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Staff Picks



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

February 2010

Zooming to the top of Karen’s all-time favorite list is Barbara Kinsolver’s new book The Lacuna (la-q-na)!!  It is the life story of a writer, set in Mexico and the United States from the 1930’s -1950’s.  She describes it as exquisitely crafted, sweeping, and packed with contemporary themes.  In Karen’s opinion, this is Kingsolver’s best book to date and if you do audio books do not miss this reading by the author!

Karen also read two other guy books recently.  Out Stealing Horses is a translation of a novel by Per Petterson.  It is a resonant coming of age story set in rural Norway that is beautifully descriptive and quietly tragic. 

The Badlands Saloon by Jonathan Twingly is a brief story of a young man’s crossing into adulthood during a summer job in North Dakota.  Oliver has returned to his home state to work after his first year at art school in New York City.  Don’t look for drama or plot here, just a snapshot rich with the sort of oddball people all of us meet in life.  Kindly told, it flows along gently and is peppered with paintings by the author.  Marie adds that this book is quirky, vivid and meandering.

One of Dawn’s favorite new books is Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin.  In this novel, stories of a group of New Yorkers are connected by the historical Philippe Petit's famous wire walk on a cable stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center which takes place in 1974. McCann captures the times and people in such a way that you feel part of the event. The important theme of this book is not that things end, but that things go on. In the authors note at the end of the book McCann writes; "A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader. This is the intimate privilege of art; In fact, it's the intimate privilege of being alive. When telling stories we are engaged in a democracy like no other." Dawn loves this quote!

31 Hours by Masha Hamilton is a story that Dawn has thought of often since she finished it. The mom in the novel  wakes up suddenly one night with a mother's intuition that something is very wrong with her twenty-one year old son, Jonas. For the next 31 hours, she will try to find him before something, she doesn't know what, goes horribly wrong.   Her intuition proves accurate as we learn that Jonas is preparing to become a suicide bomber, blowing up a subway in New York. Interesting and heart breaking, told in the mother’s perspective and basically taken from the current days headlines.

Marie wanted to move to Avening, a fictional town on an island in the Pacific Northwest, after finishing When Autumn Leaves by Amy Foster.  She describes this novel as a magical story with a cast of interesting characters. 

The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman, A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve and Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline were titles that showed up on both Dawn and Marie’s reading list for the past few months.  Not considered favorites but satisfying and fun reads.

Audrey Niffeneggar follows up the popular The Time Travelers Wife with her newest novel Her Fearful Symmetry.  This is an odd ghost story with a twisty plot that left Dawn questioning some aspects of the almost silly story. 

Sheila Dube revisited some well loved mystery authors in the past few months.  P.D. James older titles The Murder Room and Death in Holy Orders satisfied her need for Inspector Dalgliesh’s sleuthing and The Clutch of the Constables by Ngaio Marsh was an enjoyable older mystery (1969).  Doing laundry is usually not Sheila’s first love, but she loves Mandy Dyer who owns a Laundromat and solves mysteries on the side.  She can be found in Buttons & Foes by Dolores Johnson.

Marge, one of our faithful volunteers, adds the following mystery to our staff picks The Big Steal by Emyl Jenkns. Marge found it to be a good read and encourages lovers of antiques and old houses to give it a try!   

The Help by Kathryn Stockett and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown continue to be titles that have very LONG wait lists.  If you want something similar to Stockett’s book, try Someone knows my Name by Lawrence Hill, We are all Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg or Beth Hoffman’s debut novel Saving CeeCee Honeycutt.  For Dan Brown fans give Steve Berry a try, or James Rollin’s Sigma Force novels.   

We love to hear what you’ve been reading!