March 2012
68 posts
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Staff Picks
Betsy’s Picks: “The Winter Palace” by Eva Stachniak. The Winter Palace tells the epic story of Catherine the Great’s improbable rise to power—as seen through the ever-watchful eyes of an all-but-invisible servant close to the throne.
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Staff Picks
Betsy’s Picks: “The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson. The author intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World’s Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the...
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Staff Picks
Marybeths Pick: The Particular sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender The ability to taste the ingredients in food and wine is a honed consciousness. Young Rose becomes aware of the emotions of the creator of the food she is eating when she first tastes her mothers Lemon Cake and realizes her emptiness. She is just a little girl, but she feels her mothers loneliness. From this point on every bite...
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“As writers, perhaps the best we can hope for is that our books leave beautiful...”
– Kyo Maclear on The Beautiful Afterlife of Dead Books (via millionsmillions)
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Staff Picks
Nancy’s Picks: ‘Regards from the Dead Princess: Novel of a Life’ by Kenize Mourad. ‘Regards from a dead princess’ is a story about Princess Selma, a Turkish princess of the Ottoman Empire. Princess Selma’s arranged marriage to a rajah of India gives the reader a glimpse into a distant romantic world in a turbulent era, the last years of the British Empire in India. The story of the...
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“Now I’m neither a doctor nor an esteemed literary critic, but it seems that...”
– Clean Bill of Health: The Novel’s Myriad Roads to Recovery by Chris Feliciano Arnold (via millionsmillions)
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Staff Picks
Nancy’s Picks: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. ‘The Forgotten Garden’ by Kate Morton is a story of three generations of women. They are tied to a cottage in England, and the secrets of Blackhurst Manor and the Mountrachet family. Their journeys take them to Australia and Cornwall. Along the way a book of fairy tales plays a prominent role. The novel begins in 1913.
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Staff Picks
Marybeths pick: Naked Came I by David Weiss based on the life of Sculptor Auguste Rodin. It portrays Rodin as a born artist – driven by his desire and temperament to do what he did best…express his frustrations and turn them into masterpieces through his use of clay. His contemporaries of the day were Degas, Renoir and Manet. Together they formed a group of misfits being denied admission...
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“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t...”
– Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (via bookmania)
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Printz Award winners
The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. The award is sponsored byBooklist, a publication of the American Library Association.
2012: Where Things Come Back By John Corey Whaley
Witty, sardonic Cullen Witter agonizes over the disappearance of his beloved brother, Gabriel, while everyone else in his stiflingly dull...
Source: sarahenni.com via Egmont on Pinterest
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A Classic Slice of Book Art
iheartclassics:
Happy Monday!
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52 Books In A Year: Anna and the French Kiss-... →
yabookaweek:
I came in to this book with high expectations, John Green had been promoting it for a bit. So I finally got around to reading it, from the jacket I was expecting some horribly written teen romance set in a boarding school, yet again. What I found was an amazingly poignant story, sure there was…
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“Keep an audio book or two on your iPhone. Periodically I take the largest of my...”
– The Way We Read Now by Dwight Garner (via millionsmillions)
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The BBC's 100 greatest novels of all time
75. Herzog Saul Bellow Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.
74. Catch-22 Catch-22 ‘[He] would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.’
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates...
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The BBC's 100 greatest novels of all time
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler’s Germany.
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov Humbert Humbert’s obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative.
68 On the Road Jack Kerouac The Beat Generation bible.
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene Prophetic novel set in 1950s Vietnam.
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding...
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Book recommendations?
panslantern:
I want to read, but I’ve basically read all the books I own. However I’m super picky on the books I choose to read.
I like books that:
Have little to no romance in them.
include mythical creatures, preferably not dragons. [Dragons get used a lot :/]
Fantasy/Adventure
Those are the types of books I like, usually. :/ Although I’m willing to read anything fictional at this point....
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Staff Picks
Recommended by Marybeth The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman The Dovekeepers encapsulates life in 70 CE for the Jews fleeing the Roman Occupation. The Journey and the life on the mountain top of Masada located in the Judean Desert is richly weaved throughout this tale by focusing on the bravery and harsh life led by it’s characters. Based on this historic event, it’s a tale of four...
“When I was a child I read books. My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred...”
– Marilynne Robinson, from her title essay in When I Was a Child I Read Books (via fsgbooks)
“I was within and without, simultaneausly enchanted and repelled by the...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (via bookmania)
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The BBC's 100 greatest novels of all time
80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge Macabre comedy of provincial life.
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison The definitive novelist of the African-American experience.
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre A thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain.
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor A haunting, understated study of old age.
76. One Hundred Years of...
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Staff Picks
Elizabeth’s Picks: Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce
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Staff Picks
Carol’s Picks: Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland. A novel based on the real-life Clara Driscoll, an artist employed by Louis Comfort Tiffany to avoid strikes by an all-male union. A young widow, Clara uses nature as inspiration to design colorful stained glass windows and lamps.
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Staff Picks
Paul’s Picks: The Tulip by Anna Pavord. A history of, surprise, surprise: the tulip. Pavord loves plants and the obsessive nut-jobs who love them. Nicely illustrated too.
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InPRINT: Not for Kids Only – 10 Young Adult Novels... →
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Staff Picks
Danielle’s Picks: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
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Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction
2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed.
2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding A powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the...
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Staff Picks
Betsy: The Gods of Newport by John Jakes
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Staff Picks
Barb’s Picks: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. The riveting story of a little girl who is being persued by… is it a bear? a monster? This is an all-time favorite!
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Staff Picks
Shirley’s Picks: Room by Emma Donoghue
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The BBC's 100 greatest novels of all time
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women.
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee Bleak but haunting allegory of apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner.
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul The finest living writer of English prose. This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart of Darkness.
82. If on...
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Staff Picks
Barb’s Picks: The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger. Sally is a lady’s maid in Victorian London when her mistress, Lady Duff Gordon, must travel to India for her health. There Sally finds freedoms of which she never dreamed.
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Staff Picks
Danielle’s Picks: The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman
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Staff Picks
Paul’s Picks: The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa. In my opinion, it’s is one of the great European novels. I think that ‘The Leopard’ is under-appreciated outside Italy because, except for a couple of short pieces, it’s the only thing Lampedusa published and it’s hard for the academics and critics who decide what is in the ‘canon’ to deal...
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The BBC's 100 greatest novels of all time
90. Money Martin Amis The novel that bags Amis’s place on any list.
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi A prose poem about the delights of chemistry.
88. The BFG Roald Dahl A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for children of all ages.
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the Manhattan of the 1970s.
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray...
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Staff Picks
Elizabeth’s Picks: If I Stay by Gayle Forman
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Staff Picks
Shirley’s Picks: The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
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Staff Picks
Carol’s Picks: The Garner Files by Jon Winokur. A straightforward, shoot-from-the hip, autobiography of the iconic star of television and movies.
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Staff Picks
Stacey’s Picks: The Newsflesh Series by Mira Grant
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