by Ruth Krauss, 1952 Adorable little children’s book, full of adorable illustrations and cute definitions like, “A hole is to dig…Hands are to hold…Mashes potatoes are to give everybody enough…The sun is so it can be a great day.” Recommended on the book a day calendar that Christie gave me.
Category: Fiction
The Giver of Stars
by Jojo Moyes, 2019 Fantastic book about pack-horse librarians in Kentucky during the Depression. This book has everything: Characters you love, characters you hate, a couple of mysteries, well-written, deep sense of place, and a very good ending. Loved this book! It was recommended to me by Christie.
Rogue Male
by Geoffrey Household, 1939 Enthralling short novel about a talented spy who gets caught seeing if it would be possible for him to assassinate an evil dictator. He escapes after a fall from a cliff, and the suspense begins. He is badly injured but makes his way out of this country, which may be Poland, […]
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston, 1937 This book was our last book selection for the Old Town Library Book Club for 2019-2020. Mandy selected it because it was one of the Great American Read 100 best books. It’s a short book and wasn’t about what I thought it was going to be about. It’s about a […]
Long Bright River
by Liz Moore, 2020 Page-turner! So readable! Enthralling characters: 2 sisters; one a cop with a 4-year old son, the other a heroin addict. Set in Philadelphia. The sisters’ mother was a heroin addict, too, and died of an overdose. The mystery: Who is murdering young heroin addicts? Micky (the cop sister) hasn’t seen Kacey […]
Nine Coaches Waiting
by Mary Stewart, 1958 Wonderful book! Suspense, mystery, interesting characters and setting. Loved it! Set in the forest of France near Geneva, Switzerland, and involving a very wealthy family, the Valmy’s, and their beautiful chateau. A young English girl comes to live there and be the governess of 9 year-old Philippe, the rightful heir to […]
Cost
by Roxana Robinson, 2008 One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. Excellent but harrowing. So painful and scary. If anyone is thinking about taking heroin, read this first. Through the character of 22 year-old Jack, you learn what it is like to be an addict. The dark, awful, soul-consuming world of a heroin […]
The Overstory
by Richard Powers, 2018 I cannot believe this book won the Pulitzer Prize! I got so tired of it half-way through and am so glad I finally finished it and can return it to the library. It was 502 pages of new-age gobbledygook about trees and 5 humans that try to save them. I don’t […]
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift, 1726 What a strange book! I didn’t like it! It is about a LOT more than just his journey to Lilliput. In fact, that is only a short portion at the very beginning. He ends up going to many other places – a land of giants, another place governed by a floating […]
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, 1843 Loved reading this after enjoying the movie with George C. Scott every year for many, many years! I was surprised at how closely the movie follows the book, in most places word-for-word. I like the way he describes the ghosts better in the book than the way they are portrayed in […]
The Stationery Shop
by Marjan Kamali, 2019 Recommended by Christie, this is a sweet book about two young lovers in 1953 Tehran, Iran. They meet in the Stationery Shop, a shop filled with beautiful pens, papers, journals, books, etc. They decide to marry, despite the young man’s mother’s objections, and arrange to meet in the square at a […]
The Pilgrim’s Progress
by John Bunyan, Part I-1678, Part II-1684 Lora Lee told me about this book and the movie. The book has never been out of print and, second to the Bible, is the most popular book in the world. The writing style is Old English, of course, since it was written 350 years ago. At first […]
The Hate U Give
by Angie Thomas, 2017 This book takes you into the world of 16-year-old Starr; I hated the world but fell in love with her and her precious family. They live in the ghetto and Starr witnesses her childhood best friend, Khalil, get shot and killed by a white cop. She has brothers (Seven and Sekani), […]
Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine
by Gail Honeyman, 2017 A most-interesting novel! It’s about a 30-year old girl, living a very lonely life in Glasgow. She has a boring office job that pays the bills, but her co-workers don’t like her and often gossip about her. She buys vodka every Friday and stays drunk through the weekend. She has a […]
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1854-5 Classic recommended by Kindra, a librarian at the Old Town Library. At first, I thought it would be hard to read because of the old-style language, but after only a couple of pages, it was imminently readable and I couldn’t put it down! The story centers on 19 year-old Margaret Hale, […]
The River
by Peter Heller, 2019 What a disappointing book! Can’t believe it is by the same author who wrote The Dog Stars! Two young men, best friends, decide to canoe a river in Canada. They run into 1. A huge wildfire, 2. A lunatic who tried to murder his wife, and after the young men go […]
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens, 2018 What a fantastic book! Once the murder trial started, I could not put it down. I tried to go to sleep at 10:00 p.m. but got up at 10:45 p.m. and finished this book by 1:45 a.m.! It was so good! So well-written and what a plot and characters! The main […]
This Is How It Always Is
by Laurie Frankel, 2017 What a fantastic book! What a fantastic writer! I didn’t want to read this book, but my friend, Christie, read it and said she couldn’t put it down – it was so good! So, I read it and felt the same way, even though the topic, a transgender child, is not […]
The Great Alone
by Kristin Hannah, 2018 Glad I stuck with this book. The first 1/2 seemed like it was written by an amateur for teenage girls. After about 250 pages, however, it was a page-turner. Set in 1970’s Alaska, somewhere near Homer on the Kenai Peninsula, in a town called Kaneq, which I think is a fictional […]
Playing for Pizza
by John Grisham, 2007 Quick, easy read about an NFL quarterback (Rick Dockery) who is banished from the league because he throws too many interceptions. He’s had 3 major concussions. His agent finds him a job in Italy so he moves to Parma, Italy, and finds love and purpose among some Italians who love the […]