From the leftovers after last month's Friends of the Library book sale at the Central Branch of the Arlington County Library. To be released.

From the back cover: Hailed by the London Observer as "one of the most significant British novelists of her generation," Monica Ali has written a stunningly accomplished debut about one outsider's quest to find her voice.

Nazneen, raised in a Bangladeshi village, carries her sense of fatalism across continents to London, where is is married off to Chanu, a man old enough to be her father. For years she keeps house, cares for her husband, and bears children. But gradually she questions whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. To her own amazement, Nazneen falls in love with a young man. She discovers the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters, and her new world.

Profoundly humane adn beautifully rendered, Brick Lane captures a world at once unimaginable and achingly familiar.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

On the OBCZ shelf on the 9th floor.

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DEAR FINDER,
Welcome to BookCrossing.com, where we are trying to making the whole world a library!

If you have not already done so, please make a journal entry so we know this book has found a new home. You don't need to join BookCrossing and you can remain completely anonymous. However, we encourage you to join so that you can follow this book's future travels. It's fun and free, and your personal information will never be shared or sold. If you decide to join, consider listing ResQgeek (or any of the other journalers) as referring you.

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This book is a part of the BookCrossing "The Reader" Challenge: to find and release books that somehow relate to the award winning book “The Reader” by Bernhard Schlink. The movie based on the book opens January, 2009 (in the U.S.). Be sure to check your local theatres for listings.

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Also released for the Movie Books challenge.

This book is available on the Book Exchange shelf in the pantry in room 9C68 of the Knox Building (USPTO employees and authorized visitors only - this area is not open to the general public).

There are quite a few people with this book on their wishlists, so perhaps this book should become a bookray. It has been pulled from the book exchange shelf and set aside.

Bookring!

Please be sure to make a journal entry when you receive the book, so everyone knows it arrived safely. Try to read the book in a timely fashion (remember, there are others waiting for it), and then make another journal entry to let us know what you thought of the book. Each member is responsible for contacting the next person in the ring to obtain mailing addresses. Enjoy the book!

• valpete - USA (US shipping pref.)
  
• Rrrcaron - USA (US shipping pref.)
  
• nancynova - USA (int. shipping ok)
  
• bookbabe71 - Canada (int. shipping ok)
  
• babyimran - Malaysia (pref. Asia/Europe shipping)
  
• polenka - Finland (int. shipping ok)
  
• easterngirl71 - USA (US shipping pref.)<--Book is here
  
• Back to Knox9thFloor
  

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

On its way to the first bookring participant. Enjoy!

I received this today. I do have one other ahead of this one, so will try to get to it ASAP.

Introducing Nazneen, an 18-year-old who has just moved to London in an arranged marriage with a man twice her age, this story sets the stage for many interesting conflicts and adjustments. How will Nazneen, accustomed to living a quiet life in a Bangledesh village, deal with the challenges of a huge city, largely filled with white people raised with different values from her own? How will she deal with Chanu, her fat, lazy husband who fancies himself an intellectual, an unrecognized prince among paupers? More importantly, how will Nazneen deal with the tragic loss of her baby son, the only thing that really tied Chanu and herself together?

Meanwhile, Nazneen feels for her sister, Hasina, who eloped in a love marriage that ended badly. Throughout the years, she keeps track of her sister's whereabouts through poorly-written letters, which leave Nazneen to read between the lines. If only she could bring Hasina to their home in London!

While all these issues are addressed, it happens in too plodding a way...almost like a villager in Nazneen's homeland, taking a slow walk around the land. Perhaps that's the way Ali intended it; after all, the course of real life is rarely, if ever, concise and action-packed. But in a novel, it takes a real talent to pull it off. After a while, the reader just wants to know what's happened, and move on.

Not being overly familiar with Bangledesh, with Muslims, or with immigrants in London, I found Ali's details and insight into their lives fairly interesting. But, overall, even that wasn't enough to capture and keep my interest in this book. Long before I had finished, I was ready for this book to be done.

I'll be sending it along to Rrrcaron for her reading pleasure.

I received this book in the mail today. Will get to it soon.
Ruth

It took me much longer to read this book than I had anticipated. It was a great story, and I'm glad it eneded the way it did for Nanzene and her family. I was happy she finally messed with her fate. Thanks so much for sharing. Sending on to next reader...
Ruth

Got in the mail today. Adding it to the RABCK/Rays section of the bookshelf. There's one more ray ahead of it that looks like a short read. This one look like it will take a while! I'll post when I start it.

I started this earlier this week. I agree with rrrccaron - 500+ pages, tiny print and definitely not a story I can speed read through....so this one is likely to take me a week or so to read.

Good so far - it reminds me of the Roller Birds of Rampur, with the Indian/British way of life differences.

Wow. I really liked this book. Like some other books about cultures unfamiliar to me, it sent me scurrying to Wikipedia, to check out facts. I learned Bangladesh is different than India, although under British rule, the lines were blurred.

The protagonist was so deferential to her husband and the old way of life, that I kept checking to see if the years REALLY were in the 1990's and 2000's. I'm glad she let her husband go back to Bangladesh - he needed to see reality...as much as he could perceive it, but she would have shriveled up there.

And I'm glad she remained behind in England, finally moving out of her husband's shadow, to make a life for herself and her daughters. Karim gave her the strength to think for herself, but he was the wrong man for her, and I'm glad she broke it off.

All in all, a very good, mind-stretching book for me, that I never would have picked up on my own.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Mailing to next person on this ray! Enjoy!

What a great book! I found another copy of this at the thrift store the other day so I picked it up to pass around to some of my friends. I have e-mailed the next person on this list and will pass the book along as soon as I have an address. Thank you so much for including me in this bookring.

Hahaha - I thought it was good karma since I donated a box full of books for a donation to an orphanage (my department had an outing there). And I don't recall joining in any bookrays/rings.

Anyway, this book will have to wait a while since I just started a new book yesterday (one of my favourite writers, Elizabeth George).

The book arrived today, thank you a lot for sharing this!

I really don't know what to say about this book; at times it was very interesting and touching, at the times I wished it was over already. I love how Nazneen grew during the story and how everything finished for her family, but I must admit I was a bit bored from time to time.

Going to a next reader as soon as I get the address!

Got this book today:) Thanks for adding me to the list of readers. This sounds like a very good book:)