http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog walkabout the library Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:29:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Mercury Under My Tongue, Sylvain Trudel, 2008 Short delightful novel by French Canadian writer Trudel now translated into English. Our hero is a precocious teenager wrestling with the big questions of life, especially the mysteries of girls. Unfortunately he has bone cancer in the hip and does not have long to ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/08/25/cancer-wards/ Peace, Richard Bausch, 2008 Monte Cassino 1944 Bausch's newest novel deals with the experience of a few American soldiers sent up the mountain near Cassino on scouting patrols during the Allied drive north through Italy. Short but compelling look at the horrors of war up close. One of the characters ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/08/14/cassino/ Draining the Sea, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, 2008 Los Angeles River Construction A most unusual and challenging novel. The narrator lives in Los Angeles, the son of an Armenian (1915 Turkish Massacre) and a Lebanese (Civil war throughout the 1990s) mother and an American father. The narrator reflects on paradise (Los Angeles) ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/08/04/global-attrocities/ McMafia, Misha Glenny, 2008 This well researched look at global criminal empires highlights the darker side of the Chicago School's Shock Doctrine. When the Chicago boys set out to massively transfer the worlds wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs, they simultaneously undermined state apparatus of regulation and control and ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/07/28/darker-side-of-shock/ The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway, 2008 Sarajevo A novel of the time of siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996. The city of Sarajevo was proud host to the winter Olympics of 1984. Within a few years, Yugoslavia was torn apart by multiple wars, one part of which was the ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/07/21/siege-of-sarajevo/ The Konkans, Tony D'Souza, 2008 A brilliant exploration of multiculturalism. The narrator is Francisco, the son of a blond American woman who went to India in the Peace Corps in the mid 1960s and an Indian catholic from the Malabar coast on the Arabian sea whose father saw the white woman ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/07/14/catholics-of-india/ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007 Rutgers University Novel of a Dominican family living under a multi generation curse. The narrator is a skirt chasing young Dominican who falls in love with Lola the beautiful, smart, athletic popular daughter of the cursed family. Lola worries about her ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/07/07/dominican-reflections/ The Ginseng Hunter, Jeff Talarigo, 2008 Old Ginseng Root Austere tale of a third generation Korean living just across the border in China near Yanji. The grandfather was moved to China by the Japanese for labor. The father and uncle become Ginseng hunters and teach the son their secrets. The first ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/06/30/asian-sorrows/ A Richer Dust, Amy Boaz, 2008 Taos Pueblo 1936 A novel of the international artist's colony which arose in Taos New Mexico in the 1920s. The author acknowledges drawing freely from the lives and works of Leon Trotsky, G.I. Gurdjieff (Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher), Vera Brittain (British writer and pacifist). ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/06/23/artists-taos/ Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet, Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2008 End of Poverty Jeffrey Sachs We last met Jeffrey Sachs in Shock Doctrine and the PBS series Commanding Heights where he gained notoriety for advising nations throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union in the largest transfers ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2008/06/16/optimistic-listmaker/