by Mark Twain, 1893 I got this book from a little free library and finally read the first story, Pudd’nhead Wilson. I loved it so much! It’s a treasure of a story. Pudd’nhead Wilson is actually a very smart, very kind, very wise man, who moves to Dawson City and wants to be a lawyer […]
Category: Fiction
Pudd’nhead Wilson
interpreter of maladies
stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999 I got this book from a Little Free Library. It is wonderful! It is 9 short stories about East Indians or Bengali immigrants to the United States, or one or two take place in India. She is such an excellent writer! Each story is so different from the others but […]
The Christmas List
by Richard Paul Evans, 2009 Dee lent me this book to read while in Montana with Adam and Danette in December 2024. It was EXCELLENT! I read it in 2 days. It’s a re-telling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Set in Utah, the main character is James Kier. He’s a ruthless, rich businessman who […]
White Teeth
by Zadie Smith, 2000 In-depth study of London from the eyes of a diverse caste of characters: 1. Bangladeshi immigrants, Samad Iqbal, his wife Alsana, and their twin sons, Millat and Magid. 2. Archie Jones, and his wife, Clara, who is black and the daughter of Hortense, a Jehovah’s witness born in Jamaica. 3. Archie […]
Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons, 1932 I ADORED THIS BOOK!!!! I learned about it from my British Classics puzzle. It was one of the classics in that puzzle, and the cover had a little blurb, “Very probably the funniest book ever written.” It was a delight from start to finish. Set in 1930’s England. The main character […]
The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy, 1886 This book was suggested to me as his favorite classic during the FAC at Susan and Doug’s, by the retired cancer doctor from Indiana who lives in the new MCM house on E. Myrtle Street. I think his name is Jim. This was a soap opera! Main character, Michael Henchard, gets […]
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt, 1992 I read this book because it is by the author of The Goldfinch, which I loved, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. This was a page-turner, very dark in personalities and setting and plot. Six college-aged students, most very wealthy, are the sole students in a professor’s Greek class. […]
The Little Prince
by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1943 This book has been translated from the original French into 505 different languages, second only to the Bible. I was intrigued by it so checked it out from the library. It’s about a “little prince” from a tiny planet who makes his way to earth, where he meets the narrator […]
Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson, 2004 Found this book in the Little Free Library on Locust Street. It is on several best books lists. It’s about a sweet, old pastor (77 years old) who is going to die soon, writing a very long letter to his 7 year-old son. He married (for the 2nd time) late in […]
Yellowface
by R. F. Kuang, 2023 A page-turner! What an original tale! Spellbinding! This is the Fort Collins Reads book for 2024. The author comes Sunday, October 27th at 2 p.m. to the Fort Collins Marriott. It is also our first selection for the 2024-2025 season of the Old Town Library’s Book Club. An unsuccessful author, […]
Remarkably Bright Creatures
by Shelby Van Pelt, 2022 A very fun novel! This book is the last book selected for the 2023-2024 Old Town Library Book Club. I loved the characters: Tova, an elderly Swedish lady who cleans the aquarium; Marcellus, a remarkably bright Giant Pacific Octopus who lives in the aquarium and knows what happened to Erik, […]
Beartown
Fredrik Backman, 2016 I learned about this book from his Instagram posts. There are so many people who love Beartown and send him pictures of hockey jerseys with #16 and Ovich on them. I was intrigued because I love everything he’s written, so I borrowed it from the library. Well, it’s not my favorite book […]
The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig, 2020 Fun book! This was one of the Old Town Library Book Club’s selections for 2023-2024, for February 2024. It’s about a young British girl, Nora Seed, who is full of regrets and decides to kill herself by taking all of her anti-depressants. She wakes up in the Midnight Library with Mrs. […]
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus, 2022 I loved this book! It was recommended by Jan M. and Marney K. It was an engrossing novel about 1960’s America, a lady chemist named Elizabeth Zott, who faces sexual harassment, assaults, and prejudice at every turn. She meets the love of her life, Calvin Evans, but refuses to marry him […]
The Mermaid Chair
by Sue Monk Kidd, 2005 Got this book out of the little free library in front of Poppie’s house. It’s by the author of The Secret Life of Bees. The story starts when an artist/mother/wife gets called to her childhood home on an island off the coast of South Carolina by a friend of her […]
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens, 1854 It was good to read a classic again, but this one was more difficult than other Dickens novels. Here’s an example from Chapter 9, Final: “It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that […]
Whalefall
by Daniel Kraus, 2023 Fast read – 2 page chapters, short sentences. About young, 17-year old Jay, who dives Monastery Beach to try and find his dad’s bones, but ends up swallowed by a sperm whale. His dad committed suicide because he was dying of mesothelioma. He was a horrible father to Jay. Shaming him, […]
Tom Lake
by Ann Patchett, 2023 Eminently readable novel about Lara Kenison, a young seamstress turned actress who was amazingly talented and beautiful but gave up stardom to marry Joe Nelson and work his cherry farm in Michigan. Lara’s all grown up and telling the story of her life as an actress to her 3 adult daughters […]
Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn, 1992 Tyler’s book. He really wanted us to read it. It is about a young man who answers an ad, Teacher Seeks Pupil. The teacher ends up being a gorilla named Ishmael. They talk telepathically for months. Ishmael teaches him his theory of the Takers and the Leavers. The Leavers were hunter-gatherers […]
The Violin Conspiracy
by Brendan Slocumb, 2022 This novel is the ‘Fort Collins Reads’ book for 2023, and our first Old Town Library Book Club book for 2023-2024. It’s a page-turner, a mystery of who took the $10 million Stradivarius from Ray MacMillian, a young black violin prodigy. Ray, born to a single mom, grew up in North […]