Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II Review

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(More customer reviews)Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul is an excellent book for every teenager, and anyone who wants to understand what problems teenagers are facing these days. This book contains stories that range from incredibly funny to sad and serious, but yet uplifting.All teenagers facce hardships that have to do with self esteem and fitting in. It is a book that you can go to when you are having problems. I feel tha tevery teenager can relate to this book. It is a good book to uplift your spirits. I recently had some trouble with one of my friends. The book was very helpful and helped us get over our differences. However, there was one story that really touched me. it was titled "A Lesson for Life". The quote at the beginging sort fo explains it all: "The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hutr." It is about a boy who stand up for another boy when he is being picked on. This story changed my life in a way. I started to look around, and I realized that many people around me felt that they did not fit in. I suddenly thought that I was not very confident about myself, but I wanted to help others. The less that I started to worry about myself, and getting to know others, the more and more confident I became about myself. I now have a very happy life, and when someone feels down about their self, I can relate to them and give them advice. More people in this world should be friendly and stick up for others. The book teaches life lessons that everyone should be aware of. One of my friends's parents read the teenage version of htis book when her daughter was done. They previously had a rocky relationship, and everything has changed for the better since then. Another story in this book that has helped me in the struggle as a teenager was titled "No Matter What Happens". It is about growing up and how to deal with it. This book is a great place to turn to when you are looking for inspriration or help in life. You can relate to almost everything in the book.

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Out Stealing Horses: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)There are bound to be people annoyed and disappointed by 'Out Stealing Horses', as it is not the traditional narrative they may be used to. Instead of building toward a climactic finish, or revealing a fateful detail that ties together several unrelated events, 'Out Stealing Horses' is a dreamy recitation of memories and the present day, as experienced by an aging widower in rural Norway. The 'payoff', if it can be called that, is not a gratification of the reader's curiousity, but an impressionistic portrait of the sum total of a life.
Alternating between the summer of 1948 and the present, Per Petterson writes of Trond Sanders, who is essentially trying to disappear from the world after three years of mourning for his wife. He has moved to the country, and obsesses over tiny details of his new existence. At the same time, he examines the events from 60 years earier, when he spent a season with his father, a former member of the underground during the Nazi occupation.
It's surprising how big this story is, considering the fragmentary approach Petterson uses. Big in the sense that every page seems loaded with meaning, as if even Trond's stumbling around his run-down cabin hides a secret parallel with an earlier part of his life, or else foreshadows things to come. This sort of storytelling almost promises a compelling denouement, though if that is what the reader is lookng for, he may feel cheated. Instead, Petterson hews closer to reality, shunning the contrived shortcuts fiction is capable of and portrays a complex man who has no more answers to his life's meaning than any of the rest of us.
I found Petterson's style very rustic and refreshing - like a drink of water from a clear stream, or a walk through an untended, leafy wood. Though this may not be entirely apt, he seemed to strip his narrative of any modernity, or at least seperate it from a materialistic point of view. There is nothing concrete in the story to support that feeling, it is more of a general sense I had from his crafting of the novel. Unfortunately, I also found it almost too tenuous in its connections, and some events at the beginning a little too coincidental. Petterson even addresses that, saying (as Trond) after one such event that if he'd read it in a book, he would have disliked it.
In one sense, 'Out Stealing Horses' could be considered a coming of age story - a genre I usually am not interested in - but in another, deeper sense, I believe Trond revisits this critical summer in his youth subconciously looking for connections to the life that followed from it. Not so much a 'coming of age' story then, but an examination of the past to determine personal meaning. If there are any clues, he knows that they lie in this remote part of his life, but as I mentioned before, Petterson arrives at the same answers we all do when embarking on such a errand. Because he does so with such a poetic pace and with calmly quiet observations though, it is a sublime task for us to follow along.
'Out Stealing Horses' is not liable to become a classic in and of itself - I do not think it has quite that much staying power - but as a meditation on the intertwining of past and present, it is powerful without plucking at the reader's emotions, or sliding into melancholy. Simple and intelligent, there is room for different interpretations, and at the same time, it is a relief from the frenetic page turners churned out by publishers today. Petterson has created a calm and quiet place, one perfectly suited for the tale he has to tell.

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Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) Review

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(More customer reviews)From the first sentence of Jeffrey Eugenides' MIDDLESEX, I was hooked by this complicated tale of a young girl who grows into a man. The story of Cal Stephanides begins generations before his birth, in a small Greek village, when his grandparents succumb to incestuous desires. Immigration to the United States keeps Desdemona and Lefty's secret intact - until their grandchild Cal reaches puberty. Told with both humor and earnestness, the story grows more engaging with every page.
The brilliance of this book emerges not from the superficial story of a hermaphrodite but from the context - historical, scientific, psychological, political, geographical - of Cal's birth and subsequent rebirth. MIDDLESEX is about much more than gender confusion. Cal's mixed gender can be taken as a metaphor for the experience of first- and second-generations born of immigrants.
While the context of this story provides the substance, the characters provide the vibrancy. Cal emerges as a reliable and likeable narrator. He is sensible, good-humored, and intelligent. The spectrum of his experiences provides a smooth transition between childhood and adult, enabling the reader to embrace the character as both male and female. Cal's family is affectionately portrayed, even with their failings. (Cal's brother, Chapter Eleven, annoyed me with his name, a running gag, but even he ended up a full-blooded character by the end.)
Eugenides has written an expansive, compelling book. Despite its length of over 500 pages, the novel is not a slow read - unless the reader wants it to be, to make it last. Accessible, intelligent, well-paced and plotted, it should appeal to a wide range of readers.
I can't recommend this novel highly enough.

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She's Come Undone (Oprah's Book Club) Review

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(More customer reviews)If someone would have told me six weeks ago that by now I would have read and been completely absorbed by the tale of a 257 pound girl named Delores I would have told them they were out of their mind. But strange things happen when I find myself without something to read. Invariably I turn to our home library to consider reading a book that my wife purchased, or perhaps re-reading one of my old favorites. This time "She's Come Undone" caught my attention. "Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered," said the back cover. "That's an interesting hook," I thought. "And the author is a man delivering a first person female narrative? Hmmmm... may have to give ole Wally a few pages of my interest."
That was all Wally needed. Within just the first few pages describing Delores' perfectly natural early childhood and allusions to her future woes I was engrossed.
This book is about the possibly healing affects we can have as friends and the potentially destructive power we have as family. It is about the undeniable value of positive self-image and the brutal consequences of inappropriate guilt. It is about divorce, it is about AIDS, it is about obesity, and it is about rape and abortion. It is about hope and love. It contains several hundred of the most physically painful pages that I have ever read, interrupted only intermittently with some dark joke made as Delores faces her struggles. In the space of 465 pages Wally brings to life not a classic heroine who defeats all of her foes, but a woman simply trying to survive. Even after a week I feel sympathy for this illusion created by Wally Lamb, and throughout the day I look for her. Sadly, I see her in many faces.
A highly, highly recommended read for anyone who feels they have the stomach for it. While many of the topics addressed should be discussed with teenagers, I would not recommend a young reader going this one alone. There are astonishingly important lessons here. Lessons for all of us.

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A Map of the World (Oprah's Book Club) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was hesitant to pick this book after reading some reader reviews describing it as boring, too wordy, and turned off by the death of a child.
On the contrary, I found it very rich, textural, and complex in a very human way. I was never bored and whipped through this in less than a week. I found it fascinating. I loved the way Alice narrated it at first, then Howard, than back to Alice again.
People are very fallible, complex characters and this book finds the perfect pitch to tell that story. It is about surviving trageday, and ultimately, forgiveness.
While this is not a "happy" read, I was not depressed by it either. I get so tired of people complaining about subject matter being depressing and therefore, throwaway. It is through pain we often find joy. For me, a good book, or movie is something that grips me and holds my attention, whether it be happy or sad or both.
This is one of the better books I have read in a long time. I will read more by Jane Hamilton.

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club) Review

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(More customer reviews)The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is one of the best novels I've read in a while. I loved the way Carson McCullers develops the characters in this book. Loneliness and racial injustice are two timeless themes in this novel that McCullers presents so well. McCullers was a white woman writing about how black people were mistreated and felt oppressed in 1940. She was an author truly ahead of her time in that way.
All the characters are so memorable in this book. Biff Brannon is a compassionate cafe owner. He helps anyone in need by giving them either food, money or a job. Brannon becomes a widower when his wife dies suddenly of a tumor. Mick Kelly is a lonely but intelligent 12 year old girl from a poor family with a passion for music. Doctor Copeland is a black physician. He becomes a crusader for racial justice when his son goes to jail. McCullers explains the basic principles of Karl Marx's economic theory in the novel by putting in a lecture by Copeland in the novel to show how society is divided between the rich and poor people. I knew nothing about Karl Marx's ideas, so I thought this part of the novel was very interesting.Another memorable character is John Singer. He is a man who does not have the ability to speak. However, he becomes the person all the characters eventually confide all their problems to. Singer communicates with his long time room mate and only deaf friend by using sign language. The relationship and love between these two deaf friends is one of the best things about this novel.
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is one of the best books Oprah has ever chosen for her book club. The themes of loneliness and racial injustice are timeless and universal. The characters are very memorable too. I loved reading this book.

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With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

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