Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
R.K. Rowling, 1997
309 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
January, 2014
Poor little Harry. He sleeps in a closet beneath the stairs, he's bullied by his cousin, despied by his aunt and uncle, and the most memorable gift the world ever saw fit to bestow upon him was a pair of old socks and a wooden hanger. But his world is about to change.
Harry, it turns out, is legendary, so famous—in a different plane of existence—that mere mention of his name elicits oohs and awe. Poor Harry, indeed! Yet until the strike of midnight on the eve of his 11th birthday, the little fellow had not a clue.
The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion, 2013
304 pp.
November, 2013
Feelings are a serious disruption to Don Tillman's orderly world. He listens to Bach, not for its beauty but for the pattern of its notes. He runs his life based on strict logic, he times his weekly schedule down to the minute, and he has zero luck with women. Small wonder.
A 39-year-old professor of genetics, Don is an intellectual savant and social misfit. It's obvious to us that he has Asperger's though it's a fact that clearly escapes him. He's just...unusual, is what Don thinks, and his disastrous history with women notwithstanding, Don is out to get a wife.
Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, 2012
336 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
October, 2013
This may be the ideal primer for those too young to have lived through the JFK assassination or fallen under the spell of the Kennedy aura. The fact that our country remains fascinated—50 years later—with the man and his legacy is fascinating in and of itself.
Still more fascinating is that a commentator with Bill O'Reilly's conservative stripes would write such a glowing account of Kennedy, a Democrat—whom he admits he finds, well...fascinating.
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking! in America's Gilded Capital
Mark Liebovich, 2013
400 pp.
Book Review by Molly Lundquist
September, 2013
Mark Liebovich's take on the nation's capital generates so many "suspicions confirmed" head-nods, you'll be popping Advil to ease the neck pain. According to This Town, Washington really is that bad—as bad we thought, even worse.
The opening pages take us to Tim Russert's funeral, a laugh-out-loud look at the preening, posturing D.C. in-crowd. That first chapter alone is worth the price of admission.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby Girls
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920-22
300 pp.
August, 2013
Published in The Saturday Evening Post from 1920-22, these eight stories by Fitzgerald have been collected into a single new volume. An added treat are the original illustrations from The Post that accompany each story—they're wonderful.
Written with Fitzgerald's understated wit and irony, the stories, like his novels, revolve around America's elite. At country clubs, in spacious homes and yachts, handsome young women and Ivy-Leagued young men pursue one another with desperate intent. It's a marriage market to make Jane Austen blush.