Will the October meeting of the Kiko’s House Book Club come to order. Thank you.We have for your perusing pleasure today five books recommended by visitors to Kiko’s House and Yours Truly. Alas, most are recently released and only two are marked with an asterisk (*), which means they are available in paperback.
Whenever you read a good book or may have read one in the past that you'd recommend, e-mail me at kikokimba@gmail.comBLACK DAHLIA AVENGER: A GENIUS FOR MURDER
By Steve Hodel (Harper Paperbacks, 2006) (*)
The release of a new Brian DePalma movie on the infamous -- and long unsolved -- 1947 Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles prompted a recent Kiko's House post on this remarkable book.
Hodel, a retired LAPD detective, can't write worth a lick, but the story he tells is chillingly compelling and he makes a convincing case for having solved the crime, possibly implicating some Hollywood heavyweights in the process.THE COMPLETE ANNOTATED GRATEFUL DEAD LYRICS
By David Dodd (Free Press, 2005)
This is a delightfully written and nicely illustrated compendium of the lyrics to the many songs written by members of the Grateful Dead over its 40-year history, which began with a burst of psychedelic fervor in San Francisco in 1965 and ended with a whimper after lead guitarist Jerry Garcia finally succumbed to his demons.
The long introduction by Dead lyricist Robert Hunter is worth the price of admission. More here from a Kiko's House post.PRISONER OF TREBEKISTAN: A DECADE IN JEOPARDY!
By Bob Harris (Crown, 2006)
This book is big fun. Written by a comedy writer and former "Jeopardy" contestant, it provides an inside look to America's most popular and longest-running game show.Harris describes his own obsession with winning and how it cost him his girlfriend. (He got another.) He provides all kinds of tips on "Jeopardy" wannabes and has the inside dope of show host Alex Trebek: Yes, his just as nice a guy in person as he is on the air.
This is the most beautifully written book to come along in years, all the more so because the two "suites" that comprise it had not been polished before Jewish Russian-born Némerovksy was arrested in Paris and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died in 1942.
SUITE FRANÇAISE
By Irène Némerovksy and Sandra Smith (Knopf, 2006) (*)
The first suite concerns a disparate group of Parisians who deal with the approaching German army in their own ways, while the second focuses on a farming village under Nazi occupation.
WILL YOU DIE WITH ME? MY LIFE AND THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
By Flores Alexander Forbes (Atria, 2006)
If you still cling to the notion that the Black Panthers were a bunch of well meaning revolutionaries out to change the world, then don't read this book. If you're prepared to face facts -- that group leader Huey Newton was a cocaine-addicted, iron-fisted thug -- then dive right in.
Forbes joined the party at age 16 and this riveting account is part Dostoyevski and part mea culpa.
HOW THE KIKO'S HOUSE BOOK CLUB WORKS
Include in the body of the e-mail the book's title, author and type (fiction, nonfiction, bio, advice, etc.) and a few words about why you enjoyed and would recommend it. I'll post your recommendations at the next Book Club meeting.
Hitherto available only through institutional access, it is now available to mere mortals. Click here and a world of books is at your fingertips.
America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama (Yale University Press, 2005)
American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips (Viking, 2006)
The Assassin’s Gate: American In Iraq by George Packer (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005)
Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing by Lee Server (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
Candide: Or Optimism by Voltaire (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2005)
The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror by Nathan Sharansky with Ron Dermer (Public Affairs, 2004)
A Dance To the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (Mandarin, 1997)
Daniel Martin by John Fowles (Jonathan Cape, 1997)
Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir by Danielle Trussoni (Henry Holt, 2006)
The Fall of Lucifer (Chronicles of Brothers) by Wendy Alec (Realms, 2005)
The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, The Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves by Andrew Levy (Random House, 2005)
Freedom at Midnight: The Epic Drama of India's Struggle for Independence by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (Simon & Schuster, 1975)
Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse (Picador, 1994)
Guests of the Ayatollah: America's First War Against Militant Islam by Mark Bowden (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006)
I Am Charlotte Simons by Tom Wolff (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004)
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins (Henry Holt, 2005)
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
by Truman Capote (Vintage, 1994)
In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing 'The Second World War' by David Reynolds (Random House: 2005)
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (Random House, 2006)
The Keep by Jennifer Egan (Knopf, 2006)
The Life of Pi: A Novel by Yann Martel (Canongate, 2001)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (Knopf, 2006)
Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality by Richard Slotkin (Henry Holt and Co., 2005)
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (Random House, 2005)
Magic Bus by Rory MacLean (Viking, 2006)
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman (Hyperion, 1998)
The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)
Margot Fonteyn by Meredith Daneman (Viking, 2o04)
Middlemarch By George Eliot (Oxford University Press, 1997)
Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel by Arthur Golden (Vintage, 1997)
The One Percent Solution by Ron Suskind (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
The Playmate Book: Six Decades of Centerfolds by Gretchen Edgren (Taschen, 2006)
Political Fictions by Joan Didion (Knopf, 2001)
Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Acievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight (Basic books, 2005)
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler (Dutton, 2003)
The Second World War by Winston Churchill (Houghton Mifflin, 1948-53)
The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin, 1990)
Timothy Leary