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Staff Picks

At last we answer the question you've always feared to ask: What are the good women and men of the Sonoma County Independent reading in their off-hours (or when the boss is out of the office)? IF THE FLICKERING torch of English literature ever goes out, leaving us perusing TV Guide in the dark, there'll be plenty of blame to go around. Just don't point any fingers at Indian authors, whose recent output has blown away the postmodern detritus like a tornado shaking hands with a house of cards. Dive into The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy's tragic tale of twins growing up in rural India. Then there's Salman Rushdie ... Hey, it's getting awfully luminescent in here! Patrick Sullivan, Arts Editor BEFORE HE TOOK over The New Yorker editorship from Tina Brown, David Remnick specialized in Russian politics--yet another thankless task. Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia takes a backdoor look at the bewildering period between 1991 and 1996, digging up the dirt on the sleazy power-brokering and bizarre improv policymaking that drives the country to this day. Primo politdrama! Marina Wolf, Contributing Writer WITH LYRICAL authenticity, American novelist Arthur Golden tells a riveting story in Memoirs of a Geisha, displaying an amazing ability to illumine the mind of a Japanese woman. ... The relentless travails of a bullheaded Icelandic man and his family are sensitively recounted in one of the world's finest novels--Independent People--by Iceland's masterly Halldór Laxness, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in literature. Liesel Hofmann, Copy Editor FINNISH AUTHOR Tove Jansson's "Moomintroll" series is a charming progression of tales about the little Moomin family and their many relatives and friends. The series, which consists of eight books of 200 pages or so, is now out of print, so I simply enjoy my two books and dream of stealing the rest from the library. Shelley Lawrence, Editorial Assistant NEWCOMERS to Kurt Vonnegut's straight-talking mixture of storytelling, history, and curmudgeonry won't be won over by Timequake Vonnegut says that he had tried to write a sci-fi novel about a 10-year hiccup in time, but it stank, so here's this instead, making his longtime fans glad he's still doing what he does: "We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different!" James Knight, Graphic Artist [ Sonoma County | MetroActive Central | Archives ]