Sweet Anticipation for August 2019
It’s almost August! School is a mere month away, but there’s still some time to squeeze in the last of summer’s big titles. On to the top offerings for this month:
MADreads
Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
A splendid little moon
The news of the recent passing of Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri means a great loss to the mystery readers, as Camilleri was particularly known for his Inspector Montalbano series set in contemporary Sicily. Yet the late-blooming Camilleri (he wrote his first novel in his sixties) was remarkably prolific, writing close to a hundred novels in a variety of genres, notably historical fiction. Born in Sicily, Camilleri had a knack for mining the island’s rich history and culture.
A great starting point
This is recommended reading in tandem with A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson.
Time for Bed!
It is bedtime and little rabbit has much to do to get ready for bed, so he needs the reader’s help. Toddlers tap, clap, fluff (a pillow), and even give rabbit a kiss to help him through his bedtime ritual. This is just one of the Little Rabbit series that is sure to be popular with young readers. Other titles in this interactive board book series are Bathtime for Little Rabbit, and Poor Little Rabbit.
That other sunken ship
Ask anyone about a notorious shipwreck, and they will more than likely respond with the Titanic disaster of 1912. Yet a mere three years later, another grand ocean liner met an equally disastrous fate, the repercussions of which would be felt far beyond those immediately involved. The Lusitania was the giant Cunard liner that many felt could not, would not fall victim to Germany’s submarine warfare against British shipping. It’s an intriguing story, and when told by Erik Larson in Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, it becomes an intensely personal, vivid tale.
Things that go bump in dark, deep space
I'm going to tell you that I have a very low threshold for scary things. So if I say that a book freaked me out you can take it with a grain of salt. That said, The Last Astronaut, which was a bit of Alien, a bit of The Martian and some Major Tom vibes thrown in, made me read with one eye closed for the latter half of the book as the creeping dread of the unknown grew.
Spy ladies are the thing
It's 1946 and a young widow named Grace Healey stumbles upon a suitcase left under a bench in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. At the same moment, a former British special agent named Eleanor Trigg is hit by a car outside the station and killed instantly. What follows next is a tangled web of intrigue, espionage, heartbreak and heroism.
Once upon a dog
I grew up loving the work of Janet and Allan Ahlberg, so I was thrilled when I discovered Fairy Tales for Mr. Barker – a picture book written and illustrated by their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg. This cumulative story follows Lucy and her dog, Mr. Barker, through a series of fairy tales.
Old favorite, rediscovered
I used to love to wander through a bookstore and feed my reading need (this on top of checking many stacks of books out of the library). But at some point I stopped buying all those print copies, partially for space reasons, partially because of the changing bookstore landscape and partially because I was reading more and more digitally. So what's my version of strolling through the bookstore aisles? Late in the evening I look for ebook deals online to see if there's anything that catches my fancy (this on top of the library books I check out electronically and read on Libby!).
List from the lists
Are you looking for some good vacation reading? Having a hard time catching up on all the "best summer books lists"? Then check out The Ultimate Summer Books Preview of 2019 from Literary Hub. They've done the work for you. Their staff writer, Emily Temple, read a bunch of summer book preview lists and tallied the results. Below is a the list of titles that have been recommended 4 or more times.
Happy reading!
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