Books Soon to be Movies in 2014

“I’m glad I read the book first,” is a phrase I often hear people say after seeing a film based off a book. Books as inspiration for movies are more popular than ever, and 2014 is set to be a good one if you enjoy literary films.

BuzzFeed recently posted a list of “16 Books to Read Before They Hit Theaters This Year.” Here are a few that can be found at Sewickley Public Library. Click the titles to request them through the library catalog:

 

LABOR DAY by Joyce MaynardBooklist Review: Stranger danger is a concept unfamiliar to 13-year-old Henry, who befriends an injured man during one of his and his agoraphobic mother’s rare shopping excursions in town with disastrous results for all. To be fair, neither mother nor son have much worldly experience, thanks to Adele’s emotional fragility following her divorce. Yet their willingness to assist a strange man has less to do with their collective lack of judgment than it does with Frank’s infectious charm, a quality that will escalate over the coming days as the escaped convict and murderer holds the pair hostage in their own home. With remarkable ease, Adele falls in love with Frank. As she helps him plan a second escape to Canada, Henry fears losing the little stability he has ever known. Told from Henry’s point of view, Maynard’s inventive coming-of-age tale indelibly captures the anxiety and confusion inherent in adolescence, while the addition of a menacing element of suspense makes this emotionally fraught journey that much more harrowing.–Haggas, Carol Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

THE MONUMENTS MEN: ALLIED HEROES, NAZI THIEVES, AND THE GREATEST TREASURE HUNT IN HISTORY by Robert M. Edsel and Bret WitterBooklist Review: This is a chronicle of an unusual and largely unknown aspect of World War II. The heroes here aren’t flamboyant generals or grizzled GIs in combat. In civilian life these men and women had been architects, museum directors, sculptors, and patrons of the arts. They were drawn from thirteen nations, although most were American or British citizens. Beginning in 1943, they were recruited into a special unit formed to protect and recover cultural treasure that had been looted by top Nazis, especially Hitler and Goring. As Allied armies liberated areas of northern Europe after D-Day, these monuments men moved into the front lines. Since they had little advance knowledge of the location of the looted art, their efforts often resembled treasure hunts. In addition to recovering stolen art, they worked tirelessly, often at personal risk, to protect and restore art damaged by the ravages of war. Edsel describes the exploits of these men and women in a fast-moving narrative that effectively captures the excitement and dangers of their mission.–Freeman, Jay Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick HornbyBooklist Review: In his trademark warm and witty prose, Hornby follows four depressed people from their aborted suicide attempts on New Years Eve through the surprising developments that occur over the following three months. Middle-aged Maureen has been caring for her profoundly disabled son for decades; Martin is a celebrity-turned-has-been after sleeping with a 15-year-old girl; teenage Jess, trash-talker extraordinaire, is still haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her older sister years before; and JJ is upset by the collapse of his band and his breakup with his longtime girlfriend. The four meet while scoping out a tower rooftop looking for the best exit point. Inhibited by the idea of having an audience, they agree instead to form a support group of sorts. But rather than indulging in sappy therapy-speak, they frequently direct lacerating, bitingly funny comments at each other–and the bracing mix of complete candor and endless complaining seems to work as a kind of tonic. Hornby funnels the perceptive music and cultural references he is known for through the character of JJ, but he also expands far beyond his usual territory, exploring the changes in perspective that can suddenly make a life seem worth living and adroitly shifting the tone from sad to happy and back again. The true revelation of this funny and moving novel is its realistic, all-too-human characters, who stumble frequently, moving along their redemptive path only by increments. –Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2005 Booklist

 

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU by Jonathan Tropper Booklist Review: Judd Foxman is in his late thirties when he finds himself living in a damp, moldy basement apartment, without a job and separated from his wife, who is having an affair with his now ex-boss. To make matters worse, Judd finds out his wife is pregnant with his child and that his father has just died, leaving a dying wish to have all four of his children sit shivah for seven days. What transpires over the course of that week is a Foxman family reunion like no other; filled with fistfights, arguments, sex, and a parade of characters offering their sympathies and copious amounts of food. This is a story that could be told by your best guy friend: laugh-out-loud funny, intimate, honest, raunchy, and thoroughly enjoyable. Tropper is spot-on with his observations of family relationships as each member deals with new grief, old resentments, and life’s funny twists of fate. Tropper’s characters are real, flawed, and very likable, making for a great summer read.–Kubisz, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist

 

Happy New Year! We hope you enjoy reading and watching along with us here at Do Something @ Sewickley Public Library!

NPR Book Concierge 2013

The folks over at NPR Books usually write a variety of end-of-year ‘Best Of’ lists to highlight the outstanding literary offerings of the past year. However due to the number of lists ballooning from 13 in 2008 to 20 in 2012, they decided to try a different format.

And so, NPR’s Book Concierge was born! It’s billed as ‘Our Guide to 2013’s Great Reads,’ and I encourage you to go check it out. The site allows you to choose what you’d like to read along the left-hand side (in categories such as ‘Eye Opening’ or ‘ It’s All Geek To Me’) and displays a collage of books recommended by NPR Staff that fit you chosen category or genre.

Of course, not all of the books will be available at Sewickley Public Library, but if one grabs your attention, it never hurts to give us a call or stop in to ask a librarian whether it can be requested from another library in Allegheny County.

Here are a few from the site you may not have heard a lot of buzz about that can be found at Sewickley Public Library, to get you started:

FICTION

LexiconLEXICON by Max BarryBooklist Review *Starred Review* – Words have power to persuade, to coerce, even to kill. And so they have since the days when wordsmiths were called sorcerers. Streetwise teenager Emily knows nothing of this until she is recruited to join a clandestine international organization that seems bent on taking over the world through the power of language—the reason, perhaps, that its members call themselves poets. In the meantime, a young man, Wil, is kidnapped from an airport by two mysterious men determined to unlock a secret buried deep in his brain. Yes, Wil and Emily will be brought together in due course, but in the meantime, there is a great deal, some of it abstruse, about language in this fast-paced, cerebral thriller that borders on speculative fiction, but none of it slows the nonstop action that takes readers from Washington, D.C., to a small town in the Australian desert, a town whose 3,300 residents have all died mysteriously and violently. Could the cause have been the power of words at work? The poets sometimes seem a bit too omnipotent, and the book’s chronology is occasionally a bit confusing, but otherwise this is an absolutely first-rate, suspenseful thriller with convincing characters who invite readers’ empathy and keep them turning pages until the satisfying conclusion.–Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

Night FilmNIGHT FILM by Marisha PesslBooklist Review *Starred Review* – When the daughter of a notorious film director is found dead in New York, an apparent suicide, investigative reporter Scott McGrath throws himself back into a story that almost ended his career. But now McGrath has his Rosebud, and like Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane, who hoped to make sense of media mogul Charles Foster Kane by understanding his last word, so the reporter sets out to determine how Ashley Cordova died and, in so doing, penetrate the heart of darkness that engulfs her reclusive father, Stanislas. Like Pessl’s first novel, the acclaimed Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006), this one expands from a seemingly straightforward mystery into a multifaceted, densely byzantine exploration of much larger issues, in this case, the nature of truth and illusion as reflected by the elusive Cordova, whose transcend-the-genre horror films are cult favorites and about whom rumors of black magic and child abuse continue to swirl. His daughter, piano prodigy Ashley (her notes weren’t played; they were poured from a Grecian urn ), is almost as mysterious as her father, her life and death equally clouded in secrecy and colored with possibly supernatural shadings. Into this mazelike world of dead ends and false leads, McGrath ventures with his two, much younger helpers, Nora and Hopper, brilliantly portrayed Holmesian irregulars who may finally understand more about Ashley than their mentor, whose linear approach to fact finding might miss the point entirely. Pessl’s first novel, while undeniably impressive, possessed some of the overindulgence one might expect from a talented and precocious young writer. All evidence of that is gone here; the book is every bit as complex as Calamity Physics, but the writing is always under control, and the characters never fail to draw us further into the maelstrom of the story.–Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

NONFICTION

Lawrence in ArabiaLAWRENCE IN ARABIA: WAR, DECEIT, IMPERIAL FOLLY AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST by Scott AndersonBooklist Review *Starred Review* – To historians, the real T. E. Lawrence is as fascinating as the cinematic version in Lawrence of Arabia is to movie fans. The many reasons interlock and tighten author Anderson’s narrative, yielding a work that can absorb scholarly and popular interest like. Start with Lawrence’s WWI memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922). A rare-book collectible, it inspired many of the scenes in David Lean’s film and is also subject to cross-referencing interpretations of Lawrence’s veracity. For lyrical though Lawrence could be about Arab leaders and desert landscapes, he could also be enigmatically opaque about the truth of his role in events. Accordingly, Anderson embeds Lawrence and Seven Pillars in the wider context of the Arab revolt against Turkey, and that context is the British, French, German, and American diplomacy and espionage intended to influence the postwar disposition of the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence was Britain’s agent in this game, and the other powers’ agents, although none enjoy his historical celebrity, assume prominence in Anderson’s presentation. Its thorough research clothed in smoothly written prose, Anderson’s history strikes a perfect balance between scope and detail about a remarkable and mysterious character.–Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

To the End of JuneTO THE END OF JUNE: THE INTIMATE LIFE OF AMERICAN FOSTER CARE by Cris BeamBooklist Review *Starred Review* – Whenever newspaper headlines scream about the abuse of foster children, the public is outraged, child protection agencies radically change their policies, and poor children go on living in a hodgepodge of foster care and suffering myriad unintended consequences, according to Beam, whose background includes a fractured childhood and experience as a foster mother. Here she offers a very intimate look at a system little known to most people. Beam spent five years talking to foster children, parents and foster parents, and social workers, mostly in New York. Her profiles include Bruce and Allyson, with three children of their own, taking in as many as five foster children, and Steve and Erin, fostering a child they want to adopt, whose mother signed away her rights on a napkin. Beam also writes about teens who’ve been bounced from home to home, some longing for adoption, others sabotaging their chances out of fear, many hoping for promised aging-out bonuses. Beam offers historical background and keen analysis of the social, political, racial, and economic factors that drive foster-care policies, noting the recent swing from massive removals to support for keeping families together. A very moving, powerful look at a system charged with caring for nearly half a million children across the U.S.–Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

Sources:

Best Books of 2013: NPR(http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2013/)

Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association (http://www.booklistonline.com/)

Patron and Staff Book Reviews 6/22/12

Every Friday, we’ll post a sample of the many reviews that have been added to our online summer reading program over the past week. You can always read more of them on their respective, review pages: Adult & Staff. If you’re interested in writing your own reviews, head over to tinyurl.com/sewickleyreads to sign up!

The Affair by Lee Child – Good, light, summer reading. We finally find out how Reacher’s military career ended!

Check this Book Out Today!Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton – This isn’t just a chef writing about food, this is a chef writing about her very interesting life. But you can see where the relationship with food comes from.

The Breakup Bible by Melissa Kantor – The Breakup Bible is SO accurate. It really does show what a broken heart can do. Jenny has just been dumped by Max and just can’t get over him. Great book. The only thing that kept me from loving it is that Jenny is not really a likable girl. She’s pretty judgmental about everyone else in the world. Hints of a less evil Margaret Simon. But that’s it. Written by the author of Girlfriend Material and the Darlings series. Good book for someone going through the pain of a break up.


Cell 8 by Roslund & Hellstrom – Ohio death row inmate “dies”, is buried, wakes up in Sweden (vis Moscow), marries, works as band singer, kicks a drunken idiot, is arrested, deported to Moscow, extradited to Ohio, & is executed. Excellent writing.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein – “In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.” I was not prepared for the second half of this upsetting and amazing tale!

Confessions of a Not It Girl by Melissa Kantor – I always hated being it. It is funny how that idea of being “it” changes. I am NOT an it girl at all. Never have been, sadly. Jan (pronounced Yahn, she is named for one of her parents’ favorite artists, Jan Van Eyck. I like him too, but I wouldn’t name a kid after him!) Miller isn’t either. Confessions of a Not It Girl is her story of love non-existant and love almost lost and love found. This is another from Melissa Kantor and I liked it, but Jan wasn’t very likable, but again, not liking the main character all that much and yet still being able to enjoy the book says something good about the book. I think Kantor is a really good author. A good, quick read and there are some very funny, funny lines.

Check this Book Out Today!A Dark and Lonely Place by Edna Buchanan – it was a long slow read. the basic story is attention grabbing, but not where the reader won’t put down the book. I did finish it tho. I would rate it a C to C-


Devil is Waiting by Jack Higgins – Islam, IRA, Mossad all tangle along with the irrestible lure of power and money overcoming devotion to Allah. Alas, youth cannot be revisited.

Check this Book Out Today!Fifty Shades Freed by E L James – I had a harder time getting through this book in the trilogy. However, it was still enjoyable and I was very sad to close this one up. I feel like I’ve said good-bye to close friends! I seem to always go through this little mourning phase at the end of a really absorbing series!


Check this Book Out Today!French Fried by Harriet Welty Rochefort – I am a huge lover of all things non fiction so this book was a delicious morsel to snack on!


Raising the perfect child through guilt and manipulation by Elizabeth Beckwith – This is funny, but not at all politically correct. Like it could be offensive to family-oriented people and to people who try not to be racist–so pretty much everyone. But if you don’t mind being offended, it has some entertaining views on parenting, and even some that I might use with my own kids.  Check this Book Out Today!

The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick – I’ve had this on my shelf forever and just got around to reading it. I’d heard it was really good, but I was doubtful at first because it gets off to a slow start. Well, it turned out to be one of those stories that is like a roller coaster and the first part you’re just clacking up the hill wondering when you’re ever going to get to the top and then it just takes off! The characters were all kind of nuts, but not nuts enough that you couldn’t see where they were coming from.

Check this Book Out Today!

Rose Madder by Stephen King – Story told from two perspectives: Rose, a battered and broken wife and Norman, her disturbed, abusive husband. Rose escapes to Chicago and starts a new, hopeful life but you know Norman is coming. The fact that King lets you into Norman’s thought process, might be the most disturbing thing about this book. Not only because you learn his motivations, but because you actually start to feel bad for him. At least I did. Predictably, his childhood was marred by his father who was abusive both physically and sexually. Norman does a lot of very disturbing things to anyone who gets in his way.
Rose, meanwhile, is ambling along in her new life. Not sure of who to trust, what feelings she should have, and what her life will become. Then she finds (or rather is found by) a mysterious and unsettling painting in a pawn shop. This book did take awhile to get supernatural. I was glad it did because without it, Rose was just boring and honestly, a little annoying.
Reminded me a lot of Insomnia especially when they mentioned Susan Day! (Hey Hey)

Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher – “Everything affects everything,” declares Hannah Baker, who killed herself two weeks ago. After her death, Clay Jensen finds seven cassette tapes in a brown paper package on his doorstep. The narrative alternates between Hannah story which chronicles the13 people who led her to make this horrific choice and Clay Jensen’s thoughts, reactions and revelations. The author creates an intense, suspenseful novel that was quite thought provoking. Disturbing but worth reading.

Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz – Although there is an undercurrent of horror – goblins masquerading as humans are the scary psychopaths here – this is a psychological thriller about a boy attempting to hide among carnival folk in a Pennsylvania town.

Patron and Staff Book Reviews 6/8/12

Every Friday, we’ll post a smattering of reviews that have been added to our online summer reading program over the past week. You can always read more of them on their respective, review pages: Adult & Staff. If you’re interested in writing your own reviews, head over to tinyurl.com/sewickleyreads to sign up!

Austenland By Shannon Hale
I haven’t read a lot of Jane Austen’s books, but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was short, entertaining, and an interesting look at the way people presented themselves in the 1800s. Even though I like the fact that the book was short, I would have preferred it to be a bit longer. I believe that the author could have done a bit more with describing the scenery and the clothing of the period, which is why I gave the book a four instead of a five.  If you’re looking for a fun way to escape for an afternoon, I would definitely recommend this book!

Dearly, Departed By Lia Habel
I wasn’t sure how I would feel about a steampunk zombie novel…I stayed up until 2am to finish it and there was fluttering in my chest when Nora and Bram were each realizing they liked each other and were trying to figure out how a human and a zombie could be together. Crazy, huh?

Gone from Home By Angela Johnson
Angela Johnson can tell a beautiful story and she can tell beautiful short stories. And I can’t say I’ve ever read an Angela Johnson story that I didn’t like. Some of these I truly love. A ginormous smile would just appear when I would come to the last line of many of these, here in Gone from Home. Literary and lovely. Read the book, only 101 pages, but it should take you a long time, because you’ll want to treasure each sentence. Seriously.

The Help By Kathryn Stockett
Was a wonderful story of the bravery and courage of three woman who decided to make a difference in the culture. I laughed, I cried, and I could not put it down.

I Suck at Girls By Justin Halpern
I was only vaguely familiar with the author’s twitter fame – “Sh*t My Dad Says” – going into this book, but now I’m really interested in learning more. The author is witty and funny, but his dad is funnier (and loves to use the “F” word). Quick read that’s sure to make you laugh out loud!

Insomnia By Stephen King
Out of all the King books I’ve read, the protagonist, Ralph Roberts, was the most likable. He is inflicted with insomnia after the death of his wife. At first he is tired beyond expression. But then, when he think he might die from lack of sleep, his world is inundated with colorful auras. He is terrified and awestruck all at once. Read 300 pages of this, in wonderful, descriptive Kingian prose, and then the story really starts.

With all the crazies in the world, it’s still hard to believe this occured. Disturbing.

Unsinkable (Titanic #1) By Gordon Korman
If you are “of a certain age” and from Pittsburgh, and you listen to the audio book of Gordon Korman’s Unsinkable, the first in his Titanic Trilogy, you will think of Patti Burns a lot! When you listen to an audio book, of course, you don’t know how the characters’ names are spelled. Even know I knew that the stowaway on the Titanic, the homeless boy from Belfast was probably named Paddy Burns, (he is) every time I heard the narrator say his name I thought of Patti. I miss Patti. All of Pittsburgh does.

This is a neat way of telling the story of the Titanic. Fiction and nonfiction. The story of four characters who were on that fateful voyage. One is Paddy Burns, a stowaway, trying to escape thugs who are out to kill him. Another is Alfie, a boy of fifteen who lied about his age to get a job on the Titanic with his father, who is a boiler dude. Sophie, the daughter of an American suffragette, who has been thrown out of England for stirring up trouble and another girl…I can’t remember her name, but she is as interesting a character as the others, I just can’t recall her name! She is the wealthy daughter of British royalty. The four meet up on the ship and they are characters you can care about, all the while thinking about what is coming ahead for them on the high seas.

Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

321 Pages

Copyright 2010

Published by Little, Brown, and Company

The surface area of the world is 510,072,000 km2; Jack’s world is eleven feet by eleven feet.  In his five years of life, he has never left Room.  Jack is Emma Donoghue’s main character in her 2010 novel, Room, an unnerving novel of love and survival that was inspired by the Joseph Frizl case in 2009. Donoghue is a writer whose work is typically housed in the contemporary and historical fiction sections of the library.  She wrote the bestselling fiction novel, Slammerkin, and she experienced even more success with this, her most recent publication.  Room is an international bestseller, and has won multiple awards: Salon Book Award for Fiction, an NPR Best Book of 2010, Bloomberg’s 2010 Top Novel, and Indies Choice Book Award for adult fiction,

The story begins as Jack turns five years old.  Told in his voice, we learn how his world works.  He lives with Ma in Room, what he calls the small enclosure.  He truly believes that there is nothing peculiar about staying in the one room, for Room is all that there is.  Life in Room is routine and structured: Eating time, playtime, sleeping time, TV time, repeat. Ma keeps him entertained at all times.  However, when nighttime comes, Ma hides Jack in Wardrobe.  She is trying to keep him away from the man who kidnapped her seven years ago, whom Jack calls “Old Nick”, who comes to Room each night.

To Jack, Room is comforting; it’s home.  To Ma, it’s the prison that has held her for seven years.  After Jack’s birth, Ma used the power of a mother’s love for a child to create some sort of life for Jack in the small space.  However, now that he is five years old and his curiosity is peaking, Ma believes he might be old enough to comprehend that there is more to the world than just Room.

From Jack’s point of view, this novel is even more compelling and unique.  Jack has a refreshing innocence, however at times this innocence hinders him greatly.  Several times while reading the book, I found myself so engrossed in the story that I wished I were there with Jack to tell him what to do.  Room is a dark, unsettling tale, and Donoghue has made Room feel terrifyingly real.  From the first page, I was entranced.  “Room is a book to read in one sitting.  When it’s over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days,” says Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife.  Donoghue has created a masterpiece that is exhilarating, shocking, and absolutely riveting.  Room is a place that you cannot forget after reading this novel.

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana DeRosnay

293 pages

Published by St. Martin’s Griffin

Copyright 2007

The Vel’ d’Hiv round up was one of the darkest moments in France’s history.  July 16th and 17th of 1942, French police rounded up 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children from Paris and placed them in the Velodrome d’Hiver.   They were kept in horrendous conditions there until they were sent to internment camps.

Once they arrived at the internment camps, they were split up into groups of men and then women and children.  After being divided, all the men, women, and about 4,000 children were sent to Auschwitz.  This piece of French history has been kept away and unacknowledged by the French for years.  The French author, Tatiana De Rosnay, has brought this event to the spotlight in her internationally best selling novel, Sarah’s Key.

In this New York Times best selling novel, Julia Jarmand is a journalist for an American magazine based in Paris.  She has a Parisian husband, Bertrand, and a daughter named Zoe.  In 2002, for the sixtieth anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv, Julia begins research on this event that she has never heard of.  Amidst her research, Julia discovers darks secrets about Bertrand’s family.  As Julia learns more about this event and how the people she knows are connected to it, she can’t stop investigating.

Rosnay also tells the story of Sarah Starzynski.  Sarah’s story begins in 1942 when French police knock on her door to take her and her family away.  Instinct causes her to hide her younger brother away in a cupboard, swearing that she will come back for him.  With impeccable detail, Rosnay portrays the journey and experience of being taken to the Veledrome d’Hiver and then the internment camps.

Rosnay has provided a masterpiece that shows a piece of the Holocaust that so many have never even heard of.  This book was impossible to put down till I reached the back cover.  “A remarkable novel.  Like Sophie’s Choice, it’s a book that impresses itself upon one’s heart and soul forever,” says Naomi Ragen, author of The Saturday Wife.

Furthermore, this heart-thumping story has been made into a movie, starring Kristen Scott Thomas.  Sarah’s Key is such a powerful moving piece of literature, that once you read it, you will never forget it.

 

Dead Unti Dark by Charlaine Harris

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

260 pages

Published by Ace Books

Copyright May 2001

Looking for an enjoyable light read? Then Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris is your book.  Dead Until Dark is the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse Series (also known as the Southern Vampire Mysteries).  Charlaine Harris is an established mystery writer, having written several different series and additional non-series books: The Harper Connelly Mysteries, The Lily Bard Mysteries, The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, and more.  Born and raised in Mississippi, Harris has been writing for thirty years; earning her New York Times Best Selling Author status.  Having read over ten of her books, most more than once, I’d say she deserves this recognition.  Her latest books, including the Southern Vampire Mysteries, are in the urban fantasy genre.

Dead Until Dark, and the rest of the series, centers on Sookie Stackhouse, a barmaid in Bon Temps, Louisiana.  As the story is narrated from her point of view, you learn that she has a little quirk, what she calls a disability; she can read other people’s minds.  However, unlike most stories, where a character’s supernatural ability is the main focus of her life, Sookie treats her telepathy as routine and just another obstacle in life.  The story begins just a couple years after vampires have “come out of the coffin”.  When scientists in Japan created a new synthetic blood, which the vampires could survive off of, the vampire community was able to integrate into human society.  However, there were still a number of human-killing and blood-sucking incidents that occurred when some vampires were not amenable to the idea of living alongside humans.  Many humans did not agree with the idea of vampires having equal rights, either.  So, when a vampire, Bill Compton, walks into Merlotte’s, the restaurant where Sookie works, she is thrilled.  However, the sparks that fly between the two may be for the worse, when a murderer begins to go after women who sleep with vampires.

Harris sets herself apart from other authors in this genre by changing the background.  Instead of an average middle class hero, this book takes working class people in a small southern town.  “Rural America finally has a vampire story to call its own,” says Tanya Huff.

Dead Until Dark is a light read, yet it still offers great entertainment.  This vampire romance/mystery has been highly successful.  In 2001, it won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery, and the entire Sookie Stackhouse Series is a New York Times Best Selling series.  Publishers Weekly proclaims, “Harris is an author of rare talents.”  Additionally, Producer Alan Ball has created an HBO series, True Blood, based on the books.

Dead Until Dark is the perfect read for the beach or airplane.  In Dead Until Dark, Harris especially invites female readers to enjoy a tantalizing yet risqué story, but even my father admits that it is a “real page-turner.”  So far, there are eleven books in the Sookie Stackhouse Series, and the twelfth, Deadlocked, is finished but not yet released.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

350 pages

Copyright 2006

Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

 

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is a rare novel with a story so engrossing, once started; one cannot put it down.  This thrilling, romantic story is Gruen’s third novel.  She has also written the best selling Riding Lessons and Flying Changes.  Her environmental values show in all of her books, showing how animals can teach people about love.  This New York Times #1 best seller is set on a depression era traveling circus that is brought to life through Gruen’s words.  Her impeccable research shines throughout this book; her author’s note mentioning many trips to Sarasota, Florida’s Ringling Brothers Museum.

Though he doesn’t speak of them, Jacob Jankowski, at ninety-something-years old, can still remember the sound of the concessions, the sight of raising the big top, and everything else about his days with the Benzini Brothers’ Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

At twenty-three, Jacob is preparing to take the test that determines his future.  After he passes this veterinary exam, he will take on the family business.  However, an interruption in the classroom brings grave news when Jacob is asked to go identify his parents’ bodies from a car accident.  Following his parents’ death, Jacob finds himself losing his father’s practice and home to the bank.  Without money, a veterinary license, and family, he sees no other option than to leave his old town behind.  With no endpoint in mind, Jacob makes his way down the train tracks.  When a train comes by, he jumps aboard.

This rickety circus train holds the Benzini Brothers’ Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  Jacob’s veterinary skills are put to use as he gains the job as the circus’s own vet.  At this point in the Great Depression, everyone working on this third-rate circus is lucky to have a job at all.  When Jacob sees the equestrian act of the show, Marlena, the star, entrances him.  She is also the wife of the boss, August.  As the circus loses more and more hope each day, life aboard the Benzini Brothers’ train gets darker and darker.  A new optimism comes with Rosie, though.  Rosie is the great, loving elephant left behind by a rundown circus.  Bonds grow quickly between Jacob and Marlena as they worked alongside each other with Rosie.  Even with their new show though, life aboard the train continues to get bleaker, especially as August’s mean streaks shone through.  The trio’s bond may be their only hope in survival.

While reading this book, you can feel the wind blowing past you as you sit atop the train, you can hear the character’s voices echoing in your head.  “This is a fiction reader’s dream come true, “ says Jeanne Ray, author of Julie and Romeo Get Lucky.  The memories of the ninety-something man mix with your own as he tells his tale.  You will be completely swept off your feet and into the circus’s dark twist and turns, unable to get out till the last page.  This book is simply and positively incredible.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

The Pact: a love story by Jodi Picoult

389 pages

Copyright 1998

Published by HarperCollins

Jodi Picoult is the bestselling author of twenty novels, including My Sister’s Keeper.  She is known for creating provocative themes with family conflicts and difficult moral choices.  As one of the most powerful writers in contemporary fiction, Picoult has outdone herself in her fifth novel, The Pact. 

For eighteen years, the Hartes and the Golds have been nextdoor neighbors.  Their lives were intertwined.  The Hartes’ son Chris and The Golds’ daughter Emily were born just months apart and were inseparable since.  It was no surprise when their friendship blossomed into something more.  Everyone knew they were soul mates.  However, just when it seems like nothing could rip these families apart from eachother, tragedy strikes with midnight calls from the hospital.  Emily is dead from a gunshot wound to the head, inflicted by Chris as part of a suicide pact.  When a single additional bullet is found in the gun, Chris states it was meant for himself.  In spite of this, a local detective has his doubts.  As Chris finds himself on trial for murder, Jodi Picoult portrays, with extraordinary talent, families in anguish as guilt, loss, and betrayal enter their lives.

Picoult has a true gift in story telling.   Switching between different characters and different periods of time allow all points of the story to be heard.  “Engrossing… Picoult has a remarkable ability to make us share her characters’ feelings of confusion and horror… The Pact is compelling reading,” said People.  This deeply moving novel is filled with compassion and heartbreak.  The Pact made me smile and weep, but most of all it made me think.

 

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

288 pages

Copyright 2007

Published by Razorbill

Jay Asher is an American author whose primary focus are contemporary novels for teens.  Inspired by events from high school, he has created a New York Times and international bestseller: Thirteen Reasons Why. 

Teenager Clay Jenson found a shoebox sized package addressed to him on his doorstep one afternoon.  Upon opening said package, he found seven audiotapes.  No note and no instructions were found, but the sides of the tapes were labeled one to thirteen.  Clay is instantly shocked when he hears Hannah Baker’s voice, for 16 year old Hannah killed herself just days ago.

Thirteen of Hannah’s classmates were selected to listen to and pass on the tapes that were mailed the day she committed suicide.  “I’m about to tell you the story of my life,” Hannah says, “more specifically, why my life ended.  And if you’re listening to these tapes, you’re one of the reasons why.”  Each tape was about a specific person, and the tapes were sent to everyone she talked about.  Hannah created a system that ensured the tapes would get to all of the intended audiences.  Whoever received the tapes would send them to whoever was mentioned after them in the tapes.

All through the night, Clay listens.  He follows Hannah’s words through the small town he lives in.  He is captivated, devastated, and what he learns changes his life forever.

As a reader, I was as captivated by Hannah’s words as much as Clay was.  Jay Asher skillfully combined Hannah’s story with Clay’s ever mounting anxiety and dread.  It was impossible to let go of this book after reading the first page.  Entertainment Weekly calls Thirteen Reasons Why, “suspenseful and addictive”.  This is a book that will stay with you long after you put it back on the shelf.