Reported by Laura
Nevermore
was a fun time this week with a wide variety of books !
The first book reviewed was The
Twilight Man by Koren Shadmi. This graphic novel is a biography of Rod
Serling, who is probably most remembered for The Twilight Zone and Night
Gallery series. The reviewer found it to be a wonderful and very informative
book. I will definitely be adding it to my
reading list!
Our next book was also a nonfiction
offering, Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist
Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World by
Michael Meyerson. The subtitle pretty much explains it all. The reviewer
enjoyed the book and shared one of the quotes from James Madison, “If people
were angels, we wouldn’t need this constitution.”
The Invisible Code by
Christopher Fowler was a very good, funny detective story. It covers the
exploits of two very different detectives working for the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
One is very logical, while the other uses supernatural ideas to solve crimes. This
particular case leads them into the world of madness, codes, and the secret of
London’s strangest relic.
The Library at the Edge of the
World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy is the first in the Finfarran Series. After a
nasty divorce, Hanna Casey finds herself back where she started, living with
her overbearing mother and licking her wounds. She restores a cottage left to
her by her great aunt and takes a job as the local librarian. All goes
relatively well until the threat of library closure jeopardizes her livelihood
and she finds herself leading the community in a fight to save it. Our reviewer
reported that the book was very good and she enjoyed it.
Our next reviewer found The Road From
Coorain by Julie Ker Conway to be a beautifully written book about
Australia. This memoir tells of Ms. Conway’s beginnings growing up in the
outback on a sheepherder’s ranch, the drowning death of her beloved father, the
subsequent withdrawal of her mother into depression, and the resulting move to
suburban Sydney. In later life, she becomes the first female president of Smith
College, as well as a feminist and famous writer (this is her first memoir).
The next offering was a YA novel, Hideous
Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein. It was written like a
journal by Mary Shelley and feels like a biography that details what life was
like before and after the publication of Frankenstein. The reviewer was
impressed with the extensive research that went into this novel.
Lord of the Mountain is a
juvenile book that feels more like a YA rendering. It is an especially relevant
book for our area as it follows a young man who lives in Bristol, TN and is endeavoring
to disobey his father by attending the Bristol Sessions. The reviewer had not
finished the book, but was enjoying it immensely thus far.
Poetry was up next. Originally having
read Elizabeth Barrett Browning and being left cold, the reviewer decided to
try Robert Browning. He read some, but not all of the book, and still found it
lacked something. Some of the poems seemed tacky and he found a lot of the
poetry to include double entendres. He felt the Italy poem read almost like a
tour guide.
In Contraband by Stuart Woods,
Stone Barrington is enjoying some time off while cruising Key West on a yacht
with his friend, the police commissioner. While they are enjoying the view, a
plane crashes into the water. Thrown into investigating a smuggling operation;
the evidence keeps disappearing. Metal cases contained in the plane disappear
and then the plane itself. This was considered a good, easy read.
People of the Book by
Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, was a lovely novel and comes
highly recommended. Based on a true story, it tells of Hannah, an Australian
rare-book expert, who is hired to restore the famed Sarajevo Haggadah. As she
works, she finds tiny artifacts in the bindings of the book and uses those to
unlock the mystery of the book’s owners throughout history.
Also by Geraldine Brooks, The
Secret Chord was reviewed this week. This book covers the history of the
Biblical story of David and Goliath. The author found it to be a lot about who
killed whom, and although it was well-written, she didn’t enjoy it.
Dumpty is a small book filled
with political cartoons and satirical verse about President Trump and others in
his administration. It is written by the actor, John Lithgow. Our reviewer
found it highly amusing.
