A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines. List: $12.00 Our Price: $7.20 You Save: $4.80 (40%) . This story is simply but profoundly told. It has the artistic quality of waking us up and silently provoking us to ask serious questions. The man who is to die is a quiet, inexpressive man who worked very hard from childhood. His complicity in the murder for which he is sentenced is fuzzy.
As we read of his meetings with those who care to see him, we begin to appreciate the unique spark within him. We touch his spirit and are drawn into the tragedy of the day on which the electric chair is brought into his town, carefully set up, and made ready so he may be shaved and strapped into it. Then this man, whom we have grown to know and to love, is killed by a righteous state. Or is it righteous?
The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ginnie Hofmann (Illustrator) List: $14.95, Our Price: $11.96, You Save: $2.99 (20%). An American household classic, the newly revised and expanded edition of The Joy of Cooking is the most essential item one can have in the kitchen. Divided into three parts, "Foods We Eat, " "Foods We Heat, " and "Foods We Keep, " The Joy of Cooking contains more than 4,500 recipes with hundreds of them new to this edition, plus an enlarged discussion on herbs, spices, and seasonings, tips on various cooking techniques, canning and preserving advice, and more. 1,000 line drawings.
The Deep End of the Ocean, Jacquelyn Mitchard. List: $7.50 ~ Our Price: $6.00 ~ You Save: $1.50 (20%). A reader writes: Rating=10: Increased awareness of human emotions! I am simply stunned by the intense writings by this author. She was able to reach out and grab me (literally) emotionally from the beginning of the first page. I felt as if I were experiencing what each character was going through during the loss of a child. This book is not depressing but rather a better understanding of how humans cope with tragedy, and how they relate to each other. This book has certainly opened my heart for each character and has made me pause at the depth of pain one can go through and still survive. I highly recommend reading it.
Rating=10: Increased awareness of human emotions! I am simply stunned by the intense writings by this author. She was able to reach out and grab me (literally) emotionally from the beginning of the first page. I felt as if I were experiencing what each character was going through during the loss of a child. This book is not depressing but rather a better understanding of how humans cope with tragedy, and how they relate to each other. This book has certainly opened my heart for each character and has made me pause at the depth of pain one can go through and still survive. I highly recommend reading it.
Rating=10: The simplest summary ever of complex scientific theory. As a student, I have always loved physics and scientific theory, but many of the cosmological ideas (such as the fourth dimension) have always escaped my comprehension. In this book, Stephen Hawking manages to explain all of these in great detail, but still in a way that one can understand, especially so because of the detailed photographs and diagrams. I greatly reccomend this book to anyone with an interest in science and cosmological theory.
Rating=10: The best book about the Universe for the general public This is an updated version of Hawking's 1988 bestseller: A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking, the greatest physicist since Albert Einstein, introduces the laws and ideas describing the Universe to the general public. Beautiful pictures (absent from the 1988 version of the book) help the reader in understanding the key topics covered by the author. This very well written book is a must reference for your home/office/public/school library.
The Silent Cry: A Novel, Kenzaburo Õe. List: $11.00 ~ Our Price: $8.80 ~ You Save: $2.20 (20%). Traces the uneasy relationship between two brothers who return to their ancestral home, a village in densely forested western Japan. While one brother tries to sort out the aftereffects of a friend's suicide and the birth of a retarded son, the other embarks on a quixotic mission to incite an uprising among the local youth. Õe's description of his brother's messianic struggle to save a disintegrating local culture and economy from the depredations of a Korean wheeler-dealer called "The Emperor of the Supermarkets" is as chillingly pertinent today as it was when first published in 1967. Powerful and daring, The Silent Cry is a thoroughly compelling classsic of world literature. Henry Miller: Õe, in the range of hope and despair he covers, seems to me to have in him a touch of Dostoevsky.
Õe, in the range of hope and despair he covers, seems to me to have in him a touch of Dostoevsky.
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck. List: $7.95 ~ Our Price: $6.36 ~ You Save: $1.59 (20%). This book has stayed in my bones for over 30 years. It is possibly John Steinbeck's most famous novel, chronicling the survival of the Joad family in the harsh, often unlawful, world of migrant farm labor in California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Drawn, with hundreds of others, by the promise of rich earth and well-paying jobs, they instead compete for slave-wages and atrocious living conditions. They also contend with the hatred and violence of locals alarmed by the influx of "outsiders" and learn not to question the "law," for fear of being beaten or run out of town. With no choice but to persevere, they find solace with each other and hope that fortune, or at least a little luck, waits just around the corner.
Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi. List: $13.00 ~ Our Price: $7.80 ~ You Save: $5.20 (40%) One reader writes:
Rating=10: Stones from the River = Pearls of Wisdom. Ursula Hegi writes a compelling novel set in Germany before and after the rise of Hitler. The main character Trudi, acquaints you personally with all of the people in her life -- German, Jew, Catholic and Protestant. You get a first-hand account from Trudi of how fragile the fabric of community can be -- in this case ripped apart by the ideals of a madman (Hitler). It's been a while since I've read a book that endeavored to bring me face to face with atrocities accepted for ages -- things WE'VE accepted for ages -- which human nature tells us to gloss over. Trudi is the story teller in us all. We all record day to day events and use or discard that knowledge as we see fit. Some spread rumors, some keep secrets. Some live with the torment of the truth. What I walked away with from this book is that we can't change what we see, even after the fact. It is up to us to accept the good and the bad that comes from each of us -- to appreciate that we are indeed human and fallible.
Rating=10: No words are enough! From the moment I read the first page, I couldn't stop until I realized I was at the last page of this amazing book, I simply had to keep on reading, I wasn't able to stop until I knew what happened to every single personnage of the story. In fact, after reading the Lord of the Rings triology, I immediately read The Hobbit, afterwards the Silmarilon and so on. Tokien definitely wrote the best fiction-story ever!!!
Rating=10: Lord Of The Rings is The Best Book In The Universe. This Book Is Simply the best book this century. Tolkien is a genius. I won't write anymore because there is no contest.
Rating=10: This work will capture even the strongest hearts. Thanks to my parents and the brilliance of such an amazing creative author as JRR Tolkien, I learned to enjoy and love reading. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy are worlds upon themselves. To open their book is to step into and be captured in, their contents. Each character, Bilbo to Pippin, the Dark Lord to Gollum, has a definite life that is brought forth. Each time you read and enter Tolkien's world you will find new magic.