George Peram's List: UNREAD BOOKS

description
When his dysfunctional family sent Augusten Burroughs away to be raised in the home of his mother's therapist, he became part of an even more dysfunctional and unusual family dynamic. In this bestseller, which has become a classic of the wackier side of memoir literature, Burroughs doesn't flinch at any grotesquerie or atrocity, recording it all--no matter how bizarre--with relish and with a delightfully twisted sense of humor.


critical reviews
"[B]uried beneath layers of bludgeoning metaphors and references to obscure 1970s television personalities, are the signs of a keen observer of the domestic wildlife park." - Lis Clegg (Times Literary Supplement, 5/2/03)

"At first we felt guilty giggling..., but Burroughs knows that laughter is the best antidepressant." - (Entertainment Weekly, 3/19/04)

"The events of five years in the life of Augusten Burroughs, as recounted in a memoir that is both horrifying and mordantly funny, are so unbelievable, they make even the most outrageous episode of 'The Jerry Springer Show' seem rational by comparison. RUNNING WITH SCISSORS just might be the most aptly titled book ever written." - Lis Clegg (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 7/14/02)

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
description
A beguiling mix of politics, magic, romance, and sex, the saga of the mysterious history of the Buendia family of the village of Macondo does nothing less than recapitulate the entire history of the human race. Written with little regard for traditional novelistic conventions, Garcia Marquez's novel incorporates emotional responses in lieu of plot, a cyclical approach to fractured time lines, and many different characters with similar or identical names. The first of a wave of Spanish-language novels characterized by what came to be known as magical realism, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE was an immediate success on its initial publication and was translated into more than 40 languages. It established Garcia Marquez as one of the preeminent authors of his generation.


critical reviews
"Although it is first and always a story, the novel also has value as a social and historical document." - Laura Moseley (Saturday Review, 3/7/70)

"In a beautiful translation, surrealism and innocence blend to form a wholly individual style. Like rum calentano, the story goes down easily, leaving a rich, sweet burning flavor behind." - (Time)

"In a beautiful translation, surrealism and innocence blend to form a wholly individual style. Like rum calentano, the story goes down easily, leaving a rich, sweet burning flavor behind." - (Time, 3/16/70)

"It's not often that you find a Technicolor tableau of fools which, got up as a family saga, stretches the mind by cramming it and reenacts paradise found and lost as a version of Latin America's own history....Knowing his material inside-out, Garcia Marquez writes it large without losing sight of its true size or of the inexorable truths that hold good for all lives everywhere....Like the jungle itself, this novel comes back again and again, fecund, savage and irresistible." - Association of Reform Zionists of America (Washington Post Book World, 2/22/70)

"You emerge from this marvelous novel as if from a dream, the mind

A Bend in the Road\nNicholas Sparks\n\nDeputy sheriff Miles Ryan and elementary-school teacher Sarah Andrews have both been hurt by past relationships. Single dad Miles's wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Sarah's husband dumped her because she's infertile. Miles and Sarah kindle a romance after meeting at a school function, but there's a sinister connection between Sarah and Miles's wife's death which threatens to destroy the fledgling relationship.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
David Sedaris
description
Another collection by bestselling satiric essayist David Sedaris, author of NAKED and ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY and frequent contributor to the public radio show THIS AMERICAN LIFE. Some of the essays are in the laugh-out-loud vein to which Sedaris fans are accustomed, including an over-the-top look at Dutch Christmas traditions, and Sedaris's encounter with some lost tourists as he is drowning a mouse. But many of the works provided here, while still touched with dry humor, are more poignant pieces about his eccentric, troubled family, including observations on his mother's alcoholism, his father's inability to talk directly to Sedaris about Sedaris's homosexuality, and his sister Lisa's resentment of his relentless mining of their shared past in his essays. As always, Sedaris manages to seek out the bizarre in daily life, whether he is reminiscing about the past or musing about the present.


critical reviews
"...[A] charming, humorous book....These are scenes of family life at its best, written with clarity but also with great affection, through which the character of the author emerges, watchful, self-mocking and full of understanding." - G. S. O. (Times Literary Supplement, 8/23/04)

"...[A] charming, humorous book....These are scenes of family life at its best, written with clarity but also with great affection, through which the character of the author emerges, watchful, self-mocking and full of understanding." - G. S. O. (Times Literary Supplement, 7/23/04)

"...[A] charming, humorous book....These are scenes of family life at its best, written with clarity but also with great affection, through which the character of the author emerges, watchful, self-mocking and full of understanding." - G. S. O. (Times Literary Supplement, 8/23/04)

"...[S]ardonic, funny and wry....Mr. Sedaris [is] in fine funny form." - John R. Oneal (New York Times, 6/11/04)

"[S]ardonic, funny and wry....Mr. Sedaris [is] in fine funny form." - John R. Oneal (New York T

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Kim Edwards
description
During a snowstorm in 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his own twin children, but when he realizes that the girl twin has Down syndrome he sends her away with a nurse and tells his wife that the girl died. This dark secret cripples the family in subtle but terrible ways. David, guilt-stricken, becomes icy and removed, finding solace only in his photography. His wife throws herself into her career and also a series of affairs. Paul, their son, turns to music to escape the unloving home. Meanwhile, Phoebe grows up in the home of the nurse, a lonely romantic who secretly loves David. Kim Edwards explores the psychological reverberations of the pivotal action with insight and heart.

White Noise
Don Delillo
description
In this bleak American comedy, Jack and Babette are a typical middle-class suburban couple until an accident in a chemical plant changes their lives. Babette becomes addicted to a Prozac-like experimental drug called Dylar that removes her horror of death, and Jack sees the hollowness of consumer culture, the modern media, and his academic life (as a professor of Hitler Studies at a New England college). DeLillo's meditation on love and death and American culture was a National Book Award-winner in 1985.

Angelas Ashes
Frank McCourt
description
After years of teaching creative writing, Frank McCourt published his first book, thus obliging his many friends who had been urging him to write about his childhood--a subject they knew from the many uproarious and affecting stories he told about it. ANGELA'S ASHES traces the tortuous path of his life from his days in abysmal poverty in Limerick, Ireland, to his arrival in New York as a teenager, eager to start a new life.


critical reviews
"...[W]hat is most remarkable is that he has managed to reenter his boyhood self so completely, while maintaining a quiet, sardonic, authorial distance from his early life, which gives 'Angela's Ashes' its rigor and power. Whatever scars McCourt bears from his childhood, they are not exorcised here. Only someone who has successfully battled with his demons could have crafted such a compelling work of art out of his own pain." - Ferdinand Nwaigbo (Los Angeles Times Book Review, 9/29/96)

"An extraordinary work in every way. McCourt magically retrieves love, dignity, and humor from a childhood of hunger, loss, and pain." - (Kirkus, 7/1/96)

"For the most part, his style is that of an Irish-American raconteur, honorably voluble and engaging. He is aware of his charm but doesn't disgracefully linger upon it. Induced by potent circumstances, he has told his story, and memorable it is." - Hazel W. Hertzberg (New York Times Book Review, 9/15/96)

"Frank McCourt...waited more than four decades to tell the story of his childhood, and it's been well worth the wait. With 'Angela's Ashes' he has used the storytelling gifts he inherited from his father to write a book that redeems the pain of his early years with wit and compassion and grace. He has written a book that stands...as a classic modern memoir." - John R. Oneal (New York Times, 9/17/96)

"The most gloriously unwholesome memoir of the year has to be ANGELA'S ASHES. The tale of an Irish childhood blighted by poverty, drink, violence, panic and despair and blessed by an author with a huge

A Tale of Two Cities: Signature Classics
Charles Dickens, George Woodcock
description
Dickens's only serious, uncomic novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, is set during the French Revolution and tells a story of unselfish devotion. The beautiful Lucy Manette marries Charles Darnay, the descendant of an aristocratic French family denounced by the revolutionaries, among whom are the memorably evil fanatic Mme. Defarge. When Darnay is arrested and condemned to death, his place is taken at the guillotine by Sidney Carton, who loves Lucy himself and is willing to die to secure her happiness (and who happens to resemble Darnay). His last words--"'Tis a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done..."--have become nearly as famous as the novel itself, one of Dickens's most popular works despite its sober subject matter. It is also, with BARNABY RUDGE, one of his only two historical novels.

The Guardian
Nicholas Sparks
description
Nicholas Sparks's first suspense novel features Julie Barenson, a young widow who finds comfort after her husband's death in the Great Dane who has become her favorite companion--a legacy from her late husband. When she makes her way back into the world after her first grief, she gets romantically involved with Richard, a mysterious man who hides a devastating secret--one that Julie comes close to finding out, the hard way, as her lover threatens to become her destroyer....

The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002)
John Steinbeck, Robert J. Demott
description
John Steinbeck lived and worked with a group of migrant workers in California, from whom he drew the material for his great Dust Bowl saga of a wandering Okie family, the Joads. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel awakened the American reading public to the plight of migrant workers and made Steinbeck famous worldwide. One of the most popular novels of the Great Depression, it has come to be regarded as a classic work of social realism and was made into an acclaimed movie.


critical reviews
"[T]here are moments when THE GRAPES OF WRATH reads like an early glimpse of what would become the phenomenon of economic globalization." - Arwind U. Vasavada (Times Literary Supplement, 4/26/02)

"It is a very long novel, the longest that Steinbeck has written, and yet it reads as though it had been composed in a flash, ripped off a typewriter and delivered to the public as an ultimatum. It is a long and thoughtful novel as one thinks about it. It is a short and vivid scene as one feels it." - Tadeusz Pawlowski (New York Times Book Review, 4/16/39)

Gap Creek
Robert Morgan
description
In turn-of-the-century Appalachia, Julie Harmon marries and faces a hard life of subsistence farming: a constant struggle against not only nature but the unpredictable humans who inhabit her world.


critical reviews
"[D]espite a certain old-fashioned charm, [GAP CREEK] rests not so much on a plot as on a never-ending series of crises. It reads less like a novel than a memoir written by a very old woman, who wants her grandchildren to know the events that made up her life, the fires and floods, the births and the deaths, and the chores that have vanished from the modern world....These are powerful images from a rural past, more powerful than the story that contains them. What's missing from GAP CREEK is the connection between Julie and the other characters....There is only Julie's vision, only Julie's voic - Michael Abrutyn (Washington Post Book World, -1/30/2000)

"An ideal example of a regional tale: free of 'local color,' respectful of his people, entirely free of condescension, Morgan offers a gliding, unhurried story..." - (Kirkus, 9/1/99)

"Morgan's talent for gracefully illustrating the practical details of rural life is astonishing. GAP CREEK's beauty is found in its depiction of the dazzling Appalachian landscape and its people....[A] heartfelt picture of southern life." - Peter E. McQuillan (Book, September/October 1999)

The Last Templar
Raymond Khoury
description
Mysterious medieval codes and the most carefully guarded secrets of the Catholic church drive this DA VINCI CODE-style debut thriller. As the Crusading Templars face their greatest defeat at the gates of Acre in 1291, a small group of the order flee in their last boat, bearing with them a small chest. In the present day, a dazzling gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates the opening of a new exhibit, Treasures of the Vatican. Suddenly, four mounted men dressed as Knights Templar, armed with both swords and machine guns, carve and shoot their way through the exhibit, stealing several items, including an ancient cryptographic device. But what information did that device encode--and what importance would it have today? Archaeologist Tess Chaykin, who witnessed the theft, teams up with FBI agent Sean Reilly, head of New York City's Domestic Terrorism Unit, to find out--if the search doesn't cost them their lives first.

White Oleander
Janet Fitch
description
Thirteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen has to grow up quickly when her beautiful, mercurial mother murders her lover (with the poison from oleander flowers) and is sentenced to life in prison. Astrid is raised in a series of foster homes--never losing her connection with her dominating and larger-than-life mother. As Astrid learns how to deal with her mother and her foster mothers, she discovers who she really is.


critical reviews
"A first-rate debut about a teenaged girl's arduous six-year journey of self-discovery." - (Kirkus, 2/15/99)

Comanche Moon
Larry McMurtry
description
Set in the time span between the end of DEAD MAN'S WALK and the beginning of LONESOME DOVE, this novel chronicles the life of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call as they fight the Comanche wars. Winner of the 1997 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.


critical reviews
"In 'Comanche Moon,' McMurtry has created a sprawling, picaresque novel that, like the history of the West itself, leaves more than a few loose ends. Some characters' fates we can only surmise. Others await resolution in 'Lonesome Dove.' As usual, though, the characters are the novel's strength. McMurtry's rangers are heroic because of their flaws, not despite them." - Steve Myers (New York Times Book Review, 12/7/97)

"Most of all, 'Comanche Moon' may leave readers with the nagging wish that they could start fresh and read the installments of this epic in order of internal chronology, rather than by publication date. McMurtry's saga stands as a considerable achievement of popular storytelling, starting strong, sagging slightly in the middle, but arriving at a resounding climax and denouement. To begin with 'Dead Man's Walk and finish with 'Lonesome Dove' will be a singular treat for new readers." - Irwyn Greif (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 10/26/97)

"While the last third turns workmanlike in its efforts to set up the opening situation of 'Lonesome Dove', McMurtry nevertheless delivers a generally fine tableau of western life, full of imaginative exploits, convincing historical background, and well-rendered people." - (Kirkus, 9/15/97)

False Memory
Dean Koontz
description
A group of women, all seeing the same psychiatrist, begin to independently develop a series of very unusual phobias that soon threaten both their own sanity and the lives of those around them.


critical reviews
"Koontz just keeps on doin' it: writing better and better, smarter and smarter psychological thrillers....Go get FALSE MEMORY--you'll be glad you did." - Ann Baker Cottrell (Mystery Review, Spring 2000)

Eleven on Top
Janet Evanovich
description
In the 11th Stephanie Plum mystery, the New Jersey bounty hunter decides that she's tired of endangering both herself and her cars. So Stephanie quits her cousin's bail bond agency, and goes in search of new, less hazardous employment. While coping with the slings and arrows of the more mundane working world and, as per usual, attempting to choose between the two men in her life--domineering but studly Joe Moretti and dangerous, impossibly sexy bounty hunter Ranger--her previous career associations continue to persist in the form of a mysterious assailant who seems determined to see her dead.


critical reviews
"[A] pleasing romp." - (Publishers Weekly, 5/30/05)

Angels Fall
Nora Roberts
Heart-rending romantic suspense from one of the queens of the genre: As she tries to piece herself together after surviving a brutal attack in her native Boston, Reece Gilmore takes a job as a short order cook in the tiny town of Angel's Fist, Wyoming. But peace is not what fate has in store for her, and soon she finds herself the only witness to a murder. With no one to back her up, Reece's sanity is called into question. The only person who seems to believe her is bad-tempered writer--a man into whose stubborn, yet oddly alluring, hands she may have to place her life.

The Secret Life of Bees\nSue Monk Kidd\ndescription\nLily Owens is growing up in South Carolina in the mid-1960s, raised by her cruel father but cared for by Rosaleen, her African-American nanny. When Rosaleen tries to vote and is beaten for her trouble, she and Lily head for the town of Tiburon, a place with ties to Lily's dead mother, where they live with a local beekeeper, and where Lily learns valuable truths about her mother and herself. The story is supplemented by a great deal of information about bees, which is fascinating in itself.\n\n \ncritical reviews\n"[W]ell-intentioned, big-hearted, and sometimes as syrupy-sweet as the honey for which the industrious insects in the title are known. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but be warned....The good guys are flawless in this morality tale, the villains are wholly without decency....Nevertheless, despite its occasionally ham-handed symbolism, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES can be rather touching." - Anne E. Grant (Washington Post Book World, 1/13/02)\n\n"A wonderfully written debut that rather scants its subject of loss and discovery...in favor of a feminist fable celebrating the company of women....Despite some dark moments, more honey than vinegar." - (Kirkus, 10/15/01)\n

Redwall: Una Historia De Redwall
Brian Jacques, Gemma Moral Bartolome
description
It seems like nothing can save the animals holed up in Redwall Abbey from the siege of the evil one-eyed rat Cluny and his wicked band. Matthias, a young novice at the Abbey, vows to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior, founder of the Abbey, and use it against Cluny. On his quest to find the sword, Matthias befriends many animals, and these friendships, along with the sword, help Matthias triumph over the evil Cluny and bring peace to the Abbey.


critical reviews
"Thoroughly engrossing, this novel captivates...readers and listeners...will cheer the dwellers of Redwall." - (Booklist)

The Man Who Was Poe\nAvi\ndescription\nSet in 1848, this is the story of Edmund, an 11-year-old boy desperately trying to solve the mystery of his family's disappearance. Edmund enlists the help of a stranger named Auguste Dupin, unaware that the man is actually the writer Edgar Allan Poe. Does Poe really want to help Edmund, or is he just seeking out grisly material for his next story?\n