Elizabeth's blog

Some more new biographies, in no particular order:

The Last Lion:  The Rise and Fall of Ted Kennedy

The Snowball:  Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Call Me Ted by Ted Turner with Bill Burke

Under Their Thumb:  How a Nice Boy from Brooklyn Got Mixed Up with The Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell About It) by Bill German is a"warts-and-all" "tell-all" account of German's career working for the Rolling Stones as public relations guy, personal assistant, and all-around fixer.  A journalism student until he dropped out to follow the Stones, German always knew what he wanted to do with his life:  chronicle the work and career of his favorite band, The Rolling Stones.  Amazingly, German went from publisher of a fan-zine to personal confidant.  This is his story:  "he was a player in the Mick-versus-Keith feud and was an eyewitness to Keith's midlife crisis and Ron's overindulgences."

Two new biographies of important and fascinating individuals from our nation's past:

Sitting Bull by Bill Yenne

Up From History:  The Life of Booker T. Washington by Robert J. Norrell

New Biographies

We have a diverse group of new biographies on the new book shelf, with something to please everyone.

 

Military History

If you 're interested in military history, you may enjoy one of these titles:

American Lion by Jon Meacham

Patton:  Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago

Beaumarchais: A Biography by Maurice Lever

The Peasant Prince:  Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution by Alex Storozynski

Celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday!

A. Lincoln:  A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

Mrs. Lincoln:  A Life by Catherine Clinton

The Bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe's Birth:

Poe:  A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd

Celebrating the lives and achievement of other writers:

The Haunted Heart:  The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak

Flannery:  A Life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch

 

This year's Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on Monday.  The prizes in Letters, Drama and Music appear here:

Fiction - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Drama -  Ruined by Lynn Nottage

History - The Hemingses of Monticello:  An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

Biography - American Lion:  Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Poetry - The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name:  The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Music - Double Sextet by Steve Reich, premiered March 26, 2008 in Richmond, Virginia

It's been about a year since I read Mark Haddon's novel, which was a bestseller.  My mother recently read it, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed this novel.

Part of what makes this novel so enjoyable is that it is different from your average novel.  The novel's narrator and protogonist is an autistic boy living through the break-up of his parents' marraige.  Although he's autistic, he's quite bright in some ways.  He's very good at math, for instance.  And he's very self-aware, although not perceptive about the emotional tensions carrying on among the adults in his life.  That makes some things mysterious to him that would not be mysterious to us.

And, I think another thing that helped to make this novel so popular was that it's really written as a mystery.  The "curious incident" of the title is not explained until the end of the book, and I was quite surprised when I found out who was responsible. 

New DVDS

In addition to these two fun and classic titles, My Best Friend's Wedding and Four Weddings and a Funeral, we 've got DVDs of the TV series "Rawhide" and "Hogan's Heroes."

If you're a fan of Julia Roberts, other titles in our collection you might enjoy include Charlie Wilson's War and Pretty Woman.  She also performed one of the character's voices in the animated Charlotte's Web.

If you're a Dermot Mulroney fan, you might also enjoy Flash of Genius, also starring Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham, or The Memory Keeper's Daughter, adapted from the popular novel by Kim Edwards about a family coping with a child with Downs' Syndrome.  Other recent films he's appeared in, in our collection, include About Schmidt and Zodiac.

If you enjoy Hugh Grant, you might also enjoy Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Two Weeks Notice, and About a Boy.

If you like Andie McDowell, you'll probably also enjoy Groundhog Day, in which she appears opposite Bill Murray.

  Matilda Goodnight is a good person.  She adopts a very sweet dachshund out of a neglectful home; she works hard painting murals to help support her family. 

But Tilda has a secret, in a family full of secrets and lots of drama.  After all, it was Tilda's mother, Gwen Goodnight, who said:  "If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a terrible warning." 

And her secret is really messing with her love life.  Until she meets Davy Dempsey (what sort of name is "Davy" for a grown person, anyway?) in a closet, of all places. 

What were they doing in a closet?  Well, that's a long story that has to do with Davy's ex-girlfriend, and some favors Tilda did for her father when her father was running the Goodnight Gallery. 

This book is cute, funny, improbable, optimistic, and charming.  The Boston Globe said, "'Faking It' is an unabashed homage to such classics as the Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday.  The dialogue, which is peppered with movie references, is arch and smart-alecky, and moves the story at a rattling pace."

More New DVDs

Wild Palms

"Dark, sexy, noir" Los Angeles is the setting for Oliver Stone's sci-fi tale starring Jim Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, Kim Cattrall and Angie Dickinson.

Hondo

The John Wayne classic adaptation of the Louis L'Amour Western, starring Geraldine Page and James Arness.

Hombre

Charged with social significance, the classic Martin Ritt Western, starring Paul Newman, Fredric March and Richard Boone.

Golden Globe Awards