http://litmob.com Reader's Unite Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:23:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [rating:5] author: K.B. DIXON Fiction 142 pages Academy Chicago Publishers Forget stream of consciousness. I don't know about you, but my stream of consciousness generally consists of fully formed sentences latched together into comprehensive paragraphs, often incorporating plot and lots of action verbs. This may be why ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/27/the-sum-of-his-syndromes/ [rating:3] author: BENJAMIN GREENMAN Fiction 225 pages MacAdam/Cage Benjamin Greenman makes me want to be single for the rest of my life. Seriously. Never before has a collection of stories about “love” left me so jaded, miserable and repulsed at the thought of committed relationships. If I ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/27/a-circle-is-a-balloon-and-a-compass-both/ [rating:4] author: DAVE EGGERS Non-fiction 342 pages McSweeney's When Dave Eggers publishes a new book, I get pretty excited. Partly because his work rarely disappoints, but also (largely!) because McSweeney’s books are a work of art. Much like his last book, the cover of Zeitoun in many ways ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/25/zeitoun/ [rating:5] author: ROY BLOUNT JR. Fiction 384 pages Farrar, Straus and Giroux Roy Blount, Jr. shares his passion for words in this delightful, rollicking book. He mixes etymology with anecdote to create as entertaining a book about the origins of words as one could hope for. Blount ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/25/alphabet-juice/ [rating:4] author: KATHRYN STOCKETT Fiction 464 pages Putnam Adult In the Deep South of the early 1960s the civil rights movements gained force and the institutions that had held back African Americans for generations fought to keep their laws and traditions in place. It was a time ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/13/the-help/ [rating:4] author: KATIE KITAMURA Fiction 208 pages Free Press I will not lie, I bought this book because it had tattoos on the cover and the author and I had the same name. Pathetic criteria for selecting reading material but we all have our methods, and thankfully ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/12/the-long-shot/ [rating:3] author: MARY ROACH Non-fiction 320 pages W.W. Norton & Co. Nonfiction author Mary Roach tackles the science of the afterlife in Spook, a New York Times bestseller when published back in 2005. Spook is less an examination of the evidence of the afterlife as a historiography ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/12/spook/ [rating:4] author: JONATHAN CARROLL Fiction 320 pages Tor Books According to Benjamin Franklin, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” And though it’s highly unlikely that author Jonathan Carroll would tackle the latter in one of his novels, he does seem to have a ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/12/the-ghost-in-love/ [rating:4] author: DAMON GALGUT Fiction 249 pages Atlantic Books How many of us have run away from things at some point in our lives? Personal failure is what Adam, the protagonist of Damon Galgut's "The Impostor" is running from. Moving to the country, he seeks solace in ... http://litmob.com/2009/10/12/the-impostor/ [rating:3] author: CHARLIE OWEN Fiction 448 pages Headline Books The third in Charlie Owen’s series of excellent police procedurals, Bravo Jubilee is set in the seventies—Owen’s “golden age of vocational policing”—and the fictional North Manchester district of Handstead: a penurious council dumping ground for the city’s most ... http://litmob.com/2009/04/03/bravo-jubilee/