January Reading Choice

Jen R. has picked One Second After by William Forstchen as January's reading! Take a peek at reviews here. The library has several copies available. Happy reading!

February Reading Choices

Here are the choices for Maggie's month:

I'm With Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks, Edward Ugel

Ugel (Money for Nothing), freelance writer and Huffington Post blogger, opens his newest memoir with an evocative and eye-grabbing lead sentence ("I'm haunted by mirrors") as he allows us to follow the fat as it melts. He begins with his Bethesda, Md., family life, explaining how he became a freelance writer after he was fired in 2006. Snoring and sleep apnea sent him off to the Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, where he learned he had to drop from 263 pounds to 213, which he saw as a monumental challenge: "Starting a real diet after so many years of eating anything I wanted was akin to turning around a cruise ship." Ugel's task becomes clear as he documents battles lost at lunchtime, candy binges and secret eating: "Every bite tasted like failure." As he visits a health club, gets a trainer, plays racquetball, starts a food journal, does daily workouts, and meets with a nutritionist, the pounds vanish. Recalling embarrassments, triumphs, and defeats, Ugel shares intimate moments of his struggle. After much denial and shame, confronting emotional and psychological issues while fighting his "inner demons," he eventually was stepping on the scales with a Rocky-like determination. When he details the delights of food, one can get hungry just turning the pages. (Publishers Weekly)

Firelight, Sophia Jordan

Descended from dragons, the draki's ability to appear human protects them from hunters. Jacinda lives with her pride in the Cascades, but she chafes under her special status as the only fire-breather in hundreds of years. Recklessly breaking the “no-fly” rule, she attracts hunters; mercifully, one hunter, a beautiful boy who looks upon her with wonder, lets her escape. After this, the pride intends to hobble her rebelliousness, and Jacinda is forced to flee. But while twin sister Tamra, who never manifested and was shunned, is happy with the move, Jacinda feels only anguish within Nevada's desert climate. Then she meets Will and, despite recognizing him as the same draki hunter, feels herself come alive. Jordan's compelling addition to the supernatural star-crossed lovers theme is equal parts taut suspense and sensuous romance, with visceral writing and believable relationships among characters, particularly among Jacinda's family. A foreshadowed twist and a thrilling confrontation in the end pages leave Jacinda heartbroken and in trouble, and readers will howl for more. Grades 8-12. --Krista Hutley

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later. You might find yourself paused, considering the universe of lives one city contains in any slice of time, each of us a singular world, sometimes passing close enough to touch or collide, to birth a new generation or kill it, sending out ripples, leaving residue, an imprint, marking each other, our city, the very air--compassionately or callously, unable to see all the damage we do or heal. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful.

But then someone does something extraordinary, like dancing on a cable strung 110 stories in the air, or imagining a magnificent novel that lifts us up for a sky-scraping, dizzy glimpse of something greater: the sordid grandeur of this whirling world, "bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants." --Mari Malcolm

March's Reading Choices

Here are Courtney's choices for March:

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

From the depths of Mexico’s Copper Canyon to the heights of the Leadville Trail 100 ultramarathon in Colorado, from the centuries-old running techniques of Mexico’s Tarahumara tribe to a research lab at the University of Utah, author McDougall celebrates, in this engaging and picaresque account, humankind’s innate love of running. There are rogues aplenty here, such the deadly narco-traffickers who roam Copper Canyon, but there are many more who inspire, such as the Tarahumara runners, who show the rest of the world the false limitations we place on human endurance. McDougall has served as an Associated Press war correspondent, is a contributing editor to Men’s Health, and runs at his home in rural Pennsylvania, and he brings all of these experiences to bear in this slyly important, highly readable account. --Alan Moores

The Road by Cormack McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew

December reading

Here are the choices for December:

Wish You Well, David Baldacci

Amazon.com review:
"David Baldacci has made a name for himself crafting big, burly legal thrillers with larger-than-life plots. However, Wish You Well, set in his native Virginia, is a tale of hope and wonder and "something of a miracle" just itching to happen. This shift from contentious urbanites to homespun hill families may come as a surprise to some of Baldacci's fans--but they can rest assured: the author's sense of pacing and exuberant prose have made the leap as well.

"The year is 1940. After a car accident kills 12-year-old Lou's and 7-year-old Oz's father and leaves their mother Amanda in a catatonic trance, the children find themselves sent from New York City to their great-grandmother Louisa's farm in Virginia. Louisa's hardscrabble existence comes as a profound shock to precocious Lou and her shy brother. Still struggling to absorb their abandonment, they enter gamely into a life that tests them at every turn--and offers unimaginable rewards. For Lou, who dreams of following in her father's literary footsteps, the misty, craggy Appalachians and the equally rugged individuals who make the mountains their home quickly become invested with an almost mythic significance:

They took metal cups from nails on the wall and dipped them in the water, and then sat outside and drank. Louisa picked up the green leaves of a mountain spurge growing next to the springhouse, which revealed beautiful purple blossoms completely hidden underneath. "One of God's little secrets," she explained. Lou sat there, cup cradled between her dimpled knees, watching and listening to her great-grandmother in the pleasant shade...

"Baldacci switches deftly between lovingly detailed character description (an area in which his debt to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harper Lee seems evident) and patient development of the novel's central plot. If that plot is a trifle transparent--no one will be surprised by Amanda's miraculous recovery or by the children's eventual battle with the nefarious forces of industry in an attempt to save their great-grandmother's farm--neither reader nor character is the worse for it. After all, nostalgia is about remembering things one already knows. --Kelly Flynn

The Hunger Games Series, Suzanne Collins

An Amazon.com review for the first in the series:
Grade 7 -- "In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as the mining district's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta, the son of the town baker who seems to have all the fighting skills of a lump of bread dough, will be pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives. Collins's characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic, and engrossing. This book will definitely resonate with the generation raised on reality shows like "Survivor" and "American Gladiator." Book one of a planned trilogy." Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK

See Amazon.com for reviews of the subsequent two in the series.

Summer reading suggestions

Thanks to all who participated in the book group last night! We created a long list of recommended reads, so here it goes:

Non-fiction:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver
India: An Illustrated History, Prem Kishore
The Templars, M. Haag
Worried Sick, N. Hadler
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
The Whale, Hoare
A Little History of the World, Gombrich
The Story of the World, Weisbauer (children's history, elementary level)

Historical fiction:
The King's Rose, 16th century England
Just Jane, fictionalized bio of Jane Austen
Kite Rider, set in China under the Huns
The Blood of Flowers, 16th Century Persia (NOTE: contains some intense scenes)
The Lighthearted Quest, Portuguese Escape, Illyrian Spring and other novels by Ann Bridge

General fiction (much of it YA):
The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd
The Alchemist, M. Scott, series (similar to Percy Jackson)
Isabel Dalhousie series and 44 Scotland Street series by A. McCall Smith
Elm Creek Quilt series
Beverly Lewis series (Amish romance/mysteries)
Hunger Games series
Leviathan, S. Westerfeld
Seven Towers, P. Wrede
The Last Apprentice, J. Delany
Last of the High Kings and others by Kate Thompson
Sarah Wolson mysteries (set in San Francisco)
The Underland Chronicles, Suzanne Collins (young readers)
Septimus Heaps series
Lips Touch Three Times, short stories
Much Ado About Nothing
Exodus and Zenith, apocalyptic YA novels
Incarceron, Fisher
The Dark Is Rising, S. Cooper
The Tricking of Freya (Icelandic immigrants in Canada)
I Dreamed of Africa, Kuki Gallmann
The Waves, Virginia Wolfe

I may not have caught all of them, but this is a pretty good starting point! Happy Reading!

November's Reading Choices

North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell

Even though Wives and Daughters is considered her masterpiece, I liked this Gaskell novel better. It is set in a fictionalized industrial Manchester and looks at the conflicts between agrarian and industrial England in the 19th century through the characters of Margaret Hale and John Thornton.

Obasan, Joy Kagawa

A fictionalized memoir of one girl's experiences during World War II in Canada. Beautifully written. I think Kagawa herself was left with an aunt while her mother made a trip to Japan, and while she was gone, war broke out and she couldn't return. This was the first novel to address the issue of interment camps for the Japanese during the war.

And Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

I found this at the thrift store and now need an excuse to read it! Written in 1937, it's the story of a Southern black woman and considered a must-read in the canon of African-American literature.

(You can click on the titles for links to Amazon.com reviews...)

October's Choices

From Cari, for October's reading pleasure:

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell:
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff (Amazon.com)


What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell:
Check out Amazon or elsewhere for a review. I couldn't find one that was succinct and to the point! :)