Sebastiano Toma Toma থেকে Sormany, NB E8K 3A5, Kanada
This is this year's Newbery Award winner. I stayed up late last night to finish reading it and I LOVED it! I love the way the story goes back and forth between the main character Abilene's time, which is in the Great Depression (1930's) and her father's time when he was a boy (during WWI.) The story alternates between Abilene telling her story, Miss Sadie "the diviner" (fortune-teller) talking about the past when Abilene's dad lived in the small town of Manifest, letters from the past, and newspaper clippings from both time periods. If you liked "Turtle in Paradise" or "Esperanza Rising" you will love this book.
Dear Saul, I'm afraid it's over. I can no longer have you on my favorite authors list. (No, no let go of F. Scott's sleeve. You're only making this harder than it needs to be.) I want to tell you how much I loved Henderson the Rain King. One of my favorites. It was so full of wit and energy. Then I had to go and read this piece of crap, Herzog. Whereas Henderson was an adventure, this was just a big long bitch session. (Hey, give Borges back his cane.) Yes, fine maybe it's me. In fact I'm sure it is. Just like songs with melodies I can easily whistle, I need books with plots where things happen. I'm just not smart enough to be satisfied with the philosophy laden interior monologues that comprise most of this book (416 pages, for chrissakes!) I mean I can't make heads or tails of this passage: Whereas a man like me has shown the arbitrary withdrawal of proud subjectivity from the collective and historical progress of mankind. And that is true of lower-class boys and girls who adopt the aesthetic mode, the mode of rich sensibility. Seeking to sustain their own version of existen... And it just goes on like that. Sorry I couldn't bring myself to type the rest of that paragraph. So it's me. I'm obviously not wise enough for this book. But still you gotta go. (And don't steal Nabokov's pen on the way out. Could someone send Dostoyevsky in here, please?)
Easily my favorite novel, and it never even made it to paperback..