Adult fiction, history (what WOULD the Founders have said?), Michelle Obama, daring women in flying machines, and a series for young adult readers and some kids books to help you start the year.
YOUNGER CHILDREN
We Don't Eat our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins, 2018
It's the first day of school for
Penelope Rex, and she can't wait to meet her classmates. But it's hard to make
human friends when they're so darn delicious! That is, until Penelope gets a
taste of her own medicine and finds she may not be at the top of the food chain
after all. . . .
Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, art
work by Christopher Silas Neal, 2011
Over the snow, the world is hushed and
white. But under the snow exists a secret kingdom of squirrels and snow hares,
bears and bullfrogs, and many other animals that live through the winter safe
and warm, awake and busy, under the snow. Discover the wonder and activity that
lies beneath winter's snowy landscape in this magical book.
Notes at the end of the book about the
various animals that are found under winter's snow greatly increase the appeal
of this very attractive book.
THIRD GRADERS
Hello Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly, 2017
2018 Newberry Award Winner
In one day, four lives weave together
in unexpected ways. Virgil Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of
place in his loud and boisterous family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is
smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and loves everything about nature. Kaori
Tanaka is a self-proclaimed psychic, whose little sister Gen is always
following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just act
normal so that he can concentrate on basketball. They aren’t friends -- at
least not until Chet pulls a prank that traps Virgil and his pet guinea pig at
the bottom of a well. This disaster leads Kaori, Gen, and Valencia on an epic
quest to find the missing Virgil. Through luck, smarts, bravery, and a little
help from the universe, a rescue is performed, a bully is put in his place, and
friendship blooms
ADULT FICTION
River by Esther Kinsky (translated from German by Iain Galbreath), 2018.
The river Lea runs through northeast London and into the Thames. It passes through derelict industrial wastelands and wetlands teeming with life, through bustling urban locales and down at the heels parts of town that are populated by people who landed there from all over the world.
The river Lea runs through northeast London and into the Thames. It passes through derelict industrial wastelands and wetlands teeming with life, through bustling urban locales and down at the heels parts of town that are populated by people who landed there from all over the world.
The protagonist is a German woman who grew up along the Rhine River and who is now living, temporarily, in London. We never know why, but it works for us because as she wanders the length of the Lea she sees this poor river through eyes that have known many other rivers.
This book is more meditation on rivers, nature and people than it is a novel. There is no plot, only a few recurring characters who live in the vicinity of the writer's flat (Katz, the green grocer, the Croat, the King and a few more). One could read the 18 or so chapters in any order.
It took some time for me to adjust to the writer and, in the end, I found the book to be more poetry than anything else.
This is what one reviewer wrote:
So much has been packed inside these 350 pages or so that calling River a mere description of flowing bodies of water is very much slighting. It is true that reading it requires some amount of concentration, especially in the beginning when one is only getting accustomed to Kinsky’s style of writing, but its meditative flair is surprisingly addictive to follow. As long as you do not expect plot twists and are willing to go unhurried with the flow, you are in for a literary treat. Reading River is, in a sense, a meditative practice, a welcome exercise in an age of short attention spans. In fact, I don’t think River’s level of observation and focus on the everyday is very far from the actual experience of meditation.
The narrator isw a German woman who grew up along the Rhine River and who is now living, temporarily, in London. We never know why, but it works for us because as she wanders the length of the Lea she sees this poor river through eyes that have known many other rivers.
This book is more meditation on rivers, nature and people than it is a novel. There is no plot, only a few recurring characters who live in the vicinity of the writer's flat (Katz, the green grocer, the Croat, the King and a few more). One could read the 18 or so chapters in any order.
It took some time for me to adjust to the writer and, in the end, I found the book to be more poetry than anything else.
This is what one reviewer wrote:
So much has been packed inside these 350 pages or so that calling River a mere description of flowing bodies of water is very much slighting. It is true that reading it requires some amount of concentration, especially in the beginning when one is only getting accustomed to Kinsky’s style of writing, but its meditative flair is surprisingly addictive to follow. As long as you do not expect plot twists and are willing to go unhurried with the flow, you are in for a literary treat. Reading River is, in a sense, a meditative practice, a welcome exercise in an age of short attention spans. In fact, I don’t think River’s level of observation and focus on the everyday is very far from the actual experience of meditation.
Unsheltered by Barvara Kingsolver, 2018
Willa Knox has always
prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family.
Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with
nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid
bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is
literally falling apart. The magazine where she worked has folded, and
the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated
house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law
and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig,
and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived
with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development.
In
an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her
home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take
an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through
her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian
community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher
Greenwood.
A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest
investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for
telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new
theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships
with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw
him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At home, his new
wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal,
and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house
is structurally unsound.
Brilliantly executed and compulsively listenable, Unsheltered
is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner
of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world
in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told
in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though
the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the
bonds of kindred—whether family or friends—and in the strength of the
human spirit. .
Macbeath by Jo Nesbo, (translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett) 2018.
Joe Nesbo, the writer of Norwegian thrillers, has updated Macbeath for Hogarth Shakespeare, a series in which best-selling novelists turn Shakespeare’s works into contemporary fiction.
From one reviewer:
" Nesbo has spoken of finding himself on familiar terrain here, arguing that “Macbeth” is essentially a “thriller about the struggle for power” that takes place “in a gloomy, stormy crime noir-like setting and in a dark, paranoid human mind.” True enough, yet many features of this 400-year-old tragedy don’t easily fit the demands of a modern, realistic thriller. One of the pleasures of reading this book is watching Nesbo meet the formidable challenge of assimilating elements of the play unsuited to realistic crime fiction, especially the supernatural: the witches, prophecies, visions, and the mysterious figure of Hecate. "
Nesbo's Macbeath is 450 pages in length while Shakespeare's play is one of his shortest. Nesbo uses these pages to delve into the missing back stories of major and minor characters, to paint a very gritty picture of the setting (probably Glasgow in the early 1970's). Drug addition provides plenty of space for witches and other supernaturalia.
It's a dark novel. The reader will remember bits from Macbeath that were read so long ago in highschool. And will most likely welcome Nesbo's filling in the blank spaces.
Only to Sleep, a Philip Marlow NOvel by Philip Osborne, 2018.From the publisher:
In this brilliant new novel, commissioned by the Raymond Chandler estate, the acclaimed author Lawrence Osborne gives us a piercing psychological study of one of literature's most beloved and enduring detectives, told with a contemporary twist. It is an unforgettable addition to the Raymond Chandler canon.
The year is 1989, the Reagan presidency has just come to an end, and detective Philip Marlowe--now in his seventy-seventh year--is on the case again. What country is this for old men? For Marlowe, this is his last roll of the dice, his swan song, and he is back on his home turf. Set between the border and badlands of Mexico and California, Marlowe's final assignment is to investigate the disappearance of Donald Zinn: supposedly drowned off his yacht in Mexico and leaving his much-younger wife a very rich woman. But is Zinn actually alive, and are the pair living off the spoils?
Lawrence Osborne's unforgettable Marlowe investigates.
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, a series by Ransom Riggs
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,2011
Hollow City.The second novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, 2014
Library of Souls. The the third novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, 2015
A Map of Days, the fourth novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, 2018
From Wikipedia:
This young adult book [Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children] was originally intended to be a picture book featuring photographs Riggs had collected, but on the advice of an editor at Quirk Books, he used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative.Riggs was a collector of photographs, but needed more for his novel. He met Leonard Lightfoot, a well-known collector at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, and was introduced to other collectors. The result was a story about a boy who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs, tales, and his grandfather's last words which lead him on an adventure that takes him to a large abandoned orphanage on Cairnholm, a fictional Welsh island.
The series builds through these four novels, following a group of children - - each of whom has special powers.
This from Goodreads review of the third volume, Library of Souls,:
The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.
They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all. Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.
BIOGRAPHY
Becoming by Michelle Obama, 2018
This is the widely praised biography of our former First Lady.NONFICTION
Fly Girls. How five daring women defied all odds by Keith O'Brien, 2018
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.O’Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high‑school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue‑blood family’s expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men — and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.
Like Hidden Figures and Girls of Atomic City, Fly Girls celebrates a little-known slice of history in which tenacious, trail-blazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness.
HISTORY/POLITICAL SCIENCE
Frederick Douglass. Prophet of Freedon by David W. Blight, 2018
The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.This is a fascinating biography of a simply incredible person. David Blight recounts Frederick Douglass' life from slavery in Maryland's Tidelands to become the most famous and influential African American of the 19th Century. Blight describes Douglass' evolution as he understands that nothing short of a civil war will abolish slavery and free his people in the county he loves. I was not so aware of the 'colonists,' which included President Lincoln, who had the idea that the bvest solution was for former slaves to be transported to 'climes more suited to them,' whether it was Mexico or the Caribbean region.
This is a big book at 800 or so pages of text, but it is fascinating to read about the peri Civil War period, the build up to Emancipation and the ultimate disappointment of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
American Dialogue. The Founders and Us by Joseph J. Ellis, 2018
The award-winning author of Founding Brothers and The Quartet now gives us a deeply insightful examination of the relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today.The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Jefferson and the issue of racism, Adams and the specter of economic inequality, Washington and American imperialism, Madison and the doctrine of original intent. Through these juxtapositions--and in his hallmark dramatic and compelling narrative voice--Ellis illuminates the obstacles and pitfalls paralyzing contemporary discussions of these fundamentally important issues.
