Tuesday, December 30, 2014
LIBRARY HOLIDAY CLOSING JANUARY 1, 2015
All branches of the Memphis Public Library will be closed on New Years Day (Thursday), January 1, 2015.
Please visit www.memphislibrary.org for holds, renewals and to download materials.
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 29, 2014
[Book Review] Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
"What's Your Flavor" is a series of reader's advisory sessions where library staff learn the distinctive qualities of fiction and non-fiction genres. After each session they are tasked with selecting a book to read and review.
Reader’s Advisory: Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Review
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Young Adult
Linda Wong, Bartlett Public Library
Reader’s Advisory: Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Review
Linda reviews STEELHEART by Brandon Sanderson (Delacorte Press, 2013)
It’s been ten years since Calamity, a meteor event that caused normal people to develop superhuman abilities. It’s been ten years since David watched Steelheart kill his father with his own gun. Now 18 years old, David is ready to seek his revenge on Steelheart and wants to join a group of rebels called the Reckoners.
David has amassed a wealth of knowledge about the Epics over the years and filled several notebooks with what he’s learned. He knows their names, their abilities, and how they can be defeated. He’s ranked them according to their invincibility, calling those with no known weakness High Epics. Steelheart is thought to be a High Epic, but David has seen him bleed before and is determined to see him bleed again.
The characters are fun - smart and quirky – and the witty dialogue moves the plot easily and quickly. The world building is great. I would call it a dystopian/comic book mash-up, with lots of action and a nail-biting ending that will leave you wanting the next one to see what happens to these great characters.
Labels: Fantasy, Readers' Advisory Annotations, Reviews by Linda Wong, Science Fiction, Staff book reviews, Young Adult
Monday, December 22, 2014
[Book Review] The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh
Andrea reviews THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau, 2014 )
This is a most grisly tale set in the backwoods of the Ozark Mountains. Even though 17-year-old Lucy Dane has grown up in the tiny town of Henbane, Missouri, members of the small town still treat her as an outsider.
When Lucy was just an infant, her young mother, Lila, disappeared without a trace, leaving her father, Carl, to raise her. Now a generation later, Lucy’s friend, Cheri, has vanished--just as Lila did. Townspeople have their suspicions, but why are they pointing fingers at Carl and his brother, Crete? Especially frustrated since there were no answers about Lila’s disappearance, Lucy incorporates her two friends, Daniel and Bess, to help her to solve Cheri’s murder.
Alternating mainly between Lucy and Lila’s voices, Ms. McHugh’s debut novel is one of foreboding and fright. Everyone is suspect in both crimes when really the answer is almost obvious.
If readers are looking for a thriller that will make their hair stand up on end, I definitely recommend The Weight of Blood.
Andrea, Poplar-White Station Library
Labels: Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Reviews by Andrea King, Staff book reviews
Friday, December 19, 2014
UPCOMING HOLIDAY CLOSINGS DECEMBER 24-25, 2014 AND JANUARY 1, 2015
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| Click for all library Holidays and Closings |
All Memphis Public Library locations will be closed on the following days:
Christmas Eve: Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Christmas Day: Thursday, December 25, 2014
2015 New Year's Day: Thursday, January 1, 2015
Don't forget to visit www.memphislibrary.org to reserve and renew books.
The Library’s website also offers several resources customers can use anytime—24 hours a day—seven days a week. E-books and downloadable audio books, magazines, and music can be checked-out for free; online databases contain searchable newspaper and magazine articles, reference books and more; and blogs and newsletters on everything from fiction bestsellers to travel can be read on the web.
Labels: News and Notes
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
[News and Notes] December 17, 2014
It's that time of the year when the end of year best-of book lists pop up on the web. I've compiled a few below. 100 Notable Books of 2014 -New York Times
2014 National Book Award Winners (Redeployment by Phil Klay won the National Book Award in Fiction)
The Best Books I Read in 2014 from Bill Gates
LibraryReads Favorite of Favorites 2014
Publisher's Weekly's Best Books of 2014
Riot Round-Up: The Best Books of 2014
Ever heard of NPR's Book Concierge? This website and app allows users to browse and discover titles recommended by National Public Radio's critics and staff.
For those who prefer recommendations from fellow readers instead of critics should look at the winners from 2014 Goodreads Choice Awards.
Labels: News and Notes
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
[Book Review] Six Months Off by Lamar Alexander
Marilyn reviews SIX MONTHS OFF: AN AMERICAN FAMILY’S AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE by Lamar Alexander (Morrow, 1988)
How does a father and former governor of Tennessee reconnect with his family, who had been living in a governor's mansion which occasionally has tourists roaming through it? The solution: take time off.
While he was governor of Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, father of four children, had drifted away from his family’s lives. Now, with the end of his second term in sight, he noticed at the dinner table that three of his children had their chairs slightly turned toward their mother. From this setting begins Alexander’s idea of taking six months off, chronicled in his book, Six Months off: An American Family’s Australian Adventure.
"It just came up one night at supper. I remember that the sun was still hot through the big windows, even though it was six o’clock so it must have been midsummer, and it must have been 1985.
We were sitting at our places around the breakfast-room in the Mansion. I was at the head. Honey commanded the other end, guarding the only exit to the television set. The children sat two on each side..."
The family conversation turned from the children not eating their food to getting away for six months in a foreign country; one of several countries named was Australia.
The idea intrigued Lamar and his wife, Honey. Both agreed they needed a rest and started making plans. They found out that other families were thinking of doing the same thing. Lamar and Honey also wanted to take time away to transition from a governor’s family to a normal family.
According to Alexander, the landscape of Australia is a contrast of breathtaking wildernesses to modern coastal cities. With most of the population living near the seacoast, he reveals that some Australians rarely visit the interior of their country. But the book is more than a tour of Australia; it’s about a family getting to know one another, a father involving himself in his children’s lives, and Lamar Alexander’s observations of the similarities and differences between Australians and Americans.
Six Months Off is a humorous book that had this reviewer chuckling throughout the pages.
Labels: Memoir, Nonfiction, Reviews by Marilyn Umfress, Staff book reviews, Travel Writing
Monday, December 08, 2014
[Book Review] Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
Fiction/Thriller
Raka reviews SACRED GAMES by Vikram Chandra (Penguin, Viking, 2007)
At the heart of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games is a crime thriller, but ultimately this is a book that is so much more. The novel is set in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) and revolves around the central plot of a middle-aged Sikh police inspector, Sartraj Singh, who seeks to capture the illusive mob boss, Ganesh Gaitonde. Although this story frames the novel, Chandra weaves in a multitude of other subplots and uses flashbacks to illuminate the lives of a number of secondary characters. Coming in at 900 plus pages, Chandra creates a sprawling and tumultuous tale, reflecting the chaos of modern India itself.
Nominated for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, Chandra’s creation has been called Dickensian in its scope, “linguistically challenging,” a social novel, a noir novel, and a developing world thriller. In one sense, it is a book about Indians for Indians. Chandra takes for granted that the reader has knowledge of India’s past and present, and drops one down into a sea of Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu words. But not to fear, he also provides a handy glossary, which readers can turn to for further clarification. For me, the glossary adds to the fun of this book, because as an Indian, I found myself intrigued by the range of idiomatic expressions and obscenities with which Chandra peppers the novel. It is the stuff of every naughty schoolboy (or girl) and gave me a chance to acquaint (and reacquaint) myself with a range of colorful slang expressions.
Chandra’s love of India, and especially Mumbai, is evident in this book. His descriptions of slums, police stations, the rich, and the poor, provide a vivid picture of a metropolis that the British aptly named “the gateway to India.” Chandra is also well versed in Indian history and the social, economic, and political issues that have framed this nation historically and in the present day. One of the most poignant back stories of the novel and one that may stick with me long after Sartraj Singh and Gaitonde fade away, is his development of the character of Singh’s mother. Chandra’s sensitive rendition of her experience of the Indian Partition is one that pulls on the heartstrings of anyone who has suffered loss at the hands of prejudice, hatred, and the inevitable cruelty of historical change.
Sacred Games scope and playfulness lends itself to comparisons to James Joyce’s Ulysses, but that novel’s iconic use of language is a somewhat awkward fit with the approachability (and sometimes delightful trashiness) of Chandra’s plot and prose. Instead, I look to popular music to provide a better comparison. Legendary double albums, like The White Album, Exile on Main Street, Songs in the Key of Life, Sign of the Times, or the multi-disc 69 Love Songs, provide a better guide to the achievement of Sacred Games. Those albums were overly ambitious attempts to create music milestones and the artists throw in everything but the kitchen sink in the quest for greatness. In the end, the albums may not have the artists’ greatest hits, and include several failed experiments (“Revolution 9” comes to mind), but the sheer hubris of the journey and the variety of musical experiences make these works perhaps the most admirable in their creators’ enviable catalogues. Chandra’s novel strikes me as the same; an enormous undertaking that goes down several dangerous rabbit holes but leaves one gasping for breath at the end.
Labels: Fiction, Reviews by Raka Nandi, Staff book reviews, Suspense, Thriller
Monday, December 01, 2014
[Book Review] Fierce Patriot by Robert L. O'Connell
Philip reviews Fierce Patriot: the Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O'Connell (Random House, 2014)
Robert L. O'Connell offers a very readable biography of an important figure in American history, William Tecumseh Sherman. Without Sherman's contributions as a military leader and strategist during the Civil War, the United States could have lost the War. As General of the Army, after the War, he oversaw the suppression of the remaining Native American tribes, west of the Mississippi, to ensure the completion of the Trans-Continental and other railroads. With the railroads, Sherman knew the rest of the future United States would be settled by Americans thirsty for new lands.
O'Connell does a superb job of chronicling the life of a complicated and controversial man. Most of the book is devoted to Sherman's role in the Civil War, but O'Connell offers a detailed account of Sherman's complex relationship with his foster father, the politically powerful Thomas Ewing, and with his foster Ewing siblings, including Ellen, who he took as his wife, and with his brother by blood, John Sherman.
It is a well-written, fascinating book, one hard to put down. It is a good introduction to the life of Sherman for anyone not familiar with him. But also one the student of Civil War history would find valuable.
One criticism of the book those readers already familiar with Sherman could have is that O'Connell is too sympathetic to Sherman. Sherman was ruthless and cruel in many ways, and some readers may find O'Connell too forgiving of the man whose policies had tragic consequences for Native Americans and for the millions of bison he ordered slaughtered to eliminate them as a food source for Native Americans.
Philip Williams, Cordova
Labels: American History, History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Philip Williams, Staff book reviews
