I'm generally proud of myself when I successfully make it home after a Saturday stop at my local wholesale store, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the fantastical adventures that ensue during this run to the corner store for milk.
The Flamethrowers is set in 1975 where Reno, a 25 year old woman interested in motorcycles and art falls in love with Sandro Valero, a much older artist from an uber wealthy Italian family. The story moves between the Bonneville Salt Flats, the 1970s New York City art scene and the Years of Lead, a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy that deeply affects the Valero dynasty. I was mesmerized by the setting, the characters, the situations and the conversations. One of my favorite books of 2013.
Fans of cozy mysteries will enjoy Murder at the Altar, by Veronica Heley. The story actually begins with the climactic moment when the murderer is advancing towards Ellie. Suddenly: “Too late… The murderer took a step forward.” (p. 1)
I like to be challenged occasionally, but definitely not all of the time. The music I choose to enjoy (and by extension, most entertainment) carries an air of familiarity and comfortable context. Very rarely will I actively seek out the latest and greatest in a genre or medium that I’m not familiar with. And yet I’m always looking for really good night music for driving. It just seems to create that perfect soundtrack for the darkened interior of a car, lit only by little dots and dashes.
The aliens have unleashed 4 waves of death upon humanity. The first, an electronic pulse to render all machines useless. The second, tsunamis to destroy coastal cities. The third, an avian plague called The Red Death. The fourth, Silencers, a race of humans implanted with alien intelligences as fetuses, an enemy we didn’t see coming. The 5th is upon us. Cassie, a 16 year old surviving on her own is one of the few left alive on earth. Armed with an M-16 and a teddy bear, she searches for her little brother with the hunky and mysterious Evan.
Like in his most recent work, At Home, travel and history writer Bill Bryson uses a loose premise to explore all of the quirky nooks and crannies of history with his trademark humor and insight. Bryson covers the more eventful happenings in the summer of 1927, like Charles Lindbergh's flight, the advent of flappers, and Babe Ruth's spectacular, record-breaking season, but also finds the strange bits of trivia that connect them. Did you know the Lindy Hop was originally called the Lindbergh Hop, coined after Lindbergh's fateful flight over the Atlantic?
What makes life worth living? Will Traynor is struggling with this very question since an accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down and often in excruciating pain. Confined to a wheelchair and dependent on others to assist with even the most basic tasks of daily life, Will isn't sure life is worth living. Then his mother hires Louisa (Lou) Clark as his daytime assistant/caregiver. Two very different personalities, Will and Lou get off to a rocky and stilted start.
Parents: if you’re looking for a few hours of uninterrupted time to yourself, check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney--for your kid. NoveList, an online database the Library subscribes to, is a great resource for books. It lists the minimum reading level for this book at 2nd grade and the maximum reading level at 8th grade. I’d agree that’s about right. If you’ve got a 7-year-old Human Reading Vacuum, a 14-year-old reluctant reader, or anyone in between, it’s a good bet they
When seventeen-year-old Tana wakes up hungover from a wild party at a remote farmhouse, surrounded by dead classmates, she thinks things can't get any worse...until she discovers a mysterious vampire named Gavriel chained up in the same room as her bitten ex-boyfriend Aiden, who is about to turn into a full-fledged bloodsucker at any moment.
Almost seven score and ten years ago on November 19th, the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA was dedicated to those Union soldiers who fought and died during the three day battle there. It was at this event that President Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps his most well-known speech of his political career: the Gettysburg Address. At less than 280 words long, it is a speech that many Americans have had to memorize at one time or another in the years since.
