on his toes. "And all teenagers are human beings. That is my minor premise, controversial though it may be. And if my major and minor premises are so, sir, what is your conclusion?" Roy Lee wrinkled his brow. "That all teenage boys have brains?" he finally allowed. "Why, yes, my boy!" Mr. Hartsfield shouted and bounced a foot off the floor. "So what, pray tell, is your excuse?

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction represents the very best in contemporary fiction (from the UK, Ireland, and the Commonwealth). One of the world’s most prestigious awards, and one of incomparable influence, it continues to be the pinnacle of ambition for every fiction writer. It has the power to transform the fortunes of authors, and even publishers. In 2004, not only did Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty reach the bestseller lists, but previous winners The Life of Pi (2002) and Vernon God Little (2003) were also amongst the bestselling books of the year. Congratulations to last year's winner Anne Enright for her novel The Gathering.

	The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
	Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
	The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
	From A to X by John Berger
	The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
	Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
	The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
	A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
	The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
	Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
	The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
	Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
	A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself wants them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.

Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Then came 'Tis, the glorious account of his early years in New York.

Now, here at last is McCourt's long-awaited book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments (he instructs one class to write "An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God"), singalongs (featuring recipe ingredients as lyrics) and field trips (imagine taking twenty-nine rowdy girls to a movie in Times Square!).

McCourt struggles to find his way in the classroom and spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story on paper. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparallelled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourt's rocky marriage, his failed attempt to get a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, and his repeated firings due to his propensity to talk back to his superiors ironically lead him to New York's most prestigious school, Stuyvesant High School, where he finally find a place and a voice. "Doggedness," he says is not as glamourous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still one thing that got me through the days and nights."

For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in Teacher Man the journey to redemption -- and literary fame -- is an exhilarating adventure.

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He wrote Helen that "a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around who's enough like yourself to understand you..."

In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard.

The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordinary, preternatural skills. When Takeo's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru. Under the tutelage of Shigeru, he learns that he too possesses the skills of the Tribe. And, with this knowledge, he embarks on a journey that will lead him across the famed nightingale floor -- and to his own unimaginable destiny...

A teenage boy named Takeo is chased out of his peaceful village as it is attacked by a local warlord. He escapes pursuit with the help of a strange man, who then takes him in and adopts him as his son. As they get to know each other the man tells Takeo more and more and soon he realizes that their meeting was not random, nor was the attack on his village. Takeo, unbeknownst to him, is from a long line of assassins. They are a race of people with extraordinary abilities, and his father was the best of them all. And now Takeo's fate has come to meet him as he is asked to do that for which he was born to do.

I picked this book up off the shelf having never heard of it, but I read the synopsis on the back and became very interested. I love feudal Japan and the idea of a young man born with specially-heightened senses to facilitate his fate as the world's next great assassin sounded great. And the book was good, I just believe it missed it's mark.

It had everything I described above, but what I didn't like was the disparity between the assassin race and everyone else. I was hoping that the advantages wouldn't be so extraordinary. I afford sci-fi/fantasy authors a lot of creative license, but at some point it goes too far. And I felt like that happened, to an extent, in Across the Nightingale Floor.

But, at least for now, I am not so turned off that I am unwilling to give this series another shot. I do plan to read Grass for His Pillow, which is the second book in the Tales of the Otori series, but I'm not sure when I will get to it.

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I suffer a sudden onset of meaningless melancholy and feel the eyes of the check-out lady on my forehead as I search for the money to pay, the widower is what she sees, they do not understand anything, and it is just as well.