Vladimir NABOKOW
Sprich, Erinnerung
Wiedersehen mit einer Autobiographie
Anne WEST
Der Venus-Effekt
Spielregeln für Liebe, Sex und andere lustvolle Kleinigkeiten
Tom WOLFE:
I am Charlotte Simmons
Product Description: Dupont University - the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition... Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.
As Charlotte encounters Dupont's privileged elite - her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus - she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives. With his signature eye for detail, Tom Wolfe draws on extensive observation of campuses across the country to immortalize college life in the '00s. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the much-anticipated triumph of America's master chronicler.
Elizabeth Noble
The Reading Group
From Publishers Weekly: Perfect indulgence for the eponymous set—or pandering to an anticipated audience? Or maybe both? As the London Evening Standard put it, "The blurb has [the author] down as a simple Surrey housewife who knocked this out between the Hoovering and the hot sex, but further investigation reveals her to be a veteran of book marketing married to the head of Time Warner UK." Go figure! Well, either way, this U.K. bestseller is a frothy page-turner that dissects the relationships, desires and discoveries of five English women, all members of a book club. Over the course of a year, the women read 12 novels (including Atonement, Rebecca and The Alchemist) and, through their playful but intimate discussions (few of which revolve around the books), they bond closely while coping with such matters as a philandering husband, a mother with dementia, a pregnant but unmarried daughter, an infertility crisis, a wedding and a funeral. It's a testament to Noble's characterizations and plotting that the novel is not overwhelming, despite its numerous (perhaps too many) points of view, complicated backstories and interweaving contemporary crises. Light but never flip, this is funny, contemplative and touching reading, and the group's familiar book choices allow readers to feel as if they're part of the gang, too, as they race to the end, eager to find out what happens, why it does and what it all means.
Leslie Brenner
American Appetite
The Coming auf Age of a Cuisine
From Publishers WeeklyI: this intriguing, albeit somewhat haughty, culinary treatise, Brenner (1996 winner of the James Beard Award for journalism and the author of several books on wine and food) attempts to discern whether an American cuisine exists. Brenner observes that "Americans love big flavors. As a group, we tend not to have, shall we say, refined tastes," and from there she sets out to define what is American cuisineAmostly from a perspective of culinary sophisticationAas evidenced in what is offered by grocery stores, restaurants and cookbooks. She gives a brief history of the American culinary evolution, from the clever and imaginative cooking methods of the Native Americans and Dutch (which were altered to suit the bland Puritan taste) to Thomas Jefferson's introduction of French foods to the era of industrial canning, which Brenner believes led to the demise of American gastronomy. In a chapter entitled "Xenophobes No More: The Foreign Influence," she lists the contributions that have been made by people from other countries, especially since the Immigration Act of 1965. A chapter on "chic" food informs that celery ruled in the 1860s, oranges gained prominence in the 1870s and vichyssoise came of age in the 1920s. In the end, Brenner states that American cuisine is "alive, it's vibrant, it's hereAthough it's only just starting to come into its own." Although her tone may irk readers not from New England or California ("In many cities and towns across America, the gastronomic revolution has yet to arrive"), Brenner offers a fascinating look into the history of America's cuisine. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
