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 […]
Author: bookhound
The Lake House
by Kate Morton, 2015 Loved this book! Suggested by Christie. Set in Cornwall, England, in WWI, WWII, and modern days (2003). Wonderful setting – a beautiful lake house in Cornwall, near the sea. Interesting characters: a spinster mystery writer and her sisters and mother and father, and a precious baby brother who disappears and is […]
The Complete Guide to Fasting
by Jason Fung, MD, with Jimmy Moore Adam and Danette recommended a documentary about fasting that was by the same author. We weren’t able to get it from the library but the book was available, so that is why I read it. It is causing a paradigm shift for me because I always thought going […]
Just Mercy
by Bryan Stevenson, 2014 Excellent book! I’m not sure where I heard about it but I’m so glad I read it. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who started the Equal Justice Initiative. We needed him and, unfortunately, we still do. He works tirelessly to free innocent men from death row, to end the death penalty […]
The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson, 2003 Heard this book mentioned by Karen, our Old Town Library Book Club leader. True story about the building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair, in Chicago in 1893, and a psychopathic serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The fair is completed against all odds: Architects not completing their designs on […]
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 […]
The Warmth of Other Suns
by Isabel Wilkerson, 2010 Fantastic book! Heard about it from Karen, the leader of the Old Town Library Book Club, during our discussion of American Prison. It’s long (550 pages) but gripping and eye-opening. We learn about ‘America’s great migration’ through the true stories of 3 black people who left (really, escaped) the South (Ida […]
Golf’s Sacred Journey
Seven Days at the Links of Utopia by David L. Cook, PhD, 2006 Adam recommended the movie, “Links of Utopia,” as being very, very good. I ordered it via Prospector at the Library but didn’t pick it up before they closed for Covid-19. Then, when they reopened the Library, again I didn’t pick it up […]
Becoming
by Michelle Obama, 2018 Wonderful book by and about Michelle Obama, her growing up years in the South Side of Chicago, her college years at Princeton and Harvard Law School, her meeting and falling in love with Barack Obama when he was a summer intern at the law firm where she worked, her marriage to […]
The Story of More
by Hope Jahren, 2020 Book about climate change by the author of Lab Girl. Excellent! No BS, just the facts, but she’s funny and honest, and ‘hope’-ful. Love this scientist-author. She’s a gift. Her thesis is that the developed countries use more than they need of everything, resulting in carbon dioxide output that is causing […]
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 […]
American Prison
by Shane Bauer, 2018 This was one of the books for our Old Town Library Book Club. We are going to discuss it tonight via Zoom. Shane Bauer is a reporter for Mother Jones and goes undercover as a guard in a for-profit prison in Louisiana for 4 months in 2014. The company that runs […]
The Tracker
by Tom Brown, Jr. as told to William Jon Watkins, 1978 Adam’s book about Tom Brown, Jr. and how he became the tracker he is. He grew up near the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. He was taught how to track by his best friend’s grandfather, Stalking Wolf. From the age of 6 to 18, […]
The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh, 2000 Historical fiction about Burma and India in the late 1800s through mid-1900s. Learn about the royal family of Burma and their ousting by the British, learn about teak harvesting in Burma and rubber plantations in Malaysia. Learn about colonialism through the eyes of those colonized (Indians). Also learn that many Indians […]
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
by Bill Bryson, 2006 What a hilarious book. I laughed out loud on almost every page. He was born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, and this is a story about growing up there in the 1950s. I LOVED his description of his mom, her horrible cooking, her forgetfulness and spaciness. His dad was the […]
The Yellow House
by Sarah M. Broom, 2019 Interesting and well-written memoir about growing up in New Orleans East, the youngest of 12 siblings. The home she grows up in, which she calls the Yellow House, was damaged by Hurricane Katrina and then demolished. She has had such an interesting life, growing up the youngest of 12. Her […]
How to Do Nothing
by Jenny Odell, 2019 Too many big words and thoughts! This young lady is just too smart! She doesn’t appear to believe in God so all of her deep philosophizing is for naught because, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Psalm 127:1 Without reading the book, Wayne predicted […]
The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America
Matt Kracht, 2019 This was supposed to be one of the funniest books of 2019, but it’s mainly an unfunny, potty-mouthed berating of birds. He likes to use the f-word, butt, dumb, gd, etc. I didn’t read it for that reason, just scanned a few. Here’s what he says about the wonderful chickadee that is […]
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 […]
Dopesick
Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy, 2018 Painful, scary book about the opioid epidemic, which started with the release of Oxycontin by Purdue Pharma in the mid 1990s. This was a drug so powerful and so over-prescribed by doctors in the Appalachian areas, that many were addicted and when […]