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Susan Schoenberger is an associate regional editor for Patch.com in Central Connecticut. Her first novel, "A Watershed Year," was released in March 2011.In keeping with the number theme in the title, here's what you need to know before buying "50 Shades of Grey." Number of times the protagonist, Anastasia Steele, says "Crap" or "Holy Crap": 86 Number of times Anastasia refers to her lover Christian Grey and his moves as "hot" or "freaking hot": 37 Number of times a specific part of the female anatomy is referred to as "down there": 6 If fine writing is like bittersweet truffles, this book is like a wad of Gummi Bears stuck to your back teeth. To use another food metaphor — and I'm not sure this author knows what a metaphor is — it's the …
Non-fiction books don't usually grab me the way fiction does. When I start one, it's not unusual for me to put the book down for weeks before I pick it up again. But there are exceptions, and "No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction" is one of them. I read it in a matter of days, and I was sorry when the book ended, so caught up was I in Ellen Painter Dollar's morally complex struggle to determine whether her Christian values were compatible with using advanced reproductive technology to prevent a disabling disease in her children. …
At 176 pages in the print version, Julian Barnes' "The Sense of an Ending" will appeal to many book clubs if only because it will spare many members from that last-minute Evelyn Wood speed reading session to see what happens at the end. But whether or not readers choose this 2011 Man Booker Prize winner because of its length, the novel provides ample opportunities for discussion and commentary. As if that weren't enough, it's amusing as well. Barnes is an esteemed writer with more than a dozen previous novels, but he seems to have hit a sweet spot with "The Sense of an Ending." The book is by…
At the tender age of 26, Tea Obreht has published one of the biggest novels of the past year to great acclaim, although the book's fantastical elements will appeal to some readers more than others. Obreht, who was born in the former Yugoslavia but moved to the United States when she was 12, has already been named as a 2011 National Book Award finalist and winner of the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. "The Tiger's Wife" was also the first selection of the all-new Huffington Post Book Club, where reader discussions will continue until the end of January. Pretty impressive for someone not even …
