A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 26 Feb 10

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the February 26th issue include:

The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis, by Tara Austen Weaver. Rodale Books. Print length: 240 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...will you ever want a seat at the Tea & Cookies blogger's table after reading her sublime descriptions of food." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Raised a vegetarian, writer and editor Weaver was always diet-conscious, so it was a bit of a surprise when, in her 30s, her physician recommend meat-eating for her suffering health; Weaver's consequent foray into the world of meat is a toothsome take on the learning-to-eat-better memoir. Weaver jumps into the flesh flood with both feet, sampling all things savory, up to and including roasted bone marrow, in a game effort to understand the appeal... Her narrative maintains a funny, personable tone throughout, more like a knowledgeable friend than a professional reporter. Though eventually settling on a raw food diet, Weaver avoids prescriptive finger-shaking, encouraging readers to find the diet that's right for them by incorporating a wide range of perspectives." - Publishers Weekly.

The Wife's Tale, by Lori Lansens. Little. Brown and Company. Print length: 368 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Lansens...sketches another indelible female character..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 reviews (32 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy - still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school - to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search..." - Amazon.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Crown. Print length: 368 p. NONFICTION - SCIENCE. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (64 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive - even thrive - in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution - and her cells' strange survival - left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story..." - Tom Nissley for Amazon.

The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell. Knopf. Print length: 384 p. MYSTERY. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (27 reviews). EW's slant: "This is hands down the best thriller I've read in five years." Kindle edition $12.60. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andrén ancestor - a gang master on the American transcontinental railway - that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjövallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth. The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique..." - from the hardcover edition.

Black Hills, by Dan Simmons. Publisher. Reagan Arthur Books. Print length: 496 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...Simmons keep the tale buoyant with his evocative prose and storytelling muscle." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $14.29. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
Unfortunately this book has three strikes against it before it even becomes available for the Kindle: Although it was released in hardcover on February 24, the Kindle edition (in which the text-to-speech feature is disabled) will not be available until Mary 25 - and at a premium price.
"When Paha Sapa, a young Sioux warrior, 'counts coup' on General George Armstrong Custer as Custer lies dying on the battlefield at the Little Bighorn, the legendary general's ghost enters him - and his voice will speak to him for the rest of his event-filled life. Seamlessly weaving together the stories of Paha Sapa, Custer, and the American West, Dan Simmons depicts a tumultuous time in the history of both Native and white Americans. Haunted by Custer's ghost, and also by his ability to see into the memories and futures of legendary men like Sioux war-chief Crazy Horse, Paha Sapa's long life is driven by a dramatic vision he experienced as a boy in his people's sacred Black Hills. In August of 1936, a dynamite worker on the massive Mount Rushmore project, Paha Sapa plans to silence his ghost forever and reclaim his people's legacy - on the very day FDR comes to Mount Rushmore to dedicate the Jefferson face." - Amazon.


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