NUMBER: 98
Genre: Fiction; Origin: Australia; Pages: 100
Satisfaction rating: 9.5
OVERVIEW:
The Aunt’s Story traces the uncompromisingly independent career of Theodora Goodman from the dusty reality of Australia to to the whirling madhouse of Europe before World War II, and ends calmly, although across the boarders of sanity, in that most practical of countries, the United States of America.
NUMBER: 90
Genre: Fiction; Origin: Canada; Pages: 150
Satisfaction rating: 10.0
OVERVIEW:
At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2,000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. It had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden. By day he cut hair and purveyed gossip at N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor. At night he played jazz as though unleashing wild animals in a crowded room. At the age of thirty-one, Buddy Bolden went mad.
NUMBER: 88
Genre: Non-fiction; Origin: France; Pages: 100
Satisfaction rating: 1.0
OVERVIEW:
Simone de Beauvoir records the final days of her mother’s losing battle with cancer, the clinical humiliations of a proud woman and the unforeseen flashes of love and hostility at the bedside.
NUMBER: 87
Genre: Fiction; Origin: Austrian; Pages: 150
Satisfaction rating: 8.5
OVERVIEW:
Miss Hester Harper, middle aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dinners for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well.
One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm’s deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder would not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.
NUMBER: 76
Genre: Non-fiction; Origin: Austrian; Pages: 100
Satisfaction rating: 2.5
OVERVIEW:
The letters were originally written to Franz Kappus, a 19-year-old student at the Military Academy of Vienna, of which Rilke was an alumnus. Discouraged by the prospect of military life, Kappus began to send his poetry to the 27-year-old Rilke, seeking both literary criticism and career advice. Their correspondence lasted from 1902 to 1908. In 1929, three years after Rilke’s death, Kappus assembled and published the ten letters.
