- March 26, 2021
George Saunders has been teaching a graduate level course about short stories in Russian literature at Syracuse for twenty years and his new book encapsulates this course. He includes seven stories by four writers (Chekov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol) and then goes into a discussion and afterthought to help us process them and become better ...
Read more… - March 19, 2021
Addie LaRue is stuck in a loop. For the pandemic reader, Addie’s loop is a delicious escape from our own daily repetitions. She isn’t tied to her cell phone, the indoors, a demanding family, or a mind-numbing work-from-home job. Addie isn’t tied to anything at all—at least, no thing we would consider real. She has ...
Read more… - March 12, 2021
This is a book that was on almost every “Top Ten” list for last year, and won the 2020 Booker Prize. I loved it, but I have hesitated to review the book because it is sad, gritty, and difficult. Reading a long book that recounts the many horrors of a poor family splintered by alcoholism ...
Read more… - February 26, 2021
In Susan Conley’s latest novel, Landslide, we meet Jill, wife of a fisherman and mother of two teenage boys (or wolves, as Jill refers to them). After a fishing accident leaves her husband injured and hospitalized in Canada, Jill must go it alone with her sons in their small fishing village in Maine. It’s no ...
Read more… - February 19, 2021
Beavers (Superpower Field Guide) by Rachel Poliquin is a book that offers an inside look at what makes the ordinary beaver EXTRA-ordinary! Did you know that beavers have unstoppable teeth, paws of power, and a turbocharged superstink? I didn’t know that either until I read this first book in this four-book (so far) series. Rachel ...
Read more… - February 12, 2021
Alternative Lives is the first short story collection by Bath-native Roger D. Skillings. In it, the author reflects on the homes, families, and acquaintances of a fictionalized youth in Long Reach, Maine. The characters, boys and men, are coming of age in the mid-20th century, in a world their elders don’t recognize. They are curious, ...
Read more… - February 5, 2021
This collection of short stories by young adult author Holly Black wasn’t short on anything I look for in her novels. It was gripping, magical, dark, and utterly lovely. Each character draws you in with their unique voice and story, making it hard and exciting to move on from each tale. The tone of each ...
Read more… - January 22, 2021
It’s the summer of 1945, and 18-year-old Zofia has been released from the hospital where she convalesced after liberation from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. She is determined to reunite with her younger brother Abek, the only other family member who went “right” with her in the lines at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she is hindered by mental ...
Read more… - January 15, 2021
I recently read Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares and fell in love with it! It’s co-authored by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.
Netflix has been pumping out new series to watch, and Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares is one of their recent releases. I hadn’t watched it yet, but I spotted the book on ...
Read more… - January 8, 2021
I watched this movie as part of our preparations for the Library’s upcoming “Armchair Traveler” Series, which starts later this month. It is available through Kanopy, the Library’s free video- streaming service.
This award-winning film — by a Zambian-born, Welsh-raised director named Rungano Nyoni — is set in present day Zambia. The movie opens as a ...
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