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The River Why
David James Duncan

A very kind viewer of mine sent this book to me and I LOVED it. It was not only worth reading but worth telling all your book loving friends about. It has been a long time since I laughed aloud not once, but many times while reading a story. The main character Gus Orviston's journey through life, in a fishing obsessed family, is so unusual yet compelling that you just do not want to put the book down.. you must keep reading!

Even if you are not into fishing, you'll enjoy this compelling story of a young man's self discovery.

 
Feel This Book
Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo

While Stiller and Garofalo are funny in acting/stand up, their attempt to "play off each other" and amuse the reading audience just doesnt come off as a hoot in print. Something is missing.. it was a good attempt I suppose, but it was just not all that grand of a read to me. Sorry guys, love your work but maybe stick with your original schtick. :)

 

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

Is this one of King's better works as many reviewers have suggested? That depends on the type of King you are looking for. The story took a couple turns that I wasn't expecting and kept me thoroughly entertained. The end gets rather "Kingish" (a long time King reader will understand this) but isn't as out there as it could have been. I do recommend this book though don't expect it to keep you looking over your shoulder as much as some of his other works have done. - Mr.A

Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy

When you are in the mood for a detailed spy/thriller novel, a Clancy book is the obvious choice. With Rainbow Six he doesn't disappoint as we are treated with lots of action and a wonderfully intricate story line with John Clark as the central character. - Mr.A

Love and Glory by Robert B. Parker

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil : A Savannah Story by John Berendt

Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland

While Coupland's Generation X got most of the attention, Shampoo Planet quietly garnered a cult following as the true voice of a generation. Are you in your mind-to-late 20's or early 30's? If so, then there is little doubt that the materialism, even while shunning society, that Coupland's characters display will hit very close to home. There are few works in the media that become markers for a generation. Shampoo Planet falls in the same category as Fast Times at Ridgemont High as a work that most everyone in the age group it depicts can see themselves in. for better or for worse. - Anonymous

The Fermata by Nicholson Baker

This book should appeal to all of the voyeurs out there.. and considering you're watching August on the remote window right now, I'm talking to you! ;)

The story revolves around Arno Strine, who has the unique ability to stop the world around him. Once done Arno proceeds to undress some of those around them, just to look. He also enjoys giving women sex toys so that when he allows time to continue he can watch what they do with them. A fairly quick, enjoyable and somewhat arousing read. - John Seph

Vox : A Novel by Nicholson Baker

The trouble with erotic literature is that after a very short time it gets numbingly repetitious and frankly boring. There seem to be only so many ways to describe the caresses, sighs, thrusts, and parries of carnality. The plain truth is that most writing about sex simply isn't very sexy.

Nicholson Baker's infamous Vox is the exception. Written as the transcript of a single telephone conversation conducted over a 900-service chat line, Vox allows us to eavesdrop as two lonely strangers find meaning--and significant sexual satisfaction--by sharing their innermost thoughts and fantasies.

On one level, the book is an insightful exploration of aloneness and togetherness, of technology and community, of the challenge of ever knowing another. On another level, with equal effectiveness, it is a triumphantly erotic book, guaranteed to get your juices flowing.

Baker is known as a master of the closely observed, lovingly described detail. What brings Vox to life is its dead-perfect ear for language, the believability of the characters, and the combustible heat of their conversation. It's a winner. - J.D. Hildebrand

Death Is Now My Neighbor : An Inspector Morse Novel by Colin Dexter

Viewer request, possible future review.

The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

This brilliant story and soon to be released movie (opening December 1997) is an emotionally moving work of art. Author Nicholas Evans brings us into the world of a family and a mystical man known as a Whisperer who has the ability to communicate with horses.

"A forty-ton truck hurles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins-to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to... The Horse Whisperer."

This book will grab your imagination and won't let go until the last page. Highly recommended nighttime reading. - August

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Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Viewer Request

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The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

Viewer Request

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

Reality, fiction, truth, metaphor, and illusion engage in a graceful dance in this lyrical novel. The main character-a novelist named Richard Powers-loses a love and returns to the university town where he first discovered himself. There, he is enlisted in an experiment: Can he train the university's artificial intelligence system to pass the university's infamous freshman test of basic literacy? As the story unfolds, Powers learns about neural networks and the frustrating complexity of language. He finds a new love, or maybe two...but maybe they are no more real than the computer system that astonishes him as it learns about the world. This remarkable, richly layered book is full of ideas to set your mind racing and unexpected moments of poignancy to touch your heart, gently but indelibly. If you don't cry twice, you aren't human. - J.D. Hildebrand

Excerpt:

    A's interpretation was a more or less brilliant New Historicist reading. She rendered The Tempest as a take on colonial wars, constructed Otherness, the violent reduction society works on itself. She dismissed, definitively, any promise of transcendence. She scored at least one massively palpable hit. She conceded how these words are spoken by a monster who isn't supposed to say anything that beautiful, let alone say at all.

    The computer's said:

    "You are the ones who can hear airs. Who can be frightened or encouraged. You can hold things and break them and fix them. I never felt at home here. This is an awful place to be dropped down halfway."

    At the bottom of the page, she added the words I taught her, words she cribbed from a letter she once made me read out loud.

    "Take care, Richard. See everything for me."

    With that, she undid herself. Shut herself down.

    "Graceful degradation," Lentz named it. The quality of cognition we'd shot for from the start.

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged is the capstone on the career of America's most controversial philosopher-novelist. The story--a rambling and improbable potboiler about what would happen if the nation's industrialists simply walked off the job--is intended primarily as an explanation of Rand's philosophy, a derivative of existentialism she called Objectivism.

Many readers of Atlas Shrugged say that the book changed their lives. Rand's arguments and examples are compelling, and although mainstream philosophers tend to dismiss Objectivism, the philosophy is coherent, logical, and effective in practice. Most readers find that Atlas Shrugged gives them a powerful new perspective on life, helps them see things in new ways. The book has done lots of good for lots of people. For more than a generation, the book has been a constant presence on college campuses, where it finds itself imprinting a new generation of sophomores every year.

Most people tend to outgrow Objectivism. They come to believe that Rand's philosophy does not include sufficient room for compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. Rand spent many years countering these charges, but Objectivism seems to burn out, for most people, along with other college-years passions. It's hard to keep those intense fires burning, I guess.

Some percentage of Atlas Shrugged readers do manage to keep the passion alive. Politically, they are active in the Libertarian Party. They judge the moral value of people, events, and ideas according to a simple scale: Do these things affirm and enhance life, or detract from life?

Basic cultural literacy requires that you read Atlas Shrugged. Its ideas will energize and enlighten you, and you may find that you are one of those whose lives are forever altered. - J.D. Hildebrand

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The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

Set in the rural state of Madison County, Iowa, Francesca Johnson 45, meets photographer Robert Kincaid 52 by chance on a hazy afternoon as he is searching for directions to photograph the areas bridges for National Geographic Magazine. A spark of light is felt between them and as a result both of their realities change. A story of true passion and a deep look into the very souls of two people who will be forever changed by their experience.

The author has a gifted insight into a woman's psyche and is a true visionary. Remarkably, he understands what few men know or care to know about a woman's deepest passion and innermost desires. Men can learn from this story the moving force that drives and allows a female to go beyond the every day and into the realm of true love and living. The Bridges of Madison County should be required reading for every person alive. - August

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