<p>Two of my favorite novels: </p>
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<p>1) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&tag=motheringhud-20&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMiddlesex-Novel-Oprahs-Book-Club%2Fdp%2F0312427735%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1371690866%26sr%3D1-1%26keywords%3Dmiddlesex" rel="norewrite" target="_blank">Middlesex</a> - by Jeffrey Eugenides</p>
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<p>This is the 1st person narrative of a hermaphrodite. A beautiful story - be warned that this is a page turner! - Can't wait for a movie to be made out of it and hope it will be as good as the book. </p>
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<div><i>"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."</i><br><br>
So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, <i>Middlesex </i>is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.</div>
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<div><i>Middlesex </i>is the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.</div>
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<p>2) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&tag=motheringhud-20&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FThe-Giver-Readers-Circle-Laurel-Leaf%2Fdp%2F0440237688" rel="norewrite" target="_blank">The Giver</a> - by Louis Lowry </p>
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<p>This is more of a sad, dystopian novel. I read it on my Kindle in December 2011, while I was on a backpacking trip in Patagonia, trying to stay warm in my tent, in a place where the sun is up until almost midnight. A surreal environment to read and finish such a surreal book. Apparently it is considered a children's novel. You can read more about it here: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver</a> - but you may not want to, as it also contains plot spoilers. </p>
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<div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of </span><i style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&tag=motheringhud-20&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2FISBN%3D0899664237%2F%24%257B0%257D" style="color:rgb(0,51,153);" target="_blank">Brave New World</a></i><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;">, in this 1994 </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325&tag=motheringhud-20&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2Fsubst%2Flists%2Fawards%2Fnewbery.html%2F%24%257B0%257D" style="color:rgb(0,51,153);font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;" target="_blank">Newbery Medal</a><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;line-height:normal;"> winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price.</span></div>
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