Memphis Reads

The Memphis Public Library & Information Center sponsors book clubs at many branches and at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Here's a list of the titles that will be discussed in September. For a book club's contact information, click the link for that branch or call (901) 415-2700.

Book Lover's Book Club

East Shelby Branch Library
Tuesday, September 16, 1:30 p.m.
Book selection: Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish by Mark Levin

Central Readers' Club

Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library
Monday, September 15, 7:00 p.m.
Book selection: Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz

Cordova Book Club

Cordova Branch Library
Tuesday, September 16, 12:00 p.m.
Book selection: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

North Renaissance Men's Book Club

North Branch Library
Saturday, September 20, 2:00 p.m.
Book selection: Deliver Me From Evil by Mary Monroe

This meeting will feature a conference call with author Mary Monroe.

Learn more about the Renaissance Men's Book Club

North Women's Book Club

North Branch Library
Saturday, September 27, 2:00 p.m.
Book selection: Sula by Toni Morrison

Parkway Village Book Club

Parkway Village Branch Library
Wednesday, September 17, 2:00 p.m.
Book selection: Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton

Raleigh Book Club

Raleigh Branch Library
Saturday, September 13, 2:00 p.m.
Book selection: A Piece of Cake: A Memoir by Cupcake Brown

Second Saturday Book Club

Highland Branch Library
Saturday, September 13, 1:30 p.m.
Book selection: Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Learn more about this book club

From the Sacramento Bee:

"Mystery writers Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller have lived and worked [together] for 17 years – without mayhem.

'Without apparent mayhem,' Pronzini amended with a laugh.

The husband and wife are two of the most recognizable names in crime fiction – he with his Nameless Detective series, she with her Sharon McCone thrillers. Both were named Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America, she in 2005, he in 2007....

The 'Mulzinis,' as they are jokingly called by their friends, married in 1992 after meeting at a gathering of the Northern California Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, when Pronzini was vice president." [via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind]

Read full article

Check our catalog for Marcia Muller

Official Website

Check our catalog for Bill Pronzini

Bibliography (includes awards and author's recommendations)

Labels: Author Profiles

Fiction

Philip Williams reviews GONE FISHIN': An Easy Rawlins Novel by Walter Mosley (Black Classic Press, 1997)

19-year-old Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins agrees to drive his friend, Raymond Alexander, better known as "Mouse," to Pariah, Texas. Mouse is seeking money from his stepfather so that he can marry his fiancée EttaMae. Along the way, Easy and Mouse pick up two teenagers, Clifton and Ernestine, who are running away from the law. The swamp witch, Momma Jo, and her hunchbacked son Domaque, also play important parts in the story.

Basically a coming-of-age story about Easy and Mouse, Gone Fishin' is not a mystery per se. Still it contains much that will interest readers, regardless of whether they are Easy Rawlins fans. Learning how Reese Corn, Mouse's cruel stepfather, influenced Mouse and his often violent behavior, forces Easy to confront his own past and his own father, who deserted his family with Easy was still a child. The journey (which includes violence, voodoo and murder) teaches Easy much about life and influences the rest of his life.


Philip Williams, Cordova Branch Library

Labels: Reviews by Philip Williams

Fiction/Suspense

Beth reviews GUILTY by Karen Robards (Putnam, 2008).

Can you ever truly escape your past? I’m not talking little white lies and a skipped afternoon of school--I’m talking something serious. Something that weighs on your mind...for Katrina Kominski it happened the summer when she was 15. After being placed in foster care, Kate decided to skip curfew and go out with friends. That decision would come back to haunt her and her son years later.

Kate White, Philadelphia’s Assistant District Attorney, starts her day off wrong by leaving the ringer on her cell phone turned on and it rings during a trial. But that turns out to be the easy part of her day--the defendant takes out a gun and kills the judge. Kate is taken hostage but escapes. All attention focuses on her as Kate explains that she managed to kill her kidnapper. But soon after, her troubled past catches up with her...she is followed, carjacked, kidnapped and threatened. Can she trust Detective Tom Braga, the investigating officer, enough to tell him the truth? Will he believe her?

This suspenseful book will have you wondering how Kate is going to pull this off. Can she manage? Will she and Tom become a couple or will she run? Enjoy another great Karen Robards novel!


Beth, Highland Branch Library

Labels: Reviews by Beth, Suspense

I was curious to find out what books the library had about Morgan Freeman, who captured national news headlines recently after he and a friend were injured in a car accident in North Mississippi. (Fortunately, Freeman is recuperating in a Memphis hospital; his friend has already been released from the hospital).

In addition to two biographies, I came across Morgan Freeman and Friends: Caribbean Cooking for a Cause, a cookbook that the actor organized to raise money for victims of 2004's Hurricane Ivan. Tom Hanks, Alfre Woodward, Katie Couric and Tim Robbins are among the contributors. Check it out.

Doris, Raleigh Branch Library

"BOOK TALK" is an informal, radio interview show featuring authors discussing their work. The show is produced at the studios of WYPL and can be heard Saturdays at 6 p.m. on FM 89.3.

The public is invited to attend live tapings. All interviews last approximately 30 minutes.

E. Lynn Harris
Wednesday, August 6, 2:00 p.m.

Lesley Kagen
Friday, August 8, 2:00 p.m.

Virginia Boyd
Monday, August 11, 4:00 p.m.

J.M. Kearns
Wednesday, August 20, 3:00 p.m.

Charles Martin
Monday, August 25, 3:30 p.m.


"Book Talk" is taped in the WYPL radio studios, located in the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar Ave., Memphis, TN 38111. For more information, please call (901) 415-2752.

Labels: Book Talk, WYPL

Fiction/Young Adult

Andrea Bledsoe reviews FREAKS: ALIVE, ON THE INSIDE by Annette Curtis Klause (Simon and Schuster, 2006)

Although this book is shelved in Young Adult fiction, older readers may like it. I enjoyed the story of Abel Dandy and his pal, Apollo. Abel's parents perform in the circus. His father is legless and his mother is armless. It's 1899 and such people were considered “freaks” by most people. But, because Abel grew up in the circus, people with such abnormalities did not faze him. The Dandys travel from city to city by train with other members of the sideshow, and over the years the group has become like family. Abel loves and respects his extended family but feels he needs to branch out and explore the world beyond the circus.

Ironically, Abel runs away but ends up on a train housing another traveling circus. Dr. Mink, owner of Mink’s Marvels, is a cruel and abusive boss and circus owner. The months away from his family are hard on 17 year-old Abel but teach him plenty of life lessons.

I originally chose this book to present to a meeting of teen services librarians. If I had children of my own, I would be a little reluctant for them to read this particular title. It is very sexually graphic and violent in some parts. But, on the flip side, the author emphasizes to all her readers that even though we all have differences, we all are alive and human on the inside!

Labels: Reviews by Andrea King, Young Adult

From CNN.com:

"MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author whose books chronicled the horrors of dictator Josef Stalin's slave labor camps, has died of heart failure, his son said Monday. He was 89.

Stepan Solzhenitsyn told The Associated Press his father died late Sunday in Moscow, but declined further comment.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet gulag, Solzhenitsyn's novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder" that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe.

But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person -- Solzhenitsyn himself -- survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice."

Read Full Article

Check the Library Catalog for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Labels: Author Obits

Doris, Raleigh Branch Library