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 […]
Category: Fiction
Gilead
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 […]
Hatchet
by Gary Paulsen, 1987 Children’s book, mentioned by Pat, who was reading it with/to her grandson. I read it in one day. It’s about a 13 year old boy, Brian Robeson, who is being flown up to northern Canada to spend the summer with his Dad, who is working the oil fields. His parents are […]
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver, 2022 Painful page-turner, about the opioid crisis as told through the life of a little boy, Damon (Demon), in rural, poor Virginia. He goes through hell, literally, with a single, drug-addicted mom who marries an abusive man. When she dies of an overdose on “Oxy,” his already terrible world falls apart, and […]
Trust
by Hernan Diaz, 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner. Two versions of the life of Andrew Bevel and his wife, Mildred, extremely wealthy as a result of playing the stock market, culminating in the crash of 1929. The first version is a novel by Harold Vanner depicting them as Benjamin Rask and his wife, Helen. The second […]
The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling, 1894 Wayne read a copy of The Jungle Book at the condo in Palm Springs, so I checked out this version from the Library. It has 3 of the 7 stories and was illustrated by Nicola Bayley. The three stories are: Mowgli’s Brothers, Kaa’s Hunting, and Tiger! Tiger!. In Mowgli’s Brothers, a […]
my grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry
by Fredrik Backman, 2013 Translation, 2015, by Henning Koch Sweet story by the author of A Man Called Ove. It’s about a 7-year old girl, Elsa, and her granny. Granny is a real character but she loves and protects Elsa and is Elsa’s only friend. But then she dies of cancer and leaves Elsa alone, […]
September
by Rosamunde Pilcher, 1990 Delightful soap opera set in mid-1970s Scotland. It’s 613 pages long. I got the book from a little-free library. First, Mom read it and loved it. Then, Carol read it and loved it. She said it takes you away to Scotland, and it certainly does. A rural village in Scotland with […]
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong, 2019 Eew. Yuck. I hated this book. Too dark, too depressing, too sad, too hopeless, too graphic, too filthy. No goodness and light whatsoever. Set in Hartford, Connecticut, it’s about “Little Dog,” a Vietnamese boy who is beaten by his mother, who was beaten by her husband. He falls in love with […]
Garden of Eden
by Ernest Hemingway, posthumously 1986 What a strange book! It was the September 2022 selection for the Classic Book Club. I gave it to Mom to read first and asked her if she wanted to go to this book club and discuss it. She at first said yes, but then she said no. I finally […]