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The
Smyrna Reading Group
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January
5, 2010
Breakneck
by Erica Spindler
Det.
Kitt Lundgren and her partner, Mary Catherine Riggio, of the
Rockford, Ill., Violent Crimes Bureau pursue a serial killer
ripped from Internet urban legend in this unconvincing thriller
from bestseller Spindler (Copycat). When Riggios too-good-to-be-true
fiancé is caught in the line of fire, the shooting
at first appears to be unrelated to the murder spree of Breakneck,
who targets computer-savvy 20-somethings. Of course, the connection
is immediately obvious to readers, if not the veteran staff
of the VCB. Lundgrens preoccupied with mending her broken
marriage while ambling toward career burnout, and Riggio doesnt
hesitate to throw out the procedural rulebook, eschewing her
police training in a desperate search for the truth. Spindler
strays from her comfort zone in tackling the mysterious world
of cyber crime. Casting disaffected youth as criminal masterminds
doesnt ring true, while descriptions of technology and its
applications are painstakingly overexplained. (Jan.)
SOURCE: Copyright © Reed Business Information,
a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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February
2, 2010
To
Dance with the White Dog
by Terry Kay
This
short book moves like poetry....A loving eulogy to old age....A
tender celebration of life, made poignant by death being
so close at hand.
SOURCE:
Los Angeles Times
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March
9, 2010
(Rescheduled
Due to March 2 Snowstorm)
A
Journey to Here
by Margaret Johnson-Hodge
Happily
married for nineteen years to Emory and with two adorable
adolescent daughters, Aaron and Monet, Suvie is sure her
life is complete. But when the past shows up at her door
in the form of Phillip Butler, her first love from thirty
years ago, Suvie finds herself reevaluating the life she
has built for herself.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
Margaret
Johnson-Hodge is a nationally acclaimed author. She is a
winner of the Reviewer’s Choice Awards for The
Real Deal. Her novel Butterscotch Blues
made the Blackboard Bestsellers List, the Essence
Magazine Bestseller List and a Black Expressions Book Club
Book of the Year.
Though born and raised in New York, she now calls Georgia
her home.
Please join Ms. Johnson-Hodge and The Smyrna Reading Group
to discuss her book A Journey to
Here on March 9, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. in the Smyrna
Public Library’s upstairs meeting room.
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April
6, 2010
Run
by Ann Patchett
Novelists
can no longer take it as an insult when people say their
novels are like good television, because the finest American
television is better written than most novels. Ann Patchett's
new one has the texture, the pace and the fairy tale elegance
of a half dozen novels she might have read and loved growing
up, but the magic and the finesse of Run is really much
closer to that of Six Feet Under or ER or The Sopranos,
and that is good news for everybody, not least her readers.Bernadette
and Bernard Doyle were a Boston couple who wanted to have
a big lively family. They had one boy, Sullivan, and then
adopted two black kids, Teddy and Tip. Mr. Doyle is a former
mayor of Boston and he continues his interest in politics,
hoping his boys will shape up one day for elected office,
though none of them seems especially keen. Bernadette dies
when the adopted kids are just four, and much of the book
offers a placid requiem to her memory in particular and
to the force of motherhood in lives generally. An old statue
from Bernadette's side of the family seems to convey miracles,
and there will be more than one before this gracious book
is done. One night, during a heavy snowfall, Teddy and Tip
accompany their father to a lecture given by Jessie Jackson
at the Kennedy Centre. Tip is preoccupied with studying
fish, so he feels more than a little coerced by his father.
After the lecture they get into an argument and Tip walks
backwards in the road. A car appears out of nowhere and
so does a woman called Tennessee, who pushes Tip out of
the car's path and is herself struck. Thus, a woman is taken
to hospital and her daughter, Kenya, is left in the company
of the Doyles. Relationships begin both to emerge and unravel,
disclosing secrets, hopes, fears. Run is a novel with timeless
concerns at its heart—class and belonging, parenthood
and love—and if it wears that heart on its sleeve,
then it does so with confidence. And so it should: the book
is lovely to read and is satisfyingly bold in its attempt
to say something patient and true about family. Patchett
knows how to wear big human concerns very lightly, and that
is a continuing bonus for those who found a great deal to
admire in her previous work, especially the ultra-lauded
Bel Canto. Yet one should not mistake that lightness for
anything cosmetic: Run is a book that sets out inventively
to contend with the temper of our times, and by the end
we feel we really know the Doyle family in all its intensity
and with all its surprises.
SOURCE: Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division
of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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May
4, 2010
The
Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Zusak
has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated
teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War
II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken,
at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family
in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued
mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work
of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first
book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and
her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull
her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about
her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the
late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen
books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy,
the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has
a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and
especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing
and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing
readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the
action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller,
but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving
Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled
expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca
Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
SOURCE:
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of
Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers
to the Hardcover edition.
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June
1, 2010
The
Heart is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
With the
publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER,
Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation.
With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate
glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered
McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published
by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute
John Singer, who becomes the confidant for all various types
of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one
yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute
companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house,
where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on
McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attune
to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition,
and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers
spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to
the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through
Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search
for beauty.
Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to
rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white
and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness."
She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming,"
said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary
sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful
today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY
HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing
best.
SOURCE:
Copyright © Amazon.com. All rights reserved.
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July
6, 2010
Coronado:
Stories
by Dennis Lehane
Lehane
(Mystic River) hints in the first of these five richly vernacular
(and, save one, previously published) stories and one play
that "a small town is a hard place to keep a secret."
In "Running Out of Dog," two Vietnam vets return
to their hometown of Eden, S.C., and become tragically entangled
with the wife of a man whose rich family kept him out of the
war. Class resentment similarly erupts in "Gone Down
to Corpus," set in back-water Texas, 1970, as a group
of high school football players breaks into the house of rich
kid Lyle, who fumbled the big pass at the last game. They
drunkenly wreck the house and are shocked by the appearance
of Lyle's younger sister, Lurlene, who is eager to join the
party. The collection's centerpiece is "Until Gwen,"
which has also been adapted by Lehane into a two-act play,
Coronado. Transcribed, the play revolves around the edgy reunion
of a hustler father and his son, Bobby, newly released after
four years in prison. It quickly becomes apparent that Bobby's
father has retrieved him only to find out where the heist
loot is hidden, and Bobby, in turn, needs to know what happened
to his girlfriend, Gwen. Powerfully envisioned lives, recounted
unflinchingly. (Sept.)
SOURCE:
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of
Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers
to the Hardcover edition.
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August
3, 2010
Heartburn
by Nora Ephron
Rachel
is seven months pregnant with her second child when she learns
her husband is not only having an affair with a mutual acquaintance,
but has fallen in love with her. This indignity is compounded
because, due to Rachel's advanced preganancy, she can't even
date. This short, savvy, and funny novel is peppered with
recipes since Rachel is a cookbook editor and host of her
own cooking show.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
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September
7, 2010
A
Painted House
by
John Grishman
Set in
rural Arkansas in 1952. The story centers around 7-year old
Luke, his family, and the migrant Mexicans hired to help them
harvest their 80 acres of cotton.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
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October
5, 2010
A
King's Ransom
by James Grippando
When Florida
fisherman, Matthew Rey is kidnapped while on business in Colombia
by a group of Marxist guerrillas led by a sadistic soldier
named Joaquin, it is up to his son, Nick, a young Florida
lawyer to pay the outrageous $3,000,000 ransom.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
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November
2, 2010
The
Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
Vida
Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an
end hires Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who
is a bookseller in her father's shop to write her biography.
However Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans
for years by giving over 19 different version of her life,
each time swearing it's the truth.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
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December
7, 2010
The
Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Explore
the meaning of friendship with Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and
the mischievous Toad who live a quiet life on banks of the
River Thames.
SOURCE:
FOSL Volunteer
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