MADreads Reviews

It's March and the Lakeview Mystery Book Group has read and discussed three titles so far this year. Thus I'm prompted to come to you with a first quarter book report.

OK, I like - no I love musicals. Even though a lot of the time this demands a certain suspension from reality—I mean, how often do you see someone bursting into song and dance and no one notices?  But I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly with any of their partners, have watched The Sound of Music too many times to count, and look forward to any announced new musicals (very few these days at least in film) but can always hope.

This is the book I'm going to be recommending to everyone in 2019- it's the delightful, funny, and very relevant story of Alex, the First Son of the US, and Henry, Prince of England and their journey from having a PR driven "friendship" to a real relationship and love. The story takes place a kind of alternate reality where a progressive female with biracial children has won the presidency. Her son, Alex, believes that he's meant to go into politics, and behind his seemingly party lifestyle, he works tirelessly to campaign and research in preparation for his mother's hopeful reelection.

Nonfiction readers will see much to like this April, as the publishing world swings into spring. After a 2018 mostly dominated by politics-related titles, April 2019 sees the return of some favorite authors to nonfiction shelves in general and the memoir genre in particular. On to the highlights:

A wonderfully illustrated book about going to bed! Owen Davey has given us a great little story about a boy who imagines he is a knight as he is doing his nightly, or should we say knightly routine. This fun mix of dragons, castles, baths, and beds makes for a great nighttime tale.

Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread is the story of three women, Margot, Harriet and Perdita Lee, how their lives intertwine with the Kerchevals, a wealthy family of landowners in the fictional country of Druhástrana, and a legacy recipe for gingerbread. It's hard to put into words all of the magic that's present in this novel. I'll tell you one thing: it was impossible for me to read this book without craving gingerbread something fierce.

Did you know that you can get MADreads review emailed to you weekly? Or that you can find out what new Book Club Kits have been added to the collection? Or learn what's new with the Wisconsin Book Festival? All of these, plus a whole lot of other book news, are options when you subscribe to the Library's Insider Newsletters. 

Big reader of mysteries? You're covered. Someone who'd rather listen than read a print book? We've got your back. 

I read Stradal's debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, almost in one sitting (literally, as I was in my seat on an airplane) and loved every moment of it. So I was thrilled to give Stradal a second try and find out if the magic persisted.

As war overtook their home in Iraq in 2010, the al Rabeeah family sought a safe refuge. Their choice was the ancient and vibrant city of Homs in Syria. But within a year, their hope had turned into a nightmare as Homs became the epicenter of struggle against Syrian president Bashir al-Assad. Abu Bakr al Rabeeah was ten and one of eight children in the al Rabeeah family when the violence broke out, and witnessed the devastating siege of his new home before his family was able to finally escape to Canada.

The Cardboard Kingdom is a middle grade graphic novel about a group of kids that transform their backyards one summer to create an entire kingdom complete with dwellings, costumes, personas and the best adventures of their lives.

A biography of Thomas Beckett is not exactly something I'd pick up every day. This was actually a jumping off point from an article I was reading that pushed me into a deeper dive. I'm glad for the push as John Guy's detailed account of the martyr is both history and page-turning suspense.

Bowlaway is a community saga set in Salford, Massachusetts centered on a candlepin* bowling alley. For those of you not familiar with candlepin, it is a variation of bowling played in New England with pins that have a cylindrical shape that taper toward each end similar to a candle. Scoring is different from tenpin and the balls are smaller, with no finger holes.

All you spuds looking for duds, “Lance Vance’s Fancy Pants Store” is having a big sale on potato pants.  Hurry, hurry, hurry because “Once they’re gone, they’re gone!”

Alafair Burke just keeps 'em coming. The Better Sister is another solid hit from an author who has become an auto-read for me.

Stella Lane sees the world in math and economics. There is no room for error and there's a formula for everything. So when she's ready for a serious relationship she creates a to-do list and gets ready to start checking off boxes! The only problem is, romantic chemistry is not a formula she can predict.

This book is a trip, literally and figuratively. Crazy Rich Asians took me into the world of the crazily rich families who make up the Singapore elite. These people are wealthy beyond my imagining and I loved delving into their wild world.

This novel is all the things. All the words. All the awards. All the feelings.

Like our recent deluge of snow, library collections see their own kind of deluge with the new year: the onslaught of 2019 titles. Our librarians have been so caught up in wading through the heaping piles of new titles we missed our previous two months of Sweet Anticipation, a fault we hope readers will forgive us. Just in time for the spring melt (fingers crossed), here are some of the top titles we’re looking forward to in March:

The most tragic shipwreck in history may be one very few people remember.  It’s not the Titanic.  It is the World War II sinking of the German military transport ship Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945.  On a ship designed to carry 1,465 passengers and crew, 10,582 desperate refugees from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, fleeing the advancing Russian troops, crammed on-board.  Two torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine sank the ship and 9,343 passengers drowned, including 5,000 children. 

Khoury's new YA novel is a science fiction imagining that plays on the mythos created around the last Romanov, Anastasia, rumored to have escaped when the rest of her family was murdered.