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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
A couple of months ago, my colleague Jane posted a book review for A Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and described it as “a warm hug of a book.” I really needed a warm book hug at the time and I read it… three times. Ever since I have been on the hunt for that warm hug feeling. A book about people making connections, showing up for each other, and making the most out of their lives. It’s a big ask, and not something you find every day.
This week the National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2024 National Book Awards.Finalists will be announced October 1, and winners named November 20 at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony.
Desmond Aloysius Limerick (Dez) is a retired gatekeeper. What's a gatekeeper you may ask? Well in Dez's case, a kind of cross between Jack Reacher, MacGyver, and John McClane. His former profession had him working ops around the world and as a gatekeeper he was responsible not only for getting his teams into whatever location they needed to enter, but making sure they all got out too. He was an expert on entrances and exits of all kinds. His current life has him living in southern California and sitting in on an occasional musical gig.
This book is all about how to help the people you love when they are sad and grieving. The narrator makes a card for their brother when his cactus dies, but it turns out he just wants to hear a joke to make him laugh.
So then, they go to the library for a joke book when their cousin’s goldfish dies, but it turns out that what she wants is a hug.
Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look.
This is the first book in "The Norendy Tales" series by Kate DiCamillo. The Puppets of Spelhorst is a wonderful story filled with hope, adventure, wisdom, courage and love. Five puppets: a king, an owl, a boy, a girl, and a wolf are "in a story together" that starts with their purchase from a toy shop by an old, broken-hearted sea captain named Spelhorst.
In this heartwarming, character-driven novel, the author explores the ways in which people navigate and (hopefully) survive deep grief.
This story nearly made me want to cry - and then it made me hungry.
This book celebrates summer in an unexpected and inviting way. Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro creates a thematic collection of yearning, love, sadness and the other-worldliness of travel in a graphic novel comprised of lyrics written for Grammy-nominated jazz singer Stacey Kent. Who knew that the author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go honed his literary skills writing lyrics as a young man? He explains it all in the introduction.
Shannon Chakraborty is back with a new magical adventure (after her Daevabad trilogy) set on the Indian Ocean and introducing a bold, smart, and notorious female pirate, Amina al-Sirafi. Let the sea voyages and the hunt for a kidnapped girl commence.
