Wetumpka Library Blog

Authors you might not know…yet. March 19, 2009

Occassionally I try a new author based on a review I read or by recommendation from a reader.  Since you cannot tell about a book just from its title on our new book list, I will from time to time post reviews about them on this blog. 

If any of you have read a book lately that you enjoyed, feel free to send me a comment about it to add to this blog. It doesn’t have to be from the library, but if it is not be sure to mention that in your review.

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood: From Bookmarks Magazine
Ann Hood lost her own young daughter to a rare form of strep, and in this semiautobiographical novel, she reveals the searing pain, the upheaval, and the loss of self that accompany such a heartbreaking event. Critics applauded Hood’s intense, unbearably sincere portrayal of grief. However, some felt that the cast of characters was so large and unwieldy that many were caricatures serving merely as vehicles for different steps in the healing process. Those who appreciate the comforting click of knitting needles will find kindred spirits in The Knitting Circle, but it’s not necessary to know the difference between casting on and casting off to enjoy this poignant novel.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar: From the Back Cover
“Millar writes like Kurt Vonnegut might have written, if he’d been born fifty years later in a different country and hung around with entirely the wrong sort of people… The Good Fairies of New York is a story that starts when Morag and Heather, two eighteen-inch fairies (that’s 45 centimeters tall to you) with swords and green kilts and badly-dyed hair fly through the window of the worst violinist in New York, an overweight and antisocial type named Dinnie, and vomit on his carpet…It has a war in it, and a most unusual production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Johnny Thunders’ New York Dolls guitar solos. What more could anyone desire from a book?… Read it now, and then make your friends buy their own copies. You’ll thank me one day.”–Neil Gaiman, from the introduction

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork (YA novel): Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear–part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify–and he’s always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm’s mailroom in order to experience “the real world.” There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm. He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it’s a picture he finds in a file — a picture of a girl with half a face — that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight. Reminiscent of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary novel is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside.

If you’d like to go on reserve for any of these books email me at wetumlib@bellsouth.net.