What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

This week we have another set of posts from the library’s Circulation Services staff. We start off with Mandy Malone’s look at Haruki Murakami. Ever since I started contributing posts to Blogging for a Good Book I’ve wanted to write about Japanese author Haruki Murakami, but I could never settle on a book to review. [...]

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The List: Men in High Latitudes

The climate is very healthy although inclined to be cold… * In 1910, a British Army officer writes these words to reassure his mother about the place where he will soon be traveling.  Because the officer is Captain Lawrence Oates and the place is Antarctica, this may rank as one of the great understatements of [...]

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The Body Finder, by Kimberly Derting

Violet Ambrose is the body finder. The bodies of dead animals and people call out to her. Sometimes she hears a sound, sometimes she sees an aura, sometimes she notices a smell, but she can always locate the dead. She can even locate their killers. Those who have killed something, or someone, in their lives [...]

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House of Dark Shadows, by Robert Liparulo

Xander King’s family is moving, and he’s not happy about it. Pinedale, the town they will now call home, is in the middle of nowhere, far away from his girlfriend and friends, and the school doesn’t even have a soccer team. He’s even less happy when he sees the house they are moving to. It [...]

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All-of-a-Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor

Among the books that I read and enjoyed as a child, including the Betsy-Tacy books, the Ramona books, and E. B. White’s books, the ones I remember most fondly are Sydney Taylor’s books about an All-of-a-Kind Family. There are five in total, but most are out of print and hard to find. Luckily, WRL has [...]

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The Gollywhopper Games, by Jody Feldman

Yesterday you read about my favorite Battle of the Books title from the older student list, and today I’m highlighting my favorite from the 4th and 5th Grade list: The Gollywhopper Games. The author, Jody Feldman, attributes her inspiration for this story to an encounter with a student looking for a read-alike for Charlie and [...]

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First Light, by Rebecca Stead

Every year when we put together our Battle of the Books lists, I have a favorite. From this year’s 6th-8th Grade list, my favorite is First Light. Its author, Rebecca Stead, won the 2010 Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me. First Light, Stead’s first novel, is as good as, if not better than, her [...]

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The List: Charlotte is the New Jane

Every time it seems the market for Jane Austen-esque sequels, parodies, and pastiches must have been exhausted, up pops another title. Jane fights crime! The Darcys fight crime! Mr. Darcy has a fling with Charles Bingley! Years go by, and still one cannot walk past the new book shelf without encountering “vampyre” Darcy or vampire [...]

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Something About You, by Julie James

Three years ago Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde and FBI Special Agent Jack Pallas worked a big case that fell apart. Jack blamed Cameron, committed a big, career-busting faux pas, and was soon exiled from Chicago. Cameron moved on with her life and tried to forget about the sizzling attraction she felt for Jack. But [...]

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Amanda, by Kay Hooper

Amanda Daulton disappeared with her mother in 1975 and for 20 years her grandfather Jesse has been trying to find her. In 1995, Amanda Grant arrives claiming to be Jesse’s long lost granddaughter. But not all is as it seems. Amanda’s memory is spotty at best and there have already been two impersonators trying to [...]

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What a Demon Wants, by Kathy Love

Ellina Kostova doesn’t quite fit in on either side of her family, human or demon. Crowds and cute boys bring out her dark side and make dating a little hard. To cope she hides away and writes. Jude Anthony is a tired, jaded bodyguard looking for one last job that will give him enough money [...]

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Dreaming of You, by Lisa Kleypas

Dreaming of You is one of the few historical romances that I enjoy revisiting every so often because the characters are unforgettable. It is one of those books that once you pick it up, you can’t put it down. You want to shut off the phone, curl up in your favorite chair, and put a [...]

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The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold is one of those authors I’ve heard about but never got around to reading, mostly because everything great I’ve heard about her has to do with her popular science fiction series following Miles Vorkosigan. Not that I dislike science fiction, I’m a big fan of the film genre.  I just haven’t found [...]

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The List: Great Essayists

There are times when the thought of committing to reading a novel or a work of narrative nonfiction can seem overwhelming. When the distractions of the day do not offer enough concentrated time to get through a longer work, we are fortunate to have a long history of superb essay writing to draw on. The [...]

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Death at the Alma Mater, by G.M. Malliet

This is the third entry in G. M. Malliet’s cozy mystery series featuring Cambridge Detective Chief Inspector Arthur St. Just. Malliet follows the well-worn formula of the English Country House mystery with its closed (often trapped) circle of suspects: Her first St. Just mystery takes place at a family gathering in a snow-bound manor house; [...]

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Deception, by Jonathan Kellerman

Since retired psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis first teamed up in 1985’s When the Bough Breaks, they have featured in 26 novels, Deception being the latest. The foundation for the series’s success is the relationship between the two, cemented by a solid mix of police procedural and psychoanalysis (two of my favorite [...]

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The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

Listen! Yes, you heard me—listen to this book on audio CD, part of Naxos Audiobooks’ Complete Classics Unabridged series. From the description in the informational booklet accompanying the CDs: “A dark and humid night on a London highway…a hand on a shoulder…a ghostly woman asking directions…and the reader is away on a tale of deceit, [...]

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The War Against Miss Winter, by Kathryn Miller Haines

Sitting on the shelf, the book’s jacket art put me in mind of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs mysteries. There the similarities ended, though I enjoyed it all the same. This is the first entry in the Rosie Winters mystery series, set in New York during World War II. Rosie is an out-of-work actress with a [...]

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