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Read about someone else for a change
Recommended biographies

Like reading about other people and their lives? Then here is a list for you.  These titles are from various"best of" lists, including the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year.  Below are a few from a new library booklist-- ...read more

Reviewed by Kathy K. - Central on January 29, 2013 | 0 comments

A life worth living?
A review of Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

 "The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life - or at least shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window - is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people." This is the realization that Louisa Clark comes to after her comfortable, if boring, life is upended by the loss of her job at The Buttered Bun restaurant. Louisa is twenty-six and lives with her parents ...read more

Reviewed by Jane J - Central on January 28, 2013 | 0 comments

Beware: this book will make you crave PIE!
A review of Pie by Sarah Weeks

 Alice’s beloved Aunt Polly made amazing pies. She loved to bake them so much that she opened up a pie shop and gave the pies away for free! Everyone in town had a favorite flavor of Polly’s pies, and as word of them spread, people traveled from all over to taste her renowned baking. Sadly, Aunt Polly dies unexpectedly and perplexes everyone by leaving her secret pie crust recipe to her cat, Lardo. Her will also bequeaths Lardo himself (a rather grumpy cat) to her favorite niece, Alice. How do ...read more

Reviewed by Carissa - Alicia Ashman on January 25, 2013 | 0 comments

A tale of two solos
Two Very Different Books with the Same Title

I recently was chatting with a fellow reader about favorite books, and he happened to mention that he was rereading one of his favs: Going Solo. I immediately thought of Roald Dahl’s autobiography by that name, but in fact he was referring to Eric Klinenberg’s study of the growing trend towards single member households. Dahl’s book, one of my all-time favorites, recounts his earliest single years in East Africa and his RAF service in the Mediterranean theaters during World War II ...read more

Reviewed by Katie H. on January 24, 2013 | 0 comments

Creepy crawlies and boop-oop-a-doop
A review of The Diviners by Libba Bray

 I'm going to be completely honest about this: I had been looking forward to reading The Diviners for most of 2012 but when it first showed up on the hold shelf for me and I discovered it was 578 pages, I paused a little. OK, I paused a lot, like, for 28 days, and then had to bring the book back to the library without even having started it.  So I placed it on hold again and decided to dedicate myself to it when it next arrived. That time is now. Here's the scoop: Evangeline (Evie ...read more

Reviewed by Molly - Central on January 22, 2013 | 0 comments

Ghosts need their quiet places, too
A review of The Hungry Ghost of Rue Orleans by Mary Quattlebaum

 Fred the ghost is happy in his leaky, creaky, dusty old house. He tends his cactus, gobbles air, and is perfectly content. But when Pierre and his daughter Marie arrive, declaring the house their new restaurant, Fred loses his quiet corner of the universe. Walls are painted, cobwebs swept away, and suddenly, Fred’s house is…CLEAN. Then came the noise. The horrible clanking of silverware and dishes disrupting Fred’s peace. After throwing a fit of ghostly proportions, sending food flying, Fred is ...read more

Reviewed by Jill O on January 18, 2013 | 0 comments

Hangman's haunted past
A review of The Beggar King by Oliver Potzsch

 My favorite 17th Century sleuths are back for another hair-raising, exciting, and almost deadly adventure. It is 1662 and Jakob Kuisl, the Schongau hangman, his oldest daughter Magdalena, and Simon Fronwieser, the medicus and son of the town doctor are in for quite an adventure in Oliver Plotzsch's new novel, The Beggar King. This time the story moves from Schongau to Regensburg. What they say is true: ...read more

Reviewed by Kathy K. - Central on January 17, 2013 | 0 comments

The definition of mordantly funny
A review of The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

 It's been six years since the last book in Keyes' Walsh Family series so she'd fallen off my radar a little bit. Which turned reading her newest into something of a surprise. It's been long enough (though Keyes did have a standalone novel out in 2009) that I forgot how darkly funny she can be - and in this case I mean DARKLY funny. You know that phrase you see in book reviews? "Mordant humor"? Well here is the book that defines what that is. Helen Walsh is having a very bad time. Her career as ...read more

Reviewed by Jane J - Central on January 16, 2013 | 0 comments

Good grief, Charles Schulz!
A review of Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaels

 A recent viewing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, without which my holidays would be incomplete, got me thinking of the Peanuts strip and its creator, Charles Schulz. Over the course of nearly fifty years and 17,897 strips,** Schulz singlehandedly created a bittersweet epic in the travails and triumphs (however fleeting) of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang. That the strip, with its slightly melancholy take on life and philosophical musings, endured so ...read more

Reviewed by Katie H. on January 15, 2013 | 0 comments

Well deserved award
A review of The Round House by Louise Erdrich

 Louise Erdrich knows how to write a book. She's received high praise for most of her past novels, and her latest, The Round House, is every bit as good as the rest. Critics seem to agree: it won the 2012 National Book Award. This story is part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, and part analytical look at Native American tribal life and law in the late 1980s. Joe Coutts has considered himself a pretty normal kid until he turns 13 ...read more

Reviewed by Kylee on January 11, 2013 | 0 comments
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