A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Throughout the month of January I'm sharing our staff picks of reads, movies, and websites that we enjoyed over the past year.  This is the second installment of the series.  To read the first installment, please click here to read about Miss Sheila's picks.  Today I'll share Timothy's picks for 2014.  Timothy is one of our assistants here at the library where he works part-time while attending college. Favorite books from 2014 (listed in no particular order): The Story of a Macaron-loving Girl Who Lived a Thousand Years Somehow by Karate Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways The World Wants You Dead by Robert Brockway Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh Favorite movies from 2014 : Guardians of the Galaxy Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Rebellion Story Timothy enjoys seeing what other people are read...

We're kicking off 2015 with a new series here on the blog!  Throughout the month of January, I will be sharing our Staff Picks of 2014.  This is the first part of a multi-part series in which library staff will share their favorite books, movies and/or literary websites or blogs from the previous year.  We're starting off with Miss Sheila's picks for 2014.  So keep on reading to find out what Miss Sheila's been reading over the past year! Although she has read many books during 2014, Miss Sheila is hard pressed to name her favorite novel.  That’s because all the books she enjoyed throughout the year fell into the nonfiction category.  Oddly enough, her favorite topic to read about is ... physics.   “The discoveries being made daily in the science of physics, as well as the discoveries made during the last one hundred years or so are nothing short of  fascinating”, Miss Sheila tells us.  “The ideas and theories brought together by t...

I know what it means to be set loose in the world. Damaged children are all of the same tribe: I can look at any adult and recognize one instantly ... we're everywhere. Lost childhood lingers like tribal scars ... there's always some sign. from page 59 Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber is a mystery thriller that follows two mysteries that in the end are so closely intertwined that one would not exist without the other; in fact, one mystery spawns the other and only by pursuing leads in both mysteries can either be resolved. The mysteries themselves really take a backseat to the character of the narrator, Lena, a young and expert fingerprint examiner for the crime lab in Syracuse, New York; the meat of the story focuses on the inner workings of Lena's thoughts as she struggles to come to terms with her past. Lena was a foster child, she was raised by Pia and Henry who never tried to legally adopt her. Before she came to live with her foster parents at the age of three, she only re...

I tell myself that this is not an investigation. It is for others to be investigated, but not for my family and not for me. I will delve into the lives of strangers, and I will expose their secrets and their lies ... but I do not want to pick and scratch in such a way at what I have always believed of my mother and father. They are gone. Let them sleep. But there are too many questions left unanswered, too many inconsistencies in the narrative constructed of their lives, a tale told by them ... I can no longer allow them to remain unexamined. from page 3 So John Connolly released the latest installment of the saga that is Charlie Parker's life earlier this month and I finally got my hands on a copy, read it, and was not disappointed. This new novel is narrated by Parker and focuses on his story; Connolly's previous novel, The Reapers , focused on Louis and Angel. The Lovers returns to the questions first raised about Parker's parentage and history by the Collector in...

In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know ... for everyone else, it's just another end. from page six of Elsewhere In this young adult novel, fifteen year old Liz dies after being hit by a car on Earth; she awakens on a cruise ship bound for Elsewhere, and she slowly realizes that death is more of an afterlife lived in a place similar to Earth called Elsewhere. This is the story of a teen adjusting to the end of her life as she knows it and to the beginning of a new life without her friends and family. The end of the novel, though certainly not the end of Liz's story, is heartbreakingly poignant. Zevin writes beautifully; however, this novel is definitely for the tween and young adult set. I could easily tell that this was targeted for the younger reader from the juvenile tone of some sections of the book. There are some authors who write for younger readers whose novels the older, more sophisticated reader can also app...

The library has recently added new titles to the Young Adult fiction section located downstairs along the back wall of the library. We hope you'll check them out the next time you're visiting the library! New titles Sweetwater Gap by Denise Hunter Shadows of Lancaster County by Mindy Starns Clark Against All Odds by Irene Hannon Love Starts With Elle by Rachel Hauck Waiting for Daybreak by Kathryn Cushman Where Do I Go? by Neta Jackson

I've never read a book by Joyce Carol Oates though I did see her speak once at the National Book Festival On The Mall a few years ago. She is a very prolific writer--she writes scripts, novels, and poems, and as a person she struck me as slightly eccentric. She was a very good speaker. Recently I was reading the news on a movie website that I frequent, and I came across an article about an upcoming independent film production that was adapting Oates' novella, Rape . Samuel L. Jackson and Maria Bello are attached to star. You can easily read this book in a day, all told, I finished it in a few hours. You were twelve at the time. Your thirteenth birthday would arrive abruptly, too soon in August, and depart mostly unheralded. For childhood belonged to before, now you had come to live in after. from page 37 Rape: A Love Story is seen through the eyes of Bethel Maguire. It is a narrative of before and after; it is the tale of the end of childhood for Bethel, and the story...

My streak of nonfiction reads continues--and ends with The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--And Why by Amanda Ripley, a writer for Time magazine. I read a short article by Ripley in Time ; it was about the survivors of the Hudson River passenger jet crash and their behavior in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The Unthinkable is a fascinating read. Ripley examines the various stages one goes through in a disaster (for example, denial, deliberation, determination...) and the different reactions people have and why (for example, paralysis, panic, action, heroics...). It also examines who responds in what way and why they respond this way in a crisis or disaster and what we can do to improve our chances of survival in the midst of a disaster such as a fire or a tsunami or a plane crash (for example, rehearse evacuation, locate all the exits in an unfamiliar place...). Ultimately this book is an examination of human behavior as it is influenced by genetics and e...

Non-fiction books aren't really my thing; generally, this is how my relationship goes with non-fiction books: I see a really interesting one, I borrow it, I start to read it, and then I ditch it a chapter or two later when the dry, boring writing and non-existent plot fail to hook me. However, this a review of two non-fiction books that I read back to back after a five year old three article series that I dug up on the internet; it was written by Evan Wright and preceded his book Generation Kill , which is basically a book version of the article series that he wrote and published in Rolling Stone Magazine . Recently HBO adapted Generation Kill into a mini-series that ran sometime last year; I got the series on DVD and in the midst of watching it, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the book to read. In the meantime, I stumbled across One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, the lieutenant of the platoon that Wright embedded with, and I read that book while I waited for Generation K...

The Child had been here. It was here no longer. The man Jack followed his nose down the stairs through the middle of the tall, thin house ... The man Jack sniffed the air. Then, without hurrying he began to walk up the hill." from page 10 This Newbery Medal winning book by Neil Gaiman is a fantasy-supernatural-mystery-coming-of-age story told in long, vignette-style chapters interspersed with black ink illustrations. When Nobody 'Bod' Owens is just a babe his family is killed by a Man, and Bod barely escapes with his life. Serendipity finds the toddler Bod wandering out of his home while the Man is killing his parents and his sister. Bod wanders up the hill and into the graveyard near his home where the graveyard folk take him in, give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, and teach him the ways of the dead. Since Bod is too young when his parents are killed to remember his own name, his adoptive parents, the Owens, give him a new one and their last name. Each chapter s...

It's the number sequence that's clued me in: 3-4-5, the simplest representation of the Pythagorean theorem. Ely was obsessed with it. He heard it in the cawing of the grackles outside our Hyde Park bungalow and claimed the traffic lights on Guadalupe were timed to it. from page 12, The Night Villa The Night Villa is Carol Goodman's latest novel. This one, like its predecessor, The Sonnet Lover , begins in the U.S. before moving the action to Italy. Dr. Sophie Chase, a classics professor at the University of Texas, is working on a book about a first century Roman slave woman named Iusta who essentially took her masters to court to sue for her freedom. Iusta's fate--both the outcome of her court case and her life--is vague as she disappears from the historical record when her village, Herculaneum, is buried by fallout from the eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The eruption buried the entire town and many of its inhabitants, preserving them in volcanic ash ...

The Sonnet Lover is Carol Goodman's fifth novel. The novel, like her previous novels, starts with a murder mystery and then focuses on a literary mystery that is closely connected to the murder mystery. Dr. Rose Asher is a Comparative Literature professor at Hudson College, a private liberal arts school in New York City. What exactly Comparative Literature is, I'm not entirely sure... It is never really defined or explained in the book and I don't think we had Comparative Literature at Kutztown University. At a soiree that wraps up the college's student film contest, one of Asher's male students falls to his death. The police rule it a suicide, but Asher wonders if it was really an accident, a suicide or was it murder. Asher travels to Italy to search for the sonnets of a sixteenth century female poet who may or may not have been the Dark Lady of 28 of Shakespeare's sonnets. This female poet's sonnets hold the key to unlocking both the secrets of the presen...

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry is an engrossing story that sucks you right in to it and by the end of the story the reader finds out just how "unreliable" the narrator really is. The novel takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, the town of seventeenth century witch-hunt infamy. The town itself really acts as another character in the story because it is the nature of the town's history that influences the events and characters of the story. Ultimately this is the tale of the deadly destruction of a family by one man, who is an extremely dangerous and cunning alcoholic, abuser and psychopath. It is also the story of one young woman's journey toward mental and emotional healing. When her beloved great-aunt goes missing, Towner Whitney returns home after a self-imposed fifteen year exile. Towner comes from a family of lace readers--women who can read others' fortunes in the patterns of lace--and is herself a very gifted lace reader. Towner refuses to use her gifts o...

This is a review of a trilogy called The Brothers' Bond written by Linda Goodnight. The titles in the trilogy are A Season For Grace , A Touch of Grace and The Heart of Grace . The trilogy tells the tale of three brothers who have been separated as boys by social services because of family issues and when the brothers are adults, it is about their journey toward healing and reuniting with each other. Each book focuses on one of the brothers. This series is very captivating and exciting. I could hardly wait to start the next book, and it didn't take long to finish all three books. I recommend this series. You can find these books at the Matthews Public Library in the Young Adult fiction section located along the back wall downstairs. Check them out the next time you're in the library! --Review written by Ms. Kathy; posted by Ms. Angie

I'd pulled this exact same fire handle last summer right around this time. And boy, were those firemen steamed when they found out there was no fire. I'd done it cuz Mary Lane said she'd give me a dime if I would and, after all, she was our best friend. from page 82, Whistling In The Dark by Lesley Kagen Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen tells the story of the summer people started locking their doors on Vliet Street--it is told from the perspective of a ten year old girl with a very active imagination. It is summer. It is 1959 in the Vliet Street neighborhood in Milwaukee. Young girls are going missing and then their bodies are being dumped--molested, naked, and dead. The O'Malley sisters' mother is in the hospital for a mysterious procedure and complications and the fact that she "may be dying" keep her there for most of that summer. The girls' older sister, Nell, and their stepfather are supposed to look after them, but these plans don't qu...

The Keepsake is the latest installment in Tess Gerritsen's Dr. Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli (medical examiner/homicide detective, respectively) series that is set in Boston, Massachusetts. This is the other book that I was anticipating for about the past half a year since I found a listing for it on amazon.com. The novel begins with a cryptic first chapter narrated in the first person--this is a departure from the rest of the novel and the series since the rest of the book, save for the final chapter, is narrated in third person. Gerritsen contributes a much better written installment to her series than Reichs did to the Brennan series. Gerritsen's mystery crackles with tighter, more urgent suspense as well. Gerritsen succeeds in creating and painting a more terrifying serial killer. In The Keepsake we catch up with Isles and Rizzoli. Isles continues to see a man she cannot completely have and Rizzoli's marriage is still going strong; Rizzoli's daughter is now a year old....

Herstory: Women Who Changed The World edited by Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn is copyrighted 1995, which makes me wonder who would be included in an updated volume. Ever since high school I've identified myself as a feminist, and women's history and women's rights are near and dear to me. The marginalization, objectification, discrimination, and second class citizenship of women throughout history are ideas that still outrage and horrify me when I read about the obstacles, injustices and perils that my female forebears have had to overcome and survive to get to where we are today. I may not have personally experienced these struggles--I have come of age in the title IX era where equality or near equality is the only thing I've known--but I am acutely aware of the fairly recent period in history in which women had few or no rights and how fragile those rights remain with the current Republican president and the addition of two conservative justices to the U.S. Supre...

Before I begin the book review, I'd like to point out that this is my 100th blog post. Whoa. That is a lot of posting of reviews, news of new arrivals and notices of new YouTube videos. Here's to the next 100 posts. I hope my fingers don't get too sore. Ever since I found out the title of Kathy Reichs' next Tempe Brennan novel and then stumbled across its listing on amazon.com with a release date attached, I was counting down the days 'til I could get my hands on the next installment of Brennan's adventures. And I was obsessively checking amazon.com nearly every day for an updated Devil Bones listing with a blurb attached. Then the book came out in August, and as soon as the title appeared in the Lebanon County Library System, I put my name on the Hold Queue. And I obsessively checked my account on its status to see if it was finally on its way. It arrived one day last week... Thursday or Friday. I finished it Saturday, and since I reviewed the last Brennan no...

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson is a beautifully, vividly written novel coming soon to the Matthews Library. The author may sound familiar to you because I reviewed her most recent novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming , on this blog a few months ago. [Click on the title to go to that review!] I believe I also mentioned Between, Georgia in that review. That was back in May, and this past Labor day weekend, I did some major reading. I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , and then started Between, Georgia Saturday afternoon. I stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish the book, which is something I rarely do, but everything was getting ready to go to hell in a hand basket (in the book) by bedtime that I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I then read a book called A Thousand Bones by P.J. Parrish on Sunday and Monday. That is also a wonderful book, and I am now getting ready to read the series by that author. Some people have picnics on federal holiday wee...

I'm sorry I can't send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily [Bronte]--I used them to kindle a fire in my cookstove, there being no other paper in the house. I'd already burnt up my tide tables, the Book of Revelation, and the story about Job. from page 52 of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books. from page 53 of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. According to a review that I read for the novel, Shaffer died before it was published; Barrows, her niece, finished and edited the novel for publication. The novel is set in post-war London and Guernsey Island; World War II has literally just ended--it is 1946--and London, Guernsey Island, and its citizens are struggling to rebuild their towns, their homes and their lives. They are wondering if and when life will ever return to normal and how do they move ...