Staff Recommendations
Pages
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Year zero : a novel
by Reid, Robert
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryAugust 6, 2012
Call Number: SF
What if humans were unimaginably horrible at every form of art in the universe but one: music? And what if our music was so good, compared to the efforts of our galactic neighbors, that its discovery resulted in a type of galactic reckoning where dates were revised, cultures were altered and some races were completely wiped out due to ecstatic brain hemorrhaging? And what if the collective universe’s love of our music resulted in so much unintended piracy (according to our laws) that if an attempt were made to pay the fines, the universe, and everyone in it, would be bankrupted? This... Read Full Review
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Dreaming in French : the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davi
by Kaplan, Alice Yaeger
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionJuly 30, 2012
Call Number: 920.073 K165
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis were three American women who, in their youth, spent time studying and living in Paris. Based on extensive research in archives in the United States and France, Alice Kaplan examines the lasting effects of the women's experiences which formed a lifelong French connection for all three. Living in France would sustain, nourish, and confirm a sense of independence and uniqueness in each of their lives. All three were outsiders within their social milieus in the United States.
As a Catholic with divorced parents in the 1950s,... Read Full Review
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Redshirts
by Scalzi, John
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJuly 23, 2012
Call Number: SF
What if your coworkers were regularly being killed off, and in spectacularly implausible ways, while your superiors were always left unfazed and untouched? Wouldn’t you try to figure out why and make sure whatever was happening to them didn’t happen to you? This is the premise John Scalzi boldly explores in Redshirts.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union. But once he reports for his new posting, he can’t help but notice that things on the Intrepid are far from normal. His crewmates in the Xenobiology lab... Read Full Review
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Watergate: a novel
by Mallon, Thomas
Reviewed by: Bob Timmermann, Senior Librarian, History & Genealogy DepartmentJuly 16, 2012
Call Number: F
Although most of the events of the Watergate scandal are well-documented, there is still much that may never be known about what exactly happened. Who really ordered the break-in? What was on the missing 18 1/2 minutes of one White House tape? Who was the master organizer of the conspiracy?
Sometimes the events of Watergate sound like they should be part of a good mystery novel, but Thomas Mallon takes a different approach here. Instead of looking at the grand conspiracy, Mallon weaves a story of fact and fiction that works incredibly well.
While most of the major figures of... Read Full Review
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The night circus : a novel
by Morgenstern, Erin.
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJuly 9, 2012
“The circus arrives without warning.
"No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
"The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little... Read Full Review
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The year of the gadfly : a novel
by Miller, Jennifer, 1980-
Reviewed by: Mary McCoy, Senior Librarian, Art, Music, & Recreation DepartmentJune 25, 2012
Call Number: M
In the wake of a mysterious tragedy, 14-year-old aspiring journalist Iris Dupont is pulled out of school and enrolled at Mariana Academy, an elite private school with a strict honor code and a tightly wound, high achieving student body. Iris quickly realizes that Mariana isn’t as perfect as it seems. Rumors abound of students expelled and faculty dismissed under unusual circumstances, but no one will go on the record about it - they're all too worried that a scandal will damage the school’s reputation and crush their Ivy League dreams.
With her imaginary friend/life... Read Full Review
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Far north
by Theroux, Marcel
Reviewed by: Julie Huffman, Librarian, History & Genealogy DepartmentJune 4, 2012
Call Number: F
If Cormac McCarthy’s brutal western Blood Meridian were set in the dystopian future of The Road and then translated into homespun sentences by Larry McMurtry, you’d approach Far North by Marcel Theroux.
Narrated by Makepeace, the constable of a barren, post-apocalyptic town in Siberia, this is a story about survival in a struggling world. A “broken age,” as Makepeace tells it, one in which human beings who are deprived of food and “unwatched” are rat cunning and will not just kill you, but will “come up with a hundred and one reasons why you... Read Full Review
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The chaperone
by Moriarty, Laura
Reviewed by: Robert Anderson, Librarian, Literature & Fiction DepartmentMay 28, 2012
Call Number: F
Wichita, Kansas, 1922. Warren Harding is President, Prohibition is the law of the land, and many prominent citizens belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Cora Carlisle, at 36, is envied by her friends for her marriage to handsome, successful attorney Alan, her twin sons who are going off to college soon, and her large, comfortable home on a quiet suburban street. So why does Cora jump at the chance to chaperone the 15-year-old daughter of Myra Brooks, a casual acquaintance, to a New York dance class run by the famous Ruth St. Denis?
Cora tells Myra and others that she wants to see some... Read Full Review
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Hedy's folly : the life and breakthrough inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the most beautiful woman in the world
by Rhodes, Richard
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionMay 14, 2012
Call Number: 812.092 L216Rh
Hedy Lamarr was a glamorous actress with a sultry demeanor which gave the impression of a self-igniting fire. She was also known for the line, “I am Tondelayo” from the 1942 version of the film White Cargo. The image of her speaking that line still makes some men more than a bit giddy. Not just another pretty actress, at one point she was called, “The most beautiful woman in the world.” Lamarr also had a brain and it was for the scientific and technical. During her Hollywood career it is possible to imagine people advising her not to worry her pretty head... Read Full Review
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All men of genius
by Rosen, Lev AC
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryApril 30, 2012
Call Number: F
What if you were a young and gifted scientist/inventor who dreamed of attending the best college for sciences in the world, but you knew that your application would never be accepted? What would you do to make your dream a reality? These are the questions explored by Lev AC Rosen in All Men of Genius, a wonderful steampunk-infused comedy of manners.
Violet Adams spends her days tinkering in her laboratory instead of learning those things expected of a proper young lady in Victorian England. What Violet desires more than anything else is to attend Illyria College, a school dedicated... Read Full Review
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The gods of Gotham
by Faye, Lyndsay.
Reviewed by: Mary McCoy, Senior Librarian, Art, Music, & Recreation DepartmentApril 16, 2012
Call Number: M
The year is 1845, and crime, poverty, and political corruption are rampant in New York City. The potato famine has driven thousands of Irish immigrants into the city’s slums, and anti-Catholic sentiment is high. The streets are filled with brothels, opium dens, and hundreds of orphaned, abandoned, and runaway children.
It’s in the face of these conditions that the city’s first police department is formed. Timothy Wilde has no desire to become a “copper star,” but he also has no other choice. A fire destroys the bar where he works, burns his savings, and... Read Full Review
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In Zanesville : a novel
by Beard, Jo Ann.
Reviewed by: Julie Huffman, Librarian, History & Genealogy DepartmentApril 9, 2012
Call Number: F
This is the story of an unnamed 14-year-old girl growing up in the farm-implement capital of the world: Zanesville, Illinois. It’s a wry observation of the folly and seriousness surrounding a middle-class life in 1970s America, which includes first flirtations and overworked mothers, the melodrama of cheerleaders and the drama of corporal punishment, telepathy with best friends and feral kitten abduction.
Many of the happenings in the book are, like adolescence, a combination of hilarity and pain, e.g., an alcoholic father who seems prone to suicide is obsessed with taming the... Read Full Review