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), […]
Category: Fiction
The Hate U Give
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 […]
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid, 2017 Very interesting premise–Nadia and Saeed, two people living in some unnamed Mid-Eastern country, fall in love at the same time that their country deteriorates into chaos and war. They hear about hidden doors that appear and disappear but allow you to escape the country. They pay an agent and escape first […]
The Leavers
by Lisa Ko, 2017 Good book about Chinese mother (Polly Guo) and son (Deming Guo) separated when Deming was 11 years old. He thinks his Mama abandoned him. He is adopted by a white couple in upstate New York but never feels comfortable there and his heart aches for his Mama. Finally, at the age […]
Around the World in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne, 1873 Finished 12/14/18 Loved, loved, LOVED this book! Phileas Fogg, a rich Englishman, decides to take on the challenge to go around the world in 80 days. He takes his brand new servant, Passepartout, along and the adventures they have together are so entertaining.
Bridge of Clay
by Markus Zusak, 2018, finished 12/7/18 Good novel, set in Australia, about 5 brothers wracked by grief when their beloved mother, Penelope (Penny), dies of cancer, and their father (Michael) abandons them. Clay, the fourth of 5 boys, leaves home to help their father build a bridge, and ends up building a bridge for all […]
Sea Prayer, by Khaled Hosseini, 2017, 2018
Beautiful, poignant short illustrated book about Syrian refugee father and son fleeing Syria by boat. They lost their wife and mother in the bombing in Syria and father and son are escaping Syria and waiting on the shore for the boat: Your mother is here tonight, Marwan, with us, on this cold and moonlit beach, […]
Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko, 1977 This was our first book for the Old Town Library Book Club for 2018-2019. We met and discussed it on 10-15-18. Most everyone liked the book although some did not like the ending. I think it was rather violent but I can’t really recall the ending. I loved the main […]
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irvin, 1989 Unique, thought-provoking, sometimes hilarious story about tiny Owen Meany and his best friend, Johnny Wheelwright, and their growing up in Gravesend, New Hampshire, in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The story is told from Johnny’s perspective and starts with telling how, during Sunday school when their teacher left the room for a […]
The Story of Ferdinand
by Munro Leaf, 1936 Drawings by Robert Lawson Ferdinand the Bull just wanted to sit under his favorite cork tree, “smelling the flowers just quietly.” I loved this book as a child and they made a movie of it, which is pretty good, and made me want to read the book again. Learned about cork […]
The Little Paris Bookshop
by Nina George, 2013 Jean Perdu owns a book barge in Paris. He is 20 years into grieving his lost love. She gave him a letter but he never opened it. Finally he does and she left him because she was dying of cancer. He unhooks his barge and travels south with Max Jordan, a […]
The Pearl
by John Steinbeck, 1945 Finished in 2 days. Exquisite, painful story about Kino, Juana, and little baby boy, Coyotito. Coyotito gets stung by a scorpion – that Kino, his father, couldn’t catch in time. Jauna, Coyotito’s mother, sucks out the poison but decides they must see the doctor. The rich doctor won’t see them because […]
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens, 1861 Pip as a young boy meets an escaped convict in a church cemetery. The convict scares him into bringing him food and a file to cut off his leg iron. Pip does this. Pip lives with a much older sister and her blacksmith husband, a saint of a man, Joe Gargery. […]
The Arabian Nights
Translated by Husain Haddawy “This translation is of the complete text of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a 14th century Syrian manuscript, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and considered to be the most authentic.” Shahrazad marries the King Shahrayar who typically puts his wives to death after one […]