I
read The Perks of Being a Wallflower as one of my choices for Banned Books Week
2023. I didn’t expect to fall so far in love with the characters that the rest
of my world fell away while I was reading it. I stayed up way past my bedtime.
I kept thinking about it during my waking hours. And when it ended, I couldn’t
imagine starting another book right away. I ached to know what happened to
Charlie and my literary “friends.” I wanted to follow Charlie through high
school and college, grow into adulthood, and learn the lessons from his painful adolescence.
A modern cult classic, a major motion picture and a timeless bestseller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story.
Charlie is not the biggest geek in high school, but he's by no means popular.
Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is attempting to navigate through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and music - when all one requires to feel infinite is that…
Pete
Hamill is one of my father’s favorite writers. Both share a love of history and, especially, the history of New York, which is the backdrop of this book and the history of
my family.
Hamill paints such a rich world that it’s easy to fall into it and long to stay.
Many of my family called New York home, most via Ellis Island. Reading
this story, which takes New York back to its beginnings, made me feel closer to
my ancestors. I’ve walked those streets with my father and been in those
neighborhoods, listening to his tales of his childhood and wondering what it
all looked, smelled, and sounded like in the past.
From the shores of Ireland, Cormac O'Connor sets out on a fateful journey to avenge the deaths of his parents and honour the code of his ancestors. His quest brings him to the settlement of New York, seething with tensions between English and Irish, whites and blacks, British and Americans, where he is swept up in a tide of conspiracy and violence. In return for aiding an African shaman who was brought to America in chains, Cormac is given an otherworldly gift: he will live forever - as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan. A writer, a…
I
adore Michael Chabon and have read almost all of his books, but I was surprised I
hadn’t gotten to this novel until 2022.
I have Jewish roots, and I love any
opportunity to see Yiddish in print, so it was fascinating for me to get
involved in the world of this novel, which is part detective novel, part
speculative fiction, and part cultural exploration. I had so much empathy for the
characters. They felt like the people I’d grown up with.
The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.
What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska - and not Israel - had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon's Yiddish-speaking 'Alyeska', Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn its…
Eli works in his parents’ deli. His family is
his whole world—almost. He spends every Sunday at the movies and hopes to hit
it big as a Hollywood screenwriter. How can he tell his parents that one day
he’ll be leaving?
Evelyn’s father works for the mob—undoubtedly
why they’re doing so well. That is definitely the reason she’s not allowed out
unescorted. Even though her parents have chosen a husband for her, she
fantasizes about a life in service to the unfortunate. For the moment, she
dreams of escape, if only for a few hours.
Opportunity strikes, and she ends up at the
deli. The pair meet only briefly, but their connection tempts an unlikely,
forbidden romance that could endanger both their lives.
