The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler

Given bailouts that went to companies that regularly grant huge executive perks, it’s understandable that there’s much talk in America today of reducing government spending, but when actual cuts take place, social services, money spent on infrastructure, and money used to enforce regulations against abusive business practices take the hit, while money to fund foreign wars and corporate [...]

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The Warrior’s Apprentice, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold is a gift to science fiction and fantasy, accessible but intelligent, equally talented at writing characters, imagining alternate worlds, and crafting exciting plots. She’s been rewarded for this skill many times, winning more total Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel than any other writer. We’ve waxed rhapsodic about books like Cordelia’s [...]

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The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons

I have a secret past. In another period of life, I was a huge sports fan, able to spout stats, debate the strengths and weaknesses of different teams and players, manage a fantasy roster to the top of the league, and shout and swear at a television screen with the best of them. I watched [...]

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O’Connor

It’s been nearly 50 years since Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 in 1964, but her short stories are still fresh and powerful, built around a grotesque realism that is hard to shake. This is marvelous stuff, but be forewarned, there’s a chance these stories will haunt your mind a little after you read them. [...]

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The List: Great Historical Mysteries

I am an unabashed fan of crime fiction set in the past. It is fascinating to consider how crimes might have been solved in the days before police departments, forensic scientists, and loads of technology. Often these books hark back to the puzzle side of crime fiction allowing the reader to solve the crime along [...]

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When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News? The short answer, according to Kate Atkinson’s book, may well be “never.”  At least, that’s the way it feels in this novel, so if you’re looking for a fast and easy read with an upbeat ending, this isn’t it.  However, if you want to read a marvelously written story [...]

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Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva

In a discussion at the political website Talking Points Memo, editor Josh Marshall engaged a couple of readers in a comparison of state governments and corruption.  Surprisingly (to me), Rhode Island took some hard knocks in the voting.  If even half of what debut novelist Bruce DeSilva describes in Rogue Island is true, the Ocean [...]

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The Pig Did It, by Joseph Caldwell

One of the great pleasures of my job is picking the books that the library book groups will read for our Fall, Winter, and Summer sessions.  I review dozens of titles for each of those sessions to come up with three titles, and along the way I find books that I’d like to read myself, [...]

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The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch

Great nature writing cannot exist without a human character to give it scope.  Even the authors of nonfiction narratives have to put themselves into their writing to truly capture the scale and effect of the worlds they describe.  For a writer of fiction, the added test is creating a memorable character whose imagined experience serves [...]

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England, England, by Julian Barnes

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden – demi-paradise – This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea…   —Richard II, Act [...]

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Let Me Finish, by Roger Angell

We finish the week with a collection of recollections by New Yorker editor and writer Roger Angell. Not a memoir, moving chronologically through the writer’s life, Angell’s book is episodic, sliding from topic to topic as the mood strikes him. Reading Let Me Finish is similar to listening to the family storyteller relate tales that [...]

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Open Season, by C. J. Box

I do not read too many contemporary crime novels for pleasure. They are often so realistic, and so carefully reflective of our often violent and chaotic world, that they are too disturbing. However, there are a few writers whose work, despite the violence and sadness, is too compelling not to read. One of these writers [...]

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Music of the Spheres, by Elizabeth Redfern

I am always fascinated by crime fiction set in the past. These stories offer the delights of a good mystery and an historical novel in a single package. While I always enjoy series fiction for the chance to revisit beloved characters, there are lots of stand-alone novels in the historical mystery genre that are great [...]

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The Shape of Water, by Andrea Camilleri

Lately, I have been enjoying a number of crime writers who write in languages other than English. We are fortunate to have in the library’s collection a wide range of mysteries in translation, from novelists in Italy, Spain, India, Austria, Russia, Japan, all of Scandinavia, and Brazil among other places. Like any novels originally published [...]

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Maigret at the Gai-Moulin, by Georges Simenon

In the reading world, it can be very easy to get caught up in the promotional machinery that seems to drive bookselling these days. The bestseller list, whether it is from the New York Times or USA Today, becomes the gold standard and the main source we look to for our reading suggestions. While many [...]

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Female Force, by Neal Bailey

In an ideal world, somebody would have already written a comic book in which Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Caroline Kennedy decided to suit up in spandex and fight crime. This has not been done yet. I am waiting. Meanwhile, Neal Bailey has delivered a collective graphic biography that explores the lives of [...]

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Clan Apis, by Jay Hosler

When we first meet Nyuki the honeybee, she is still a sightless, shapeless larva, but soon she will transform into a mature worker. To begin the transmogrification, she must enter a cocoon, which she will build by producing silk from the spinnerets in her mouth and mixing it with her own feces. It’s just amazing [...]

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Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation, by Michael Keller

One hundred and fifty-one years ago, in November of 1859, an Englishman named Charles Darwin published a book that detailed his theories about evolution, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest. It was a groundbreaking work that revolutionized our understanding of life on the planet, but it did not fit tidily into the mainstream [...]

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