In "Confederacy of Dunces" the reader is given a satirical glimpse of the seedy side of New Orleans. But more importantly, they are also introduced to Ignatius J. Reilly, a character that is probably one of the funniest and certainly one of the most memorable that I have come across in awhile.

He is a 32 year old man who lives with his mother, taking complete advantage of her motherly love. He is obese, deluded, arrogant, selfish and insults every person he converses with... with the exception of a senile, bitter old woman whom he regards as some kind of goddess. He is also tormented by an extremely sensitive "valve" located somewhere in his intestinal tract that makes him extremely sensitive to "stress" of any kind.

In this book, Ignatius is forced to venture out into the working world and a series of events unfold into an utterly amusing narrative, which is accented with Ignatius' writings as he chronicles his adventures as a "working boy". Ignatius is one of the most unlikable main characters you can imagine, yet one becomes curiously fond of him throughout the course of the book. Taken at face value it is a somewhat sad story, but it is told with a such comedic flair that one hardly notices.

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SHOU is a search for self. The question of cultural identity is at the core of this beautiful story about Lili Quan, a strong willed young woman who struggles with who she really is - American or Chinese. When Lili Quan's mother, Su-Wei, is about to die, she asks her daughter to promise to visit China since she knows that Lili (who Su-Wei insists on calling Li Li) will never appreciate her Chinese heritage until she sees the country and the people for herself. Reluctantly, Lili does go to China, only to be swept up in an international conspiracy to find the secret of longevity. The Shlians have managed, in this book, to layer several stories on top of one another and to do it quite well. There is the story of Lili finding her grandfather;; Lili's love relationship with Chinese born Chi-Wen, a contemporary in age, but not in experience; the quest for SHOU; and finally, the struggle within China for power which ends in the Tiananmen massacre. I felt all of these stories were fascinating and wonderful to read. But, the essential question of ultimately who we are as individuals was, for me, the most significant story within the story. I highly recommend this one!

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I read this book several months ago, and have been wanting to review it ever since. I've enjoyed several of Ruth Rendell's (aka Barbara Vine) books, because I always like a good mystery, but I don't like reading books that follow a "formula", and hers NEVER do! In "Anna's Book" you are slowly drawn into the past as Anna's granddaughter, Ann Eastbrook begins to piece together information from Anna's diary, written at the turn of the century shortly after her immigration to America. Ann also has access to transcripts involving a grisly murder and a missing child, and she realizes that her grandmother has made some very subtle references in her diary to the people involved. When the pages of some crucial dates are discovered to be missing from the diary, Ann is compelled to discover the truth. Interwoven through the story is also the story of Swanny, and her quest to discover her true identity. Is it possible that she was the missing child? You will find yourself wondering this throughout the book, by the end you feel like you just HAVE to know!
...I read this book all in one night just to find out!

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The long-stagnated genre of Fantasy is about to receive a fresh breath of renewal in the form of newcomer Kevin Scott Munnings's Fantasy novel "Blood of the Ancients."

I've managed to obtain a prepublication copy of this wonderful book (at the author's website www.tapestryofblood.com) and found, much to my delight, that I could not put it down. The story is fast-paced yet masterly crafted and showcases solid, life-like characters the likes of which I haven't "adventured" with since J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings.

The story centers around a young man named Kiernan who possesses two ancient bloods--one good, and one evil. Kiernan is following a psychic urge to flee his longtime home and to rendezvous with a mysterious shaman who appears to know all about Kiernan's destiny--a destiny upon which, as the back cover states, "the fate of the entire world, and all that he holds dear, is hinged."

I cannot express enough my delight and satisfaction at having read such a superb and well-crafted book. Mr. Munnings's future as one of the "Masters" of the Fantasy genre is all but ensured. I recommend it to all lovers of Fantasy and Adventure everywhere.

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This first novel examines the fabric that holds a family together, as well insulates the family members from each other. The center of Naumann family is Saul, the vibrant father who is the guitar-strumming cantor at the local synagogue. He runs the household, in both literal and figurative senses. His lawyer wife Miriam is rarely around, and thus Saul takes care of the chores, which he enjoys, and provides strong encouragement to his children, who live to please him.

Aaron, the older child, is the apple of his father's eye. He learned the Jewish prayers as a small child; by the time of his bar mitzvah (his crowning glory) he could lead the entire service. He and Saul enjoy a special relationship, and spend every evening practicing guitar.

When fifth-grader Eliza wins the spelling bee at school, everyone is surprised (particularly Eliza). She had missed the cut for gifted and talented status in the second grade, and spent her afternoons watching TV reruns and after-school specials. When Saul begins to appreciate Eliza's enormous gift, he realizes she may have the tools to reach his lifelong dream.

Saul's new interest in Eliza comes at the expense of Aaron, who seeks other ways to be appreciated and to belong. Miriam's obsessive tendencies become increasingly reflected in the behavior of her children.

This novel is very skillfully rendered with an omniscient viewpoint that allows the reader insight into all characters, even within the space of a single paragraph. This is particularly important for the Naumann family, where many important things remain unsaid.

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I read this immediately after taking a Microbiology course, and found enough detail to challenge and inspire, but don't worry. Even those who don't know a bacterium from a virus will discover plenty of understandable, human stories. Digging in on an airplane, I was compelled to read chunks of it to my next-seat-neighbor. Soon she (an accountant) was wide-eyed and enthralled.

This is a scary story. It starts with a basic history of our battle against biological pathogens. Then she starts pointing out how we are digging our own grave. By disturbing remote sites and traveling at breakneck speed around the globe, we introduce new bugs to victims with no resistance. Our exploding population growth and overcrowding create ideal circumstances for these tiny monsters to flourish.

Ebola, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and a number of other pathogens are covered. Also analyzed, in detail worthy of a political science student, are the varying reactions (and lack of action) by the world powers. I believe this book should be required reading for anyone studying medicine, politics, urban planning, history, world travel, or life in general.

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I just completed reading The Hours, by Michael Cunningham and thought that it was excellent. Lots of juicy objects and symbolism were used to tie the characters together, very much the way Virginia Wolff (who is one of the characters) employed form and function in her novels. Her book, Mrs. Dalloway, would make an excellent companion "read" to The Hours.

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This fascinating book written by Canadian painter Emily Carr shortly before her death at age 74, documents her struggles for acceptance as an artist. Carr could express herself with a pen almost as well as with a paintbrush and she has created a vivid portrait of her triumphs and setbacks. The book documents her strict Victorian upbringing, her training as a painter in San Francisco and in London, England. Carr also describes her eventual discovery of her artistic voice which so perfectly captures the essence of the Canadian woods.

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Irene Fevens' first contemporary romance is a must for those who enjoy reading love stories with a twist. I just got a copy of the book New Time New Place and read it in one sitting. I liked the fact that the author didn't load me down with a lot of details. I recommend it. You'll have trouble forgetting the characters. I'm looking forward to reading her next book. I got my copy directly from the publisher at http://www.editionsodyssey.com

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"Chaos" was a book that kept me interested all the way through - rather a rarity for non-fiction. Gleick took a lot of disparate parts and brought them together in a cohesive, informative story.

So it was with happy anticipation that I bought "Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything" at the local book outlet. The premise is of great interest to me, a 40-something technical writer in the software business. In my lifetime, I've seen and pondered much of what the inside flap of this book describes.

When I was a kid, my mom worked at the Census Bureau. She was recruited to learn about computers when they realized that they would not be able to complete the 1960 census by 1970 without the aid of computers. She worked on early Univacs, where 64k of memory was housed in a room the size of my house, which they affectionately called "Memory Lane." 40 years later, I bought 64M of memory on two chips scarcely larger than the fingernail on my pinky.

I remember having 13 channels (more than half of which were static) on a black and white TV, watches you had to wind, "typists" at work, Instamatic cameras, vinyl records, US Mail, and human bank tellers being the only games in their respective towns. I remember a time before express lanes in fast-food restaurants, microwave ovens, touch-tone phones, ZIP codes, FedEx, home computing, email, fax, and the Internet.

Gleick talks about things like this in chapters divided by area of human endeavor. It's a fairly exhaustive survey of the changes in things in history. A few themes return periodically - "Type A" personalities, "Multi-tasking," the concept of time that you save or spend in a kind of psychological bank.

After about six chapters if this, it really started to sound to me like whining, when it's not just a reeling-off of statistical information, a catalog of potential stressors. I plodded onward, though, hoping for the denouement - a ray of hope, perhaps, or a suggested means of coping with all of the rushing, or a forecast of how it ends. To my surprise, there wasn't one.

Of course, time does continue no matter how we fill it, and as Gertrude Stein said, "There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."

And I'm left feeling gypped, somehow. The point of this book, I guess, is that we as a race have assimilated more and more change, and are faced with more and more options (consider your possible mustard choices 30 years ago vs. those you have today), and are bombarded by more and more... stuff... from all angles.

I kept thinking, "So What?"

Some things Gleick didn't but might have mentioned, where our speeded-up society seems to be part of the cause of leakage and overflow: "road rage," computer hackers and virus-makers, mass-murderers (especially children like those at Columbine), and the computing gap - the class distinction now forming between those who are computer-enabled and those who aren't. It seems to me that these are some of the biggest problems, and they're not mentioned.

I was disappointed by this book. I kept wondering if I was too young to appreciate the significance, or the effects, of the speeding-up of which I'm well aware. But while my girlfriend and I are often at or near the "bleeding edge" of technology in our work, we go hiking regularly; we read quite a bit (online and off); we take vacations where we sleep in a tent without electricity or hot-and-cold running water on tap; we visit museums; we often have meals that are made from food that was never frozen; we sit and listen to records or CDs all the way through; and in general, we don't seem to have much of a problem finding time to relax and decompress. If we had a problem, this book wouldn't have given a solution. If anything, it would contribute to the anxiety.

This book is well-written and -indexed, contains lots of interesting little facts, and is obviously the product of a great deal of research. You may enjoy reading it. (Obviously?) I didn't.

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The House of Gentle Men is the debut novel of Kathy Hepinstall, and if this is what her first book is like, her subsequent ones will be extraordinary. It's hard to classify The House of Gentle Men and it truly does it a disservice to try and summarize it. It's a modern-day fable with a current of romance, set during and after WWII, in a mysterious house in the deep Louisiana woods. It's a story of secrets, guilt, forgiveness and redemption -- of the refiner's fire. Readers will be drawn into this carefully created world with the first page, will hardly be able to put it down, and find their only disappointment when it ends. The prose is lyrical and graceful, the characters so real it's impossible not to feel for them... from the silent Charlotte to the tree-washing Louise, from the fainting man to the little boy with healing kisses, these characters will get under readers' skin. This is a special novel, especially for women. And for anyone who loves Southern novels -- picturesque, but never cliche-driven. It can be found at most bookstores, but is also available on Amazon.Com. You can also visit the official website for the novel: http://www.houseofgentlemen.com. Everyone I know who has read this book has loved it -- give this new author a chance. :)

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