Idgie Says:
What a sweet book. Not sweet in a twee way, but just filled with love and promise and.... well, finding the hope. I teared up at more than a few of the stories. But teary with a smile ended those chapters.
Heather, an obituary writer in a small Alaska town where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other - well, she works hard to find the good in everyone.
From her obituaries where the only good thing she could find was "She kept a clean stove", to the unexpected death that caused, voluntarily, the entire town to give up a day's livelihood to make sure the almost grown children made it home safely after a father falls overboard, then gathering together to raise funds to create safety gear for the fisherman, these stories are sharp and alive and life affirming.
This is not just a slim book of obituary stories - these are stories of her family, her friends and her town. The book makes you feel a lot and think a little harder about just relaxing a tad and enjoying life a bit more.
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Find The Good
Heather Lende
Algonquin Press
April 2015
As the obituary writer in a spectacularly beautiful but often
dangerous spit of land in Alaska, Heather Lende knows something about
last words and lives well lived. Now she’s distilled what she’s learned
about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three
words: find the good. It’s that simple--and that hard.
Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers
up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of
seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see
any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting
married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she
says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live.
The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions
before it goes to press.”
Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times
called her “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” and that comparison
has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective
from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities,
our community, and our world.
An antidote to the cynicism and
self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in
our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what’s right with the world.
In her extraordinary debut, Aline Ohanesian has created two
remarkable characters — a young man ignorant of his family’s and his
country’s past, and an old woman haunted by the toll the past has taken
on her life.
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kema l— a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs
— is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the
decades-old business. But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it
answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles
away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her
existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why
Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather
than to his own son or grandson.
Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.
Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.
No. 1 Indie Next Pick for April
Amazon Editors’ Featured Debut for April
A Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
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Author Essay
Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.
Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.
No. 1 Indie Next Pick for April
Amazon Editors’ Featured Debut for April
A Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
___________________________________________________
Author Essay
A multi-faceted, multi-voiced debut novel that is at the same
time personal and heartfelt-chronicling a family in flux, trying to find
their individual and collective way-and also tells a larger, cultural
story, one of our time, of how we live and hope and dream now.
A car accident has left young Anabelle Vincent in a coma-like state-unable to move or speak. Her mother spends her days and nights taking care of her frozen child, but Anabelle’s father has left: unable to cope, broken under the responsibility of having been the car’s driver. Then, one day, a visiting friend experiences what seems like a miracle. She thinks it’s because of Anabelle. Word spreads. There are more visitors. More miracles. But is there a connection? And does it matter? Will Anabelle ever wake up, and if she does, will the miracles cease?
Andrew Roe has crafted an intricate story, told by Anabelle, her parents, and the visitors, who include neighbors, a priest, the affluent and the downtrodden. What becomes clear is that life’s cruelties show no prejudice, but becoming a believer-in something, anything, even if you don’t understand it-can bring salvation.
More than a novel about a family in crisis, The Miracle Girl tells a larger cultural story, of how we live and hope and dream.
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Off the Books
On Literature and Culture
Head "off the books" in this collection of newspaper
columns, where J. Peder Zane uses classic and contemporary literature to
explore American culture and politics. The book review editor for the
Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer from 1996 to 2009,
Zane demonstrates that good books are essential for understanding
ourselves and the world around us. The columns gathered in Off the Books
find that sweet spot where literature's eternal values meet the day's
current events. Together they offer a literary overview of the ideas,
issues, and events shaping our culture—from 9/11 and the struggle for
gay rights to the decline of high culture and the rise of sensationalism
and solipsism. As they plumb and draw from the work of leading
writers—William Faulkner, Knut Hamsun, Eudora Welty, Don DeLillo, Lydia
Millet, and Philip Roth among others—these columns make an argument not
just about the pleasure of books, but about their very necessity in our
lives and culture.
was the book review editor and books columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, for thirteen years. His writing has won numerous national honors, including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Before joining the News & Observer, Zane worked at the New York Times. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle and current chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, Zane is the editor of and has contributed to Remarkable Reads:34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading, and The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books and is coauthor of Design in Nature.
A car accident has left young Anabelle Vincent in a coma-like state-unable to move or speak. Her mother spends her days and nights taking care of her frozen child, but Anabelle’s father has left: unable to cope, broken under the responsibility of having been the car’s driver. Then, one day, a visiting friend experiences what seems like a miracle. She thinks it’s because of Anabelle. Word spreads. There are more visitors. More miracles. But is there a connection? And does it matter? Will Anabelle ever wake up, and if she does, will the miracles cease?
Andrew Roe has crafted an intricate story, told by Anabelle, her parents, and the visitors, who include neighbors, a priest, the affluent and the downtrodden. What becomes clear is that life’s cruelties show no prejudice, but becoming a believer-in something, anything, even if you don’t understand it-can bring salvation.
More than a novel about a family in crisis, The Miracle Girl tells a larger cultural story, of how we live and hope and dream.
____________________________________________
Off the Books
On Literature and Culture
An exploration of American culture and politics through the literary lens of a book review editor.
was the book review editor and books columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, for thirteen years. His writing has won numerous national honors, including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Before joining the News & Observer, Zane worked at the New York Times. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle and current chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, Zane is the editor of and has contributed to Remarkable Reads:34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading, and The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books and is coauthor of Design in Nature.