Unabridged Bookstore

Updated 10/26/11

freedom FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen.
Picador, fiction, $16.00.

There is little I can add that hasn't already been written about Jonathan Franzen's latest. Franzen has written one of the great American social-realist novels by turning the mirror not on our mistakes (all though there are many) but on our compromises.

Franzen's cuts are deep and they sting, but if his characters and plot are the knife his prose, pacing, and style are the salve.

Stefan was blown away by this novel and highly recommends.

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert. Translated by Lydia Davis
Penguin Books, Fiction, 16.00.

Since its original publication, translators have been trying to solve the riddle of Flaubert's subtly powerful style. Davis, a fiction writer and acclaimed Proust translator, worked for years, with Flaubert-style meticulousness, to create the closest possible English version. She even preserved apparent mistakes: irregular capitulization, mismatched verb tenses, etc.

Davis' version reminds us that MADAME BOVARY, the official textbook of "realism" is in fact, quite experimental.

We recommend!

french lessons THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by Isabel Wilkerson.
Vintage Books, Non-fiction, $16.95.

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS is a landmark piece of narrative journalism chronicling the great migration, a six-decade long exodus of six million black southerners who fled the Jim Crow south for the promised land of the North, forever transforming American culture and demographics. Wilkerson humanizes history by focusing on three separate people who trekked North in three different decades:

Idamae Gladney leaves Mississippi to come to Chicago (Our city features prominently in this book!)George Swanson Starlin leaves central Florida for Harlem. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a doctor, flees Louisiana for California.

It is a testament to this brilliant and stirring epic that you will never forget these people and their stories!

The book is at once passionate and personal, scholarly and anecdotal, where lives were changed by small outrages and the cherished notion of freedom. It changed the way I look at our history!

Ed loved and highly recommends.

at home AT HOME by Bill Bryson.
Anchor Books, Non-fiction, $15.95.

Bill Bryson returns with his insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm with AT HOME. In this fascinating book, Bryson takes readers on a room by room tour of his rural English parsonage, delving into the history of everything he encounters, including ice cubes, mousetraps, comfortable beds, and glass windows.

Bryson explores how our homes and the functional objects contained within have evolved, and how this evolution has changed our lives. During this progress, things once considered luxurious and even decadent are now so commonplace that they aren't even thought about. But Bryson thinks about them, and he reveals the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.

AT HOME is a witty, enlightening, and informative romp through domesticity.

Shane loved!

MEMOIRS OF A BRETON PEASANT by Jean-Marie Deguignet
Seven Stories Press, Non-fiction, $19.95.

Deguignet's memoirs prove so fascinating, so narratively intriguing that the book reads like a 19th century novel, but with a late 20th century political and philosophical sensibility. To Deguignet's detriment he was far ahead of his time on thoughts of war, religion, intellectual curiosity, and biting humorous sarcasm, that he had few true companions. We may friend him now for his story is extraordinary.

Born into poverty in Brittany and escaping by way of the military, Deguignet traveled the world. He provides us a very unique document of a time now only chronicled by modern historians who lack a certain ... verve that Deguignet possessed. To top it off, the translation is deft and never leaves you wanting.

Stefan could not recommend this entertaining and enriching memoir more!

A SECRET GIFT by Ted Gup.
Penguin Books, Non-fiction, $16.00.

During the Great Depression in 1933, Sam Stone anonymously offered money to 75 families in Canton, Ohio if they wrote him letters describing their lives and hardships. He delivered on his promise. Decades later, grandson Ted Gup discovered these letters. In A SECRET GIFT, Gup not only explores this act of generosity and how it affected the families involved, but also delves into his grandfather's mysterious past and the reasons behind his generous gift. Gup paints a vivid and informative picture of the Great Depression and how ordinary people struggled to endure. What could have been an overly-sentimental work in the wrong hands is instead a powerful book that reminds us that the fragile line that separates the social classes can dissolve overnight. This time and soulful book is moving, well-researched, engrossing, and elegant.

Shane recommends!