Best Books of 1989
Top 10 Best Books of 1989
: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Like Water for Chocolate, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, Talking God, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Pyramids, Straight, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I), The Second World War
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
| Author | Jon Scieszka |
| ISBN | 0140544518 |
You thought you knew the story of the “The Three Little Pigs”… You thought wrong.
In this hysterical and clever fracture fairy tale picture book that twists point of view and perspective, young readers will finally hear the other side of the story of “The Three Little Pigs.”.
| Author | John Irving |
| ISBN | 0552135399 |
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying....
| Author | Laura Esquivel |
| ISBN | 0552995878 |
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.
The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller...
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
| Author | Bill Bryson |
| ISBN | 0060920084 |
'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to'
And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the...
A grave robber and a corpse reunite Navajo Tribal Police Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee. As Leaphorn seeks the identify of a murder victim, Chee is arresting Smithsonian conservator Henry Highhawk for ransacking the sacred bones of his anscestors. As the layers of each case are peeled away, it...
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
| Author | Stephen R. Covey |
| ISBN | 0743269519 |
When Stephen Covey first released The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book became an instant rage because people suddenly got up and took notice that their lives were headed off in the wrong direction; and more than that, they realized that there were so many simple things they could do in...
| Author | Terry Pratchett |
| ISBN | 0061020656 |
It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun. First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid...
What is there to say about Dick Francis? As I think about all of his books (yes, this review covers all of his books, and yes I've read them all) I think about a moral ethical hero, steeped in intelligence and goodness embroiled in evil machinations within British horse racing society - either directly...
| Author | David Hackett Fischer |
| ISBN | 0195069056 |
This book is the first volume in a cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural...
In this comprehensive history, John Keegan explores both the technical and the human impact of the greatest war of all time. He focuses on five crucial battles and offers new insights into the distinctive methods and motivations of modern warfare. In knowledgable, perceptive analysis of the airborne...
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
| Author | Michael Rosen |
| ISBN | 0689853491 |
A Scathing Review of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, aka "The Children's Guide to Passive Suicide"
Before we go any further, a little context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWpzxz...
There are plenty of children's books about self destructive impulses. In The Cat in the...
What to Expect the First Year
| Author | Heidi Murkoff |
| ISBN | 0761129588 |
Some things about babies, happily, will never change. They still arrive warm, cuddly, soft, and smelling impossibly sweet. But how moms and dads care for their brand-new bundles of baby joy has changed—and now, so has the new-baby bible.
Announcing the completely revised third edition...
Ramses the Great has reawakened in opulent Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. He becomes the close companion of a voluptuous heiress, Julie Stratford, but his cursed...
| Author | David Eddings |
| ISBN | 0345369351 |
The Endless Quest...
Troubles and delays continued to mount as Garion, Belgarath, Polgara, and the company pursued Zandramas across the known world. Possessed by the Dark Destiny, she had stolen Garion's infant son for a ritual that would destroy all that men valued.
She was always...
| Author | Martin Amis |
| ISBN | 0099748614 |
Samson Young, first-person narrator of this Martin Amis novel, is a somewhat jaded, frequently sarcastic and acerbic 40-something intellectual literary writer from, not surprisingly, New York City. But his hard-edged Big Apple voice is absolutely pitch-perfect for the story he...
| Author | E.L. Doctorow |
| ISBN | 0452280028 |
In 1930's New York, Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old highschool dropout, has captured the attention of infamous gangster Dutch Schultz, who lures the boy into his world of racketeering. The product of an East Bronx upbringing by his half-crazy Irish Catholic mother, after his Jewish father left...
A Knight in Shining Armor
| Author | Jude Deveraux |
| ISBN | 0743457269 |
Once upon a time... as a fair maiden lay weeping upon a cold tombstone, her heartfelt desire was suddenly made real before her: tall, broad of shoulder, attired in gleaming silver and gold, her knight in shining armor had come to rescue his damsel in distress...
Abandoned by a cruel fate, lovely...
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
| Author | Julian Barnes |
| ISBN | 0679731377 |
Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters presents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they...
| Author | Tim Powers |
| ISBN | 0441790976 |
When Michael Crawford discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed, he is forced to flee not only to prove his innocence, but to avoid the deadly embrace of a vampire who has claimed him as her true bridegroom.
Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey...
| Author | Terry Brooks |
| ISBN | 1857230752 |
I need a way to rate the book and then a way to separately rate the edition I got. I have the audio I got from OverDrive and the gain is so low that with the recording turned up all the way, my speakers turned up all the way and going into my computers audio controls and jacking them up all the way I could barely hear...
| Author | Terry Pratchett |
| ISBN | 0552154164 |
'Neighbours... hah. People'd live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.'
Throughout history, there's always been a perfectly good reason to start...
| Author | Sebastian De Grazia |
| ISBN | 0679743421 |
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
In this intellectual biography, Sebastian de Grazia presents a new vision of Machiavelli that evokes, with uncanny precision, the great Florentine thinker's presence. After providing an engrossing account of Machiavelli's childhood and the period following...
The career of playwright Joy Sinclair comes to an abrupt end on an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands when someone drives an eighteen-inch dirk through her neck. Called upon to investigate the case in a country where they have virtually no authority, aristocratic Detective Inspector Thomas...
| Author | Octavia E. Butler |
| ISBN | 0446603635 |
The last volume of the mind blowing, thought provoking Lilith’s Brood series (I prefer the original name Xenogenesis myself, it has a nice sci-fi ring to it).
Jodahs the protagonist of this book is another offspring of Lilith Iyapo. The least human of the series' central characters, especially...
| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
| ISBN | 2290032042 |
So. Two stars. That’s a really low rating for me. Normally, if I really don’t like a book, I just move on with my life. But this one had elements that hit close to home for me.
Sorry, I realize that I was just speaking Midwestern Understatement. What I meant to say was that this book is a tangible...
| Author | Aaron Elkins |
| ISBN | 0445408642 |
Mayan ruins in the Yucatan...a secret room in a tomb...an ancient skeleton. To Gideon Oliver, anthropologist, this archaeological find is paradise on earth. He and his wife, Julie, have joined his old mentor, Abe Goldstein, at Tlaloc, Mexico, to make sure there are no dirty doings at the dig. Five years...
| Author | Linda Howard |
| ISBN | 1551665743 |
A small Wyoming town is about to learn a few lessons from a new schoolteacher with the courage to win the heart of a man who swore he had nothing to give....
Mary Elizabeth Potter is a self-appointed spinster with no illusions about love. But she is a good teacher and she wants Wolf Mackenzie's son...
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
| Author | Eileen Christelow |
| ISBN | 0899197698 |
Review
4+ of 5 stars to Eileen Christelow's children's story Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, one of a bunch in a series about little monkeys and their crazy antics. This wonderful little book wasn't published until I was around ten years old, but I still read it one summer in a reading contest...
| Author | Alan Moore |
| ISBN | 0861661419 |
"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell."
Having proved himself peerless in the arena of reinterpreting superheroes, Alan Moore turned...
| Author | Caroline Graham |
| ISBN | 1933397268 |
Actors do love their dramas, and the members of the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society are no exception. Passionate love scenes, jealous rages? they?re better than a paycheck (not that anyone one in this production of Amadeus is getting one). But even the most theatrically minded must admit that murdering...
| Author | Sheri S. Tepper |
| ISBN | 1857987985 |
Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It too had developed a culture......
Now a deadly plague is spreading across the stars, leaving no planet untouched, save for Grass. But the...
"Yer eyes'll shine when ye see the rivers runnin' silver in Mithril Hall!"
Bruenor the dwarf, Wulfgar the barbarian, Regis the halfling, and Drizzt the dark elf fight monsters and magic on their way to Mithril Hall, centuries-old birthplace of Bruenor and his dwarven ancestors.
Faced...
Cuchulain, another sad, brave figure (Irish history and folklore are full of them). The legend of Cuchulain has come down through time, history and folklore as tale of courage and tragedy.
Son of prophecy he will defend in single handed battle....and die young. Cuchulain victim of his own...
| Author | N.H. Kleinbaum |
| ISBN | 0553282980 |
Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to "make your lives extraordinary! " Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society--a secret club where, free...
| Author | David Eddings |
| ISBN | 0345367693 |
'You'd better get ready to ride, Sparhawk.'
Meet Sparhawk: Pandion Knight and Queen’s Champion. If this were D&D his character class would likely be Paladin; he can cast spells, but mostly prefers to just chop off heads with his considerable broadsword.
Sparhawk is a bit of...
| Author | Gregory Benford |
| ISBN | 0553278452 |
THE UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR
What would have happened if history had been different -- if the major events that shaped our times had occurred in a different way ... or had not occurred at all? In this stellar collection, twelve of science fiction's most imaginative minds have altered the past to reveal...
| Author | Wendy Wasserstein |
| ISBN | 0822205106 |
Comprised of a series of interrelated scenes, the play traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland, a successful art historian, as she tries to find her bearings in a rapidly changing world. Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism...
