Archive for the ‘Award Winner / Nominee’ Category
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004
Hardcover (available in trade), 405 pages, 2003
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: The winner of the 2003 Giller Prize.
Synopsis: Vikram Lall has fled to Toronto after finding himself at the top of Kenya’s List of Shame, but he’s haunted by reminders of his past. As he writes his memoirs, from growing up Indian in Africa, to interracial love tearing his family apart, to his own corruption, Vikram begins to think he may need to make amends for his past deeds, no matter what consequences he must face in his war-torn homeland of Africa.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
Trade, 319 pages, 2003
Rating: 10/10
Reason for Reading: Shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize.
Synopsis: Kitty Wellington has recently lost a child, and combined with synaestesia, which causes her to see emotions as colours, things are beginning to seem overwhelming. On top of her own problems and desolation, she’s trying to keep her father and four brothers connected as a family.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary | No Comments »
Sunday, February 1st, 2004
Hardcover (available in trade), 301 pages, 2001
Rating: 10/10
Reason for Reading: A book I heard good things about, but forgot about until I saw it on the shelf at the library.
Synopsis: Fuller, known to her friends as Bobo, tells the story of her childhood, where she grew up white in Africa during changing times of black power, revolution, and war. Her family survives by farming and moving around Africa, influenced as much by weather (floods, drought) as the political upheaval in the area.
(more…)
Posted in Award Winner / Nominee, Non-Fiction, Biography | No Comments »
Sunday, January 25th, 2004
Hardcover (available in trade), 277 pages, 2003
Rating: 10/10
Reason for Reading: Winner of the 2003 Booker Prize, my personal favourite literary award.
Synopsis: Vernon, a 15-year-old Texan, finds himself the town’s scapegoat after his friend Jesus carries out a Columbine-style shooting, leaving himself and sixteen students dead. Vernon refuses to give details on what he was doing that fateful day, and as trouble mounts, both legally and at home, Vernon has a rising urge to flee.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 30th, 2003
Hardcover (available in trade), 456 pages, 2002
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: A buzz book; I read Lives of the Saints for a high school English class and enjoyed it.
Synopsis: A fictionalized account of the life of Jesus, told by four people - Yihuda, Miryam, his mother, and Simon, a Syrian shepherd. This isn’t the widely accepted Jesus from the Bible, however - Testament is presented as the ‘true’ story of Jesus, working with the idea that the Bible may be full of misconstrued stories that passed through generations before being written down.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Historical, Religion | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 21st, 2003
Hardcover (available in trade), 226 pages, 2002
Rating: 8/10
Reason for Reading: Longlisted for the 2003 Booker prize.
Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Christopher, the narrator of the book, is autistic ‘ unable to comprehend human emotions, but absolutely brilliant mathematically and scientifically. When Christopher finds a neighbour’s dog murdered with a pitchfork, he decides to find out who did it, using the logical Sherlock Holmes as his model. His sleuthing skills end up uncovering more than he could have dreamed of - and possibly more than he can understand.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary, Humour, Mystery | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2003
![What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoe Heller](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0805073337.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg)
Hardcover (available in trade), 258 pages, 2003
Rating: 10/10
Reason for Reading: Shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize.
Synopsis: Sheba Hart, a 42-year-old school teacher, has been in the news lately - for her affair with a fifteen-year-old student. Her friend, Barbara Covett, narrates the story of Sheba’s love, betrayal, and the crushing effect on her family, as well as her own life, including why she would possibly defend a ‘child molester.’
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary | No Comments »
Monday, September 22nd, 2003
Hardcover (available in trade), 324 pages, 2003
Rating: 3/10
Reason for Reading: Longlisted for the 2003 Booker.
Synopsis: In a single day, an ex-cop turned private investigator of marital affairs explores how the events of two years ago lead from affairs to murder.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Contemporary | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 9th, 2003
Trade, 639 pages, 2000
Rating: 10/10
Reason for Reading: I avoided it for a while, despite the Pulitzer Prize, because it was about comic books, but the continuing praise from unexpected sources eventually drew me in.
Synopsis: Escaping from the Holocaust in Europe, Joe Kavalier lands on the doorstep of his American cousin, Sam Clay, where they form an immediate alliance between Joe’s drawing skills and Sam’s incredible story-telling abilities and begin to produce some of America’s first comic books. The comic books become symbolic of the personal struggles of the two young men, with the Holocaust and Joe’s struggle to save his remaining family from Hitler becoming a large part of America’s comic book empire.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Historical | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003
Hardcover (available in mass market), 392 pages, 2003
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: Because it’s Atwood, of course.
Synopsis: It’s some time in the indeterminate future, and Jimmy, or Snowman, as he now goes by, is living in a strange world of genetically modified pigoons and rakunks, as well as the innocent and breathtakingly beautiful children of the mysterious Oryx and Crake. Sliced in with Snowman’s current struggle for survival are glimpses of his old life, from the disappearance of his mother in his childhood through to the time of the world rapidly changing into the strange place it has become.
(more…)
Posted in Fiction, Award Winner / Nominee, Sci-Fi | No Comments »