Book reviews
Thirteen of the Best Romance Novels of 2010
Ask any romance reader, and you’ll get a long lecture on what makes a great romance novel. But what it always boils down to are these two elements. (1) Does the novel focus on the relationship between two people? (2) Does it have an emotionally satisfying happy ending?
New Winter Reading Video: Librarian Ashlei Wheeler Talks Fahrenheit 451
Imagine a future where literature is outlawed, mindless hedonism is the order of the day, and firemen don’t put out fires – they start them. This is the world of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel of censorship, Fahrenheit 451. Watch Waldo librarian Ashlei Wheeler explain why it's her favorite pick in the 2011 Adult Winter Reading Program.
New Winter Reading Video: Librarian Bernie Norcott-Mahany on The Iron Heel
Jack London is best known for books about boys and their dogs, but as L.H. Bluford Branch librarian Bernie Norcott-Mahany explains, London was also the first dystopian novelist of the 20th century. His book The Iron Heel is a complex and enriching story of a not-so-glorious future.
New Winter Reading Video: Librarian Alicia Ahlvers on The Handmaid's Tale
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterwork, America has collapsed, the Republic of Gilead has risen, and women’s rights have been dismantled. In our latest Winter Reading Video, Waldo Branch Manager Alicia Ahlvers tells how The Handmaid’s Tale, her selection for the 2011 Winter Reading Program, influenced her life as a reader and thinker.
Book Review: The Wolves of Andover
Colonial Massachusetts was not an easy place to survive. Strained relations with the native peoples, smallpox outbreaks, and barbaric wolves (of both the four-legged and two-legged, human varieties) devoured all who showed weakness in mind, body, or spirit. But in Kathleen Kent’s The Wolves of Andover, the most treacherous forces in 17th century America were often unseen.
