13 women buy a $37,000 diamond necklace

The necklace : thirteen women and the experiment that transformed their lives

by Cheryl Jarvis. New York : Ballantine Books, 2008.

BookPage reviews: Overall, though, this is a feel-good and thought-provoking book that will challenge your assumptions about the value of luxury goods.

Kirkus: Why would diamonds, of all things, inspire this unusual openness? Does modern life have so few vehicles for sisterhood that shopping is the one thing we have left? Jarvis avoids wrestling with such ideas, preferring to fawn and overstate.As frivolous as its centerpiece.

Border songs

Lynch, Jim. (2009).Border songs. New York : Alfred A. Knopf.

Kirkus: Tensions on the U.S.-Canadian border disrupt a neighborhood in Lynch's entertaining second novel. Forget the shaky plot. What's memorable is the masterful use of Brandon as a bridge between the human world, foolish and chaotic, and the more ordered universe of birds.

California wine country

Sosnowski, Vivienne. (2009). When the rivers ran red. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kirkus: How the Napa and Sonoma Valley wineries survived Prohibition.California's wine country is an oft-romanticized region, and newspaper executive Sosnowski, a first-time author, seems to have fallen sway to its well-advertised charms in her attempt to showcase the region's fortitude during Prohibition. While it is true that many families suffered mightily during that period (1919–33), as the entire region's economy was centered around winemaking, the author's narrative lacks the cohesive direction necessary to give the wineries' plight sufficient dramatic tension. Copiously researched, but this particular vintage lacks complexity and depth.

Postsecret

One in a series of books about postcards. An aside: interestingly, some libraries have it at 155.6 (Differential and developmental psychology), others at 741.683 (Drawing & drawings).

World War II writings

A J Liebling. A collection of World War II accounts by the influential journalist and author includes "The Road Back to Paris," "Mollie and Other War Pieces," and "Normandy Revisited," in a volume that also features twenty-nine previously uncollected New Yorker articles.

Catch-22

Heller's classic. Book-a-day calendar states that today, 10 November, is the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. It adds that "The Modern Library ranked Catch-22 number seven in its list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century."

Hemingway's boat

First I heard of it was a patron asking for it today.

Kirkus: Seven years in the making, this vivid portrait allows us to see Hemingway on the Pilar once again, standing on the flying bridge and guiding her out of the harbor at sunrise. Appearing on the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's death, this beautifully written, nuanced meditation deserves a wide audience. High praise, indeed.