2000s decade

bergg: First person narrative from a 15 year old autistic who is trying to find a dog murderer. A insightful look into the mindset of persons with autism and the difficulty they have with normal situations. -randomnonsenseaboutthings.blogspot.com

bergg: Set in an alternative England during the Napoleonic wars, Clarke envisages a world in which magic is a reality, albeit practiced in a mundane, academic fashion. -ign.com

bergg: A girl with a big imagination thinks she sees something. She is wrong, but she sticks to her guns. Lives are ruined. As an old woman, she wonders if she can repair her irreparable mistake. -pastemagazine.com

bergg: A strange gender changing, time spanning complicated novel. Past and present combine to give this novel literary force. -randomnonsenseaboutthings.blogspot.com

bergg: Two nice, mid-20th-century Jewish boys go to work in the nascent comic book industry, where the dreams and nightmares of the real world manifest themselves in the extravagant guise of entertainment for children. This buoyant tragicomic adventure story remains one of the most persuasive and gorgeously written depictions (and vindications) of the way popular culture transfigures our lived experience to become the modern-day equivalent of myth and folklore. -Laura Miller, Salon.com

bergg: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the book follows Oscar Wao, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey. The book deals with themes of isolation and nostalgia while blending comedy and tragedy. -dailyiowan.com

bergg: Kath, a seemingly ordinary British girl, goes to a special boarding school where she and her friends are groomed for a special fate while enjoying and suffering the loves and betrayals that come to young people everywhere. This odd, heartbreaking novel unfurls age-old conundrums about what it means to be a person; about the grievous sin of treating anyone, however unexceptional, as the means to an end; and about the unfathomable future that awaits each and every one of us. -Laura Miller, Salon.com

bergg: Following letters written by Rev. John Ames, this winner of the Pulitzer Prize centers on the memories and legacy of his life. Taking place in fictional Gilead, Iowa, Robinson explores themes of religion, family, love, and doubt. -dailyiowan.com

bergg: A Memoir written by Dave Eggers recounting the events leading to his current adult life through the death of his mother due to Stomach cancer and also the death of his father from lung cancer. Becoming the soul caretaker of his younger sibling results is Dave maturing beyond his years which eventually leads to his need to be irresponsible and reckless mostly through sex and alcohol.

bergg: Related from heaven after a brutal rape, Susie watches her family grieve and disintegrate, watches her friends and indeed watches her killer and the sad detective working on her case. -lindyloumacbookreviews.blogspot.ca

bergg: Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak's new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

bergg: Retelling the story of Australian folk hero Ned Kelly where he writes the story for his daughter. Although set in Australia, you could say this is one of the best Westerns in a while. -randomnonsenseaboutthings.blogspot.com

bergg: Recounts the lives and experiences of two Afghan women Laila and Mariam starting with their separate lives as children and how they came to be best friends as two wives of a local shoe maker named Rasheed. During a time of war, poverty, gender issues, and abuse, this creatively written novel still offers a bit of hope.

bergg: America is no place for a divinity. Our soil isn’t fertile that way — myths don’t thrive the way they did in the old world. Reading American Gods, you can see why it takes a foreigner — Gaiman’s a Brit — to see what is invisible to the natives: the old deities scratching out a seedy living all around us — Norse, Slavic, Irish, Egyptian, voodoo, Egyptian — brought over by generations of immigrants and then left to die. Together they re-enact the old myths here on our barren soil, and Gaiman shows us that, even here, they still have their old power. -entertainment.time.com

bergg: tells the tale of fifty-nine people that were held hostage in an unnamed country in South America. The hostages, which include international ambassadors, Japanese businessmen, an opera singer, and local government officials, had gathered together to celebrate Katsumi Hosokawa's birthday. Hosokawa was being courted by local politicians to build a plant in their country. Bel Canto isn't the usual blood-and-guts tale of a hostage situation; instead, the novel focuses on the various hostages and terrorists and the relationships that grow amongst them all. -Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, cmlibrary.org

bergg: In this intensely personal, deeply moving account, the author exposes the layers and facets of her life over a year of dramatic and unexpected events. Her daughter's serious illness and her husband's sudden death "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." (summary from ISBN 159887005X)

bergg: The Biafran War of the late 1960s is seen through the eyes of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy, and the beautiful, passionate twin sisters Olanna and Kainene. This stunning piece of writing won the 2007 Orange Prize. -aggsliterature.wordpress.com

bergg: Aravind Adiga on The White Tiger “The White Tiger is set in one of the fastest-changing societies on Earth — modern-day India — but the story it tells is an old one: of a man’s quest to be free. One afternoon I was in the zoo in New Delhi, and saw a white tiger in its cage, and I thought, ‘A man who is prepared to do anything for his freedom — sacrifice his family, kill another man — would be as rare as that animal” -http://aggsliterature.wordpress.com

bergg: Much of America made it out of the 20th century badly equipped to deal with the 21st. Richard Russo’s Empire Falls is set in just such a place, a rust-belt Maine town that’s kept going even though the industry that led to its creation can no longer sustain it. Russo brought his by-then-familiar command of memorable characters and comic moments to a novel more ambitious than any he’d attempted before. The book captures a time and place unnerved by a future that offers no reassuring promises of a better tomorrow beyond the comfort its inhabitants can give each other. -avclub.com

bergg: ...a rich story about secrets, ghosts, winter, books and family. The Thirteenth Tale is a book lover's book, with much of the action taking place in libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is Setterfield's debut novel (released in 2006), for she makes the words come to life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills. -Erin Miller

bergg: ... a delightful piece of historical fiction that will make you laugh, cry and remember the transformational power of literature. -Erin Miller

bergg: Bryson, author of bestselling comic travelogues, bravely journeyed beyond his familiar territory to attempt a layperson’s guide to science.He manages to convey such subjects as the origins of the Universe with integrity, and without sacrificing his familiar humour. -http://aggsliterature.wordpress.com

bergg: Every so often there comes along a book that we all feel we have to read to be better educated. Rarely are such books as beguiling as Truss’s punctuation guide, which, amazingly, made us laugh while we learnt about semi-colons. -http://aggsliterature.wordpress.com

bergg: A novel about racism, prejudice and injustice in the post war years in London as Jamaicans, escaping economic hardship, move to the Mother Country. Told from four characters’ points of view, it deserves all the accolade and prizes it has received. Powerful yet light in touch, humorous yet high in drama, it is a most rewarding and touching read. Won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004 and on the 25th Jan 2005 the Whitbread 2004 overall. -www.lovereading4kids.co.uk