Set in Georgia during the Great Depression, King retells the story of Christ's persecution through the eyes of Paul Edgecombe, the central character and narrator (whose life closely paralells Saul from the New Testament). Edgecombe works as the head secrurity guard on the E-Block of Cold Mountain Penitentiary. At the outset of the novel, E-Block, the death row wing of the prison, receives a new black inmate named John Coffey, whose been convicted and sentenced to die for raping and murdering two young white girls.

As his execution date quickly approaches, Edgecombe begins to question Coffey's guilt. Can Paul find evidence to answer his own doubts? Can he save a man from death who might be innocent? Can he live with himself if he doesn't? Find out in The Green Mile.

All my life I have been haunted and filled with despair by the visions of the Holocaust, to which I attribute a great deal of my misanthropy.

Today, August 8th, 1998 I finished Anne's diary, and I will never be the same. Paradoxically, it took a product of the Holocaust, Anne's diary, as well as her death in a Nazi concentration camp, for this to happen.

Anne has been immortalized by her diary. Her wish to become a writer of importance has come true, probably beyond her wildest dreams. Congratulations, Anne!

Anne Frank, I hope that you still exist somewhere in this universe. And I wish that you are experiencing that profound love that you once dreamed and wrote about.

Anne, I love you.

"Pride and Prejudice"-- the story of independent-minded Elizabeth Bennet's journey to a happy marriage and her rousing rebellion against the stultifying and stale social system of 19th-Century England-- is an adrenaline-rush of a book.

As Elizabeth battles the defenders of society (her marriage-obsessed mother, a condescending suitor, and several members of the "upper-class" trying to stem her promising relationship with the affluent and handsome Mr. Darcy) we sample a world where family, money, and class dictate your friends and suitors.

When Elizabeth and Darcy move to his stunning home, they leave the hostility of an uncaring society behind. Through rebellion and stubbornness, they have found Eden.

The book starts out with a meager and demented man, Raskolnikov, shutting himself off from society, but still interestingly enough, shows much compassion and pleasure in the company of the downtrodden. Raskolnikov wants to prove a theory to himself, and perhaps to the world, that powerful men are able and predictably will seize power by force and are justified in doing so. In other words, Raskolnikov sought after a proof of his belief that he could murder a villainous old pawnbroker and be able to maintain a guilt free conscience. In order for powerful people to complete this task, they must separate their feelings and morals from society and demand the isolation that waits for them.

However, Raskolnikov has a weakness for the downtrodden victims, and seems to seek their approval. As a result, he confides in a prostitute, Sonia, who happens to represent all of the maltreated people of the world. With a confession, Raskolnikov's world is not as it seems and his preposterous theory is in ruin.

Crime and Punishment is a very difficult, but valuable and memorable read. I highly recommend reading this book, and even I would suggest reading the cliff notes version to follow up on the important symbolism saturating the novel. This book is not just about a theory, but about human society, class structure, and consciousness.

To be sure, the book seems wordy in places, but I suspect this has to do with the translation. And what translator in his right mind would be bold enough to edit the great Dostoyevsky? But this is a very minor problem.

What we get with Dostoyevsky is dramatic tension, detailed and believable human characters, and brilliant insight into human nature. Early in the novel our hero meets and has a lengthy conversation with Marmeladov, a drunkard. This conversation is never uninteresting and ultimately becomes pathetic and heartbreaking, but I kept wondering why so much time was spent on it. As I got deeper into the book, I understood why this conversation was so important, and realized that I was in the hands of a master storyteller. This is also indicative of the way in which the story reveals itself. Nothing is hurried. These people speak the way we actually speak to one another in real life, and more importantly, Dostoyevsky is able to flesh out his characters into whole, three-dimensional human beings.

And what a diverse group of characters! Each is fleshed out, each is marvelously complex. Razujmikhin, the talkative, gregarious, good-hearted, insecure and destitute student; Sonia, the tragic child-prostitute, with a sense of rightness in the world; Petrovich, the self-important, self-made man, completely out of touch with his own humanity; Dunia, the honorable, wronged sister: we feel like we know these people because we've met people like them. They fit within our understanding of the way human beings are.

Dostoyevsky also displays great insight into human nature. Svidrigailov, for example, talks of his wife as liking to be offended. "We all like to be offended," he says, "but she in particular loved to be offended." It suddenly struck me how true this is. It gives us a chance to act indignantly, to lash out at our enemies, to gain favor with our allies. I don't believe I've ever seen this thought expressed in literature before. In fact, it never occurred to me in real life! Petrovich, Dunia's suitor, not only expects to be loved, but because of his money, and her destitution, he expects to be adored! To be worshipped! He intentionally sought out a woman from whome he expected to get this, and is comletely flummoxed when she rejects him. His is an unusual character, but completely realized.

There is so much more to talk about: the character of Raskolnikov, which is meticulously and carefully revealed; the sense of isolation which descends on him after committing his crime; the cat and mouse game played on him by the police detective. I could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned the historical and social context in which this takes place. Suffice to say this is a very rich book.

Do not expect it to be a rip-roaring page turner. Sit down, relax, take your time, and savor it. It will be a very rewarding experience. And thank you SL, for recommending it.

This is the second Tom Clancy book that I've read. My first was Red storm Rising and from there I was hooked. I just finished The Hunt for Red October and am just starting Rainbow Six. So far I have yet to be disappointed and I don't think I will.
In this techno-triller, the Russians and the Americans go head to head in a post cold war race to get to a defunct Marco Ramius. But they don't want him; they want the new class of sub that he has, an undetectable nuclear sub. Ramius was fed up with the Russian Communists when a drunken doctor during a procedure killed his wife. So he and some other high-ranking officials take the boat for an exercise but plan to defect to the US. This is when "the franchise" of the book, Jack Ryan comes in to hunt him down before the Rusky's blow him out of the water. This was a memorable book but honestly I must say the book was a little long and boring and the movie defiantly dominated. Some would say that the book had more to offer than the book and in some respects I can agree. But over-all I have to say that the movie was much more exciting and the character selection for the movie was excellent.
I am very pleased with Clancy's books. Red Storm Rising was a great book and Red October was also very good but I was more impressed with the movie. Over all I must say that Clancy is the man when it comes to spine-tingling books that leave you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole book. Keep it up man.

Book Rating: 4 out of 5

Although it was the first of the series to be published, Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October is actually the third novel in the Jack Ryan series. It propelled Clancy, who had been an insurance salesman with only a few letters to the editor under his writing belt, to best-selling superstar. His success with military and espionage-related fiction earned him a title he does not readily accept: father of the techno-thriller.

This novel, if I remember correctly, was the first work of fiction published by the Naval Institute Press, the publishing arm of the United States Naval Institute, a civilian entity which promotes all things naval, including the study of naval history, strategy, technology, and tactics. Some of the Naval Institute Press' other books include A.D. Baker's Fleets of the World, Clay Blair, Jr.'s Silent Victory, and Norman Friedman's Desert Victory: The War for Kuwait. But considering that although Clancy's novel deals with the workings of other federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and both the Executive and Legislative branches, the heart of the story is a sea chase.

Based loosely on a 1975 incident in which a Soviet frigate attempted to defect to the West, The Hunt for Red October tells the by-now familiar tale of how Captain First Rank Marko Ramius and a group of selected officers aboard the Soviet Navy's newest Typhoon-class SSBN (the Navy designator for a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, or "boomer") band together to defect to the United States and hand over the Red Navy's most advanced "stealth" submarine.

Ramius, you see, is motivated by one of the strongest emotions of all: the desire for revenge against the callous Soviet state. Not only for the death of his wife as a result of negligence by a well-connected surgeon, but for all the injustices he has witnessed from even his early childhood. His father, a Lithuanian communist and devoted Party apparatchik, was responsible for many deaths and unjust acts, and Marko, raised by a decent grandmother, sees both his father and the State as monsters who care for nothing but power and expansion.

In this novel, set sometime in the mid-1980s, Clancy introduces us to Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst being groomed by his mentor, Admiral James Greer, for better and more crucial postings within the Agency. Now currently assigned as CIA liaison in London (which puts this novel's setting to be after the current Clancy novel Red Rabbit), it is Ryan who first hands the U.S. its first intelligence data on Red October, courtesy of the British Secret Service.

The novel's focus is on Ramius' defection attempt aboard the Red October, which has been modified to use a "caterpillar" drive (described in the movie version as a "jet engine for the water") which enables a sub to glide through the ocean almost undetectably. It also deals with the Red Navy's desperate attempts to seek and destroy the defectors' submarine, and the almost equally desperate moves of an Anglo-American fleet to acquire Red October.
The novel, as if often the case, is far better than its film adaptation. Not that John McTiernan did a bad job with Paramount's 1990 feature film, but in slimming down the characters and situations to fit within a 2-hour movie, far too many exciting scenes were ignored and the scope of the sea chase is narrowed down from "seeing" almost the whole spectrum of the Soviet Navy in the novel to actually seeing one Bear-Foxtrot anti-submarine bomber and one Alfa-class attack sub. I am not saying the movie is not worth watching, but the book, with its various characters and storylines (some of them which would be woven back and forth in all the other Ryan novels), is far better.

I finished "The Waste Lands" (third of the Dark Tower Series) about five years ago. I waited, and I waited. I finally read the fourth and most gripping book of the series, "Wizard and Glass", about a month ago. I was consumed. Afterwords, I was compelled to re-read the first three books, then "Wizard and Glass" agian.

Anyone who tells you that Stephan King doesn't know how to do romance is sad and ill-read. The heated, rushed and sometimes confused love between Roland and Susan (the lovely girl at the window) is epic.

This breath-taking flashback of a novel gives us a badly needed look into Roland's (the main character and last gunslinger) past. Sadly, but as expected, it leaves the reader wanting to know more, more, more about the gunslinger's past, the world he left in pursuit of the Dark Tower, and his future.

Anyone familiar with the series (and/or King's writing) will tell you that this book is also wrought with foreshadowing - of events within the book and events still to come. You can more or less see what is coming, but it is (and will be) gut-wrentching to read as events unfolds.

While this book is capable of standing on its own as a horror/sci-fi/romance, don't read it unless you are already, or are willing to become, a slave to the Tower.

I loved this book (though not without reservation). I'm dismayed at the comments of some reviewers complaining about the length - or even the existence - of the flashback section of the book. It seems clear enough that the episode from Roland's youth was intended to be the heart and primary focus of this volume. The flashback provides a wealth of insight into Roland's character by intimately exploring defining experiences in his formative years that contributed to the mysterious personality we find in the main timeline of the story. How can anyone professing interest in The Dark Tower epic consider that pointless? I found it the most moving piece of work SK has produced since his masterpiece novella, "The Body." Mr. King at his best makes me live his stories to an extent I rarely do with other authors and I truly lived the "Roland & Susan" story in this book. I share the hope of most of the other reviewers that SK gives us another Dark Tower volume in the near future. On the other hand, I hope he takes all the time he needs to do it justice. Unlike the anti-flashback minority, I am hopeful that we get additional segments fleshing out Roland's background. I look forward to learning more about what happened to Cuthbert and Alain, and about Roland's life between age 15 and the start of "The Gunslinger." I am NOT anxious to get to the end of this trek; I'm enjoying the journey too much.

On the down side, I was disappointed with the "Emerald City" segment. It seemed shallow and contrived - but maybe that was only by comparison. I got the impression that Mr. King poured his soul into the Roland & Susan story and rushed the rest of the book just to have an envelope to contain the flashback.

And these are the reasons I consider this his best.

Without forgetting to grab our attention and build his characters, Peretti sets the stage for a powerful spiritual metaphor that hits the reader between the eyes. The seductive oath of this town comes back to haunt them, and by the end, no one will be left unchanged--for better of for worse. The consequences of flirting with sin are starkly portrayed here. Don't give up too soon; read on to the finish and you'll understand Peretti's point.

Of all Peretti's books, this one alone have I been able to pass out freely to my nonbelieving friends. The story is genuinely intriguing--not just a hastly sketched backdrop for a sermon--and it grabs your attention, demanding that you heed its warning.

This may not be for all readers, particularly those who like syrupy romance or immediate feel-goods, but it's worth the effort. If you like no-holds-barred Christian fiction, "The Oath" is for you.

The strangest thing is that BeauSeigneur does such a good job of presenting the antichrist that you actually find yourself pulling for him. It's weird, but exactly as Matthew 24:24 says it will be. In Left Behind you know that Nicolae is the Antichrist right from the beginning (though the characters seem a little thick-headed in not being able to see what's so obvious to the reader) and there's no way in the world I would ever follow ol' Nick. If I weren't a Christian, though, I'm sure I would follow BeauSeigneur's Antichrist. He's that good, I mean bad . . . oh you know what I mean.

One other big difference is that Left Behind is obviously written for a Christian or near-Christian audience; the preaching is pretty thick and I think turns off many nonChristian readers. (I've tried to get nonChristians to read Left Behind and none have read past the first book.) The Christ Clone Trilogy is written for a secular audience (it even has an occasional curse word) but when the truth is revealed (book 3 of the series) the Christian world view and the presentation of the Gospel is unmistakable.

(NOTE: Also take a look at my other previous reviews written on the 'Left Behind series' to follow this exciting most talked about series-just click on my name above.)

There's nothing I like better than a David and Goliath story and that's just what Grisham delivers in 'The Rainmaker', in which he pits Rudy Baylor, a lawyer fresh out of law school, against Great Benefit Insurance and its lawyer Leo Drummond in a bad-faith claim lawsuit. What really made this book is the Black vs. Great Benefit case, and how an insurance company would bend over backwards to not get caught in its own lies.

Prior to the court case, the book goes into some detail about the life of Rudy Baylor, law student, and his struggles to get himself through school and into the labour market. However, this insight isn't really necessary and the book could've easily lost 50 pages without the reader noticing a difference.

The movie 'The Rainmaker', with Matt Damon as Rudy Baylor and Danny DeVito as Deck and John Voight as Leo Drummond, does an excellent condensed version of the book. It's time well spent on either reading the book or watching the movie.

The villains are lawyers from a giant firm and a heartless insurance company, which is certainly stacking the deck but part of the fun. As with "The Pelican Brief" there is a bit of misdirection at the beginning in terms of getting a read on the main character. Rudy is broke and has some shady friends in the legal profession, but the bottom line is he is a good guy and he will do the right thing. Even if it means playing David against Goliath in a stacked courtroom where the presiding judge is best buds with the great Leo F. Drummond of the giant law firm Trent & Brent, representing the Great Benefits Insurance Company. But then Rudy gets a break. The presiding judge suddenly drops dead and his replacement, Judge Kipler, is a plaintiff's dream. Better yet, Rudy has the truth on his side.

The joy of this book is watching Rudy beat the bad guys. Every single lawyer's trick used by Drummond fails with Judge Kipler. Every dirty trick by the insurance company is exposed by Rudy, who comes up with some little twists of his own. Sure, all the rabbits getting pulled out of the hat is a bit excessive, but that is what makes this such a fun read. At the heart of this book is the quest for justice, but that does not mean we can not enjoy a little payback along the way. The romantic subplot between Rudy and Kelly comes across as something of a diversion from the main story, but at the end it gives the hero someone with whom he can ride off into the sunset. "The Rainmaker" is one of those books where you pick it up from time to time to read the good parts. If you saw the movie and enjoyed Rudy sticking it to the bad guys, then you should enjoy much more of the same in this novel.

"The Grapes of Wrath" is an engrossing tale of one Oklahoma family seeking not their fame and fortune, but just the hope of putting a few scraps of food on the table. Join them in their clunker of a truck as all 12 of them pile in to make the long and arduous drive west to California in the hopes of finding work picking fruit. They lose family members along the way, some by death and some by choice, but they learn a lot about friendship and taking care of not only their loved ones but also the strangers who find themselves in the same dire straits as the Joads are in. Steinbeck's descriptions of the hunger, the hardship, the futile search for work, the disappointments, the hostile environment the migrants faced in California, all make for an eye-opening read. This is a great source of information on how it was for one group of people during the Depression.

It may not be one of the great novels of the twentieth century, its characters are often overly-sentimental, and its theme is relatively simple, but it is a landmark of literature for the way it portrays the Depression in the western United States. This book has been proven to be an accurate portrayal of the victims of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

Steinbeck alternates plot-driven chapters that feature the story of the Joads with chapters that focus on the large-scale problems of the economic history of California and the psychology of groups of migrants and of the landowners. These large-scale chapters provide background information and a broad world view that gives weight to the Joads' struggle, while the story of the Joads gives the large-scale chapters a sympathetic human face.

Whether you love or hate the book, you will probably never forget this story of one family's valiant fight to survive while the world around them collapses and disintegrates.

The novel was made into an excellent film in 1940 which starred a very young Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.