Eric Pallant's Book List Home Fiction Reviews Nonfiction Reviews Jewish Books Mystery Recommendations Links Type Book List into Google and 37,200,000 hits come up. So why another one? Because whenever I cross the threshold of a public library the list of books friends have recommended, or reviews of books I swore I'd read, immediately leaves my mind. I'm soon overwhelmed by hundreds of artfully designed book covers and a completely blank mind. That's why I started keeping a list of books I've read and books I'd like to read. Also, I forgot what I've read, or remember I read it, but can't remember what it's about. The following lists includes books I've read and books recommended to me, mostly by my mother, referred to under recommendations as LEP. Mom reads everything from cereal boxes to Melville and reads them faster than I can eat cookies. I think she is an excellent judge of quality. If you have book you would like to recommend or a review you want to add, click on want to contribute? My Home Page. Recent Reads Edited by Susan Orlean The Best American Travel Writing *** (of 4) On the upside, no kidding, Orlean and the series editor really do skim the cream from thousands of annual travel articles. Read more...   Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett **** ( of 4) It's difficult to write a series of detective stories with the same cop in the same location and not get stale. Burdett, now writing book number three, gets better, rather than repetitive. He is more comfortable and relaxed filling out the Buddhist Thai policeman, Sonchai Jiptleecheep, who may be the only son of a prostitute and brothel owner in Bangkok who is also the only honest cop in the country. Read more... Using all her gifts as a poet Angelou recounts a period in the 1950s when she joined a community of ex-patriot African Americans in Ghana to search for her metaphysical African roots. Obviously, her true ancestors, torn from their parents and their continent, cannot ever be located; read more... All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou **** (of 4) Beaufort by Ron Leshem **** (of 4) Erez, a patriotic IDF commander of 13 fresh recruits, is sent to Lebanon in the late 90s to protect Israel’s northern border from Hezbollah rocket attacks. What begins as a group of read more... Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky *** (of 4)   As a Hampshire College student in the late 70s, Lansky decides to learn Yiddish. At that time Yiddish, having barely survived the murderous rampage of the Holocaust, was being finished off by assimilating Jews anxious to distance themselves from their ghettoized past. Lansky found himself a teacher, an old textbook, and I.B. Singer's Satan in Goray. Then he could not find any other Yiddish book in print Read more... Additional Categories Generally speaking the following categories list only books I really liked (*** and ****) in each category. There are others, but you'll have to hunt for the reviews. Best Reads of 2008 Bangkok Haunts, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Beaufort, People of the Book, Red Sea,To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever, Fire, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, A Short History of Nearly Everything Travel Confederates in the Attic, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Holy Land: A suburban memoir, No Man's River, The Places in Between, Walk in the Woods, Winter, Oracle Bones, To Hate Like this is to be Happy Forever, Fire Islam The Attack, Guests of the Sheik, The Looming Tower, Persepolis 1, Persepolis 2, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Shia Revival, A Thousand Splendid Suns History The March (fiction), A Peace to End all Peace, A People's History of the United States, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (fiction), 1491, Mayflower, Kristallnacht Foreign Fiction Corelli's Mandolin, The Dew Breaker, A Fine Balance, Interpreter of Maladies, Map of Lost Lovers, Natasha and Other Stories, Small Island Classics East of Eden Favorites The Book Thief, Corelli's Mandolin, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, A Fine Balance, Mila 18, What is the What, The Nine, People of the Book Recommendations by past and present students Hope's Edge, And Still We Rise, Blood Brothers Memoir and Biography Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Persepolis 1, Persepolis 2 , Seabiscuit, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes