Category: Book Review

2016 Library Challenge: A Book A Friend Recommended

A Monster Calls

This coming Sunday is National Friendship Day, and I figured the best way to celebrate was by highlighting the library challenge of reading a book a friend recommended. One of my dear friends, Whitney, told me a few weeks ago that I really needed to read Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls. She also warned me that it deserved an honorary mention for books that will make you cry.  I’m so glad she suggested this book to me because it’s a wonderful read. (Thanks again for the great recommendation, Whitney!)

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Ask the Blogger: Enemy Women

Enemy Women

A couple of months ago at Books in Bloom, I was accepting suggestions for books/movies/topics to blog about, and I received a lot of intriguing suggestions. One of the recommendations was for Paulette Jiles’s Enemy Women. The woman who recommended it told me it was set during Civil War-era Missouri and that the author was a poet and her resulting writing style was lovely and evocative. We got so distracted discussing the book that I didn’t even think to ask her for her name until after she had left, but I recently read Enemy Women and really enjoyed it. (I really hope the lady who suggested it chimes in with a comment, so I can thank her properly. Until then, thanks so much for the great book recommendation!)

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Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia

One of the prompts for the 2016 Library Challenge is to read a memoir. To that end, I’m reviewing the book I read for this challenge—Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia, which chronicles Powell’s year-long project of cooking every single recipe in Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My boss Julie recommended the book to me, and I’m glad she did. (Thanks, Julie!) I had vaguely heard of Powell’s project—due to the buzz surrounding the blog Powell initially recounted her culinary adventures on—and upon reading the book, I realized that several years ago, I actually had read and enjoyed an excerpt of her chapter on cooking (and murdering) lobsters.

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Ask the Blogger: The Storied Life of AJ Fikry

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry

A few months ago, the library’s book club read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Now, I am not a member of that book club, but I do always like seeing what they’re reading and discussing the books with coworkers who are members. I remember this one being particularly popular; in addition, a short time later, a patron who belonged to the book club–Callie–also recommended the book to me and suggested I review it for the blog. (Thanks, Callie!) I ended up enjoying it and think it would appeal to most people who love reading and books.

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Louise Erdrich’s LaRose

LaRose

I’ve been a Louise Erdrich fan ever since reading her short story “Red Convertible” for a class in college several years ago. I later discovered that the story was actually a chapter from one of her novels, and though I was too busy with school that semester to read any more of her work, the first break I got, I read the original novel. Ever since then, I’ve tried to keep up with her work because I enjoyed her realistic, three-dimensional characters; her lyrical writing style; and her depictions of contemporary Native American life interwoven with stories from the past.

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2016 Library Challenge: An Author with Your Initials (S. E. Hinton)

The Outsiders

The author with your initials challenge took me an embarrassing amount of time to find a book for. None of the authors with my initials seemed particularly interesting to me, until a few weeks ago when Mynette told me I really needed to read S. E. Hinton’s classic coming-of-age story, The Outsiders. In addition to being intrigued by her recommendation, I also realized that Hinton shares my first and middle initials. In the weeks since then, the book has come up a couple of times with other people, and whenever I would admit to never having read it, the response was always a confused “You’ve never read The Outsiders?”

Having finally read The Outsiders, I now understand everyone’s reaction. I’m actually  embarrassed that I hadn’t read it before.

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2016 Library Challenge: An Author You’ve Never Read Before (Brooks Blevins)

Ghost of the Ozarks

We’ve been talking about the upcoming Books in Bloom Festival the past couple of weeks. As part of my preparation for attending, I started reading a book that will be the subject of one of the featured talks–Brooks Blevins’s Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South.

This books tells the strange story of Connie Francis, a drifter who was murdered in Stone County, Arkansas, in the spring of 1929 by several local men. That anecdote in and of itself doesn’t really stand out in the annals of true crime, but the fact that several months later Francis testified at his own murder trial does. (No, you didn’t read that wrong. The murder victim testified at his killers’ trial.)

Intrigued?

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Guest Blogger: Tiffany Newton’s The Here and Now review

The Here and Now

[We’re continuing our guest blogger posts, courtesy of our friends from the Green Forest Public Library. This one is from Green Forest’s director, Tiffany Newton. She also wrote about Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore a few weeks ago.]

“You can’t even look up tomorrow [on Google].  Who says the Internet is boundless?” (pg 129)

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares is a Young Adult book with some romance, science fiction, and dystopian themes.  It was published in 2014, but it’s only been checked out from the Carroll and Madison County libraries less than 12 times. However, it’s a quick read that you won’t regret.

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Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne is a hardworking, tough talking housekeeper for an elderly woman on an island just off the coast of Maine. She’s been accused of killing her employer by shoving her down the stairs, and Dolores has her work cut out for her, explaining why she is, in fact, innocent of that crime, though she readily admits she did murder her husband thirty years earlier. Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne is the protagonist’s chapterless confession of what drove her to murder her husband and also an explanation for why she didn’t murder her employer, Vera, despite having several good reasons for doing so.

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Guest Blogger–Tiffany Newton

[Usually blog posts are written by Shirley, Berryville’s library services associate, but today we have a special treat–a guest review written by Tiffany Newton, the director of the Green Forest Public Library. She’s reviewing Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore for us!]

March--Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”–Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

Do you love books? Quests with wizards, rogues, and warriors? Do you love code-breaking? What about ancient conspiracies? Living Forever? Modern Technology? 3D Printing? Rock Climbing? Computer Animation? Late nights spent reading your favorite childhood novel? Audio Books? Knitting?

What do all those things have in common? Well, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan takes all those amazing things and mixes them into one page-turner.

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