Synopsis:
A headstrong Upper West Side yearns to escape her family’s Jewish Bronx origins and become a Broadway star.
Review:
This is the third or fourth time I’ve read Marjorie Morningstar, and every time I find myself absolutely riveted for the first two-thirds, then bored and indifferent for the final third, only to be knocked out by the [...]

Popularity: 41% [?]

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Synopsis:
A legendary folk hero tells the first part of his life story, encompassing his early years as a vagabond and his time spent at University studying alchemy and magic.
Review:
It’s not for nothing that The Name of the Wind has been touted as a great fantasy debut. It absolutely is. I am leery of [...]

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Synopsis:
The son of a wealthy industrialist enters Jungian therapy to discover why he feels that his life is at a point of crisis.
Review:
In The Manticore, Robertson Davies continues the story he began in his masterful Fifth Business, turning his acute eye for the majesty of the quotidian on David, the son of Boy Staunton, a [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

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Synopsis:
Rap the stableboy joins a merchant crew still intent upon rescuing Queen Inosolan, who is crossing a haunted wasteland in order to appeal her case to the four wardens.
Review:
Perilous Seas is the third book in Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word series, and again I’m impressed at the skill with which Duncan crafts his [...]

Popularity: 54% [?]

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Synopsis:
Harry Potter braces for his final battle with evil Lord Voldemort, knowing that only one of them will survive.
Review:
My biggest criticism of Harry Potter has always been his passivity. In the first few books especially, he spends most of his time being rescued or protected, simply because he’s “The Boy Who Lived.” And [...]

Popularity: 59% [?]

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Synopsis:
Schoolteacher Dunstan Ramsay looks back over his life, intertwined with that of a childhood friend and inextricably linked with a madwoman he desperately wants to believe is a saint.
Review:
I had no idea what I was in for when I began Fifth Business, the first book in Canadian novelist Robertson Davies’s Deptford trilogy. I have [...]

Popularity: 72% [?]

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Synopsis:
The strange adventure of magic-possessed soldier son Nevare continue, as he finds himself expelled from military academy when his weight skyrockets after a bout of the Speck plague.
Review:
Forest Mage is the second book in Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy begun in Shaman’s Crossing. Interestingly, I found echoes of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Synopsis:
A young man’s military training is threatened by his seeming possession by a creature in thrall to an evil forest goddess.
Review:
Shaman’s Crossing is the first book in Robin Hobb’s newest trilogy, Soldier Son, and I ate it up with a spoon, thanks to a very long train ride to Canada. The world of Soldier [...]

Popularity: 52% [?]

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Synopsis:
Snapshots in the life of a slightly depressed young woman with low self-esteem.
Review:
I loved Sittenfeld’s debut novel Prep, and had high expectations for this one. I was pretty disappointed. Hannah is passive and largely disinterested in life, and this just doesn’t make for a compelling main character, unless her passivity is what the [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Synopsis:
Kristin Lavransdatter is a girl in 14th Century Norway, betrothed to one man but desperately in love with another.
Popularity: 90% [?]

Popularity: 90% [?]

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