by Laura Landon on 2019-02-21T12:37:23-04:00 | 0 Comments
It's Reading Week! It's also the season of the Winter Doldrums -- a perfect time to lose yourself in a good book. We asked librarians and staff about the best books -- published any time -- they've read over the past year. Here are some of their recommendations. You can find all of them in the library book stacks.
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Call Number: PS 8626 .A7999 A64 2017
Recommended by: Susan Duke, Access Services Assistant
Description: Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. When he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and maybe his soulmate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? (Publisher's description) Susan notes this book also made the 2019 CBC Canada Reads longlist.
A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré
Call Number: PR 6062 .E33 L44 2017
Recommended by: Marc Truitt, University Librarian
Description: The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than 25 years. Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (Publisher's description)
Dark Money: the hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right by Jane Mayer
Description: Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? As Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs--that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom--are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws. Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews -- including with several sources within the network -- and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book. She traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colourful figures behind the new American oligarchy. (Excerpts from publisher's description.)
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Call Number: PS 8589 .O6352 W66 2018
Recommended by: Elizabeth Stregger, Data & Digital Services Librarian
Description: A major work by one of our most beloved and esteemed writers, the novel is based on real events that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite community where more than 100 girls and women were drugged unconscious and raped in the night by what they were told were "ghosts" or "demons." Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. It takes place over 48 hours, as eight women hide in a hayloft while the men are in a nearby town posting bail for the perpetrators. By turns poignant, furious, witty, acerbic, tender, devastating, and heartbreaking, the voices in this extraordinary novel are unforgettable. (Publisher's description)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Walker Percy (Foreword by); Andrei Codrescu (Introduction by)
Call Number: PS 3570 .O54 C66 1980
Recommended by: Jane Heys, Access Services Assistant
Description: John Kennedy Toole's classic comic novel, published posthumously, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. The place is the French Quarter, the characters, denizens of New Orleans's lower depths. Summary: Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, a 30-year-old medievalist who lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, and pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed. Considered by many a comic masterpiece that memorably evokes the city of New Orleans and whose robust protagonist is a modern-day Falstaff, Don Quixote, or Gargantua; other are not amused by this fat, flatulent, gluttonous, loud, lying, hypocritical, self-deceiving, self-centered blowhard. Published 11 years after Toole's death, A Confederacy of Dunces is today a cult classic. (Excerpts from publisher's description.)
Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott
Call Number: PS 8559 .N425 C58 2015
Recommended by: Laura Snyder, Music Librarian
Description: In a seemingly ordinary small town, two generations navigate necessary rites of passage during one fateful week. When gallery-owner Hugh Argylle falls from a ladder on Monday, it opens his eyes to the struggles of his friends and leaves him feeling compelled to help out. Meanwhile, the sons and daughters of those friends are preparing to graduate from high school and are experiencing the desires, terrors, and revelations of adolescence, which are mirrored in the second adolescence of the soon-to-be childless adults. (Publisher's description)
Careless Love by Peter Robinson
Call Number: PS 8585 .O3575 C37 2018
Recommended by: Jane Heys, Access Services Assistant
Description: . A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn't own a car and didn't drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why? Meanwhile a man in his 60s is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks returns for the 25th mystery in Peter Robinson's acclaimed series. (Excerpts from publisher's description) Robinson was Jane Heys's pick for the Library's "Our Picks" author series in 2018-19. He spoke in the Library on Nov. 21, 2018.
Minds of Winter by Ed O'Loughlin
Call Number: PR6115 .L68 M56 2016
Recommended by: Laura Landon, Head of Access Services
Description: This 2017-Giller-shortlisted novel begins in Inuvik where two strangers meet while searching for answers about their family members -- an estranged brother and a missing grandfather. The Franklin Expedition and the riddle of the 'Arnold 294' chronometer link the missing men. Part mystery and part historical fiction, this page-turner spans two centuries and two continents. Of the 2017 short-listed Giller nominations, it was my pick for winner. (LL)
Moral Politics: How liberals and conservatives think by George Lakoff
Description: When Moral Politics was first published two decades ago, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff's classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality. Even more so than when Lakoff wrote, liberals and conservatives simply have very different, deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong. Lakoff reveals radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff has added a new preface and afterword, extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the Affordable Care Act to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent financial crisis, and the effects of global warming. (Publisher's description.) NOTE: The newest, third edition is on order; the 2nd edition is in the stacks.
Ladies in the Laboratory III by Mary R. S. Creese; Thomas M. Creese
Call Number: Q 141 .C6933 2010
Recommended by: Elizabeth Stregger, Data & Digital Services Librarian
Description: Published in 1998, Ladies in the Laboratory provided a systematic survey and comparison of the work of 19th-century American and British women in scientific research. A companion volume, published in 2004, focused on women scientists from Western Europe. In this third volume, author Mary R.S. Creese expands her scope to include the contributions of 19th- and early 20th-century women of South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.The women whose lives and work are discussed here range from natural history collectors and scientific illustrators of the early and mid years of the 19th century to the first generation of graduates of the new colonial colleges and universities. Rarely acknowledged in publications of the British and European specialists, the contributions of these women nonetheless formed a significant part of the natural history information about extensive, previously unknown regions and their products. (Publisher's description.)
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
Call Number: PS 8589 .H52 D65 2016
Recommended by: Laura Snyder, Music Librarian
Description: Set in China before, during and after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Thien's book takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations -- those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. (Excerpt from publisher's description). This book won both the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award in 2016.
84K by Claire North
Call Number: PR 6114 .O777 A615 2018
Recommended by: Marc Truitt, University Librarian
Description: The penalty for Dani Cumali's murder: £84,000. Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. There's no need to go to prison; if you're rich enough, you can get away with murder. But Dani's murder is different. When Theo finds her lifeless body, and a hired killer standing over her and calmly calling the police to confess, he can't let her death become just an entry on a balance sheet. Someone is responsible. And Theo is going to find them and make them pay. Perfect for fans of 1984 and Never Let Me Go, Claire North's moving and unnerving new novel will resonate with readers.(Publisher's description.)
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Call Number: PG 7179 .O37 P7613 2018
Recommended by: Laura Landon, Head of Access Services
Description: Don't be tricked by this book's boring cover. The title caught my eye in a Times Literary Supplement review, and the book didn't disappoint. Translated from the Polish, it tells the tale of an eccentric old woman living in a rural area along the Polish - Czech border. When people in her community begin turning up dead under mysterious circumstances, she claims it's the animals' revenge: the murdered people are all involved with the local hunting club. The book is darkly comic, with a compelling cast of characters. Its title is taken from a William Blake poem -- a favourite poet of the protagonist, Mrs. Duszejko. Author Olga Tokarczuk won the Booker International prize in 2018 for Flights. She has won several national and international writing prizes, and her writing has drawn criticism from Polish nationalists. In 2017, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead was made into the film Spoor, which won a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. (LL)
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