Alison Bechdel’s new memoir in graphic format, Are You My Mother, is getting a lot of attention: Reviews in the New York Times Book Review and the daily paper, a profile in the New Yorker, an interview with Maud Newton on Salon. The new book’s not in our collection yet but I’m informed it will be ordered.
I, for one, can’t wait to read it because Bechdel’s previous memoir, Fun Home, remains one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read, in any format, and helped me understand the appeal of graphic novels for …

While some readers struggle with finding a good book others have a different problem: Keeping track of all the books they want to read (commonly referred to on the Web and elsewhere as TBR, or “to be read” piles). Many of us, over the years, have resorted to keeping lists in notebooks or have envelopes spilling over with scraps of paper. Maybe you’ve even gotten organized and kept a list on your computer — and then your hard drive crashed.
Here’s a great thing about the library and our online catalog, commonly …

Kate Atkinson’s series of novels featuring private detective Jackson Brodie appeal to all kinds of readers, and not just readers of private eye novels. Atkinson has real literary chops (her first novel won the Whitbread Award). And these books, four so far, are not so much whodunits as wonderful character studies, centering around Brodie himself, a former soldier and cop now on his own as a P.I., divorced with a daughter and a penchant for trying to find and/or save lost girls that goes back to the unsolved murder of his …

March is Women’s History Month — which reminded me of one of my all-time favorite biographies about a truly remarkable American woman: Victoria Woodhull. The book is called Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith.
In a time when the roles of rights of women are once again in national headlines, it seems especially appropriate to consider Woodhull, who was the first woman to address a joint session of Congress (where she advocated for women’s right to vote), who ran for President against Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley, and who was a …

This is a delight on every level.  The prose is beautiful and well crafted. The story is original and wondrous! It takes you into the time of a golden era and the world of a very unique circus… a love story simmers underneath a world both dark and dazzling. Some would call it magical realism but it truly defies genre.  One of the best books I’ve read all year.

The last few months have brought us two new books about Catherine the Great, the 18th century ruler of Russia considered the epitome of the enlightened despot.
One is nonfiction: Robert K. Massie’s magisterial biography, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. The other is a work of historical fiction, The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak. Both are in the library’s collection and, read together, offer an interesting new perspective on the legendary ruler.
I didn’t know much at all about Catherine beyond the notorious (and apparently untrue) rumors about her love …

I recently ran a book club devoted to the best books we’ve read in 2011.  I had not yet finished this 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner from Egan.  THIS is the best book I read in 2011.  A series of inter connected stories spanning the nation and the world over half a century from the early 80’s to 10 years from now.   This book is very much like a puzzle, with characters appearing and reappearing.  And by the end you are left with a large picture of where we have been …

The Key West Literary Seminar is almost here — it runs Jan. 5-8 — and the lineup of writers is stunning: Margaret Atwood. William Gibson. Jennifer Egan. Jonathan Lethem. Gary Shteyngart. Colson Whitehead. To name a few.
The bad news: The Seminar is sold out, totally and completely, so there’s no way to buy a ticket at this point.
The good news: There are still several ways you can take part if you wish. (The even better news: Booker Prize-winner Atwood will open this year’s Friends of the Key West Library Lecture …

The new movie “Anonymous” claims that the guy we know as the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare, didn’t write the plays and sonnets for which he is revered. This is not a new claim — the movie’s candidate, the Earl of Oxford, has been the leading alternate contender for most of the 20th century and his case took a big leap forward when the Internet allowed fellow believers to connect and publish outside of academia and commercial presses. The idea that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of …

What a good book!  
It elicited a nice unnerved feeling that Stephen King sometimes gives me.  (And I did not want to listen to it once the sun had gone down.)  I was more thrilled with it at the beginning but it still left me with that nice satisfied–”wow, I just read a really good book”–feeling.  This is my second Bohjalian novel, after Double Bind.  I’m impressed with this author–both books have evoked physical reactions on numerous occasions as I read or listened.  I will also add that I’m not looking …