FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[ZodWallop]

The Fourth Hand by John Irving $2.99 at Amazon.

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband’s left hand– that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy.

This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels – including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

One of the best books I've ever read in my life.

So. . . I won't need 100 years of solitude to finish it?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

So. . . I won't need 100 years of solitude to finish it?

Wouldn't hurt.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

So. . . I won't need 100 years of solitude to finish it?

Before you read it, though, you should talk to The General in His Labyrinth.

Only to get a second opinion, you understand.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Before you read it, though, you should talk to The General in His Labyrinth.

Only to get a second opinion, you understand.

You could write to the colonel, but No One Writes to the Colonel.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You could write to the colonel, but No One Writes to the Colonel.

[ZodWallop]

The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger is $1.99 at Amazon.

I wanted to read his earlier A Burnable Book, but I missed that one when it was on sale.

London, 1386. A mass murder has taken place within the city walls. Sixteen corpses have been dumped where they are sure to be found, bearing wounds like none seen before.

John Gower, middling poet and expert trader in secrets, is summoned to investigate the killings even as the ruthless mayor of London seeks to thwart an open inquiry for reasons unknown. Gower learns that the men have fallen victim to handgonnes, new and terrifying weapons that threaten to change the future of war.

Challenged by deception and treachery on all sides, Gower struggles against his failing vision even as his inquiries take him from the city’s labyrinthine slums to the port of Calais to the forests of Kent, where his friend Geoffrey Chaucer serves as justice of the peace. As Gower strives to discover the source of the new guns and the identity of those who wielded them, he must risk everything to reveal the truth–and prevent a more devastating massacre on London’s crowded streets. . . .

[ZodWallop]

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt is $1.99 at Amazon US.

This is a western, but there's no thread for westerns. It's also literary (it was nominated for Booker prize and was on the best of the year lists for Washington Post and Publisher's Weekly).

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn’t share his brother’s appetite for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. But their prey isn’t an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters-losers, cheaters, and ne’er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

[Dr. Drib]

^ Picked up the literary novel by Dewitt.

Thank you!

[ZodWallop]

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden is $1.99 at Amazon US. Probably more famous for being the basis of a classic movie.

Sister Clodagh and her fellow nuns journey from their monastery in Darjeeling to establish a school and clinic in the Himalayan Mountains. But soon they are haunted by the isolation of their sublime surroundings — and their own secret desires…

[ZodWallop]

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima is $1.99 at Amazon US.

I've been on a kick of buying Japanese novels this year.

Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow is the first novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Here we meet Shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae.

It is 1912 in Tokyo, and the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders — rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Shigekuni Honda, an aspiring lawyer and his childhood friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae, are the sons of two such families. As they come of age amidst the growing tensions between old and new, Kiyoaki is plagued by his simultaneous love for and loathing of the spirited young woman Ayakura Satoko. But Kiyoaki’s true feelings only become apparent when her sudden engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion — and leads to a love affair both doomed and inevitable.

[Dr. Drib]

^ I love all of Mishima's works.

He probably would have won the Nobel Prize in Literature if he hadn't committed seppuku in 1970.

A brilliant writer, in my opinion, and an essential writer if one enjoys Japanese literature.

[GA Russell]

The Road Home - Jim Harrison - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00155EZRS

*****

Mistakes Can Kill You - Louis L'Amour - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Can-...dp/B00EBO2ET6/

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

^ I love all of Mishima's works.

He probably would have won the Nobel Prize in Literature if he hadn't committed seppuku in 1970.

A brilliant writer, in my opinion, and an essential writer if one enjoys Japanese literature.

I hadn't heard of Mishima before. I just thought the book looked interesting. Hey, I have good taste!

I've only read a few Japanese novels so far (Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, Out by Natsuo Kirino, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murikami and A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto). I've enjoyed each and really need to read more.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I hadn't heard of Mishima before. I just thought the book looked interesting. Hey, I have good taste!

I've thought that about myself a few times and got kinda smug about it too. Then I caught myself putting "Hamburger Dill" pickle slices on a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich, and I knew my cultured appearance was all a lie.

My advice is to sit down and start reading "50 shades of Gray" until this moment passes.