Jan
08
Switched By Amanda Hocking
Click here to buy the book Switched by Amanda Hocking form The Book Depository (with free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
Wendy Everly knew that there was something different about herself when her mother had tried to kill her on her sixth birthday. She accused her of being a monster that had been switched at birth with her real baby.
Wendy doesn’t feel like a monster, but she can’t help but feel that she doesn’t quite fit in. She is bored and frustrated with life in her small town, and to top it off, she’s the new girl in school. There is also a secret that she has discovered about herself that she can’t tell anyone…. Wendy has the mysterious ability to influence people’s decisions just by willing it to happen.
Read more... (585 words, 7 images, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Light Reading, Teenage Fiction books for teens contemporary fiction Fantasy Fiction Light Reading Teenage USA
Jul
15
Fiction
First Published in 2009
Publisher: Penguin Viking
Click to buy Brooklyn by Colm Toibin with free delivery
Book Synopsis:
Work in 1950s Ireland is hard to find. Eilis Lacey does what she thinks is best and makes the long and arduous journey across the Atlantic to Brooklyn, America. For the first time, Eilis is on her own, in a strange city, living in a boarding house filled with other working girls and a scrutinizing landlady. Eilis is isolated and far away from home.
Gradually, however, as Eilis gets used to her new life, her job working in a department store, taking evening classes in book keeping, Friday night dances in the church hall, and maybe an American man… Eilis starts to realize, she’s found a kind of happiness.
But where does Eilis belong? In Ireland with her family or in her new found home, Brooklyn? Read more... (876 words, 7 images, estimated 3:30 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews contemporary fiction Fiction Immigrants Ireland USA
May
12
(3/5)
Chick Lit / Light Reading / Fiction
First published in 2009
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Click here to buy Nanny Returns by Nicola Kraus & Emma Mclaughlin (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
Nan from the Nanny Diaries is back in New York twelve years after the ill-fated nanny-cam night, the night Nan was fired. She is now married to HH (Harvard Hottie) who how has a name, Ryan. Nan is finally settling down and renovating her new (falling apart) home, and is trying to get her consulting business up and running. But is surprised at Ryan’s sudden desire start a family. What startles her the most is her resistance to the idea.
Then, Nan gets a drunken visit in the middle of the night from Grayer X, now 16 years old. He has found the nanny-cam tape…
Read more... (676 words, 9 images, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Light Reading Chick Lit contemporary fiction Fiction Humour Satire USA
Feb
07
by Jonathan Safran Foer
(4/5)
Adult Fiction
First Published in 2006
Publisher: Mariner Books
New York Times Bestseller
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
Oskar Schell is nine years old, and had begun a vital and secret mission that will lead him through New York’s five boroughs. Oskar has found a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died on September 11th in the World Trade Centre. In his search for the lock that fits his key somewhere in New York, a task that seems like looking for a needle in a haystack, Oskar meets survivors of all kinds. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a moving, funny and healing journey.
My Book Review:
I had heard wonderful things about Extremely Loud and Incredible Close. Friends of mine had said it was one of their top 10 books of the year, so I was really looking forward to reading it. Read more... (397 words, 7 images, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews contemporary fiction Fiction Immigrants New York USA War surviviors
Jan
07
by Joan Didion
(4/5)
Non-Fiction / Autobiography / Memoir
First Published in 2005
Publisher: Knopf
Winner of The National Book Award 2005
and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and The Pulitzer Prize (Biography/Autobiography)
Click here to buy this book (with free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
In a second, Joan Didion’s life was thrown into turmoil when her husband John Gregory Dunne unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack in 2003. Not only was her husband of 40 years gone, but two days before his death, their daughter Quintana had been hospitalized after falling seriously ill. Life as Joan knew it had ended.
Joan’s grief leads her to a state of ‘magical thinking’, and Joan lucidly writes of her experience of that time in her life. A time when although she knew intellectually that John was dead, she found herself keeping John’s shoes for him. For when he returned. Read more... (631 words, 7 images, estimated 2:31 mins reading time)
Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Biography Death Grief memoir Non-Fiction USA
Dec
30
by Elisabeth Robinson
(5/5) 
Fiction
First Published in 2004
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
International Bestseller
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
This novel is told in the form of letters from Olivia Hunt to her sister with cancer, Michael her ex-boyfriend, her parents and her best friend. Along the way we find out about the progress or non-progress of Olivia’s feature film that she’s trying to get off the ground in Hollywood.
Through Olivia’s letters we track the progress of her year, and are privy to her thoughts, the varied way she communicates with people, her highs and lows and also just the plain usual things that happens day to day that find themselves into her letters. Simply yet powerfully told, this novel simultaneously funny and sad, tragic and heart warming. Read more... (435 words, 7 images, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Gifts, My Favourite Books contemporary fiction Fiction Gift USA
Dec
23
by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
(2/5)
Fiction / Chick Lit / Light Reading
First Published in 2007
Publisher: Atria Books
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
How would you get your revenge if your ex-boyfriend vanished on the night before your prom, then reappeared with a song detailing your first sexual experience (which by the way topped the Billboard charts), then proceeded to write chart-topping personal songs about you for the rest of his career?
Kate finally has the opportunity to confront Jake. But how is she going to confront the man who has messed up her life? The man who constantly chased by millions of adoring fans? She has a plan. But things don’t always go according to plan, do they?
Read more... (804 words, 8 images, estimated 3:13 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Light Reading Chick Lit contemporary fiction Light Reading Revenge USA
Dec
20
by Jeanette Walls
(5/5)
Memoir/Autobiography
First Published in 2005
Publisher: Scribner International
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
The Glass Castle is an extraordinary memoir of a dysfunctional yet effervescent American family. Jeanette’s father is an intelligent, compelling figure, who educates his children on geology, physics and joie de vivre. However, more often than not, he was a drunk who was caustic and dishonest.
Jeanette’s mother was a free spirit who loved painting but hated conformity and the domestic life of raising children.
And so, Jeanette and her siblings grew up taking care of themselves. Jeanette became a successful writer in New York, a place where her parents eventually moved, choosing out of their own free will to live homeless.
In The Glass Castle, the behavior of Rex and Rose Mary Walls is shocking and unacceptable, yet at the same time, it is abundantly clear that they possess deep love and loyalty for their children. It is this contradiction that makes this memoir so gripping. Read more... (722 words, 7 images, estimated 2:53 mins reading time)
Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Gifts, My Favourite Books, Non-Fiction Biography Family Gift memoir Non-Fiction USA
Dec
17
by Mohsin Hamid
(4/5)
Fiction
First Published in 2007
Publisher: Penguin Books
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007
International Bestseller
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
Seated at a cafe in Lahore, a mysterious stranger tells you his story. He invited you to join him, and though the evening, you come to know what led the stranger to approach you. Well educated, well traveled, he seems to know more about the ways of the West than you do. He embraced the Western ideal and a western woman, and was let down by both. However, you soon find out the real reason for this meeting…
My Book Review
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an extremely readable novel. It is also surprisingly gentle. The political and religious seem to take a backseat to the life story of the Pakistani protagonist, Changez. This book is really one long monologue with the reader only getting to see one side of a conversation, dominated by Changez, with an American, whom we suspect to be a very reluctant listener.
Read more... (410 words, 7 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews 9/11 contemporary fiction Fiction Pakistan USA
Nov
29
by Stephenie Meyer
(4/5)
Fiction
First Published from 2005-2008
Publisher: Little Brown and company
Set in: Forks, Washington, USA. Present day.
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book cover Synopsis:
When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret.
What Bella doesn’t realize is the closer she gets to him, the more she is putting herself and those around her at risk. And, it might be too late to turn back. . . .
Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight will have readers riveted right until the very last page is turned. Read more... (405 words, 7 images, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Teenage Fiction books for teens contemporary fiction Fiction Love Story Teenage Thriller USA Vampire
Nov
29
by Harper Lee
(4/5)
Fiction
First Published in 1960
Publisher: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Set in: Maycomb, Alabama, USA. 1930s
Won the Pulitzer Prize 1961
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book synopsis:
”Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this enchanting classic – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.
Thorough the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.
The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice.
But the weight of history will only tolerate so much…
Read more... (737 words, 7 images, estimated 2:57 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews 1930s Classic Novel Fiction Morality Racism USA
Nov
28
I – My Father Bleeds History
II – And Here My Trouble Begin
by Art Spiegelman
(5/5)
Fiction, Graphic Novel
Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize
First Published in 1980-1991 in RAW magazine
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Set: Nazi Poland and modern day New York, USA
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book Synopsis:
“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” – Adolf Hitler
Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and history itself. It’s form, the cartoon (Nazi’s are cats, the Jews are mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of our any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. It is, as the New York Times Book Review has commented, “a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness…an unfolding literary event.” Read more... (637 words, 7 images, estimated 2:33 mins reading time)
Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Gifts, Graphic Novel, Non-Fiction Adult Picture Book Biography books for teens Gift Graphic Novel Holocaust Non-Fiction Poland Teenage USA
Nov
28
by Christina Schwarz
(5/5)
Fiction
First Published in 2000
Publisher: Doubleday Publishing
Set in: Wisconsin, USA.
Part of Oprah’s Book Club
International Bestseller
Click to buy this book (free delivery)
Book cover Synopsis:
At the close of World War One, Amanda Starkey leaves the city and travels to her family farm in rural Wisconsin to recover from a traumatic love affair. Instead, she is caught up in a tragedy that will take her beloved sister’s life, and leave Amanda to raise her niece Ruth. What happened the terrible night when Mattie died? Why does Ruth say she can remember drowning? For years the consequences of the tragedy reverberate; the truth, when it is revealed, is both dramatic and extraordinarily moving. Read more... (412 words, 7 images, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
Posted in Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, My Favourite Books Fiction USA
