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	<title>Cheap Best Seller Books &#187; Fiction</title>
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		<title>First to Kill (Leisure Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/471/first-to-kill-leisure-fiction-mass-market-paperback/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:26:33 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[








      From Publishers Weekly
  Debut author Peterson kicks off a series in fine style with this complex and action-packed conspiracy thriller. Former CIA sniper Nathan McBride, called in to investigate the disappearance of an undercover FBI agent who happens to be the grandson of former FBI director Frank Ortega, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<!--CusAds2--><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/First-Leisure-Fiction-Andrew-Peterson/dp/0843961449/ref=sr_1_8/186-2039589-4242863?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1259701001&#038;sr=8-8?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=cigbea-20"><img style="float:left;width: 150px;height:150px;margin-right: 10px;" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SCVj7r3pL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg" alt="First to Kill (Leisure Fiction)" /></a></p>
<p>      From Publishers Weekly</p>
<p>  Debut author Peterson kicks off a series in fine style with this complex and action-packed conspiracy thriller. Former CIA sniper Nathan McBride, called in to investigate the disappearance of an undercover FBI agent who happens to be the grandson of former FBI director Frank Ortega, tracks down two homegrown arms dealers/terrorists, Leonard and Ernie Bridgestone, who have a huge supply of Semtex explosive. When McBride kills one of their men, the Bridgestones retaliate by blowing up an FBI headquarters building in California. As McBride chases them down, he discovers that what he thought was a clean-cut case of catch the terrorist is anything but, with corruption and twists that connect to Ortega and m <a href="http://www.amazon.com/First-Leisure-Fiction-Andrew-Peterson/dp/0843961449/ref=sr_1_8/186-2039589-4242863?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1259701001&#038;sr=8-8?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=cigbea-20" title="More at Amazon">(more&#8230;)</a></p>

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		<title>Book Review: Recovering Charles by Jason F. Wright</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/547/book-review-recovering-charles-by-jason-f-wright/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:24:18 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Take my advice, you don&#8217;t need to read this review, you just need to read the book! Just go to Amazon and buy it!
Oh, you are still reading, I guess I will have to explain why this is the book of the year in my mind.
Jason Wright is no newcomer to the literary world and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Take my advice, you don&#8217;t need to read this review, you just need to read the book! Just go to Amazon and buy it!<br />
Oh, you are still reading, I guess I will have to explain why this is the book of the year in my mind.<br />
Jason Wright is no newcomer to the literary world and his two prior books, Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters, both achieved critical acclaim and also a New York Times bestseller. With these credentials you would expect Recovering Charles to be well laid out plot wise and eloquent in the use of language. It most certainly is!<br />
Some might argue that Recovering Charles is a little slow getting out of the starting blocks, however, in retrospect the first part of the book is fundamental to understanding the entire story, Jason Wright took the correct approach.<br />
The plot itself is deceptively simple, Luke is a young successful freelance photographer on New York, he has it all, career, some money, pretty girlfriend, he is in someways the epitome of today&#8217;s American Dream. There are skeletons in his closet, a mother who died from addiction to prescription drugs, and an estranged father who fell victim to the demon bottle following his wife&#8217;s death.<br />
Luke has not spoken to his father Charles in over two years, in fact he doesn&#8217;t even know where he is. Two days after Hurricane Katrina hits Luke receives a phone call from a stranger claiming to be Charles&#8217; friend, and informs him that his father had been living in New Orleans and is missing.<br />
Luke must decide if he is willing to let his father back into his life. Should he go to New Orleans and help the search, or try to ignore the plea for help? He makes the decision to go.<br />
I feel a very personal attachment to this book. My wife is from Slidell, which was devastated by Katrina. She did not sleep for days, frantic trying to get information about her family, all of which were in the New Orleans area. The phones were not working, the images on the TV were horrific, this was not America, it could not be happening here. These disasters happen in other countries, not at home. We spent countless hours in the internet, bits of that infrastructure were still working. We scoured NOAA reconnaissance photography, satellite pictures, we searched the lists of evacuees, we left messages on bulletin boards, and we kept dialing phone numbers.<br />
Jason Wright has encapsulated all of the emotions that we felt during that time. His descriptive writing is unparalleled, he picks up on small things, a child&#8217;s broken toy, a picture frame showing a happy mother and her newborn baby. These are powerful images.<br />
Luke&#8217;s journey is one that occurs on two levels, on the outside it is one of search and rescue, on the inside it is one of self discovery and reconciliation with his past.<br />
There is also a very unique twist at the end of the book, actually two twists, these are unexpected and a masterful use of the plot.<br />
Recovering Charles is an evocative and emotional read, and even though a work of fiction, I can guarantee that you will have a lump in your throat when you finish reading it. This book deserves to be on the New York Times best seller list, it certainly is one that I will remember for a very long time. As a reviewer I rarely have the luxury of time to read a book twice, I will make time for Recovering Charles.<br />
You can pick up your copy of Recovering Charles at better book stores everywhere, on online from Amazon. </p>
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		<title>Book Review: Bear Any Burden by Ellis M. Goodman</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/537/book-review-bear-any-burden-by-ellis-m-goodman/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:45:22 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[I have mixed emotions about this book. I enjoyed it a lot, much of the action takes place at the hight of the Cold War which is a period of history that I have a big interest in, the writing quality is superb, the author clearly knows his profession, and how to utilize the written [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have mixed emotions about this book. I enjoyed it a lot, much of the action takes place at the hight of the Cold War which is a period of history that I have a big interest in, the writing quality is superb, the author clearly knows his profession, and how to utilize the written word for maximum effect. The writing style reminded me a great deal of one of my favorite Cold War authors, John LeCarre. So why do I have these mixed emotions?<br />
I have given this some serious thought over the past few days, and I think I have found the source of my troubles. It stems from the duality of the plot lines. Bear Any Burden is part a family history, and part a Cold War thriller. The flip flopping between the action and the historical component is an oft used tool in a writer&#8217;s toolbox. Usually though it is easy to segregate the active plot from the passive historical contextual plot. That is not the case with Bear Any Burden, both plots are active.<br />
Although there is a strong connection between the Cold War side of the book and the historical family story, I personally feel that more could have been written about the Cold War plot, and the family history written in a more passive voice. Oh my goodness, I sound like an English Literature teacher, and that is something I vowed I would not do. I had enough of those kinds of lessons at the English Grammar School I attended a hundred years ago!<br />
So, let&#8217;s move on to the plot itself, it is 1983 and the Cold War is at its peak, the main character is Sir Alex Campbell, the head of an international drinks company. His plan is to import Vodka from Poland a commodity that he feels will further his companies global reach. Sir Alex also occasionally helps out his friends in the Secret Service, delivering little packages for them while traveling on business, something he does a great deal of. He is not surprised when he is approached to make a small delivery while in Poland. The mission is simple, he will use a carry on bag supplied to him, it will have a false bottom that contains some money and two passports. The passports and money are to assist a Polish scientist and his wife to defect to the west.<br />
Sir Alex is to wait at his hotel and someone will knock on his door, they will have an identical bag, and they will trade. Nothing could be simpler, and certainly does not seem to involve much danger, the only potential issue will be the customs check. But Sir Alex is such a frequent traveler and so well known it is unlikely that he will receive more than a cursory check by the authorities.<br />
Indeed the border presents no problem, Sir Alex sails through using his distinguished aplomb. His problems start to spiral out of control at the hotel though. Sir Alex needs to make a huge decision, to turn and run, or pay any price and bear any burden. He can run to safety, no one knows of his involvement, and he will be long gone by the time any even tenuous link to him can be made. Or should he stay and become a part of what almost certainly will be a life or death struggle?<br />
I doubt I am writing a spoiler of the plot to reveal that his decision is to stay and try to help the nuclear scientist and his wife find their way to freedom. Part action thriller, and part exploration of his past, Sir Alex must face his personal demons, both old and new.<br />
This is a book that deserves to receive some attention, the quality of writing can not be questioned. If you know someone that enjoys a good spy story give them a copy for Christmas, I know that they will love it.<br />
You can pick up your copy of Bear Any Burden from Amazon.<br />
(Originally published at Blogger News Network and reprinted with permission from the author, Simon Barrett). </p>
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		<title>The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/440/the-way-to-paradise-by-mario-vargas-llosa/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:47:27 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[I rarely read novels more than once. There are some I have read several times, but the list might just run to double figures. I have read The Way To Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa twice, but not for the usual reasons. First time though I was so disappointed with the book that I thought [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I rarely read novels more than once. There are some I have read several times, but the list might just run to double figures. I have read The Way To Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa twice, but not for the usual reasons. First time though I was so disappointed with the book that I thought I had to be mistaken. So I waited a few months and read it again. Second time through I enjoyed it much more but, on finishing it, I had many of the same reservations as I did first time round. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>The Way To Paradise juxtaposes two stories which, in essence, deal with how people pursue ideals. It identifies the inevitable selfishness associated with a person’s obsession to achieve, how pragmatism and compromise inevitably dictate daily routine, and how fate, unpredictable and unyielding, has the ultimate say on all of our endeavours. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>The two stories of The Way To Paradise are related by family. One describes how the French painter, Paul Gaugin, left his job as a mildly successful stockbroker to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. A closet painter while he acted out the humdrum of nine to five to provide for his thoroughly and properly domesticated Danish wife and five children, Paul Gaugin drooled over canvases by impressionist painters such as Manet. The latter’s nude depiction of Olympia played a significant role in crystallising Gaugin’s ambitions. A provocative and highly erotic painting it is, for sure. What Gaugin did not know, it seems, was that the sitter shared the name of his grandmother’s lesbian lover. It would add poignancy to the story if the painting’s subject was actually the grandmother’s lover, but the decades don’t add up. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>Flora Tristan, Paul Gaugin’s grandma, was born into potential wealth. But she was illegitimate, her wealthy Peruvian father having sired her via a poor French mother. So she grew up in poverty. She marries. She hates sex, abhorring everything to do with the act, so the marriage to an impatient husband does not last. There is a child, but there is also violence, threats, public scenes and estrangement. Flora takes up the struggle for women’s rights, workers’ rights and socialism. She dresses as a man to research the experience of prostitutes. She travels from town to town giving presentations and speeches to guilds, assemblies of the poor and groups of women. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>Both Paul Gaugin and Flora Tristan travel. The artist, of course, as we all know, went to live on various Pacific islands, where he painted most of the works that now make him famous. But at the time, the experience was far from idyllic. Having wanted to escape the constricting conventions and conservatism of France, he found it reincarnated in the officialdom that dealt with him, his poverty, and his illness, syphilis, which rendered him smelly, pussy and unsightly. On can only imagine what his grandmother would have thought of his processing of local women, whom he painted, infected, made pregnant and then deserted, sometimes in that order. The grandson was doing what the grandmother would have despised, derided. But then the women on the receiving end weren’t Europeans, were they? </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>Flora travelled to Peru in an attempt to claim the inheritance of her birthright. In South America, with colonial heritage all around, she brushed shoulders with the rich, with a way of life she could only dream about in Europe. The experience galvanised her, created the resolution to seek change, a resolve that drove her through her remaining years, prompted her to write, to seek self-expression that might widen and convince her audience. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>And so both grandmother and grandson pursue their own ideals, never consciously attaining them, of course, but the pursuit, like the life that bears it, is the point. The process is the end, the product merely existence. </p>
<p>  </p>
<p>In reviewing The Way To Paradise I find I have taken much more from the book than I thought. I had problems with the style in that its unidentified narrator constantly seemed to address Flora and Paul directly, referred to them as ‘you’, almost implying that they were acquaintances. On reflection, that might be part of the book’s point, in that celebrity renders those who possess it the friends of anyone. Both characters are thus part of our own common history. We already know them as Paul and Flora. In the case of Paul Gaugin, however, we meet a much lauded, selfish, self-obsessed, perhaps, painter whom everyone recognises. In Flora Tristan, Mario Vargas Llosa tells us, we have a member of the same family who ought to be known better than she is. In contrast with her grandson, however, her selflessness, her energy, her purity, paradoxically, identify her as a figure worthy of respect, worthy of history. The Way To Paradise was clearly worth its second read. </p>
<p>  </p>
<div style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border:1px solid #c1c1c1;font-size: 10px">Philip Spires<br />
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya<a href="http://www.philipspires.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.philipspires.co.uk</a><br />
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.<br />Get information about <a href="http://gewgley.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2">Pay-Per-Click</a>
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		<title>A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini</title>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:17:53 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[I read A Thousand Splendid Suns having just finished Kite Runner. I would like the opportunity to live life again (who wouldn’t?), if only to have a chance of reversing the order of this experience. I suspect tat had I read A Thousand Splendid Suns first then none of the criticisms I raise about the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I read A Thousand Splendid Suns having just finished Kite Runner. I would like the opportunity to live life again (who wouldn’t?), if only to have a chance of reversing the order of this experience. I suspect tat had I read A Thousand Splendid Suns first then none of the criticisms I raise about the book would even have been imagined, let alone expressed. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a wonderful book, a compelling and gut-wrenching story of two women, Mariam and Laila, who share a husband throughout the years of Afghanistan’s tragedy and turmoil. The fact that Khaled Hosseini can sustain expression, narrative, emotion and interest across two novels with ostensibly similar themes in the same territory is testament both to his supreme skill and the depth of the country’s despond.</p>
<p>Where Kite Runner tells the story of two boyhood friends approaching maturity, separating and reuniting, A Thousand Splendid Suns presents two women who are forced together by arrangement. As in Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini presents ethnic and social class differences as the givens of the story. Similarly, Afghanistan’s turbulent thirty years from the mid-1970s is more than a backdrop: it is the very substance of the idea, eventually revealed as the flesh on the story’s bones, the driving force of circumstance that creates the inevitability of the characters’ fate.</p>
<p>And this is why I wish I could read both books again in the different order, because too often in A Thousand Splendid Suns I felt I had been there before. The backdrop came just too much to the fore, in some parts so much so that I felt Mariam and Laila became puppets of its detail and demands.</p>
<p>That, I suppose, may also be part of the point. Whereas Kite Runner concentrated on male experience, A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on women and, given what happened in Afghanistan over those decades, it may be that the sense of subservience to the turn of events is the very essence of these women’s experience. Thus, it is almost true to say that they were not, themselves, protagonists. They were done unto.</p>
<p>Mariam and Laila differ in age, ethnicity, birthright and social class. They both, and for different reasons, finish up unhappily married to the same man, Rasheed, older than both combined, brutish, bigoted and sadistic. Rasheed is thus a symbol for the traditional male role without declaring himself as such. In Western terms, we read this “tradition” as misogyny, however, and it is here where I find the book’s weakness. In my opinion – for what it’s worth, and not much at that &#8211; A Thousand Splendid Suns would have been an even greater novel had Rasheed been cast as a more liberal figure and had he also suffered as a result of his own conflict with the requirements of changing times. But Khaled Hosseini made A Thousand Splendid Suns from the women’s stories and a more complex role for their husband might have deflected attention from them.</p>
<p>The two women had quite different experiences of youth, and demonstrate quite different capacities to relate to others and even to life, itself. But they have enough in common to need to act together, to need to form a relationship, less than an alliance, more than acquaintance. Pragmatism might have been easier, but the two women develop a real bond, a relationship that shares out the pain, disappointment and unfulfilled dreams of their marital confinement. There is tragedy aplenty and ultimate resolution of a kind.</p>
<p>And then it was the eventual similarity between Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns that prompted me to take my eye off the ball, to lose a little bit of interest in the story at mid-point. But if this is a criticism then it is an extremely minor one. As I suggested at the start, had I read the two books in the opposite sequence, I would probably have levelled my criticism differently. But having also said in a review of Kite Runner that I would not criticise the book for a lack of explicit position on the politics, I feel that in A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini ought to have said more about the status and role of women. Mariam and Laila live a tragedy, but they are also offered as icons for something bigger, which is women’s position in the society at large. In A Thousand Splendid Suns I thus wanted the author to offer explicit comment on the plight of his characters, at least some general comment, even a dose of polemic to merely label absurdity. Alternatively, as I stated earlier, he could have made Rasheed, their aging husband, a little more complex, a tad more endearing in order to offer a source of the social attitudes without the need to justify them.</p>
<p>But these are all minor points. A Thousand Splendid Suns is, in its own right, another supreme achievement by Khaled Hosseini and a further reminder to all of us that ideology imposed blindly can be a blunt and dangerous instrument.  </p>
<div style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border:1px solid #c1c1c1;font-size: 10px">Philip Spires<br />
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya<a href="http://www.philipspires.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.philipspires.co.uk</a><br />
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.<br />All there is to know about <a href="http://gewgley.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2">Pay-Per-Click</a>
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		<title>The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/430/the-blind-assassin-by-margaret-atwood/</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:19:02 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes, when reading a big book, one gets the feeling that the author set out to achieve size, as if that in itself might suggest certain adjectives from a reader or reviewer – weighty, significant, deep, serious, complex, extensive, perhaps. Sometimes – rarely, in fact – one reads a big book and becomes lost in [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sometimes, when reading a big book, one gets the feeling that the author set out to achieve size, as if that in itself might suggest certain adjectives from a reader or reviewer – weighty, significant, deep, serious, complex, extensive, perhaps. Sometimes – rarely, in fact – one reads a big book and becomes lost in its size, lost in the sense that one ceases to notice the hundreds passing by, as the work creates its own time, defines its own experience, shares its own world. Even then, reaching the end can often be merely trite, just a running out of steam, the process thoroughly engaging, the product, however, something of a let down. Rarely, very rarely indeed, one reads a big book that actually needs its size, justifies itself, continues to surprise as well as enchant and then, finally, stuns. Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin is such a book, a giant in every sense, a masterpiece beyond question.</p>
<p>Blind Assassin was awarded the Booker prize in 2000 and charts intersecting histories of two well-to-do Canadian families, Chase and Griffen. The two Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, are quite different people. Born into the relative opulence of a Canadian manufacturing family, they have a private education of sorts, experienced throughout and yet alongside something vaguely like a childhood. Various aspects of twentieth century history impinge upon their lives and eventually force their family to reassess its status. Economic downturn, war and family tragedy take their toll on the father, who becomes less able to manage either his own life or his business. Something has to give. Ways of coping must be found.</p>
<p>Iris, the elder sister, is the first person narrator of about half of the book, the other half being devoted to a book within a book, a novel in the name of Laura, the younger sister. This novel, entitled The Blind Assassin, is an eclectic mix of experience, sex, fantasy and politics. It has made a name for Laura and retains a significant cult following many years after its publication. Laura, herself, died in a car accident. She drove off a bridge into a ravine. The car belonged to Iris. There was never any real explanation for the event.</p>
<p>Iris, meanwhile, has been married off to an older man, a Griffen, who seems to treat her like so much chattel. But then he is an industrialist with the wherewithal, not to mention capital, to assist the bride’s family business in its time of need. Iris, therefore, experiences the Canadian equivalent of an arranged marriage. Perhaps the word marriage is a little overstated. The partnership could be better described as a merger, or a union, if that were not a dirty word because of its political connotation.</p>
<p>And so the octogenarian Iris, clearly anticipating the end of her days, embarks upon a cathartic outpouring of personal and family history in the hope that an estranged granddaughter might just understand a little about other peoples’ motives.</p>
<p>The book takes us through Canada and north America, across to Europe, via an imagined universe, to political commitment, direct action and its inevitable reaction. Iris needs to write it all down. And so she works her story out, constructing it, perhaps reconstructing it, maybe inventing it from memory and relived experience against a backdrop of contemporary Canada and her own failing health. Her vulnerability, in the end, is our debt, our penance, perhaps. She is a wise old woman with much to hide, but her acerbic wit is undiminished by age, her observations of others stunningly perspicacious.</p>
<p>It is not often that a novel, a mere flight of another’s fancy, achieves the subtle, stunning and surely enduring power of the Blind Assassin. </p>
<div style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border:1px solid #c1c1c1;font-size: 10px">I grew up in Sharlston, then a mining village, and later Crofton, near Wakefield, UK. I went to London University and then did two years as a VSO in Kenya. For 16 years I taught in London before moving to Brunei technical education.  I worked to Zayed University in the UAE for three years and, since 2003, I have lived in Spain,  completing a PhD in education’s role in Philippine development and my first published novel, Mission.<br />Detailed information about <a href="http://gewgley.com/forumdisplay.php?f=11">White Hat SEO</a>
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		<title>A Review of a S Byattâs a Whistling Woman</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/375/a-review-of-a-s-byatta%c2%80%c2%99s-a-whistling-woman/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:33:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A S Byattâs A Whistling Woman is a strange book. At one level itâs a straightforward account of university life, with its politics, affairs and academic pursuit. But then thereâs the suspicion that none of this is ever satisfying for those involved. They yearn for something bigger, whilst at the same time trying to deny [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A S Byattâs A Whistling Woman is a strange book. At one level itâs a straightforward account of university life, with its politics, affairs and academic pursuit. But then thereâs the suspicion that none of this is ever satisfying for those involved. They yearn for something bigger, whilst at the same time trying to deny its significance in their lives. Another strand is the career of Federica, one of the bookâs principal characters. Almost by default, she finds herself host of a BBC2-style arts review or in-depth discussion. She is forced via the subject matter of her programmes to re-examine a whole host of assumptions. So while the scientists try to identify a mechanism by which memory is both stimulated and fixed by means of electrical stimulation, Federica, via her television shows, offers apparently ever more arcane subject matter, leaving us confused as to what we think we might believe â or even remember.</p>
<p>And these are just some of the strands of plot and characterisation in A Whistling Woman, certainly one of the more complex novels I have read in many years. I have not read the previous three works in the series. This may have been why I found a number of loose ends that seemed to have strayed and frayed from elsewhere.</p>
<p>And then thereâs the alternative university that establishes itself near to the conventional campus of the University of North Yorkshire, whose acronym, obviously, is UNY, implying generality. The alternative people adopt true nineteen sixties postures, preferring question to answer, experience to knowledge, heuristics to instruction. When we recall this hippy, flower power, professedly liberated, free thinking era, it is wise to bear in mind that this is also the generation that elected Ronald Reagan, tolerated support for death squads in central America and fuelled the consumer boom of the later eighties. But at the time, these revolutionaries sought something transcendent in their anti-university and found it in a self-destructing religious sect.</p>
<p>But no matter what people profess, no matter what they research, they still sleep with one another, still get pregnant, still need mutual support. The 1960s complicated all of these things with a superimposed need for personal, transcendental fulfilment and expression, whilst, at the same time, destroying perhaps permanently any possible recourse to established religion. In A Whistling Woman, A S Byatt captures this confusion and dissects it, but she offers us no neat packages of analysis, no simple results by which we might identify its elements.  </p>
<div style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border:1px solid #c1c1c1;font-size: 10px">Philip Spires<br />
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya<a href="http://www.philipspires.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.philipspires.co.uk</a><br />
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priestâs neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.<br />free information about <a href="http://gewgley.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2">Pay-Per-Click</a>
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		<title>Philip Spires Reviews the Black Book by Orhan Pamuk</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/357/philip-spires-reviews-the-black-book-by-orhan-pamuk/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black Book]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Turkey]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[I have visited Turkey, but not Istanbul. It’s one of those iconic places that keeps cropping up in travel plans, but then gets overlooked, possibly because its name fits so easily into my thoughts that I convince myself I have already been there. Having just read Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, that illusion will be [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have visited Turkey, but not Istanbul. It’s one of those iconic places that keeps cropping up in travel plans, but then gets overlooked, possibly because its name fits so easily into my thoughts that I convince myself I have already been there. Having just read Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, that illusion will be orders of magnitude stronger. Orhan Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature and this seems to have spurned new translations of his work, new versions which hopefully can widen his readership in the English-speaking world.</p>
<p>The Black Book is a gigantic work. And, in the way that I suspect most readers might understand the term, there is no plot. Suffice it to say that Galip wakes up one morning and his wife has disappeared. He assumes she has gone off to seek out her first husband, Celal, a well-known newspaper columnist. Galip sets off to find Celal and, he assumes, his wife, but strangely the journalist has also disappeared. As a means to help him track down the two missing people, Galip immerses himself in Celal’s life, his writing and, gradually, his very identity. Effectively he becomes the person he is seeking. He re-reads his past work and discovers unknown things about his own, his wife’s and her former husband’s past. By then, however, we cannot be sure if we are dealing with reminiscences of Celal, Galip’s interpretations of them, Galip’s reworking of them, or, indeed, Galip’s own words presented as if they were those of Celal.</p>
<p>But the plot in The Black Book is almost irrelevant. It’s not a book that one reads to discover what happens. It’s a book that’s replete with flavour, experience and history, and the reader feasts on vast helpings of all three.</p>
<p>Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul – let’s face it, there is no other city on earth that has been named three times and where, on each occasion, that name has passed into language as an expression of political, strategic, religious and economic pre-eminence. It’s a city that bridges continents, ideologies and faiths. Nowhere else on earth has a greater claim to the very quintessence of humanity than Istanbul. And yet modern Istanbul is a Turkish city, and perhaps its most fascinating aspect is its potential to mirror contemporary debates on religion versus secularism, tradition versus modernity, imperial past versus global present.</p>
<p>The Black Book has thirty-six chapters, each having its own title and prefacing quotation. The form, at least in part, is its content, in that each chapter could be read as if it were an article written by Celal or by Galip impersonating Celal. There is no linear narrative. We experience what inspired the writer and there is no ordering of time or place. But we feel we are in that city. We feel we are living its history, whatever that might be. And we feel we are experiencing contemporary debates on its and its people’s identity. The city is central to everything in the book, with its multiple histories and allegiances mixed into the melting pot of its contemporary form.</p>
<p>Throughout, Galip finds he gradually becomes his quarry, Celal. He trades identities and roles, but never permanently, never for sure. In this way the characters become the city, whose sense of place and multiplicity of identities pervade all, thus mirroring the apparent confusion of its – and humanity’s – complexity. But the people eventually are always welcomed by some aspect of the city’s – and humanity’s – multi-faceted nature.</p>
<p>The Black Book is a work that demands to be re-read, but not because it is in any way a difficult or impenetrable read. I have never been to Istanbul, but like the book, I feel it will be an experience that, once tried, will demand to be re-visited. </p>
<div style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border:1px solid #c1c1c1;font-size: 10px">Philip Spires<br />
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya<a href="http://www.philipspires.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.philipspires.co.uk</a><br />
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.<br />Find information on <a href="http://gewgley.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2">Pay-Per-Click</a>
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		<title>Book Review: The Shadow Line</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/323/book-review-the-shadow-line/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:44:55 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amitav Ghosh]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[THE SHADOW LINESA Novel by “Amitav Ghosh”‘The Shadow Lines’ is novel written by one of the well known and celebrated Indian author Mr. Amitav Ghosh. This novel is “Sahitya Akademy Award” winner which is very much prestigious award in Indian literature. And this recognition by Sahitya Akademy led me to read the book.This book is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>THE SHADOW LINESA Novel by “Amitav Ghosh”‘The Shadow Lines’ is novel written by one of the well known and celebrated Indian author Mr. Amitav Ghosh. This novel is “Sahitya Akademy Award” winner which is very much prestigious award in Indian literature. And this recognition by Sahitya Akademy led me to read the book.This book is released in way back in 1988. Amitav Ghosh has really distinctive style of writing. His novel doesn’t have the big glamor, romanticism, heroism or drama like others. But it is more intense, sensitive, moving and more close to human emotions. The book is about a boy and his world through is eyes and his imagination. It is about his uncle who teaches him to travel the world through his imagination. It’s about his grandmother and struggle through her life after husband’s demise to raise her son without taking anyone’s help. It is about boy’s cousin Ila, his love interest who invariably brakes his heart. And it is about many such people. But more importantly is based on the backdrop of riots in Calcutta and post-partition Dhaka in 60’s, as well as in London in 60’s and in wartime of 1939 in London.The author manage to shape up the book as a web of memories of a person, he starts describing from one point which led him to various situations. His interpretation not time or place bound, he keeps on moving in past and present or from Calcutta, to London or Dhaka. It is like solving a puzzle, he is arranging the pieces one by one and after some time he comes back to point where he started from and rearrange and start other side of it. It deals with relationship, history, myths, politics, humor and many things.As the name Shadow Line suggest the author builds story builds the story around the lines drawn between people and nations. Which has been drawn by some unfortunate circumstances or by someone else or the character in the novel themselves draw it; but they could not wipe it away nor could they get accustomed to it. So there comes agitation invariably in nations or relationships of individual.In simple words the book is remarkable and brilliant. It would move every sensible man. If I have to rate the book I will give it 10 out of 10. The book will find top spot in anyone’s personal collection. </p>
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		<title>Book Review: Sultry Days</title>
		<link>http://cheapbestsellerbookstore.com/322/book-review-sultry-days/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:11:07 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Book Review: Sultry DaysAuthor: Shobha DePublisher: Penguin BooksFirst Published: 1994Shobha De – is well known personality India, she used to write articles in leading newspaper ‘Times of India’, she wrote several Books, and I think she was editor for some magazine also. Her claim to fame is in being politically incorrect and being critical and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Book Review: Sultry DaysAuthor: Shobha DePublisher: Penguin BooksFirst Published: 1994Shobha De – is well known personality India, she used to write articles in leading newspaper ‘Times of India’, she wrote several Books, and I think she was editor for some magazine also. Her claim to fame is in being politically incorrect and being critical and bitchy about everything. This is true for her articles in newspaper, But this is first time I am reading any of her book. So I picked up this book to check out what’s new she can offer through other mediums.I don’t know how people rate her as author on her overall work but judging by this book she seems pretty naive in writing novels that too fiction. I am not at all impressed how she developed the book and more importantly characters of the novel although there was lot of scope for her in it.The book is about a city girl who can be best described as no ambition girl or lost confused girl called Nisha. The book is about nisha and her life, she herself narrates it. It starts of with line when nisha meets God and fell in love with him. That is how the book is marketed. When you read that you feel wow what a great fiction lying ahead of us. But your hopes come crashing down in first few pages. As you know that God is Nisha’s love interest who is “I know all and I give a damm” kind of guy, who’s name is Deb and call as God by his friends because Deb literally means in English as God. And you lost interest in the book&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.. </p>
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