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Mark Oliver Everett is probably better known simply as E, the lead singer and creative force behind the Eels, but a few months ago he published a memoir under his full name called Things the Grandchildren Should Know . He might be a little younger than most people who've decided to write memoirs...
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After reading several mixed reviews on John Grogan's newest book , I took the plunge and decided I'd see for myself. I really didn't think there was any way I could like the book as much as the bestselling " Marley and Me ", but I didn't think it would be as bad as some of the...
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I read The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz during our 2008 summer reading program, how about you? It was good enough, I read Curse of the Spellmans right afterwards. What a quirky family! The books focus on a wild private investigator named Izzy Spellman, but her whole family (mother, father, older brother...
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Many fans of the Oprah book club will remember author, Wally Lamb, from his previous books, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True . After a lapse of many years, Lamb is back with this new epic which is rather heavy both in subject matter and in physical size (740 pages.) Though these factors...
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Thanks to a recommendation by my friend, I watched a stunning film this weekend. Set in a Castilian village somewhere in early 1940's rural Spain, this movie has won international acclaim as a masterpiece - labeled one of the greatest Spanish films of the 1970's. On the surface, it is a coming...
Posted to
Movies Blog
by
wag.mado@evpl
on
12-30-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: dvd, reviews, good and evil, families, movies, murder, films, dying, childhood, Spain, foreign films
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After seeing it mentioned on one or two best movie lists, I decided to check out this 2005 film although I wondered if I would enjoy its story about a 1980s Brooklyn couple's decision to divorce and the resulting damage to their two sons. I was swayed by the casting of Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney...
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This book's preface begins, " These are the faces of illness in America. Do not look away.......Quite simply, they are us. " If you have ever known someone with a chronic or terminal illness, you probably already know that each person approaches their difficulties in a way that is all their...
Posted to
Books Blog
by
wag.mado@evpl
on
12-23-2008
Filed under:
Filed under: nonfiction, central library, books, faith, alcoholism, families, biography, illness, muscular dystrophy, ALS, lymphoma, bipolar disorder, Crohns disease
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I just finished one of those books that will stay with me for a long while. Helene Cooper's memoir, The House at Sugar Beach: in Search of a Lost African Childhood is remarkable and haunting. Her journalistic expertise opens the reader up to a privileged Liberian childhood, which ended in 1980 when...
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I picked this one up because I saw the face of Philip Seymour Hoffman on the cover. And as usual, he did not disappoint me. The story is about 2 brothers, Andy (Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke), who are both in need of money in the worst way. The elder Andy persuades his baby brother Hank to pull off...
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I guess most of us know of someone who lost their life in a war. The documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty , takes an emotional look at the personal story of one child who was left fatherless by the Vietnam War. Tracy Droz Tragos' lets us in on her journey to discover who her father, U.S. Naval Soldier...
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The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a comeback story of the most fascinating kind. The documentary begins with Farmer John tasting the dirt on his farm and ends with him dancing around the farm dressed up as a honey bee! In between is the story of one man's struggle to keep his family's farm alive...
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With its sympathetic portrayal of a family in crisis, "The Condition" reminds me of Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" and Joyce Carol Oates' "We Were the Mulvaneys." All three novels convey the message that every family has points of stress and conflict -- we...