10 Books We’re Looking Forward to in April

April 3, 2015March 23, 2015 / Louise / Leave a comment

April is typically a month of new beginnings. The snow is gone (we hope), the grass, leaves, and flowers are starting to grow, and plenty of new books are hitting the shelves. Who knows, it may even get warm enough to read outside!

Every month, librarians from around the country pick the top ten new books they’d most like to share with readers. The results are published on LibraryReads.org. One of the goals of LibraryReads is to highlight the important role public libraries play in building buzz for new books and new authors. Click through to read more about what new and upcoming books librarians consider buzzworthy this month. The top ten titles for April are:

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen
The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley
The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg
Still the One by Jill Shalvis
Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova
House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy
The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos
The Bone Tree by Greg Iles
Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight

National Joe Day

March 26, 2015March 13, 2015 / Mary / Leave a comment

National Joe Day is a little-known holiday. Although not designated by Congress as an official national holiday, it is celebrated every year on March 27th.

The point of the holiday is for everyone to call himself Joe for at least this one day. (If you’re female, you can become Jo—short for Josephine.)

We’ve all heard of Joe Blow, Average Joe, Ordinary Joe, Lucky Joe, Joe Cool, Good Joe and G.I. Joe. Joe simply stands for the everyman, for the underdog or the common man. By the way, Joe Blow was first recorded as military slang referring to the average working guy.

Curious, I skimmed through our online catalog to see how popular Joe was for book titles and hit the Joe jackpot.

Joe, A Novel by Larry Brown

Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who just won’t slow down–not in his pickup, not with a gun, and certainly not with women.

Calico Joe by John Grisham

It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records.

The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper

Right after high school, Joe Goffman left sleepy Bush Falls, Connecticut and never looked back. Then he wrote a novel savaging everything in town, a novel that became a national bestseller and a huge hit movie. Fifteen years later, Joe is struggling to avoid the sophomore slump with his next novel when he gets a call: his father’s had a stroke, so it’s back to Bush Falls for the town’s most famous pariah.

Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker

Joe Trona spends his days as a deputy for the Orange County sheriff’s department and his nights as an aide to Will Trona, the influential politician who rescued him from the Hillside Children’s Home. An expert in firearms and martial arts, Joe has been backing Will up for a long time. Still, his skill isn’t enough to keep Will alive, and when his father is killed right in front of Joe’s eyes, the young deputy vows to avenge him.

Joe College by Tom Perrotta

Danny, a Yale junior, is spending Spring break behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father’s lunch truck, which plies the parking lots of office parks in central New Jersey, using the time to try and make sense of a love life that’s gotten a little complicated. A comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education and food service.

Where is Joe Merchant? A Novel Tale by Jimmy Buffett

Where is Joe Merchant? That’s what his sister, Trevor Kane, the hemorrhoid-ointment heiress, wants to know. For Desdemona, Merchant is the missing link in her ongoing communications with space aliens. Tabloid journalist Rudy Breno only cares that Merchant gets bigger headlines than Elvis. And for renegade seaplane pilot Frank Bama, the mystery of the presumed-dead-but-often-sighted rock star is turning his life upside down.

Joe Victim: A Thriller by Paul Cleave

Joe Middleton’s story is this: He doesn’t remember killing anyone, so there’ s no way a jury can convict him of serial murder. He calls himself Joe Victim, trying, as he awaits trial, to convince the psychiatrists that he wasn’t in control of his actions, trusting that the system will save him in the end.

And if that doesn’t satisfy your Joe longings, there are entire series devoted to Joes:

Joe Burgess mysteries by Kate Flora

Joe DeMarco novels by Mike Lawson

Joe Grey mysteries by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Joe Gunther novels by Archer Mayor

Joe Kurtz novels by Dan Simmons

Joe Ledger novels by Jonathan Maberry

Joe Pike novels by Robert Crais

Joe Rush novels by James Abel

Joe Sandilands mysteries by Barbara Cleverly

So call yourself Joe, buy a cup of Joe, and peruse one of the many Joe books, all in celebration of National Joe Day.

(PS. Share this with all the Joes you know and make their day special.)

10 Books We’re Looking Forward to in March

March 24, 2015March 3, 2015 / Louise / Leave a comment

There’s a light at the end of that winter tunnel! While you’re waiting for spring to finally arrive, why not hunker down with a good book? There are some great ones coming to our shelves in March!

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Prudence by Gail Carriger
The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M. J. Rose
Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham
The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell
The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford
Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy

Another Literary Loss; Saying Goodbye to Terry Pratchett

March 13, 2015March 14, 2015 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

Fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series and author of more than 70 books, died on March 12 2015. He was 66 and suffered from a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Pratchett was best known for Discworld, a series of more than 40 comic novels set in a teeming fantasy world. He has sold more than 65 million books worldwide, and his novels have pratchettcolorof been translated into several dozen languages. Pratchett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours.

Lets remember this wonderful author by reading (or rereading) some of our favorite books from Terry Pratchett. Here is a list of some of my favorite titles to get your started.

The Color of Magic: the First Discworld Novel
A slightly disorganized and somewhat naive interplanetary tourist named Twosome joins up with a bumbling wizard and embarks on a chaotic voyage through a world filled withmonsters and dragons, heroes and knaves.

Dodger
In an alternative version of Victorian London, a seventeen-year-old Dodger, a street urchin, rises in life when he saves a mysterious girl, meets Charles Dickens, and unintentionally puts a stop to the murders of Sweeny Todd.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The world is going to end next Saturday, but there are a few problems–the Antichrist has been misplaced, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles, and the representatives from heaven and hell decide that they like the human race.

Snuff: a Novel of Discworld
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch attempts to take a vacation, but, as usual, nothing goes as planned.

Nation
After a tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and the things that matter to them.

The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen
The wizards of Discworld accidentally create a new universe, the one which houses Earth, and proceed to explain the science of this place, interweaving fantasy chapters with those that explain actual scientific principles.

More great books include: I Shall Wear Midnight, Only You Can save Mankind, The Carpet People, The long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, Thud!: a Novel of Discworld, The Wee Free Men, Wintersmith, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Thief of Time: a Novel of Discworld, The Carpet People, A Hat Full of Sky, The Fifth Elephant, and Going Postal: a Novel of Discworld.

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Realistic Fiction for Middle Grade Readers

March 10, 2015February 17, 2015 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

School assignments, curiosity, parents, friends, and more could urge children to pick up a book in a different genre than they would normally read. Sometimes this makes recommending a book difficult, because they do not know which book or books they might like and could be willing to dismiss any given title without much thought. Since realistic fiction is not my genre of choice (I prefer fantasy and other types of escapism in my reading), I scoured Goodreads lists, school library lists, and more to find the most recommended books in the realistic fiction genre that are best suited for middle grade readers. Here are some of the most mentioned books on these lists.

1. Firegirl by Tony Abbott
A middle school boy’s life is changed when Jessica, a girl disfigured by burns, starts attending his Catholic school while receiving treatment at a local hospital.

2. Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald
Her grandfather’s dying words lead 13-year-old Theodora Tenpenny to a valuable, hidden painting she fears may be stolen, but it is her search for answers in her Greenwich Village neighborhood that brings a real treasure.

3. Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis
A quirky and utterly logical seventh-grade girl named Emma-Jean Lazarus discovers some interesting results when she gets involved in the messy everyday problems of her peers.

4. Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
One by one, a number of people of varying ages and backgrounds transform a trash-filled inner-city lot into a productive and beautiful garden, and in doing so, the gardeners are themselves transformed

5. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Weighed down by guilt, Joel searches for the courage to tell the truth about the disappearance–and apparent drowning–of his best friend Tony while the boys are playing near the treacherous, and forbidden, Vermillion River

6. Half a Chance by Cynthia Lord
Lucy, with her mother and her photographer father, has just moved to a small rural community in New Hampshire, and with her new friend Nate she plans to spend the summer taking photos for a contest, but pictures sometimes reveal more than people are willing to see.

7. The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata
Just when 12-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year filled with bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for the harvest workers.

8. The View from Saturday by E.L. KonigsburgFour students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.

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Here are a few more books to chose from, including some very popular books that you might have already heard great things about; Dog Lost by Ingrid Lee, Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord, Paperboy by Vince Vawter, Paint the Wind by Pam Muñoz Ryan, See You At Harry’s by Jo Knowles, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin, The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street by Sharon G. Flake, Warp Speed by Lisa Yee, Frindle by Andrew Clements, Rhyme Schemer by K.A. Holt,Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead, Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy, Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere by Julie T. Lamana, Wonder by R.J. Palacio, One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, or The Not-Just-Anybody Family by Betsy Byars.