Suggestions for Book Clubs
Seeking a great story for your book club? The Library has many to offer. Below are two novels with remarkable characters in situations sure to spark debate.
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
Alice Love is an endearing character: pregnant with her first child, madly in love with her husband, and thrilled at the prospect of motherhood. The problem is that Alice is ten years older than she thinks, on the brink of divorce, struggling to keep three children in line, and dating a man she can’t remember at all.
Alice’s certainty that true love will prevail is what any idealistic newlywed would believe. It’s also infuriating for Alice’s estranged husband, sister, mother, and new boyfriend, who all recall Alice’s lost decade with full clarity. (The children and a self-designated Grandma seem more resilient and accepting of Alice’s sudden shift.)
It’s fascinating to see what changes long-term relationships undergo as well as the circumstances that tear people apart and the reasons they cling together. What Alice Forgot is an insightful story with great characters, an element of mystery, and a lot of depth. To find out what caused the rifts in Alice’s family and if Love can repair it, check out What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.
Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel
Creating an algorithm that locates his true love brings profound change to Sam Elliot’s life in the uniquely modern love story Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel. A victim of his own success, Sam is terminated by the dating site that employs him. (It turns out there’s little money to be made when a client discovers his soul mate on the first date.)
Still, Sam’s found love for himself with the lively Meredith. It’s when Meredith’s beloved Grandmother passes and the unemployed code writer puts his talent to work on a program that allows Meredith to receive email and video chats which seem to come from her departed Nana that things really get interesting.
With a bit of tweaking, the start-up company RePose is born and Sam and Meredith discover a whole mess of grieving survivors who want to reconnect with lost loved ones. The reasons clients can’t let go are as individual as they are and a highlight of the story.
Goodbye for Now raises fascinating questions about our perceptions of life and loss and the potentials and limitations of technology.
Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist
by Rob Reger
Emily Strange is a self-educating homeschooler with a penchant for science. When her mom decides to add family history to the syllabus, a great adventure begins. Emily time-travels back to the 1790's in a quest to stop the death of one of her great aunts. She has to accomplish this without knowing what killed her and without changing history. Emily documents life in her journal. Reger’s illustrations of Emily’s diary are a unique blend of writing, drawings, lists and notes. Reger uses the colors red, black and white to mirror Emily’s personality. The different fonts and colors emphasize the fun Emily seems to have. The crossed-out ideas, lists, and mistakes mimic Emily’s thought processes. Each page engages both avid and reluctant readers. The glossy pages, size, and weight of the book give the reader a sense of peeking into a real diary. Dark Times is a fast-paced story that blends the supernatural, mystery, historical, and science fiction, and throws in some great cats, too.
Denise Leeson
Youth Services Specialist
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a story told through the voice of Esperanza, a young Hispanic girl. We hear, in just 110 pages, the incredible beauty and sad starkness of her life. We meet her neighbors in short, amazing vignettes and begin to see hints of Esperanza’s future in these pictures of her everyday life.
This book is a gift to those who love words, a picture post card of life in full color. The author's descriptions demand that we read them aloud to someone, to anyone who will listen, just so we can hear them again. Only here can one see four trees “grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger.”
We meet Esperanza's sister, Nenny, who is “too young to be my friend. She’s just my sister and that was not my fault. You don’t pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny.”
There is a rhythm in this book that borders on poetry, so subtle that one doesn’t even realize it’s there. When it begins to prick the subconscious, one must read the passage again and again, must listen for the simplicity and beauty.
But waiting just within and beyond the beauty and rhythm of these words is Esperanza’s future. She sees the traps being set for her, longs for a house of her own, a house not owned by a man, not even by her father. Not the house where she grew up, which is “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath.” She knows she will leave Mango Street someday, tells stories inside her head of what her life will be when she has “a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.”
Judy Sepsey
Playground by 50 Cent
We meet Butterball on therapist Liz’s couch. This is his punishment for beating up his best friend on the playground at school. Butterball (Burton) is an angry young man after his parents split up and he is forced to live with his mom and her new friend. Butterball refuses to tell Liz why he mauled his friend. As he evades her questions, Butterball takes readers on a journey through the moments that made him into the playground bully he is today. Butterball is also an artist. Illustrator Lizzie Akana’s pen and ink drawings express Butterball’s view of his world. The drawings highlight pivotal moments in Butterball’s story. Liz sees a brighter side of Butterball when he talks about art and making movies. 50 Cent’s voice-driven prose allows a reader to see the beginnings of a bully and the wrong choices that Butterball makes to end up on the therapist’s couch. 50 Cent’s frank portrayal of a young bully will spark intense discussion. A great read for high school students on both sides of the bullying fence, this story will appeal to a wide range of readers. Playground is a graphic story with a great moral.
Denise Leeson
Youth Services Specialist
Hyperbole in reviews is not uncommon, but I am not exaggerating when I say Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen had a profound impact on my life. All throughout school, and even after I graduated college, I was the type of person who would rather sit down for a gaming or TV marathon rather than go outside for any type of running. Two years ago, I had the strange urge to look into recreational running. When I started looking into how to start a friend suggested I read a book called Born to Run. I gave it a shot and it inspired me to lace up (well, Velcro up) and head out. A 5k and a marathon later, I'm still doing it and having more fun than I would have ever imagined.
Christopher McDougall, author and journalist, wanted to know why running injuries were so prominent. He had "ridden Class IV rapids on a boogie board, surfed giant sand dunes on a snowboard, mountain biked across the North Dakota Badlands" and "reported from three war zones for the Associated Press" but apparently running took the hardest toll on his body. McDougall suffered from ripped hamstrings, strained Achilles tendons, and other injuries simply from running. The question that drove him to write this book was, "How come my foot hurts?"
Born to Run is the search for the answer to this question. McDougall takes an enjoyable approach to his writing; intertwined with his research into running injuries is an engaging and entertaining story. He works with the quirky Caballo Blanco in an attempt to gather together a colorful cast of elite distance runners to race against the Tarahumara--natives to the Copper Canyons in Mexico who are sometimes referred to as "the running people." The Tarahumara are initially introduced in the book as somewhat of an injury anomaly. They run with nothing more on their feet than thin huaraches (sandals) sometimes made up of nothing but scraps of leather and tire rubber, yet running-related injuries are essentially unheard of. Why do we, with multi-million dollar corporations focusing on running innovations, suffer so many injuries? McDougall's research provides a compelling theory backed with scientific findings.
So when I heard that Scott Jurek, one of the runners McDougall features in Born to Run, had recently released a book of his own, I had to read it.
In Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness, Scott Jurek shares his life story. This book is much more of an autobiography than McDougall's Born to Run, but it covers similar topics and even gives an alternate perspective on some key races. Jurek has an impressive list of accomplishments under his belt. As a runner, Jurek focuses primarily on ultramarathons; ultras are essentially any race longer than the 26.2 miles of a marathon and can range from a 50k (roughly 31 miles) to 100+ miles. He showed up for the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run in 1999 as an unknown and won it--and then won it again each year for six years in a row afterwards and set a course record while doing so. Jurek has also won the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile run through Death Valley, two times. One of the many interesting aspects of Jurek's running career is that he has done it on a vegan diet.
Eat and Run covers a lot of Jurek's motivation for his plant-based diet and describes his transition from a traditional American diet to the one he has now. Each chapter also ends with a vegan recipe ranging from smoothies to chili to pancakes. While I am not vegan, or even vegetarian, I did sample a few of these recipes and add them to my collection.
For anyone who has ever been curious about running--either doing it yourself or if you have a friend or family member who does--I would certainly suggest giving Born to Run a read. It's a nonfiction title that informs while it entertains and never sounds pretentious. Eat and Run is a more personal story about Scott Jurek; from his childhood in the Midwest growing up with a strict father and a mother suffering from multiple sclerosis to his career as one of the most successful distance runners worldwide.
When you're finished, consider signing up for a local 5k fun run! A great place to start is with the free Couch to 5K program.
Jake Bennington
Information Specialist
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback
Joseph’s favorite overcoat is worn out, so what can he do? To keep the tattered and patched garment in service, he resorts to altering it into a jacket. But through daily chores on the farm, the jacket too becomes old and worn. Joseph must resort again to altering his garment; this time it becomes a vest. And so the tale, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, a children’s picture book about early 20th century Eastern European farm life with the loveable Joseph by Simms Taback, proceeds from page to page as the well-worn piece of clothing becomes increasingly smaller as it transforms through an array of apparel until it is finally gone. In the end, Joseph, ever the optimist, makes “something out of nothing” as he sits down to share the tale by writing a book about his versatile, shrinking, changeable overcoat.
The colorful artwork consists of collages of patterns, vividly bright and pleasantly warm colors, simplistic cartoon lines, and the addition of small photographic images incorporated throughout the pictures. Your child will enjoy poring over each page for several minutes to take in all the detail that the illustrations provide about Joseph. Die cuts further add to the reading enjoyment, as readers flip the page to reveal the new and abbreviated garment that Joseph has created next. One will likely be reading this story over and over to young children who will be delighted by the endearing and innovative Joseph and his tattered yet beautifully rich overcoat.
Julie Boyd
Information Specialist--Youth Services
Stupid Fast, by Geoff Herbach, is one of 20 current nominees for the Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers, a teen’s choice book award for high-schoolers. To see the full list or to vote on a Peach nominee, go to www.georgiapeachaward.org.
Felton Reinstein was the skinny, puny guy they called Squirrel Nut. That is, until
Thanksgiving of his sophomore year, when suddenly he’s so hungry he can’t take time to transfer food to the table—he just eats standing in the refrigerator door. And suddenly, he could lie unconscious in his bed every single day until noon (or later). And suddenly, hair is sprouting from him--everywhere.
That’s not all. Felton got fast. Stupid fast. So fast that, in the spring when gym class had to run the 600-yard dash for some physical fitness test thing, he beat all the other kids—even the fast kids. Suddenly, he isn’t Squirrel Nut anymore, and the coach wants him for football, track—you name the sport.
Even though Felton’s gone from joke to jock, it hasn’t made his life any less complicated. His mother is severely depressed. His kid brother is acting stranger than usual, practicing piano and singing off-key for hours. And his best friend, Gus, is in Venezuela for the entire summer.
So when Aleah Jennings, a beautiful piano player even better than his brother, moves into Gus’s house, and Felton goes by on his paper route—he doesn’t even realize he might have a chance with her: “I couldn’t help it; I set down my bike, walked to the door, pulled open the screen, and leaned my head in so I could watch her hit those keys. There was something sort of angry and ferocious in the way she pounded that piano. … My mouth was open and I was probably drooling.”
Will Felton come to terms with his family’s tragedy? Will he be able to hold his family
together? Will he ever stop chewing up the entire contents of the refrigerator? And, what will happen when summer’s over and Aleah moves to Chicago?
Someday, he’ll find out.
Until then, he runs. He runs fast. Stupid fast.
Vanessa Cowie
Youth Services Coordinator
Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories on CD
Listen, O Best Beloved, to Jack Nicholson as he tells you bedtime stories like your very own cool-but-slightly-scary grandfather, when all the other kids’ grandpas are retired accountants who watch golf all day. Kipling is best when read aloud, and it doesn’t get any better than this. Nicholson reads Kipling’s "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin" and Danny Glover reads "How the Camel Got His Hump." Bobby McFerrin’s a cappella accompaniment evokes vivid visual images of a snorting rhinoceros, while Ladysmith Black Mambazo conjures up great migrating herds with their songs.
When I was a child we had a set of Just So Stories on little 16 2/3 r.p.m. records that were the size of 45’s. I know these two stories were there, but what really stuck in my mind from those old records was the phrase "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees” from "The Elephant’s Child." So I checked the library catalog, and there it was: King Midas and the Golden Touch; The Elephant's Child! And Jack Nicholson reads "The Elephant’s Child!" (Michael Caine isn’t bad, either, when he reads about the head of state with foolish fiscal policies.) Anyway, I had forgotten all about the Bi-Coloured Python Rock-Snake. I also felt smart that I knew about the kola kola bird because it was mentioned in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith, and the wait-a-bit bush from the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy. I have become quite worldly, actually, and I owe it all to Kipling.
Mary Kretsch
Information Specialist
An Ordinary Man redefines powerful!
Paul Rusesabagina titled his autobiography An Ordinary Man, but it’s impossible to call him that.
You may be familiar with Rusesabagina’s story from the film Hotel Rwanda. Whether or not you’ve seen the film, An Ordinary Man is an awe-inspiring autobiography and well worth your time. I’ll suggest this book for students in college and high school as well as adults. It may seem an unlikely choice due to the chilling subject matter, but the story is really amazing.
Here’s some very brief history of the war in Rwanda. Rising tensions between Hutu and Tutsi populations reached a dramatic climax in the spring of 1994 when Hutu rebels shot down the plane carrying the President of Rwanda. Foreign visitors were immediately evacuated. Peacekeeping troops were removed. Tutsi families were driven from their homes-- often by former friends, coworkers, or neighbors-- and killed on the streets. An estimated 800,000 people, including the elderly, women, children, and infants, were killed in the span of 100 days. The war in Rwanda has been called a civil war, but it may be more accurate to call it a bloodbath.
Unlikely events placed Paul Rusesabagina in the position of manager at the Hotel Mille Collines. With no weapons or defenses, he turned the hotel into a refuge for anyone fortunate enough to make it there. I can’t stop marveling at what he used to placate the homicidal rebels: currency from the hotel safe and bottled beer from the restaurant. His notebook of personal contacts also proved invaluable. With those few items and unfathomable courage, this “ordinary man” saved 1,268 refugees from certain death.
You’ll find much to be inspired by in this short autobiography and some eye-opening lessons in world politics as well. Here’s one quote of many that I particularly like:
“Words can be instruments of evil, but they can also be powerful tools of life. If you say the right ones they can save the whole world.”
If you’re interested in someone with extraordinary character who defies incredible odds, check out An Ordinary Man. It’s a story you’ll never forget.
Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist
