Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

1962 Hugo Award Winner

Probably Heinlein's most famous novel

Stranger, one of Heinlein's most seminal works and possibly his best written and best developed, is widely considered a milestone in American science fiction--one of the key books that turned the genre into a forum for something more than light entertainment. Reviews at the time decried the book's frank social criticism, impious metaphorical religious deconstruction, and satirical analysis of sex, gender relationships, and the human condition as heretical, if not pornographic. Even the publishers mandated removal of about 70,000 words to make the book shorter and less socially dangerous. Some histories credit Stranger with spawning the "free love" movements of the 1960s; others consider it the veritable bible of the counterculture.

Fun Fact: Stranger contains an early description of the water bed, an invention which made its real-world debut a few years later in 1968. Charles Hall, who brought a water bed design to the United States Patent Office, was refused a patent on the grounds that Heinlein's descriptions in Stranger and another novel, Double Star, constituted prior art.

Our Scores
Regina - 3
Victoria - Did not read because she is a lame-o
Julie - 3
Stacy - 3
Jennifer - 4
Cristen - 2 got thru most of it

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger's innovative debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, an artist, and Henry, a librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Our Scores
Regina - 3
Victoria - 3
Julie - 4
Stacy - 3
Jennifer - 3
Cristen - 4

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

All children mythologize their birth...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist. The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission. As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves. The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.



Our Scores
Regina - 3
Victoria - 4
Julie - 4
Stacy - 3
Jennifer - 3
Cristen - 4