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Yann Martel

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

Attribution

Yann Martel, LIFE OF PI

James M. Barrie

Let no one who loves be unhappy...even love unreturned has its rainbow.

Attribution

James M. Barrie

Martin Mull

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your head.

Attribution

Martin Mull

October 5, 2012

Last Saturday’s event that our ReadingGroupGuides.com website co-sponsored with the Hachette Book Group was a smashing success. The author presentations were excellent; many of them I had not heard speak before. But what made the day even more fun was the enthusiasm in that room! I met with a number of our readers --- and brought along my friends Beverley and Rachel (pictured with me above), who thoroughly enjoyed the day. You can read more about the day and see more pictures here.

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October 5, 2012 - October 19, 2012

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of October 5 - October 19.

Editorial Content for One Last Strike

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ron Kaplan

Tony La Russa is a baseball lifer. He began his career in the minors; had an unproductive stint as a major leaguer, batting .199 over six seasons as a utility infielder; and made a name for himself as one of the best managers in the game. He won six pennants and three World Series over a 33-year span for the Oakland Athletics, Chicago White Sox and, most recently, St. Louis Cardinals. He ranks third in wins behind Hall of Fame managers Connie Mack and John McGraw, and trails only Mack in games at the helm with 5,097. Read More

Teaser

 

Down 10 1/2 games with little more than a month to play, the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team made the playoffs and won the World Series. Now manager Tony La Russa gives the inside story behind this astonishing comeback and his remarkable career, explaining how a team with so much against it was able to succeed on baseball's biggest stage.

Promo

Down 10 1/2 games with little more than a month to play, the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team made the playoffs and won the World Series. Now manager Tony La Russa gives the inside story behind this astonishing comeback and his remarkable career, explaining how a team with so much against it was able to succeed on baseball's biggest stage.

About the Book

After 33 seasons managing in Major League Baseball, Tony La Russa thought he had seen it all --- that is, until the 2011 Cardinals. Down ten and a half games with little more than a month to play, the Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team mounted one of the most dramatic and impressive comebacks in baseball history, making the playoffs on the night of the final game of the season and going on to win the World Series despite being down to their last strike --- twice.

Now La Russa gives the inside story behind this astonishing comeback and his remarkable career, explaining how a team with so much against it was able to succeed on baseball's biggest stage. Opening up about the devastating injuries, the bullpen struggles, the crucial games, and the players who made it all possible, he reveals how the team's character shaped its accomplishments, demonstrating how this group came together in good times and in bad to become that rarest of things: a team that actually enjoyed it when the odds were against them.

But this story is much more than that of a single season. As La Russa, the third-winningest manager in baseball history, explains, their season was the culmination of a lifetime spent studying the game. Laying bare his often scrutinized and frequently misunderstood approach to managing, he explains his counterintuitive belief in process over result, present moments over statistics, and team unity over individual talent. Along the way he shares the stories from throughout his career that shaped his outlook --- from his first days managing the Chicago White Sox to his championship years with the Oakland A's, to his triumphant tenure as St. Louis's longest-serving manager. Setting the record straight on his famously intense style, he explores the vital yet overlooked role that his personal relationships with his players have contributed to his victories, ultimately showing how, in a sport often governed by cold, hard numbers, the secret to his success has been surprisingly human.

Speaking candidly about his decision to retire, La Russa discusses the changes that he'd observed both in the game and in himself that told him, despite his success, it was time to hang up his spikes. The end result is a passionate, insightful, and remarkable look at our national pastime that takes you behind the scenes of the comeback that no one thought possible and inside the mind of one of the game's greatest managers.

Editorial Content for Garment of Shadows

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Author Laurie R. King dedicates her 12th novel in the Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell series to “those who reach across boundaries with a hand of welcome.” Read More

Teaser

 

Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mary Russell, are separated by shocking circumstances in a perilous part of the world, each racing against time to prevent an explosive catastrophe that could clothe them both in shrouds. Will Holmes and his friends be able to find the newly amnesiac Russell in time to stop a deadly African/European revolt?

Promo

Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mary Russell, are separated by shocking circumstances in a perilous part of the world, each racing against time to prevent an explosive catastrophe that could clothe them both in shrouds. Will Holmes and his friends be able to find the newly amnesiac Russell in time to stop a deadly African/European revolt?

About the Book

Laurie R. King’s New York Times bestselling novels of suspense featuring Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, comprise one of today’s most acclaimed mystery series. Now, in their newest and most thrilling adventure, the couple is separated by a shocking circumstance in a perilous part of the world, each racing against time to prevent an explosive catastrophe that could clothe them both in shrouds.
 
In a strange room in Morocco, Mary Russell is trying to solve a pressing mystery: Who am I? She has awakened with shadows in her mind, blood on her hands, and soldiers pounding on the door. Out in the hivelike streets, she discovers herself strangely adept in the skills of the underworld, escaping through alleys and rooftops, picking pockets and locks. She is clothed like a man, and armed only with her wits and a scrap of paper containing a mysterious Arabic phrase. Overhead, warplanes pass ominously north.
 
Meanwhile, Holmes is pulled by two old friends and a distant relation into the growing war between France, Spain, and the Rif Revolt led by Emir Abd el-Krim --- who may be a Robin Hood or a power mad tribesman. The shadows of war are drawing over the ancient city of Fez, and Holmes badly wants the wisdom and courage of his wife, whom he’s learned, to his horror, has gone missing. As Holmes searches for her, and Russell searches for herself, each tries to crack deadly parallel puzzles before it’s too late for them, for Africa, and for the peace of Europe.
 
With the dazzling mix of period detail and contemporary pace that is her hallmark, Laurie R. King continues the stunningly suspenseful series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”

Editorial Content for May We Be Forgiven

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Harvey Freedenberg

In novels like THE END OF ALICE and MUSIC FOR TORCHING, A.M. Homes hasn’t shied away from grim subjects, pedophilia and school gun violence only two of them. Her new novel returns to familiar territory --- the American suburbs --- to tell a powerful story of despair and redemption, all the while probing what she’s consistently sought to expose, in the vein worked by writers like Richard Yates and John Cheever, as the real heart of darkness at the core of suburban life. Read More

Teaser

 

Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, acquire a wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control, the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

Promo

Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, acquire a wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control, the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

About the Book

A darkly comic novel of twenty-first-century domestic life and the possibility of personal transformation

Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.

Harry finds himself suddenly playing parent to his brother’s two adolescent children, tumbling down the rabbit hole of Internet sex, dealing with aging parents who move through time like travelers on a fantastic voyage. As Harry builds a 21st-century family created by choice rather than biology, we become all the more aware of the ways in which our history, both personal and political, can become our destiny and either compel us to repeat our errors or be the catalyst for change.

MAY WE BE FORGIVEN is an unnerving, funny tale of unexpected intimacies and of how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together.

Editorial Content for Clockwork Angels

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Stephen Hubbard

"The best place to start an adventure is with a quiet, perfect life...and someone who realizes that it can't possibly be enough." Read More

Teaser

 

In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.

Promo

In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.

About the Book

A remarkable collaboration that is unprecedented in its scope and realization, this exquisitely wrought novel represents an artistic project between the bestselling science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson and the multiplatinum rock band Rush. The newest album by Rush, Clockwork Angels, sets forth a story in Neil Peart’s lyrics that has been expanded by him and Anderson into this epic novel. In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life. The mind-bending story is complemented with rich paintings by the five-time Juno Award winner for Best Album Design, Hugh Syme.

Editorial Content for Hostage

Book

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Judy Gigstad

Translated from the French, HOSTAGE displays the skill that garnered Elie Wiesel the Nobel Prize. Wiesel has written many works about the Holocaust, the relationships changed by those events, and the plight of acceptance for Jews on the world stage. HOSTAGE takes place in 1975 in New York; Shaltiel Geigenberg is a Jew and a professional storyteller, a common man of no importance. He is married and childless, and ekes out his livelihood relating stories to enthralled audiences; but his gift is only appreciated locally. Read More

Teaser

 

It’s 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg --- professional storyteller, writer and beloved husband --- has been taken hostage. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, explain that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best: telling stories --- to himself and to the men who hold his fate in their hands.

Promo

It’s 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg --- professional storyteller, writer and beloved husband --- has been taken hostage. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, explain that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best: telling stories --- to himself and to the men who hold his fate in their hands.

About the Book

From Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and author of NIGHT, a charged, deeply moving novel about the legacy of the Holocaust in today’s troubled world and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg --- professional storyteller, writer and beloved husband --- has been taken hostage: abducted from his home in Brooklyn, blindfolded and tied to a chair in a dark basement. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, don’t explain why the innocent Shaltiel has been chosen, just that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best, telling stories --- to himself and to the men who hold his fate in their hands.

With beauty and sensitivity, Wiesel builds the world of Shaltiel’s memories, haunted by the Holocaust and a Europe in the midst of radical change. A Communist brother, a childhood spent hiding from the Nazis in a cellar, the kindness of liberating Russian soldiers, the unrest of the 1960s --- these are the stories that unfold in Shaltiel’s captivity, as the outside world breathlessly follows his disappearance and the police move toward a final confrontation with his captors.

Impassioned, provocative and insistently humane, HOSTAGE is both a masterly thriller and a profoundly wise meditation on the power of memory to connect us to the past and our shared need for resolution.