Friday, March 30, 2012

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney’s scandalous love affair is little known and often dismissed.  When it is included in Wright biographies Cheney is portrayed as a home wrecking, insensitive woman.  However, Horan depicts her as a loving, intelligent person who gives up her life with her children and her career to pursue Frank.  Those interested in Frank Lloyd Wright will enjoy reading about his imagined relationships and how his eccentric personality shaped them.  Loving Frank is a book club favorite - check it out @the library!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

Covering a span of nearly one hundred years, The Stranger's Child is divided into five sections. After each section, the story leaps ahead twenty to thirty years. Because all the important events  (wars, marriages, divorces, births, deaths) occur in the years between sections, the reader must glean the pertinent facts of the story from what is said about characters and events (often  minor) from previous chapters. Careful reading is required.

In 1913, a young Cambridge student brings a friend to visit his family home. Both George Sawle and his teenage sister Daphne are infatuated with the aristocratic visitor, Cecil Valance. When Daphne asks Cecil to write in her autograph book, he responds with a pages-long poem, “Two Acres,” a paean to the Sawle’s middle-class home. After Cecil is killed in France while serving in the army during The Great War, the poet and the poem become a beloved part of the British culture. Interest in Cecil’s life and work waxes and wanes into the 21st century, but lost and destroyed documents, family efforts at privacy, disingenuous statements and outright lies cloud his story for future generations.  Fans of Atonement and readers going through Downton Abbey withdrawal will love this one!

Friday, March 23, 2012

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella


Just weeks from her wedding, Poppy finds her self in a bit of trouble. First, during a fire alarm at a hotel, she loses her emerald engagement ring. Then while looking for it, her cell phone is stolen. Of course she must have some luck left because there in the trash bin is a perfectly good cell phone someone threw away.

Sam's old assistant threw out the phone on her way out the door. Now Sam wants his phone back, however Poppy needs this phone and works out an arrangement so that she can use the phone while looking for her ring.

Through forwarded e-mails and texts, Sam and Poppy get to know each other. However, things can't always be happy as scandal rocks both of their worlds. If you are looking for a great spring break read, look no further than I've Got Your Number!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Fifteen year old Esch is the third child and only daughter in a family of four siblings living in a mostly black rural area of coastal Mississippi. Motherless and raised by a disinterested father, the children have grown up somewhat poor and wild, but these conditions have created a strong family bond among them. Esch, an observant and thoughtful young woman, reports her family’s activities covering a twelve day period—ten days leading up to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, the day of the hurricane and the day after. Esch makes the reader feel the humanity of each imperfect character in her family and demonstrates the difficulty people in their circumstances had in preparing for the hurricane.  Salvage the Bones was also the 2011 winner of the National Book Award for fiction, so be sure to add this one to your list!

Friday, March 16, 2012

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult

Luke Warren lives with wolves and seems to enjoy their company more than humans.  When he suffers a traumatic brain injury after a car crash it is up to his prodigal son, Edward, to decide his fate.  Edward decides his dad wouldn’t want to live out his life in a vegetative state.  His sister Cara, who is a minor and can’t legally make the decision, wants her dad to have a chance at a miracle recovery.   Will they be able to understand each other’s point of view and repair their relationship?  Lone Wolf is another winner from Picoult. 

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The faculty and students at Westish College (a small school on the Wisconsin edge of Lake Michigan) are all earnest and endearing. But problems arise because some of them tend to put all their eggs in one basket.  Henry, a slick-fielding shortstop, is attending Westish solely to play for its baseball team. But he loses his ability to throw the ball accurately just as major league scouts start to show an interest in him. Schwartz, the erudite but rough-around-the-edges catcher, has applied to only a few of the top law schools in the country and been rejected by all. Pella, the school President’s daughter, had quit high school to elope with an older man. Now, four years later, she flees the stifling relationship, returning to her father’s home without education or skills. And the school president himself feels compelled to put his long academic career and reputation at risk to pursue an illicit love affair. These decisions lead to a long unhappy baseball season for all, straining the love and friendship they feel for one another. But a summer of emotional and physical pain teaches them that part of The Art of Fielding requires reacting to a bad hop. Life goes on in unexpected ways.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Ape House by Sara Gruen

For scientist Isabel Duncan, bonobos Sam, Bonzi, Makena, Mbongo, Jelani, and baby Lola are her family.  Along with her fiance, Peter, the new head of the Great Ape Language Lab, she has dedicated her life to studying the apes' acquisition of language.  But after Isabel is horrifically injured in a terrorist bombing of the lab by animal rights activists claiming they 'liberated' the apes, her entire focus changes to getting the bonobos back.  Sold by the university funding her research to an unknown, private buyer, the bonobos have vanished.

John Thigpen is a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and was at the Great Ape Language Lab with his partner, the horrible Cat Douglas, interviewing Isabel the day before the explosion.  Isabel and the bonobos made a huge impression on him, especially after being allowed in to meet them (Cat was not - though it doesn't stop her from stealing John's story).  So when the lab is bombed, John knows this is his story, and he'll do anything to uncover who's responsible for Isabel's injuries - and the disappearance of the bonobos.

Fans of Sara Gruen's bestselling Water for Elephants will love her newest novel.  Though completely different in story, this is at its heart a book about the powerful impact animals have on our hearts, and how, sometimes, their behavior is more human than our own.  Full of amazing details and facts about bonobos and their behavior and language in great apes, check out Ape House today!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Emily Benedict has traveled to her mom’s childhood home in Mullaby, North Carolina to answer questions about her mother who has passed away.  She lives with her grandfather who she has never met . The town does not welcome her and she soon realizes it’s not going to be easy to figure out what happened that caused her mom to leave and never come back.  Filled with magic, misfits, and far reaching secrets, The Girl Who Chased the Moon is an enjoyable read.  I am definitely going to check out Sarah Addison Allen’s other books, including The Peach Keeper and The Sugar Queen.  Both received rave reviews when they were first published.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Mental Floss: The Book: The Greatest Lists in the History of Lists


Are you looking to quickly expand your knowledge of random facts and trivia? Maybe you just want to learn enough to beat your family in Trivial Pursuit or to prepare for a Jeopardy audition, either way Mental Floss: The Book: The Greatest Lists in the History of Lists has something for you!

Exploring everything from politics to medicine and literature to pop culture, there is something new to learn for everybody. Did you know that Back to the Future was almost called Spaceman from Pluto? Or that you could improve your performance in the pool by ingesting baking soda? Perhaps you wondered why Jello didn't come in a coffee flavor. These are just some facts that are listed, pointed out and explained.

Trivia fans, history buffs and pop culture aficionado won't want to miss Mental Floss: The Book: The Greatest Lists in the History of Lists!