Robert Harris’s new novel Conclave is NOT about vampires as one of my colleagues guessed from the title, but instead is an unputdownable thriller set in a Vatican conclave sometime in the not-so-distant future. The Pope has died and the 117 Cardinals of the Catholic Church have gathered to elect, from amongst themselves, a new…
I was excited to get a copy of Roxane Gay's most recent collection of short stories the day it came out, but instead of sitting and devouring it immediately, I found myself dipping in and out of it over the past three weeks. The woman who is followed around by water, seeping into her home, work and life. Two…
Much like the end of a year will bring about multiples lists of the best books that were released that year, the beginning of a year generally has its fair share of lists that those in the book world are looking forward to reading. Of course we peruse those lists, not only for the library,…
In a small medieval village on the edge of a Russian forest, the family of Pyotr Vladimirovich waits out the brutal winter. The children crowd around the massive oven, listening to their old nurse tell wonderful stories of Morozko, the Russian Jack Frost. (Little do they know that Morozko is real.) Shortly afterward, their mother…
Eowyn Ivey When I read Eowyn Ivey’s debut novel, The Snow Child, I was struck by how deftly the author weaved Alaskan frontier life of the 1920s with a Russian fairytale. In this lovely story, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the homesteaders long for a child. After a snowfall, they make a…
Welcome to a new year and new series on our ShelfLife blog called Digital Discoveries. Here we’ll talk about what we’ve found on the web and through the library’s digital resources that we’ve enjoyed hearing, reading and watching. Real Simple Magazine I have been a fan of this magazine for several years and find their…
In Emma Donoghue's latest work of genius, we meet Lib Wright, a proper young British nurse trained by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, who has been hired to simply observe Anna O’Donnell, a sweet, young Irish girl who claims not to have eaten food nor consumed liquids for more than four months. Her family and…
Yesterday I looked back at our favorite fiction of 2016.Today I visit our favorite nonfiction. I broke the list down by Dewey Decimal categories, with links to the catalog and the names of the staffers who recommended them. We somehow covered all of the Dewey Decimal categories, although some areas clearly were favored more by…
Now that 2017 is almost here, it’s time to look back at our favorite books of 2016. We read a lot of great books this year, and shared our favorites in our annual fiction and nonfiction booklets, which you can get at the library. But for those of you who can’t make it in, I’ve…
A few years ago, I stopped making most New Year’s Resolutions since I really wasn’t good about keeping them and inevitably they morphed into just another source of guilt I carried around for the next 11.5 months. However, there is one exception which I do enjoy and I don't call it a resolution but a…
