Saturday, September 10, 2016

looking forward to this...Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman


Nietzche

Nietzsche says: "One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star." The first fundamental point of view here is: Existence is pure joy. If you don't see that, your perception is wrong. And we are not talking about Mary Baker Eddy Christian Science denial of the facts. In this approach you are supposed to learn to alchemically transmute sorrow into joy, chaos into art. You exult in the random give and take of the hard knocks of life. It's a daily feast. Every phenomenon is an Act of Love. Every experience, however serendipitous, is necessary, is a sacrament, is a means of growth."

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell,great...

Starred Review* The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are the largest branches of the Christian-religion tree. Almost unknown are Eastern Catholics, who follow Eastern traditions but proclaim their loyalty to the pope. Brothers Simon and Alex are priests, though Simon is climbing the Vatican ladder, while Alex has followed his father into the Eastern Catholic priesthood. Allowed to marry before ordination, Alex has a young son, Peter, which makes him even more of an oddity in Vatican City, where he lives. His life takes a dangerous turn when a friend, the curator of a Shroud of Turin exhibit, is murdered on the eve of the show's opening. There are secrets here, slowly revealed, that could change the face of Christianity if the truth about the shroud and an ancient fifth gospel—one that tries to reconcile the synoptic gospels with the gospel of John—comes to light. Caldwell, coauthor of the international bestseller, The Rule of Four (2000), has invaded Da Vinci Code territory here, but his version has more in common with high-end literary-historical thrillers like those by Iain Pears than it does with Dan Brown. Here motives are nuanced shadows that are as hard to grasp for Alex as they are for readers. It is this very elusiveness, juxtaposed against a strong sense of place, that intrigues, making this the best kind of page-turner, one about which you also have to think. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Caldwell's publisher smells Big Book with this one and plans to make it as easy as possible for readers to pick up the scent. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
 

Silk by Alessandro Baricco


The Unseen World by Liz Moore


 PW Reviews 2016 May #3
In her third novel, Moore (Heft) delivers a striking examination of family, memory, and technology. Leaping from the 1980s to the early 2000s, this is the story of young Ada Sibelius and her brilliant computer scientist father, David, who runs a lab at a prestigious college in Boston, working to develop a lifelike artificial intelligence program, ELIXIR. Ada is being raised nontraditionallyâ€"educated by David and his lab colleagues, treated as one of the team, without kid glovesâ€"but when David begins showing signs of Alzheimer's, her life is upended. She is sent to a local junior high school, where she is forced to interact with children her own age, and when David can no longer remain unsupervised, she is taken in by Diana Liston, David's closest associate. Moore's exploration of David's decline is remarkable and heartbreaking, and she shifts gears deftly as the story is complicated further: when Liston tries to become Ada's legal guardian, questions about David's identity arise. Since David can no longer answer for himself, Ada takes charge and tries to unravel her father's cryptic past, leading to the discovery of a hidden file, titled "The Unseen World," on David's computer. Mysteries build, and Moore's gift for storytelling excels. This is a smart, emotionally powerful literary page-turner.
LJ Reviews 2016 June #1
Moore's third and perhaps most ambitious novel (after Heft and The Words of Every Song) is large in scope, as it explores the philosophical issues surrounding human vs. computer consciousness, but it is also a small-scale, powerfully local story about a young girl. The details of Ada Sibelius's day-to-day life in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, homeschooled by her genius father, carry this narrative. She is forced to grow up fast, helping her father and his team at a computer science lab, and caring for him as he suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's. As his health and memory rapidly decline, she discovers her parent was not who he said he was, and with the help of a private investigator and a local librarian, learns more about him and his sacrifices than he would ever share with her. The story also flashes forward to the present and near future, when Ada is working for a tech company to produce a virtual reality world. VERDICT Moore's vivid characters will stay with readers long after the story has ended. Highly recommended for literary fiction enthusiasts, with crossover appeal to sf fans. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]â€"Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
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