May 6, 2014 — Selected nonfiction in which folks take a year or so to do something different, from keeping bees to reading the OED. Compiled by Forbes Library Staff | Summaries from ContentCafe, NoveList, Wikipedia, Amazon.com | May 2013 The happiness project : or why I spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean my closets,…
Author: forbes
Colonial India
April 23, 2014 — Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn When Lady Julia Grey and Nicholas Brisbane travel to India to investigate the death of Jane Cavendish’s husband, they uncover secrets and scandals, illicit affairs, and twisted legacies. A Black Englishman by Carolyn Slaughter In a novel of India set during the tumultuous decade following World War I, a young…
Black & African American Fiction
April 23, 2014 — Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston An American classic, this book is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy years. The Color…
Foodie Lit
April 23, 2014 — Eating Abroad This reading list was compiled by Forbes Library librarians as part of the 2011 Novel Destinations Summer Reading program. Novel Destination is sponsored by Friends of Forbes Library, the Massachusetts Library System, the Boston Bruins, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. My Life in France, by Julia Child EC436.A 2006 Amarcord Marcella Remembers, The Remarkable Life…
Steampunk
April 23, 2014 — Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction and alternate history premised on a Victorian world where steam power is still widely used. Compiled by Forbes Library Staff | Summaries from ContentCafe, NoveList, Wikipedia, Amazon.com | September 2013 Novels Tarnished: The St. Croix Chronicles by Karina Cooper A heiress by day and a hunter of vagrants,…
Historical Fiction: World War II
April 23, 2014 — Unbroken : A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared–Lt. Louis…
Classic Fantasy
April 23, 2014 — She by H. Rider Haggard (1886) The greatest of the “lost race” tales, this has spawned countless imitations, as well as three movies of various degrees of awfulness. The book starts slowly, but the character of Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, is justly considered an unforgettable classic. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890) A work of gothic…
Cozy Mystery
April 23, 2014 — <no preview available>
If you liked Into The Wild…
January 13, 2014 — Adrift : Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan On February 4, 1982, midway between the Canary Islands and Antigua, Callahan’s boat “Solo” was struck in the middle of the night by what he thinks was a whale. For 76 days, he drifted 1800 nautical miles across the Atlantic – the only man in…
If you liked The Inn at Lake Devine…
January 13, 2014 — Other Romantic Comedies by Elinor Lipman Into Love and Out Again: Stories Lipman’s short stories are filled with sweet, complex people in unusual relationships: gentle Tim, for instance, falls madly in love with unwed Hannah, who is in the ninth month of her pregnancy; sad Clair at last finds a true lover but breaks off…
If you liked The Help…
January 13, 2014 — The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines Miss Jane Pittman is 110 when she recalls her childhood and the arrival of both Union and Confederate troops on the plantation where she lived, and her own personal journey toward freedom. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu Seventeen years after fleeing…
If you liked The Glass Castle…
January 13, 2014 — Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller The author describes her childhood in Africa during the Rhodesian civil war of 1971 to 1979, relating her life on farms in southern Rhodesia, Milawi, and Zambia with an alcoholic mother and frequently absent father. All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg A Pulitzer…
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