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Barbara’s
Recommends...
you take a classic approach to surviving the dog days of summer
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By John
Kennedy Toole
This story
of an anti-Everyman is full of the hideous richness of life
in New Orleans—Chicago’s sister city-on-the-make.
Ignatius J. O’Reilly is a misfit for the ages; genius
who can’t hold a job, would-be academic independent who
lives at the sufferance of his decidedly working class mother,
and lover of feminine virtue who falls in love with a photo
of a stripper. While in real life you might cross the street
to avoid this hot dog vendor, on the page he should be embraced
in all of his mad splendor.
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By Marilynne
Robinson
A newly reissued
feminist classic, from the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning
Gilead. HOUSEKEEPING
is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow
up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother,
then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie,
their eccentric and remote aunt. Ruth and Lucille’s struggle
toward adulthood illuminates the price of loss and survival,
and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.
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By Alexandre
Dumas
The newly recovered
‘lost’ novel by Dumas won’t be translated
for some time, so let’s take the time to reacquaint ourselves
with the greatest adventure writer of all time with his most
famous work - THE
THREE MUSKETEERS. Porthos, Athos, Aramis and D’Artaganon
save the queen, battle the Cardinal’s guard, help besiege
La Rochelle, charm the ladies (except Madame de Winter), foil
Richlieu, and even find time for a little light larceny in what
is simply one of the most enjoyable books ever written.
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By Eudora
Welty
THE
OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER may be the greatest work
of one of the most important writers of the last century. Laurel
Hand, long absent from the South, comes from Chicago to New
Orleans when her father dies after surgery. With Fay, the stupid
new wife of her father, Laurel returns to her former Mississippi
home and stays a few days for reunions with old friends. In
a night alone in the house she grew up in, she confronts elements
of the past.
The simplicity of the story does no justice the beautiful worlds
this book contains. |
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By Vladimir
Nabokov
One of the
most famous and controversial novels of all time. Have you read
it? If not you may be surprised. While it is the story of a
man’s love for a young girl, it is also the story of a
writer’s love for his adopted language. While Humbert
Humbert plots to seduce his stepdaughter Dolores, Nabokov seduces
us with his astonishing gift for words and images. Love in all
of its forms, the sacred and the profane, come together in this
unforgettable masterwork.
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By Dorothy
L. Sayers
Besides sex,
adventure and humor what else do we like to read in the summer?
Mysteries. If you have never read Dorothy Sayers (second only
to Agatha Christie as a purveyor of murder most British) MURDER
MUST ADVERTISE is the perfect introduction to the style
and wit of her brilliant, troubled detective—Lord Peter
Wimsey. Murder, made to look like an accident, at an advertising
agency leads him to blackmail, bad women and a bit of cocaine
in this excellent novel of detection.
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