The Last Summer of Reason
10 best books like The Last Summer of Reason (Tahar Djaout): Thirsty, Round Ireland with a Fridge, Kendra, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, In the United States of Africa, The Optimist's Daughter, The Blood of the Lamb, Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything, Regarding the Pain of Others, Show Way
All Chris really wants is to be a normal kid, to hang out with his friends, avoid his parents, and get a date with Rebecca Schwartz. Unfortunately, Chris appears to be turning into a vampire. So while his hometown performs an ancient ritual that keeps Tch'muchgar, the Vampire Lord, locked in another world,...
| Author | Tony Hawks |
| ISBN | 0312274920 |
Have you ever made a drunken bet? Worse still, have you ever tried to win one? In attempting to hitchhike round Ireland with a fridge, Tony Hawks did both, and his foolhardiness led him to one of the best experiences of his life. Joined by his trusty traveling companion-cum-domestic appliance, he made...
| Author | Coe Booth |
| ISBN | 0439925363 |
The acclaimed author of TYRELL returns to PUSH with a striking novel about a mother and daughter who are only fourteen years apart, but need to learn to understand each other before it's too late.
Kendra's mom, Renee, had her when she was only 14 years old. Renee and her mom made a deal -- Renee could...
Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music
The first major biography of the Carter Family, the musical pioneers who almost single-handedly created the sounds and traditions that grew into modern folk, country, and bluegrass music.
Meticulously researched and lovingly written, it is a look at a world and a culture that, rather than...
In the United States of Africa
| Author | Abdourahman A. Waberi |
| ISBN | 0803222629 |
In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the...
The Optimist's Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old...
| Author | Peter De Vries |
| ISBN | 0226143880 |
The most poignant of all De Vries's novels, The Blood of the Lamb is also the most autobiographical. It follows the life of Don Wanderhop from his childhood in an immigrant Calvinist family living in Chicago in the 1950s through the loss of a brother, his faith, his wife, and finally his daughter-a tragedy...
| Author | E. Lockhart |
| ISBN | 0385732813 |
At the Manhattan School for Art and Music, where everyone is “different” and everyone is “special,” Gretchen Yee feels ordinary. She’s the kind of girl who sits alone at lunch, drawing pictures of Spider-Man, so she won’t have to talk to anyone; who has a crush on Titus but won’t do anything...
| Author | Susan Sontag |
| ISBN | 0141012374 |
Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in our culture today. How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newspapers) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by...
| Author | Jacqueline Woodson |
| ISBN | 0399237496 |
Soonie's great-grandma was just seven years old when she was sold to a big plantation without her ma and pa, and with only some fabric and needles to call her own. She pieced together bright patches with names like North Star and Crossroads, patches with secret meanings made into quilts called Show Ways...
| Author | E.E. Cummings |
| ISBN | 1406936537 |
Authors who only wrote one single novel are a curious lot. Some came up with a masterpiece and then died (Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath). So that's a pretty good excuse. ( Ill-informed interviewer to Emily Bronte : "Why didn't you write a follow up to your fabulous novel Wuthering Heights? " I died." "Oh,...
| Author | Cecil Castellucci |
| ISBN | 0763627968 |
What happens when an antisocial cinephile meets up with the worldly new guy at school — a quick-witted artist who's savvy enough to see through her sci-fi disguise?
Meet Egg. Her real name is Victoria Jurgen, but she's renamed herself after the kick-ass heroine of her favorite sci-fi movie,...
| Author | Tayari Jones |
| ISBN | 0446694568 |
Rating 3.75
I read Tayari Jones book An American Marriage and was immediately taken with the writing. I was so drawn into the story and couldn't wait to read more by this author. I decided to grab the audio version of this one and was hooked in the beginning. Again, Jones has a slow moving story,...
One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal
| Author | Alice Domurat Dreger |
| ISBN | 0674018257 |
Must children born with socially challenging anatomies have their bodies changed because others cannot be expected to change their minds? One of Us views conjoined twinning and other "abnormalities" from the point of view of people living with such anatomies, and considers these issues within the...
I really wanted to like this more. I love the message, showing how some version of "The Golden Rule" ("Do unto others...") is found in most cultures and religions around the world. So often people tend to focus on the differences among religions, so I appreciate a book that strives to show a kind and peaceful...
| Author | Daniel Alarcón |
| ISBN | 1594633339 |
A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns.
Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of...
مصابي جليل، والعزاء جميل، ...
وظني بأن الله سوف يديل
جراح وأسر، واشتياق، وغربة...
أحمل إني، بعدها، لحمول
وإني، في هذا الصباح، لصالح،...
ولكن خطي...
| Author | Matsuo Bashō |
| ISBN | 1570627169 |
Here is the most complete single-volume collection of the writings of one of the great luminaries of Asian literature. Basho (1644–1694)—who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is best known in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior,...
Fittingly, it is in Las Vegas, boxing's capital, that author Jonathan Rendall, a young British boxing enthusiast, reflects on his own exit from the boxing scene. What unfolds is the true story of his boyhood romance with the sport, his canny coming-of-age as a boxing writer, and his risky bid to bring...
| Author | Thomas Cleary |
| ISBN | 4805312912 |
Soul of the Samurai contains modern translations of three classic works of Zen & Bushido.
In Soul of the Samurai, bestselling author and respected translator Thomas Cleary reveals the true essence of the Bushido code or Zen warrior teachings according to 17th-century Japanese samurai...
| Author | Joshua Braff |
| ISBN | 0452286700 |
Jacob Green doesn’t mean to disappoint his father, but he can’t help thinking the most unthinkable (and very funny) thoughts about public-school humiliation, Hebrew-school disinclination, and in-home sex education (with the live-in nanny!). If only his mother hadn’t started college at...
| Author | Assia Djebar |
| ISBN | 1558615105 |
Assia Djebar, one of the most distinguished woman writers to emerge from the Arab world, wrote Children of the New World following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule. Like the classic film The Battle of Algiers—enjoying renewed interest in the face of world events—Djebar’s...
A breathless story of love and survival in war-torn Algeria-past and present
The devil has entered our country, and his footprints are everywhere.
Nine-year-old Jallal is old enough to know that his life in Algeria is precarious at best. Having run away from home, he survives by selling...
