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The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

October 2013

I had heard a lot about Graeme Simsion’s THE ROSIE PROJECT, and reading it I see why. It’s the kind of book that makes you smile --- and laugh --- as you read it, and it’s also wickedly clever.

In it, Don Tillman is a socially awkward professor of genetics who sees all of life through a scientific lens. He has not had success in dating, so he decides to attack this the way he does everything else in life: with a plan. He crafts a 16-page questionnaire in a quest to find the perfect mate. While I know this is ill-conceived, somehow the fact that Don is approaching the issue this way is both charming and humorous. The first women to answer it fail, but Don plunges on. And then he meets Rosie, who does not pass the questionnaire, but instead brings Don a project he can help her with. She wants to find her biological father, and who but a geneticist can help with that? So the "Wife Project" that Don calls his questionnaire becomes the "Father Project" to help Rosie. And well, you can figure out where things go from there. Complete comedy!

End-of-the-Year Contest 2013

Congratulations to the winners of our 2013 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 36 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2013, while 36 others won a copy of one of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2013's Bets On selections.

Week of June 2, 2014

Releases for the week of June 2nd include AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED, the highly anticipated new novel by Khaled Hosseini, who explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor and sacrifice for one another; THE SILVER STAR by Jeannette Walls, a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world; THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since ANANSI BOYS, a bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, memory and magic; and LET'S EXPLORE DIABETES WITH OWLS, in which David Sedaris discusses his misunderstood love of owls, taxidermy, colonoscopies, the pains and pleasures of frequent travel, his remarkable family, and so much more.