MADreads Reviews

A full-cast stage adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice produced by L.A.

Sometimes it can take a lifetime to understand a flashpoint decision which changes your life completely.

Sometimes the biggest pivot you take in life is one you do not choose yourself.

For cartoonist and memoirist Robin Ha, there is life before age 14, in South Korea---a life of solid academic achievement, good friends, favorite comics, and a proud role as her mother’s “warrior apprentice” in the fight to gain respect as a single mother running her own business.

Then, FLASH.

There is life after age 14, in America.

I've mentioned it before but when you're looking for something to read right now (in our digital world) you can always find something in the Lucky Day Collection on Overdrive (Libby). The books in this collection are checked out for a shorter amount of time and don't allow for anyone to place them on hold. As you can see from the graphic here (today's front page of available LD books) you'll see a little of everything.

It’s the perfect wedding: not surprising, since the bride is a wedding planner and she’s created her dream ceremony that is as much a statement of her success as a businesswoman. It has to be, since Carolina Santos has worked too hard and her family has sacrificed too much for her to suffer another financial and emotional setback. But just as she’s about to walk down the aisle, the news from her groom, Andrew, comes through his brother Max, the best man: Andrew’s gone and there will be no wedding.

It’s a telling sign of how much everyday life has shifted during the Covid-19 pandemic when an author publicly discourages people from reading her book. “Maybe wait a few months” Emily St. John Mandel responded on Twitter to a suggestion that people read her 2014 novel Station Eleven.

I've now read three books by Mhairi McFarlane and she has quickly moved up my list of romantic comedy authors to the top with Kristan Higgins and Marian Keyes. McFarlane's heroines are smart and independent and funny and a bit beat up by life (that last bit is what makes them so interesting). Though they've been knocked down, they still keep getting back up. So too is the protagonist of If I Never Met You, Laurie.

It’s been a while since I’ve read really a good anthropomorphic novel (stories where animals take on human characteristics). When the ALA awards were announced and Scary Stories for Young Foxes was named a Newbery Honor, I figured it must be special. Special is only one of the many ways to describe this book. Harrowing, magical, sad, corrupt, and resilient are other words that come to mind but once you read it you’ll have your own words to describe it.  “All scary stories have two sides,” says the old storyteller to the seven fox pups eager to be frightened.

Jenny Odell’s book is not, in spite of the title, about literally doing NOTHING. Rather, it’s about how one can find time and mental space for oneself in a world where advertising, social media and work increasingly vie for our attention every hour of the day.

Maybe you just haven't met the right one, yet? MADmatches pairs local readers with the books of their dreams! 

Post the last three books you read and enjoyed on our Facebook MADmatches event page from 5:30-7:30 pm tonight, and our librarians will respond with a few titles they think you’ll enjoy. Madison librarians will be on Facebook from 5:30-7:30 pm with custom book recommendations just for you.

A library card isn’t needed to take part in MADmatches.

How would you, a college freshman with little social skills, get the attention of the hot, tattooed baker/barista with an equally hot-but-manipulative ex-girlfriend with an enviable Insta feed named MsLOLAXO?Answer: Save his life with your EDC (Every Day Carry) bag of emergency items and become each other’s emergency contact (cause you know, the baker/barista is bare bones making it in life and can’t afford healthcare).

The Regrets is a unique love story.

When the novel begins, we meet Thomas, a cool, young Brooklynite who is newly, but incompletely, dead. Due to an erring angel, Thomas is placed in limbo and instructed to await his final fate, albeit with the grave warning that he is not to incur regrets by engaging in intimate involvements with the living.

Has there ever been a character that has inspired other writers so much as Sherlock Holmes? The world of the quintessential English detective has expanded and reimagined to include Holmes-like detective on the western frontier, an unlikely apprentice to Holmes, Holmes as a consulting magician and the 

Though my imagination is vivid enough for me to picture myself as the twenty-something heroine of every Sophie Kinsella novel, it’s refreshing to follow the adventures of fictional women born in the same millennium as I was.

Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series is one of my favorite pick-me-ups. I am linking to the latest, Twisted Twenty-Six, in this review but I've only read to book fifteen, plus four "between the numbers" books. 

Jeannie Gaffigan is a writer and executive producer of The Jim Gaffigan Show.  Both seasons are currently airing on TV Land.  She's also a business partner and wife to comedian Jim Gaffigan. She's a year older than I am and grew up in Milwaukee.  I've long admired how she manages five kids and their appointments, activities, school schedule and gets them all to church.  I know this because I've read Jim Gaffigan's comedy memoirs and watch The Jim Gaffigan Show, which is described as loosely (or exactly?) based on the lives of the Gaffigans.  If it's at all true, Jeannie an

Pottermore has made it possible for the Wisconsin Digital Library to make copies of  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone available for unlimited checkouts with no waiting until April 30th.

Looking for something different to read, to challenge you, then check out the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winners, which honor books that address racism and diversity. The 2020 books have been announced "The new books explore human diversity in riveting style, putting the lie to racism and ableism even as reading them knits us closer together in times when we must be apart," said prize manager Karen Long. I have included the ebook link for those available in the Wisconsin Digital Library and at the end the library book.

Looking for something to read or listen to?  There are many titles to choose from in the Wisconsin Digitial Library with your public library card. Since March is Women's History Month, why not check out some nonfiction books about women? Below are a few suggestions. I tried to choose ones that are available now (or at least were when I was writing this post). There are many more if you do a subject search "Women's Studies".

Pity poor Rudolph Valentino. No, not that one. It’s not just the name and the visage that brings to mind the defining heartthrob of the silver screen, Valentino also happens to make his life in the film industry, which means he’s forever correcting people in the industry who take his name at face value. One of the few UCLA film archivists laboring to preserve Hollywood’s silver screen past, Valentino has made film his life.