Staff Picks

An overgrown blackberry vine sparks a feud of epic proportion between a Martha Stewart caliber perfectionist and a reclusive architectural genius in Where’d you Go Bernadette by Maria Semple.  

Police reports, emails, hospital bills and an 8th grader’s diary entries paint vivid pictures from both sides of this contested Seattle fence. 

The escalating drama involves a psychological intervention, Homeland Security, a Russian crime syndicate, an Antarctic cruise and trauma counseling for a class of kindergarteners.   Fans of the ABC series Desperate Housewives will enjoy the improbable antics and over the top cattiness of Where’d You Go Bernadette as will anyone who's ever lived in a suburban neighborhood.  

Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist

Money Smart Week

Was Shakespeare Money Smart?

Polonius gives sound financial advice in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.  You get the best of old and new with the Bard’s original words in a contemporary setting in this highly acclaimed production.  Our eVideo format also gives you the best of both: you can watch the video full screen as it streams from our website, or you can click on the transcript tab and follow the blue highlighter to see the written words as you watch the action.  You never have to wait or place a hold for our eVideos—they are available 24/7.  And Polonius’ advice?  Watch segment 20 (Act I, Scene iii), around the 24 minute, 50 second mark.

Looking for some more free financial advice? Check out the Money Smart Week programs at a library near you!

Mary Kretsch
Information Specialist

Staff Picks: Science Fiction

I love classic science fiction stories so it thrills me to discover new books that explore the reoccurring storylines in surprising ways. Think you’ve heard every conceivable time travel scenario? Think again.

In Sean Ferrell’s Man in the Empty Suit the inventor of a time machine celebrates his birth with a visit to an abandoned hotel in a futuristic Manhattan-- just like he does every year.  Versions of himself at each age and in various states of intoxication make the festivities surreal and surprisingly antagonistic, especially when he discovers he won’t survive the next birthday party.

In this unusual mystery our time traveler is the victim and detective, plus all of the witnesses and most likely the killer. Sean Ferrell’s intriguing vision of a future Manhattan and the backstory of a mysterious actress who stands in as the daughter of a dying alcoholic are fascinating subplots within this unique story.

How might time travel transform daily life?  Author Charles Yu suspects the advance would tempt people to relive their worst moments and in How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe that’s precisely what the characters--one of them called Charles Yu—keep doing.

I really enjoy the wit and psychological aspects of this novel so I'll share some quotes. 

Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward.

Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience... It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter. 

In 2007 the National Book Foundation selected Charles Yu for the 5 Under 35 award and in 2010 How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was runner up for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.  I can't help predicting we'll see more great stories from this author in the not too distant future.

Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist

Staff Picks

I discovered Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones long before J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter and often recommend it to fans of magical stories here at FCPL. This 1977 young adult novel is a classic that really stands up to the test of time.
  
Charmed Life has a peculiar setting -- witches and wizards are common place but magic is a heavily regulated trade.  Bad girl Gwendolen Chant is as nasty to her brother Cat as any mean girl today with spells and incantations to boot.   When the two orphans are sent to a castle with its own brother and sister pair, sparks really begin to fly.  

Charmed Life takes a turn from the typical fantasy when Gwendolen transports herself to an alternate universe and leaves a teen from our own world in her place. It’s all part of her sinister plot to seize even greater power at Cat’s expense.  This imaginative story blends science fiction, fantasy and sibling rivalry into a story that inspired the four book series Worlds of Chrestomanci. 

Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist

Staff Picks

What decisions would you make if you spent over a month on an overcrowded lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with a limited supply of food and water?  Do you advocate rescuing the person languishing in the water knowing that each additional person added to the lifeboat may decrease your chances of survival?  Should people be held accountable for decisions made under the stress of being famished, dehydrated, and terrified over their slim odds of ever being rescued? 

Charlotte Rogan’s novel The Lifeboat  examines those questions and more with the story of Grace Winter.  Grace and her newlywed husband Henry are on the their journey home to the United States when their ocean liner mysteriously explodes. Although initially civil with each other and optimistic about their chances of rescue, the castaways eventually begin to battle as supplies and conditions deteriorate.  Choices are made as each castaway begins to realize that some of them will have to perish in order for others to survive.  When a power struggle develops on the lifeboat, Grace is forced to decide on  the lengths that she will take in order to ensure her personal survival. 

Henning Mankell’s newest novel The Shadow Girls is quite the departure from his popular Kurt Wallender mystery series.  It recounts the story of Swedish poet Jesper Humlin who travels to another city to conduct a reading from his most recently published book of poetry.  At the reading, Jesper meets Tea-Bag, a refugee from Nigeria.  Through Tea-Bag, Jesper is introduced to the world of the shadow girls including  Leyla from Iran and Tanya from Russia.  The shadow girls are  refugees in Sweden illegally forced by circumstances to live life “invisibly” in the shadows or edges of society.  Desperate to find a means to communicate their stories and history, the shadow girls ask Jesper to teach them how to write.  Hoping for some respite from the demands and eccentricities of his mother, girlfriend, and editor, Jesper reluctantly agrees.  Through the writing lessons, Jesper finds himself becoming involved in the lives of the refugees and after hearing their stories, compelled to try to help them.  The Shadow Girls is a multi-layered novel.  It is, on the surface, light-hearted, and at times, laugh out loud funny; however, beneath the surface, lies the heart-wrenching stories of the refugees and their desire just to be acknowledged and heard.

Amy Weiler
Collection Support Aide

Earth Day

Earth Day is April 22nd.  What will you be doing to celebrate Earth Day?  Picking up trash in the neighborhood, planting trees or reading about conservation and the environment or your favorite naturalist?

Here are a few of my favorites.

American Earth and Nature Writing:
          
Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku
Passion for Nature by John Muir

For the younger crowd:

It’s Earth Day by Mercer Mayer           
Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell (Georgia Picture Storybook nominee 2012/13) 
The Camping Trip That Changed America by Barbara Rosenstock

 Joan Dudzinski
Information Specialist

Staff Picks

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Tom Sherbourne was no stranger to hardship, loneliness, and loss.  His mother left home when he was only eight years old, leaving him in the hands of a father who was quick to punish infractions.  She had been dead for just three weeks when he finally tracked her down in his early twenties. He enlisted during World War I, suffering not only in the killing of the enemy but also in the loss of comrades and consequential moral decency...hoping that his shift on burial duty included those who had suffered some major loss of body or limb...less grave to dig and less weight to heft to fill that grave.  Post-army duty found him filling in as a temporary replacement for the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a remote island (a half day's journey by boat) off the coast of  Partageuse ("between two oceans")  in Australia. Here, in this place of solitude with his duty only to his job, he hoped to bring some order back into his life.  Having little interaction with the outside world and its politics, problems, and choices, Tom has only to light the light on schedule, keep meticulous notes of any daily occurrences, and keep the lighthouse and its lenses in proper working order.  Here he can surely save lives with his lighting duty, perhaps a way to atone for the many lives lost during the war.  There is a precise rulebook to follow and the natural world to explore.  This instills in him a degree of peace, something he had not had in a long while, until he meets Isabel Graysmark.

Isabel is the only surviving child of the headmaster in Partageuse.  Meeting her for the second time after a random first encounter, Tom is taken with her lighthearted approach to life and, eventually, her surprising desire to have a future with him, despite his unwillingness to openly share every detail of his past.  As a married couple, they thrive.  Tom's life is rounded out with the love he shares with Isabel while she is taken with both the closeness of the relationship and the novelty of island life.  Life becomes difficult, however, when Isabel is unable to fulfill her need for motherhood after suffering several miscarriages and a still birth; Tom once again faces the  possibility of losing the one who is central to his life when she despairs of being able to live without a child.

With much of the fill-in story told in flashback, author M.L. Stedman introduces the solution and the complication on the first few pages.  One becomes attached to the characters, questions the choices they make, and worries about the ensuing difficulties.  Loyalties are both tested and torn as the book progresses. Truths are twisted or ignored to protect some characters while leaving others to bear the burden of the lies.  Not until the end of the last chapter can the reader really decide whether the author has written a just ending for the protagonist...and even that is probably a matter of opinion.

I very much recommend this book.

Helen Lug
Collection Support Aide

Staff Picks

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is a wonderful, poetic, and heartwarming story for teens about a 13-year-old girl named Salamanca who is coming to terms with the loss of her mother with the help of her wonderful family and quirky friends.  Even though “birds of sadness” are interspersed throughout the story, there is ample wholesome humor that brings a smile and lightens the mood.  The story is told over a period of a few weeks during late summer when Sal drives from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents. 

Born and raised in Kentucky, Sal’s father decides to rent out his farm and move to Ohio for a change, after his wife leaves him.  After a year in Ohio, Sal’s paternal grandparents from Kentucky, come to take Sal on a trip to Idaho to see her mother.  As they drive from city to city through state to state, Sal tells her grandparents a mysterious and humorous story about her friend Phoebe.  Sal shares her feelings as well as her experiences in moving to a new town, making new friends, and going to a new school.  The descriptions of the characters are full and rich and likable. Grams and Gramps provide ample humor as well while the three make the journey across the country. 

Julie Boyd
Information Specialist

Teen Tech Week

For Teen Tech Week (March 10-17) we invited teens to write a blog post about their favorite books or genres. One teen couldn't think of what to write, so he shared this poem instead:

I like pie, and I don’t know why

My favorite color is red

I don’t have a favorite book and I don’t know why

I do not like the ticking of clocks and I don’t know why

I like myself and I don’t know why

I don’t have a good word choice 

I like the sound of trains

I like the touch of pillows

-Adam

Georgia Peach Award Winners

Congratulations to the Georgia Peach Award Winners! The Georgia Peach Award is given annually to the best books in young adult literature. The award is unique because the winners are chosen by teens who vote for their favorites. Check out this year's winners:

Winner:

Divergent by Veronica Roth

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all. 

Honor Books:

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

When Anna's romance-novelist father sends her to an elite American boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school, she reluctantly goes, and meets an amazing boy who becomes her best friend, in spite of the fact that they both want something more. 

 Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family.

Staff Picks

One of the most talked about books at FCPL this year is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  This very twisted mystery is revealed from the perspectives of both partners in a fatally flawed marriage.  What fascinates me is that their stories couldn’t be more different.

The page-turning story begins when Amy Dunne goes missing exactly five years to the date from the couple’s wedding day.  Instantly, Amy’s husband Nick becomes the prime suspect.  He’s implicated further when her journal comes to light.   Clues to a romantic scavenger hunt -- Amy's anniversary surprise for Nick -- raise the stakes of the story and raise more suspicions.

Nick’s definitely no angel but he’s not the only tormentor in this nasty psychological thriller.   If you enjoy a diabolical plot and characters you love to hate, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn will keep you guessing until the very last twist!


Another book that’s been a topic of much discussion at FCPL is Defending Jacob by William Landay. 

Assistant District Attorney, Andy Barber walks a fine line between protecting his family and keeping his integrity when his only son Jacob is accused of the senseless murder of a classmate.  Parents of middle school students will find this legal thriller especially gut-wrenching as long-held secrets come to light and relationships, careers and four parents’ hopes and dreams for their sons are tragically altered.

Defending Jacob is a compelling story of very hard choices and a recent selection of FCPL's Book Sleuths book club.

Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist 

Staff Picks

April is National Holocaust Month and like other history months, it should be remembered as a warning for the future. Here are some wonderful works of fiction I’ve read recently on this most important and difficult subject.

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Many are calling The Storyteller Picoult’s best book yet, and that is high praise for this beloved author. Picoult puts a human face on the Holocaust in this novel which centers around the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Sage Singer, a young baker and a loner, has a past she wants to hide behind. One day, she befriends a beloved elderly man she recognizes from her grief counseling group. Josef Weber confesses an evil secret to her, one he’s hidden for sixty years, even from his own wife. Weber asks Sage for an impossible favor and while Sage struggles morally with this difficult request, the novel delves into the past from Sage’s Polish grandmother, Minka’s, point of view. Magnificently intertwined stories are laced together, past and present, to give the reader a most thought-provoking, gripping, and sorrowful look at a difficult subject. This is one of those books you can’t put down, but when you finally do, you still have it in your head and heart for days to come.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

This dark fable is told through the eyes of naive and innocent Bruno, the 9-year-old son of the commandant at Auschwitz, an innocent boy who has no real understanding of what’s going on around him. After his move from Berlin to Auschwitz (a place Bruno calls “Out-With”), he befriends Schmuel, a boy on the other side of the fence who wears “striped pajamas”. It's an incredible story that leaves you thinking about the ugliness of the Holocaust, the prejudice, and the nature of man.

City of Women by David Gillem

David Gillham, author and screenwriter, depicts a vividly cinematic recreation of 1943 Berlin to perfection. Though City of Women is more about World War II in general it also explores what happens when ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death.

 It is 1943 and the Second World War is in full force. With nearly all the men off to war, Berlin has become a city of women. Sigrid Schröder is a German soldier’s wife, struggling to get by on a daily basis while her husband, Kaspar, is off fighting the war. Faced with a lackluster marriage, caring for her meddling, unpleasant mother-in-law, and working every day to get by, Sigrid begins to question her tedious daily existence. And she also has a secret. She dreams of her former lover, who is a Jew.

Gilham masterfully weaves haunting and sensual story-telling with gripping suspense in this award winning debut novel.

Beth Moore

Information Specialist

The Literazzi Book Club

Calling all bibliophiles!  If you enjoy a good mystery and the thrill of exploring an old bookstore, I may have the book for you.  The main character, Clay, young and unemployed, applies and gets a job at an old dingy bookstore.  To his surprise, there are only a few books actually for sale.  Most of the inventory are for checkout to a select few who seem to be pursuing the same mystery.  As Clay’s interest is piqued, he learns of the secret society and their pursuit.  He turns to his new girlfriend who works at Google and some other friends for help in solving this puzzle.  This story has an entertaining mix of old bookstore charm side by side with modern technology.

“From the shadows of Penumbra's bookshelves to the brightly lit constellation of cyberspace to the depths of a subterranean library, Sloan deftly wields the magicks (definitely with a "k") of the electronic and the literary in this intricate mystery.” (Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2012)

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is the April selection of the Literazzi Book Club and will be discussed April 23rd and 24th at the Sharon Forks Library.  

Joan Dudzinski
Information Specialist

Staff Picks

I recently read two very different books, one after the other, due to how they came in on my holds list.

First, I read A Higher Call: An Incredibly True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos.  This non-fiction title grabbed my attention because it’s a true story of two WW II veterans and how their individuals stories combined during a brief moment – and affected the rest of their lives.  Ever since I read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, I’ve looked for these types of stories.

This story focuses on the main characters' individual upbringings, their air combat training, some of their combat experiences, even their political viewpoints.  For a brief moment over the skies, on December 21, 1943; US 2nd Lieutenant Charlie Brown (in a highly damaged B-17) is escorted to “safety” by German 2nd Lieutenant Franz Stigler, flying a Messerschmitt fighter. Why did this happen?  Charlie couldn’t believe it…  Many years after the war ends, Franz begins to ask WWII survivors if they have ever heard of the damaged B-17 and did anyone survive the journey over the English Channel?  Eventually, these 2 war heroes meet and Charlie is able to thank Franz for saving his life (and therefore, that of his children!).

Next, I read Jodi Picoult’s newest title The Storyteller.  This is also a story with connections to World War II.  However, this story deals with the  horror of the concentration camps.  We hear from an unknown story narrator (who, we find out later is Sage’s grandmother), Josef Weber ( a former SS officer living in New Hampshire),  and Sage Singer (the survivor’s granddaughter).   Sage and Josef form an unlikely friendship and when Josef reveals his true identity, Sage is forced to acknowledge her grandmother’s past.  It is a haunting story, as are most stories dealing with the Holocaust.  Jodi Picoult weaves together a spell-binding story and her background research shows in the storylines.

Since I read these titles back-to-back, I couldn’t help but compare the “good” that did happen during WWII with the horror that was happening at the very same time.  I also got to compare how one soldier’s view of the Nazi party (Franz Stigler) differed so greatly from Picoult’s fictional character, Josef Weber.

Kim Cavalenes
Selection Assistant