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Staff Picks



In case you're interested  in what 'we' read, here is a sampling....... 

June 2010

A series by young adult author Suzanne Collins has got the staff buzzing and talking it up to patrons.  The Hunger Games is as Karen put it ‘the ultimate reality game show’. This book is about a world where the government has unlimited control and the conflict is so amazing and ‘out there’ it is hard to put the book down.  Suzanne Collins has the ability to bring to life the action, suspense, romance, humor, cleverness with vivid imagery.  You can imagine every setting, every character and every battle as the Games play out.  And, you can’t help falling in love with the main character!  Catching Fire continues the story but leaves you wanting more.  There is high anticipation for the final book Mockingjay due in August. 

The Millennium Trilogy is another series that Dawn and Marie are enjoying.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an award-winning crime novel by the late Swedish journalist Steig Larsson.  When the author died in November of 2004 he left three unpublished novels, the first two topping the best selling lists since their release and the third, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was just released in May. These novels revolve around five generations of the Vanger family and spans several continents.  Marie describes the first as a ‘solid read’.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone and Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs are books that Marie would recommend reading this summer.  They’re not light summer reads but they would be satisfying.

Dawn suggests The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry as a summer read.  While not as ‘mysterious’ as her first novel The Lace Reader, this one is also set in Salem, MA with some of the same characters making an appearance.  Other titles that Dawn read during the spring are The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg, The Postmistress by Sarah Blake and Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.  All would be worth the summer book list!

Sheila Dube is on another mystery reading binge.  She has been reading some titles by classic mystery authors like Martha Grimes and Dorothy Simpson. The Old Fox Deceiv’d by Grimes, as well as, Puppet for a Corpse, Last Seen Alive, and Dead by Morning by Simpson have been meeting that “all things British” need with Chief Inspectors, cups a tea and descriptions of quaint English villages that hold deep dark secrets. 

Sheila also recommends Laurie R. King’s newest Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes book The God of the Hive as well as Elizabeth George’s new release in the Inspector Lynley series This Body of Death.

Karen adds to the staff picks a couple of books with timely themes.  February by Lisa Moore is a novel about a widow’s grief in the aftermath of an oil rig disaster.  The Bell Ringers by Henry Porter is a look around the corner into the near future.  A Western government integrates it data gathering systems with the help of a corporation and spies on the populace in order to be more efficient and secure.  It is so likely a story that one starts to wonder who is watching and listening right now!  She also read The Orchard a memoir by Adelia Robertson of her years running the family orchard during the Great Depression in Ipswich Massachusetts.  She writes evocatively about that time period and the hardships that almost everyone faced.

Summer fun to all!!

We love to hear what you’ve been reading!