The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Another standard book club pick, this non fiction expose describes life of a fairly well off book seller and his family in post 9/11 Afghanistan. Sultan has struggled all his life (and even gone to jail) to maintain the written word in his country despite the Taliban and/or government pressures to eradicate all forms of modern culture and ancient literature. Norweigan journalist Seierstad spent several months shadowing him and his family and paints a really depressing picture for modern Afghani women. Sultan's youngest sister Leila has a particularly suffocating and bleak life.

Honestly, the book was written well and has a lot of information about the political history of the country, but MAN is it a downer.

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"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Fans of science fiction, video games and pop culture should add New York Times Bestseller “ Ready Player One ” by Ernest Cline to their list of must-reads. USA Today has referred to it as "Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.” Although this may seem to be a strange comparison, nothing could be quite so accurate. On planet Earth in 2044, real life is pretty dismal. Most of society, including teenager Wade Watts, spends its waking hours plugged into the OASIS, an immense & fully interactive virtual world. OASIS users can be anyone and do anything that they choose. Think of the OASIS as a giant role-playing game…except the main character is you . Users can explore countless planets, purchase real estate, slay monsters and even attend school (as Wade does). Wade's life changes when James Halliday, the enigmatic & reclusive creator of the OASIS, dies...leaving behind an enormous ...

"A Banquet of Consequences" by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This is the selection for the upcoming March book club. I had originally read TTW several years ago and fell in love with it (oddly enough, before I became a librarian). Henry and Clare have had an unorthodox relationship to say the least. As one might infer from the title, Henry is a time traveler (and a librarian!). Clare met Henry when she was a little girl when he traveled there as a middle aged adult. They meet again when Clare is 20, but Henry has no idea of their relationship, though she has known him all her life. And so, a passionate affair begins between the 2 of them as they struggle to work out a relationship that is plagued by Henry's absences and Clare's former knowledge. It sounds confusing, but things make sense after awhile. On reading this a second time around, I wasn't as captivated by the romance as I was before - if anything, the book (and Henry/Clare's relationship) seemed more depressing than anything else (I wonder what that says about me?). Ther...

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