College Bound?

Hey, college freshmen to be–if you’ve read all the worthy tomes that were suggested for your summer reading, or if you haven’t opened one of them, here’s a suggestion for a great introduction to college life, fantasy style: The Magicians by Lev Grossman.   Miserable in high school, Quentin Coldwater is thrilled to be admitted to an exclusive college for magicians in upstate New York. Along with courses in spell creating and transmogrification, Quentin experiences the ups and downs of friendship and love.  A darker tone interlaced with humor makes this ‘Harry Potter goes to college’ much more complex and ultimately satisfying than that well known series.

–Susan Creed, Fiction Librarian

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Zombies And Giant Squid: Monster Hits of Summer!

I’m not particularly fond of books about vampires or zombies, but I have to admit the Summer Reading List put together by NPR’s Glen Weldon has me thinking that some of these titles might be a fun reading experience.  Teenage mutants, the Beatles as zombies, and ’squidnapping’ are just three of the themes you’ll find in these books, described as funny alternatives to the teenage angst which overwhelms the ‘Twilight’ series.

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NextReads Newsletters

I love to get recommendations from friends and colleagues for my next good book to read and am less likely to trust recommendations from other sources. However, the last novel I read and enjoyed came to my attention through our library’s new service–the NextReads Newsletters (click here to sign up). The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone is one of the “Fiction A to Z” suggestions in June’s NextReads e-newsletter. Becca survives a lightning strike when a young girl and Buckley’s mother dies when lightning strikes her. Through the handbook of the title, these two fascinating characters’ lives finally intersect in this author’s excellent debut novel.

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Unravel a Mystery

Many mystery series over the past couple of decades have become theme oriented. The Betsy Devonshire series by Monica Ferris features the owner of a needlecraft shop. While cooking themed mysteries usually contain a recipe or two (think Joanna Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series) Ferris’s cozies always include the directions for some needlecraft project. In Knitting Bones Betsy is recovering from a broken leg and must do all of her detective work from her couch with outside work done by her shop assistant, Godwin. A charity check is missing along with the husband of a craft acquaintance. What Betsy and Godwin don’t know is that across town is another man with some broken bones of his own who would also like to know where that check went.  You can meet Monica Ferris and have your copies of her books signed at a presentation on Monday, June 7 at the Shadle Library at 6:30 pm.  Ms. Ferris will present “How I Got Into This Mess: The Perils, Pains and Pleasures of Writing Mystery Novels.” - Should be fun.

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Young at Heart

Despite what you might think from many currently popular novels and movies, love is not just for the young themselves, but also for the young at heart.   Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson is one of my favorite new books which features a mature romance.   Major Pettigrew, a widower, has retired to a small English village when news of his brother’s death discombobulates him.  Mrs. Ali, the widowed owner of the village shop, helps him through his dismay.  As their firendship deepens, members of both families as well as the neighbors express their disapproval.  This humorous look at contemporary life in England is also a gentle love story.

An older favorite is Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray. In this case, unlike the play by Shakespeare, it isn’t the teenagers whose love affair distresses the feuding families, it’s the parents.

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Get Lit Festival in Spokane

Spokane’s annual spring literary festival features appearances this year by the authors of two of my favorite recently read novels.  Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets gave me lots of laughs, although it is not strictly a humorous novel. A 40ish Spokane man’s life comes unglued, partly from the recent national financial meltdown. That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo features a marriage which is coming unglued.  Similarly to Walter’s novel, it is by turns poignant and funny. For a complete list of the authors and events at this year’s festival check their website.

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Favorite Fantasy Author Starts New Trilogy

One of my favorite fantasy authors, Robin Hobb, has just published the first book in a new trilogy.  Dragon Keeper begins with the hatching of the rescued sea serpents which the great blue dragon, Tintaglia, led up to their hatching grounds.  Unfortunately, the dragons which emerge are not the magnificent creatures of old, but are mostly small, deformed and unable to fly.  A group of misfits and outcasts is formed to escort the sickly creatures up the Rain River to their legendary home far away in the mountains.  Hobb has set three other trilogies,  Liveship Traders,  Tawny Man and Farseer, in this same fascinating world.  If you’ve read any of the other books, you will be pleased to greet many of the same characters in the new book.

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The Big Read comes to Spokane

A celebration of the beloved American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, begins this month and continues through the middle of March at area libraries, universities and community venues. I’ve been recording the book this past month to be broadcast on the Bookshelf, a program of KPBX radio in Spokane.  This will start at 6:30 on Monday, February 1 and continue every Monday through Thursday for about 4 weeks.  While many readers love this book for its story of a Southern lawyer defending a Negro man falsely accused of rape, I love it for its portrait of a small Alabama town during the Great Depression and the authentically youthful voice of the narrator, Scout.  The Big Read is sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts and The Spokane City and County Library Systems.

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Local Author on Time Magazine Best of 2009 list

Jess Walter’s latest, The Financial Lives of the Poets, was picked by Time Magazine’s editorial staff as #2 in its list of the ten best fiction books of 2009.  There are lots of people right now who are waiting for a library copy of this particular book, but in the meantime there are lots of other ‘Best of’ lists to peruse. The Early Word (http://www.earlyword.com/category/best-books-2009/), a blog for publishers and librarians, has handy links to all of those lists.  Are you ready to make your reading list for 2010?

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National Book Award

This year’s winners of the National Book Awards were  announced on November 18th. The choice for fiction, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, is one of my favorite books from this year’s reading, and I was thrilled to find out this morning that it had won this prestigious award.  Too often in recent years I have been disappointed by the winner, but this choice is one that I will be able to personally recommend with enthusiasm. Set in New York City during the days in 1974 that Phillipe Petit crossed a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view.  The individual stories connect in surprising and satisfying ways.

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