Contrary to any librarian stereotype, my home is not cluttered with stacks of musty books amid empty teacups. In fact, I’m rather protective of my sparse bookcase space and possess very few books. Granted, I’ve departed severely from my youthful oath, circa 1991, to contain all my belongings in a steam trunk. But books are not my undoing.
I’m especially choosy about cookbooks. To make the cut and retain position in my pantry, a cookbook must be inspirational and reliable, not fussy nor trite. (My one exception to the “fussy” rule …

Tom Perrotta’s books are deceptively easy going down — he writes in such an engaging, accessible style that you almost feel like you’re reading escapist fare … until you stop to think about what’s really happening in the novel.
Throughout his career, Perrotta has gotten more serious, from the outright satirical beginnings of “Joe College” and “Election” (basis for the fabulous Reese Witherspoon/Matthew Broderick movie) to more recent takes on contemporary adult life in “Little Children” and “The Abstinence Teacher.” Though the premise of this new novel might strike some as absurd or …

Reviews by readers are all the rage these days and for good reason — they often provide the sort of feedback you want most, the opinions of fellow readers. Now you can post your own reviews of books in our library catalog — and read reviews by fellow library patrons and members of the book site LibraryThing (which draws from 1.3 million members).
How do you do this? You go to our catalog and find a title you want to review — for example, The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Under the image of …

In the interests of full disclosure: Diana Abu-Jaber is a friend. So I was already inclined to like her new novel, Birds of Paradise. But even with all that, it blew me away. The novel is set in Miami in August 2005 just before Hurricane Katrina swept across South Florida. Brian and Avis Muir would appear to be doing well — nice house in Coral Gables, jobs they like and do well. Brian is corporate counsel to a development company; Avis is a pastry chef with a home-based business. But their …

On Nov. 10, the Book Bites Book Club at the Key West Library will return for the season to discuss The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss.  Here’s a review I wrote around the time the novel was published:
Historical hindsight tends to carry the air of the inevitable. Because we’ve all known so long about the American Revolution and worshiped the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, we assume it was meant to be, that fate decreed our nation would turn out the way it has.
Historical fiction is a useful reminder that …

From the fun folks at the Guardian: “American academic Sue Fondrie’s disturbing description of thoughts like mutilated sparrows has been declared the worst sentence of the year.”
“Fondrie, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, beat an impressive display of terrible writing to win the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, named in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford and its much-quoted opening, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’. Entrants to the prize are duly challenged to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”

Recommended by library staffer, Greg Vestal. Click here to check it out in our catalog.  Here’s the summary:
I Reach Over offers a sad but rewarding glimpse of a transformative process, in the deeply felt and highly imaginative poems of a successful physician-scientist diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Robbed of the future he’d worked so hard and long for and facing the horror of progressive paralysis, the author counters with an open-minded search for his soul, reflected in this candid and inspiring book. Brutally honest and probing poems layered in …

For the last decade and a half (OK, since the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice adaptation starring Colin Firth), Jane Austen has been very high on the popular cultural radar screen — almost entirely via screen adaptations. Many are excellent — and many are in the library collection – but it’s worth remembering what made Austen famous to begin with: Her novels.
William Deresiewicz was a young graduate student of literature, enamored of modernity and dismissive of 19th century novels, when he was assigned to read “Emma.” It changed his life, professionally …

If you are obsessed with the Tudors, in fiction and history, or love to read about medieval queens like Eleanor of Acquitaine, She-Wolves by Helen Castor is an excellent choice. Eleanor herself, who was both Queen of France and England before getting locked up by her estranged husband, Henry II, is one of the four women Castor examines as precedents for the Tudor reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. The book also tells the story of  Matilda, Eleanor’s mother-in-law and a granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Matilda battled her cousin Stephen for the throne …

This little gem of a graphic novel is enchanting and wordless. That’s right–not a single word of dialogue. I “read” this book with my 5 year old and we’re both still haunted by its complex emotions amid a simple storyline and clean graphics.
Beyond “mad and sad”, here we have abandonment, remorse, pining, betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness, with the new understanding that “happily ever after” doesn’t always include a tidy ending. A book to savor and “read” over and over again.
Click here to view the book in the library catalog.