Friends’ board and staff share some of their favorites
Have you started your summer reading yet? Have you made a list? Are you waiting for those books you put on hold to arrive all at once? If the answer to these questions is “No,” the following suggestions from FOL board and staff members may inspire your choices.
Trilogy
FOL board member Cathi Woodruff is one of the millions of readers worldwide who enjoyed Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. The “girl” in all three novels is Lisbeth Salander, a strange genius who disregards nearly all social and legal conventions in order ultimately to do good.
Mothers' Day Gifts
Two Mothers’ Day gifts have become favorites of Susan Wong, another FOL board member. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is a wonderfully written tale about a struggling English language newspaper in Rome. Susan calls it “odd and quite wonderful.”
The second gift, a first novel by Leslie Jamison who is a friend of Susan’s daughter, The Gin Closet is a remarkable and beautifully written story about a young girl’s efforts to help her alcoholic aunt. Susan’s older favorites include Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, which is about post 9/11 New York, cricket, immigration, love, and marriage; and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: a Memoir of Africa by Peter Godwin that explores the contrasts between the Rhodesia of his youth and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Conflict and Coming of Age
Our former Friends Library Store manager suggests Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, a tale of conflict between father and son and a coming of age story set during WWII; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which tells of a mute boy who has an almost supernatural ability to communicate, by David Wroblewski; The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield which takes place mostly in book stores and libraries; and Tales of the Otori, a historical fantasy based on feudal Japan by Lian Hearn.
Graphic Novels
If graphic novels are your thing, or if you’ve never tried one, board member Elayne Scoofakes recommends a great one for year round reading, Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiades and Christos Papadimitriou, which uses the life and work of Bertrand Russell to examine and explain successes and failures of philosophy, mathematics, and logic.
Mary Ellen Somerville, FOL board member, after years of resisting graphic novels, finally succumbed to the charms of Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. This novel, a late in life coming of age story, was ten years in the making and is well worth your time and attention.
Eclectic Mix
Perhaps the most eclectic list comes from board member Davida Jordan. Her choices include: The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and Interpreter of Maladies, all by Jhumpa Lahiri, an author you need to know if you don’t already;
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Downtown Owl, and Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman, a chronicler of modern American pop culture;
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, always great to read or reread;
High Fidelity, How to Be Good, and Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby on the topics of British pop culture, music, sports, and aimlessness;
Yiddish: A Nation of Words by Miriam Weinstein will delight anyone with even the slightest interest in language and culture;
Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies, The Wishbones, and Election by Tom Perrota, an author with a knowledgeable and satirical take on suburbia;
Plain and Normal and Sort of Rich by James Wilcox, the author of eight comic novels set in the fictional town of Tula Springs, Louisiana are also included on Davida’s list.
