Thinking about starting a series? Some people love to read series fiction because they can become deeply involved in the characters' lives in a way that isn't possible with a single novel. A series can be 2 books, 20, or more!  We invite you to join the Winter Reading Club and start a series. No need to commit, just try one! 

Earn video coupons and other prizes for every 5 books you read. Be one of the first to join and receive a 2013 pocket planner.

Suggested reading lists will be available online and in Reader Services.  Stop by the 3rd floor starting December 1st.

This book is more than a memoir of a 108 year old Holocaust survivor.  Alice Herz-Sommer is a world-class concert pianist who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp with her only child, her son Rafi.  Her endurance of unspeakable horrors, including the death of her husband, Leopold Sommer, in Dachau in 1944,  was made possible by her love of music and her refusal to be defined by horror and injustice.  Her story is movingly told by a fellow musician and documentarian, Caroline Stoessinger.  Alice's story was revealed to Caroline through years of interviews and by allowing Alice to reflect on events she witnessed over the span of more than 100 years.  Alice talks eloquently about the beauty and strength of sharing music. Alice grew up in Prague and personally knew Kafka, Freud and Mahler. There is no bitterness in her memories of the cruelties of the Holocaust or her struggles to survive afterwards.  Alice celebrates life and teaches others to celebrate each moment with her as she plays the world's greatest compositions or helps other perfect their playing.  Alice lived a rich life, she knew and played piano for Golda Meir. In fact, Golda peeled potatoes with Alice in Alice's apartment in Israel.  In this book, Alice shares some unusual secrets of her longevity: starting 25 years ago, she began eating the same meals each day.  This helped her save time, because her shopping list never varied.  For lunch and dinner she would eat a bowl of homemade chicken soup.  Her recipe is included in the book. 

Are you Missing Winter?

I’m not! But I did enjoy the chilly but powerful tale, The Snow Child, by Alaskan author Eowyn Ivey.   Married couple Mabel and Jack flee their comfortable Pennsylvania lives for harsh wilderness of 1920’s Alaska in an attempt to escape their enduring sorrow over their inability to have children. One night, feeling unusually lighthearted, the two fashion a girl from snow outside their cabin. The next morning, the sculpture is reduced to a lump; the scarf and mittens are nowhere to be found. But over the next several days, both Jack and Mabel spot a small, blonde girl at the edge of the woods near their home, on her own in the harsh environment. They see footprints in the snow. No one seems to know of a child in the area. No one seems to believe in a child in the area. But eventually Jack and Mabel forge a relationship with this almost feral and quite possibly otherworldly girl, named Faina.  Mabel is reminded of a Russian fairy tale about a snow maiden in which the snow child comes in the winter and disappears every spring.  Is Faina real or imagined? Can Jack and Mabel survive the extreme conditions of their homestead?  The Snow Child meshes reality and fairly tale into a moving and evocative novel.    ---- Lori Siegel, Reader Services

Notable fiction books this year include The Paris Wife - Paula McLain's take on Hemingway's first marriage - and the baseball story The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, along with Julian Barnes's Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending and popular favorites such as The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon and Pictures of the Past by local author Deby Eisenberg. See the full list of Best Fiction of 2011.

Stephen King topped the Best Thrillers of 2011 list with 11/22/63, a gripping tale of a time traveler out to stop the assassination of JFK. S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep and Alice LaPlante's Turn of Mind both featured protagonists grappling with memory loss while under duress.

Newly translated Danish authors join the Scandinavian crime wave on the Best Mysteries of 2011 list - Jussi Adler-Olsen with The Keeper of Lost Causes and Lene Kaarberbol & Agnete Friis with The Boy in the Suitcase. Old hand Lawrence Block delivers an early tale from his popular Matthew Scudder series, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, while Felix Francis continues in his father Dick Francis's footsteps with Gamble.

A Dance with Dragons, the latest entry in George R.R. Martin's series that began with A Game of Thrones, is among the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2011. Fans of space opera will enjoy Leviathan Wakes by James Corey, while urban fantasy lovers have much to choose from including Hounded by Kevin Hearne, Hard Bitten by Chloe Neill, and Ghost Story from the ever-popular Jim Butcher.

Romance readers will find a wide variety of love stories on the Best Romances of 2011 list. Contemporary fare ranges from down-home tales such as Lori Wilde's The Welcome Home Garden Club to fast-paced romantic suspense like Cindy Gerard's With No Remorse. Along with numerous Regency romances, historical fans will find In Bed with a Highlander by Maya Banks and Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas.

Earlier this month, the National Book Award winners were announced, and similar to last year, criticism was renewed that the Awards are out-of-touch. The argument began when the finalists were announced, and much to the chagrin of critics and readers, very few of the books had recognizable titles – specifically there was a glaring omission of The Marriage Plot  by Jeffrey Eugenides, similar to the missing presence of Jonathan Franzen on last year’s short-list. The argument is that National Book Award winners are so obscure that the Award is no longer relevant to the reading public – however it could also be argued that by picking little known authors and works, the award actually rewards authors who may not get recognition otherwise. Whether you like the results or not, you can view all of the winners on their website and you can also view a list of the winners that are available for check-out in our catalog.

-Leah W.

You know it’s truly Fall when the National Book Award finalists are announced! This year, there are some really great books nominated. You can view the whole list on their website but check out a few of the finalists that are available at the Northbrook Public Library.

 
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht - In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka - Julie Otsuka’s long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. The Buddha in the Attic traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman - Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one classic selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.

--- Leah W.

Bees are big business. Without bees, you can say goodbye to our plentiful supply of almonds, cherries, and other blooming fruits. But being a beekeeper is heroic and tragic work. Bees, now a completely domesticated species, are prey to viruses and fungi and the mysterious devastation of Colony Collapse Disorder.  Some are calling bees the environmental canary in the coal mine.  Filled with surprising insights into the life cycle of the honey bee, The Beekeeper’s Lament follows a third generation beekeeper through a year of herculean and loving labor to keep his hives alive.

Every couple of months, I join my counterparts from various suburban libraries for a “roundtable” discussion of books and reading.  We all read on a theme, and this past month it was “Fiction Featuring Real People.”  While some novels are fictionalized accounts of a person’s life, others use history as a setting for an original story. We noted that we frequently turn to print or online historical sources to verify how much liberty the author took with what “really” happened. Most of us agreed that although we are willing to forgive literary license in the name of storytelling, accuracy is still important. We dislike obvious anachronisms or blatantly wrong facts that might have been avoided with a little research.  Here is a sampling of the books that we discussed:

The 19^th Wife by David Ebershoff: The history of polygamy in the Mormon Church intertwines with the story of Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife of Brigham Young,

Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland: The story of Clara, the woman behind many of Tiffany’s lamp designs.

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks:  Brooks’ latest work of historical fiction is based on the life of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard.

The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir: Weir paints a portrait of the life of Elizabeth I before she became queen.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin: Mid-nineteenth-century little person Mercy Levinia Warren Bump comes of age in the antebellum south before being invited to join the P. T. Barnum circus.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain: The author recreates Hadley Hemingway’s tumultuous relationship with husband Ernest in 1920s Paris.

 -- Lori S., Reader Services

The summer reading logs are pouring in, as are reviews from our patrons and staff.  Here are a few:

Actress and author Fannie Flagg is a popular favorite for those who love Southern fiction filled with colorful characters. Remember Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café?  Flagg’s latest, I Still Dream About You, follows Maggie Fortenberry, an aging former Miss Alabama, now real-estate agent, who always tries to appear happy, but is buckling under the weight of disappointments.  In fact, she's come up with 16 "perfectly good reasons to jump in the river" and only two reasons not to. Of course, there is hope to be found even in Maggie's darkest hours. Patron Michele B. loved how the author combined humor with sadness.

Veteran writer Frederick Forsyth’s latest political thriller, The Cobra is full of intrigue and suspense.  Cobra is a master spy and ex-CIA agent called out of retirement by the President to combat the world cocaine trade. Having unlimited funds and use of the military, Cobra and his accomplices engage in a tense battle with a nasty drug cartel.  Patron Sandra B. thought it was a great mystery and found it hard to put down.

In addition to a fantastic staff, the Northbrook Public Library is lucky to have a fleet of devoted volunteers who give their time to help with various tasks.  One such volunteer in the Reader Services Department is Marilyn T., a former library employee and avid reader.  Marilyn recommends The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai.  The main character, Lucy Hull is a children’s librarian who helps her favorite patron, a book-loving ten-year-old, run away from overbearing parents who force him to attend anti-gay classes with a celebrity pastor.  As Lucy flees with the boy, she discovers that they are being pursued by an anonymous adversary. Marilyn comments that The Borrower is “a very special book; anyone who loves books and loves libraries will find this book wonderful.”

Thanks to our patrons and staff for reviews, keep ‘em coming!

Lori Siegel, Reader Services