I’ve worked in many places worldwide, including Native (Amerindian) communities, West Africa, and Jamaica. Each of these experiences has enriched my life and exposed me to the fact that our society is only one of many and, similarly, that all do not share our understanding of reality. Whether visiting Adongo, a Ghanaian shaman who lived on the Burkina Faso border, and watching him go into a trance and describe my spirit, or being in the sweltering dark of a sweat lodge transported by the chanting to another place, to merging with an ancient oak tree, I have been touched by magic. It’s out there.
Over the years, I’ve read hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Many of them have moved, stretched, and entertained me, but there are only a few I wandered into and realized early on that I would not get out of this one unchanged.
The author's inventiveness is astonishing, managing to create not one new world we inhabit but three, all deftly interconnected by the unlikely thread of a simple fable passed from generation to generation. Perhaps most striking to me is the sheer power of the book, its capacity to take us places and share lives we would otherwise never dreamed of.
While the mysterious document—itself a fascinating story within a story—wends its way through a narrative that spans a thousand years, its message is less important than the lives it touches.
And what lives. Each character is drawn so vividly and infused with such essential, defining human traits that we bond with them to the point that the reader/character divide disappears. You do not identify with these characters; you are these characters, feeling their every fear, hope, love, aspiration, and dread, sharing their integrity, determination, inventiveness, and courage.
It is a cautionary tale, a hopeful tale. It was a wonderful read.
Ursula LeGuin once wrote, “While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there; we hear their voices. Sanity returns in most cases when the book is closed.” This book was one of those—it transported me into worlds and lives so vivid and believable as to be transformed. This is a book you don’t read without being changed.
On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more
“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times…
Sci-fi/fantasy? Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but Kesey wrote metaphors, novels rich in magic, and fantasies rooted in the very real and concrete threats to our world and how to combat them.
I read this book many years ago, and it shook me to my core. It is a story of courage, redemption, and resistance to tyranny, regardless of the consequences. Ironically, though Randal McMurphy is a rascal and reprobate of the first order, he is almost Christlike in his unwavering compassion for and commitment to empowering the men with whom he shares the mental ward, even when it is clear that he will die trying.
The other characters, including Chief Bromden, are men broken in spirit by a system that weakens and discards those people on the margins, convincing them of their impotence and weakness. For all of his profanity, McMurphy is full of life and vivacity, and he is determined to bring the men out of their lethargy and depression. And in the end, he does, but at a terrible cost.
Quite simply, this book provided me with a life perspective that sustained me amid political and personal turmoil and throughout my life as I faced professional and individual challenges of all sorts. I have told numerous people that I want McMurphy’s comment (after he tried to lift an impossibly heavy sink) on my tombstone. “But I tried, goddamn it. At least I did that much.”
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Now in a new deluxe edition with a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk and cover by Joe Sacco, here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them…
Welcome to a world where the inhabitants are androgynous, able to manifest both male and female genitalia. A world where you can be both a mother and a father of your children, where gender roles and expectations make no sense. I was absolutely astounded by this book when I read it many years ago. In a beautifully told sci-fi tale of political intrigue and adventure, I found myself constantly confronted by my limitations in terms of gender equity.
For what LeGuin called her “social science fiction” and “thought experiments,” LeGuin created worlds—canvases really—where human foibles, conflicts, values, and ideas could be played out to their logical conclusion. This is one of her best.
LeGuin writes, “All science fiction is a metaphor,” and that is certainly the case with her books. Brilliant metaphors that shine light not so much on other worlds but on our own. I taught TLHOD in high school English classes, and once students got beyond the resistance to the very concept of a world, a society without determined sexual roles, they were transfixed and, I think, as I was, in most cases, changed.
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…
Anyone unfamiliar with Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy has been in an extended coma or is under five. Still, when I discovered these magnificent fantasy tales, I was about 15, and it would have been around 1962. No one knew Tolkien (outside of a very small circle of friends), and when I later wanted to do a term paper on the series, my teacher told me the books were too obscure, and there would be no reviews or research to draw on.
I find myself using the word “transformational” in these reviews, and I guess that is what defines a “great book” to me. In any event, these stories transported me into worlds so rich and fully realized that I was able to slip out of my angst-ridden teenage years and live for extended periods with hobbits in their wonderful round-doored houses in a countryside that was gentle and green—and a long way away. The mystery of Gandalf transfixed me. (I even began smoking a pipe and learned how to blow smoke rings.) The sense of evil was palpable, and the forces arrayed against it were noble but seemingly doomed. What powerful writing.
These books, I suspect, made me both a reader and a writer.
One of my publishers had a promotional poster that read, “Reading Takes You Places!” This is a wonderful slogan for a publisher and a lifeline for a lonely boy in a soul-crushing suburb. These were the vehicles that took me the farthest and stayed with me the longest. They were transformative.
This brand-new unabridged audio book of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings, is read by the BAFTA award-winning actor, director and author, Andy Serkis.
In a sleepy village in the Shire, a young hobbit is entrusted with an immense task. He must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ruling Ring of Power - the only thing that prevents the Dark Lord Sauron's evil dominion.
Thus begins J. R. R. Tolkien's classic tale of adventure, which continues in…
Quite simply, Erin Morgenstern’s book is the finest example of urban fantasy I have ever read. Besides a plot rich in sorcery and romance, with a circus (think Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) that appears mysteriously, vanishing just as suddenly and the shadowy game of two great sorcerers playing out their competitiveness through the lives of their young apprentices, this is a beautifully written book. The writing is elegant, rounded, and rich. What a writer! The imagery is transporting without clobbering the reader over the head. The characters are each fully drawn, but in slow increments as the story steams inexorably ahead like the mysterious train that carries the circus from locale to locale.
This book showed me that you do not need blazing dragons or drooling werewolves to create menace, sinister characters, and mystery. Morgenstern places this world of circus magic just out of reach but so close that we feel it and see it. It is a beautiful book.
Rediscover the million-copy bestselling fantasy read with a different kind of magic, now in a stunning anniversary edition to mark 10 years since it's paperback debut.
The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon an iron gates reads:
Opens at Nightfall Closes at Dawn
Full of breath-taking amazements and open only at night, Le Cirque des Reves seems to cast a spell over all who wander its circular paths. But behind the glittering acrobats, fortune-tellers…
The Burning Gem is a story of hidden worlds beneath our own, of lost train stations and unholy customs. The story spins from chance meeting of a woman ready for adventure after years in a loveless marriage and a mysterious artisan who will show her another world.
Barbara has always had an uncanny ability to read others, but her full empathic skills emerge only after a part of her soul is crystalized into a flaming red gem. Desperate to escape her soul-crushing suburban life and to reconnect with the mysterious man who made her gem, she makes her way on foot through the terrifying NY subway tunnels to find an abandoned station. Zoltan is a gem maker who lives an existence of opulent bitterness. Along with a network of other agents, his job is to catch souls and form them into magnificent jewels. He works with referrals only, and how his clients – rising CEOs, ambitious politicians, vainglorious religious leaders -- are selected is of no concern to him. He is 110 years old. While Zoltan’s contract with the hideous Mester – who may or may not be human – promises him wealth and extended life, it also prohibits him from touching another person, or even sharing his true name
Zoltan’s life is changed dramatically when Barbara bursts into it. She breaks the spell he has been under, and he risks everything – including his life -- to discover the true nature of the sinister cabal he has unwittingly been part of. Their base of operations is a long-forgotten 1873 subway terminal, now transformed into the Market, a hidden community of seers, shapeshifters, artisans with extraordinary skills, keepers of ancient knowledge. From here Barbara and Zoltan follow leads that take them to the ruin bars and dark alleys of Budapest in a desperate race to find the truth and neutralize the Mester before he kills them. _______
“In The Burning Gem, accomplished storyteller and author Don Sawyer gives us a meticulously crafted, richly imagined, complexly plotted, deep and magical allegory creating a world that mirrors the dark forces at work on our planet today. Entertaining and compelling, I enjoyed inhabiting its realm.” – Charlie Price, Edgar Award-winning author of The Interrogation of Gabriel James
Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.
Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?
Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.
Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.
The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.
The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.
