Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

       Landline is the latest novel by Rainbow Rowell, and author who has written both adult and YA romance novels. Landline follows the story of TV writer Georgie McCool as she struggles to balance her work life and her home life, while the state of her marriage declines. When she attempts to postpone a family holiday vacation as the result of an emergency at work, her husband, Neal, insists on taking their children home for Christmas anyway without Georgie. During the holiday week, Georgie tries to call Neal at his mother's house--however Neal's habit of never charging his cell phone leads to Georgie resorting to her parent's old rotary land-line phone to call Neal's mother's land-line. What Georgie soon realises is that this land-line connection allows her to call Neal in the past before they were ever married. Georgie now has an opportunity to either fix her marriage before it begins or to end it and see if they would have been better off never being marr...

     Not My Father’s Son is a memoir written by Alan Cumming, a well-known Scottish actor who has graced various forms of entertainment from film and television, to plays and Broadway.  When approached by the producers of the Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC), of course he fully threw himself into the show in hopes it would solve the family’s mystery that revolved around his maternal grandfather’s death. What was unforeseen was that a very similar path of finding out the man who was his grandfather, he was also figuring out the puzzling nature of his father. In a series of events that happened during the filming for the show, Alan had to confront his father and the painful memories of his past, in particular remembering the abuse he had suffered much of his life from his father. Being a successful person, it is hard to imagine the sort of pain that Alan has gone through in his younger years. In his book, the memories of his childhood and younger years are pa...

Lucy is just a normal 20-something, living in a small town and working as a children's librarian. Things are pretty humdrum - a potential romance here, some interactions with quirky neighbors there. The one consistently interesting part of Lucy's life is the young patron, 10 year old Ian Drake, who races to the children's area to devour any and all books that Lucy can loan him. Ian comes from a stifling household and his reading habits are closely monitored by his oppressive parents. One day, Lucy arrives early at work and finds Ian has managed to stay in the library overnight. What starts out as a trip to return Ian to his house turns into a road trip all across the Northeast. Lucy doesn't mean to kidnap Ian - it just turns out that way. As the two travel across many states, Lucy tries to figure out what in the hell she's just done (and what can she do now?!).As the trip continues, Lucy comes to grips with her actions and tries to rediscover what makes her tick. De...

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, Fault Lines takes an interesting narrative approach and follows four generations of a family counter-chronologically. Family secrets start to unravel as each generation's character is revealed. We first meet 6 year old Sol, a coddled spoiled brat of a character, as he and his family are on a trip to Germany to revisit a long-lost relative. Huston then introduces the reader to the other generations; his father Randall, grandmother Sadie, and great grandmother Erra. As each character's story unfolds, you can see how each narrative weaves into one. The last section, which centers on Erra, is the most eye-opening one and is the final piece of the novel's puzzle. I don't want to say much more because it'd be giving too much away, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty intense (and sad) read.

I heard about this book during a recent readers advisory workshop for librarians. Everyone raved about this debut novel and since I was lucky enough to score a free copy, I decided to give it a shot. The story is told through the eyes of young Tillie Harris, a plucky girl who's not afraid to speak her mind. Set in the 1970s, life at the Harris household is strained at best. Tillie's father is in the army developing missile technology. He's about as strict as you can imagine. Tillie's mom suffers from crippling depression, spending the majority of her days in bed. Tillie idolizes her mother and doesn't fully understand her situation. When the family moves to Washington DC, Tillie's mom disappears and the things just go from bad to worse... Overall, I liked this book. There have been comparisions made between Tillie and Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird and that's a pretty apt description. She's a very likable character and you want to root...

Golden Richards is just like your average guy. He worries about money, getting older and trying to avoid a mid-life crisis. The kicker? Golden is the titular polygamist with 4 wives and 28 children (+ or - a few stillborns and miscarriages). And as one might expect, life in the Richards house (or houses as the case may be) can get a little chaotic. The book focuses on just a few characters in the house - Golden, his 4th wife Trish and son Rusty. Each family member has their own proverbial crosses in life to bear - Golden tries hard to live his life by the Principle, desparately trying to avoid an affair with his boss' wife. Trish struggles with the loneliness comes with being part of a polygamist family. And Rusty just wants to be noticed and not humilated on a daily basis by his obscenely large family. Udall's book is funny and just an overall a good story about the American family. Fans of the TV show Big Love will probably enjoy it.

As a rule, I'm not a big fan of suspense and/or mysteries. However, once in awhile, it's nice to break out of a comfort zone and try something different. I had read Flynn's Sharp Objects awhile ago and enjoyed it, so it made sense to try her new book. Dark Places centers on the grim murders of the Day family back in 1985. Libby, our heroine and a young child at the time, managed to escape and her testimony was enough to convict her older brother Ben of the crime. The book shifts back and forth between the events that led up to that fateful day and the present day Libby. Everything is going along, until Libby gets involved with an underground crime group that wants to get to the truth of the murders. Did Ben really kill his entire family? Or was it someone else?? All in all, it was a very quick paced read and the tension held throughout the entire novel. As one could expect, adult Libby has some major psychological issues as a result of the murders. Despite being so flawed...

One of the best things about reading Jodi Picoult is that she's so consistent. You always know what you're going to get whenever you read any of her works: the family drama (usually involving a fiercely devoted mother, an ignored sibling and some poor child with a disability or medical problem), the lawyer-with-a-heart-of-gold character, a tense courtroom scene and some contemporary references sprinkled here and there. And while some might say that "consistency" is just a nice way of saying "formulaic," I would argue that there is something quite comforting in being able to rely on a decent reading experience. This time around, Picoult focuses on her attention on Aspergers Syndrome, which occurs on the low end of the autism spectrum. Jacob Hunt is an 18 year old kid trying to fit in with everyone else. His social skills teacher, Jess, encourages him to ask girls out, make normal conversation and eye contact and attempt to empathize with others. His mother, E...

When this classic novel starts, Wang Lung is a poor farmer in Pre-Revolutionary China trying to get by on his meager harvests. The one thing he knows and depends on time and time again is the importance of owning his own land. Gradually, Wang Lung's lot in life starts to improve - he takes a wife, the faithful O-Lan who gives him several sons, and slowly starts to acquire more land and status in his world. Obviously things can't go right 100% of the time and Wang Lung is frequently threatened by starvation, poor harvest weather, and potential robberies. I know this is classic, but the major problem I had with this book was the absolutely awful depictions of women. Coming from a female writer, I was surprised that not one female character was portrayed in a positive light - then again, I bet the men of that era were probably not as open minded.

Sequel to the fabulous Life as We Knew It , Pfeffer explores the same scenario (an asteroid hits the moon and changes its orbit, resulting in catastophic climactic changes on Earth) through the eyes of young Alex Morales, a teen living in New York City with his parents and two younger sisters. When the moon gets hit, both of Alex's parents are away from home, thus leaving the children to act as orphans (you never find out what happens to them) to fend for themselves. Alex is extremely mature and intelligent - making sure they ration their meals long before there is a dire need to, and he is forced to do any and everything he can to make sure his family survives. This unfortunately includes scavenging through dead people's things for items to sell on the black market. As can be expected, the book is very somber and bleak. The Morales family is extremely religious, so there is a lot of talk about God and divine help, a concept which was absent from the first book. You may also ar...

Off of Amazon's website: This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of thrillers or many mysteries, but I've got to be honest - this was a riveting read. Though the pacing is a little slow to start with, once Larsson gets the ball rolling, the momentum is nearly breakneck fast. All of the characters are clearly multi-dimensional and incredibly smar...

Off of Amazon's website: It's almost the end of Miranda's sophomore year in high school, and her journal reflects the busy life of a typical teenager: conversations with friends, fights with mom, and fervent hopes for a driver's license. When Miranda first begins hearing the reports of a meteor on a collision course with the moon, it hardly seems worth a mention in her diary. But after the meteor hits, pushing the moon off its axis and causing worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, all the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear. Food and gas shortages, along with extreme weather changes, come to her small Pennsylvania town; and Miranda's voice is by turns petulant, angry, and finally resigned, as her family is forced to make tough choices while they consider their increasingly limited options. Yet even as suspicious neighbors stockpile food in anticipation of a looming winter without heat or electricity, Miranda knows that that her futur...

I think I've posted this before, but in general, it takes a lot for a book to make me cry (or really scared for that matter). That being said, I was quite teary at several points while reading Still Alice , which is Genova's debut novel. Alice Howland is a distinguished professor of psychology at Harvard with a loving husband and three grown children. Everything is just peachy, until the day when she starts forgetting things, even going so far as getting lost in her neighborhood during an average run. After consequent trips to the doctor, Alice is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease. The rest of the novel is spent on how she and her poor family deal with this awful illness. As her condition deteriorates, her sense of language and cognition starts to fail, thus leaving her frustrated and scared. The scenes between Alice and her husband were very heartwrenching - it must be impossibly difficult to care for a spouse with the disease. Genova is a neuroscientist, and...

Although they tell you never to judge a book by its cover, in this particular instance, the cover of Atlas of Unknowns is one of the best examples of symbolism and theme that I've ever seen. The cover shows a picture of a butterfly with a map superimposed onto each wing - one of under-developed/rural India and one of Queens, NY. Anju and Linno are sisters living in Kerala, India with their poor father and grandmother. When Anju wins a scholarship to a prep school in America (by betraying her sister), Linno is the one who has to keep the remaining family together. There's a lot of other important secondary characters, but ultimately, the purpose of this book shows the rocky relationship between the sisters. Though they are completely different individuals and at different places in the world, they are still family.

Avery Academy, set in the woods of Vermont, seems like the last place for a scandal to happen. Unfortunately, all bets are off when it comes to teens and alcohol. When a sex tape is found involving 3 boys and a 14 year old girl, countless lives are shattered and not many are spared - whether it's the headmaster, the boys themselves, or their poor parents who are left wondering "how could this have happened?" I really liked the use of multiple points of view for this novel, because when something scandalous happens, it helps to hear all sides of the story. This could have easily been written from a headmaster's perspective (or even from the character of Silas) and it would have been great, but having so much insight from so many people really made this book seem more 3 dimensional to me. Jodi Picoult follows the same strategy for her novels, even going so far as to change the font depending on the character (which seems a little much, but whatever), and it's a fabu...

I'm not going to lie - I think Jodi Picoult kind of phoned in this novel, mainly because she blatantly recycled parts of My Sister's Keeper and Change of Heart . I don't know, when I read Picoult, it's always the same - the lawyer with a turbulent past, the family in crisis, a depressing ending - and while sometimes, I like the familiarity, sometimes, it just gets on my nerves. In Handle with Care , Charlotte and Sean O'Keffe have a daughter, Willow, who is born with osteogensis imperfecta, or brittle bones disease. Their financial status is spiraling downward due to high medical costs, so Charlotte decides to sue her OB for wrongful birth - meaning that her gyno should have told her about Willow's condition in utero so Charlotte would have had the option of abortion. Of course, this being a Jodi Picoult novel, Charlotte's OB is her best friend. Despite the intriguing plot potential (the O'Keffe's have another daughter who has A LOT of issues that s...

In this heartbreaking novel, de Rosnay fictionalizes a true event that most of us have unfortunately never heard about - the 1942 roundup and deportation of Parisian Jews to Auschwitz. This roundup was executed by French police and included thousands of young children basically sentenced to death. Sarah's Key shifts back and forth between narratives - that awful day as seen in the eyes of a young girl and the present day, where journalist Julia Jarmond is covering the anniversary of the event for a local magazine. The two narratives seem oddly disjointed at first, but as the story progresses, readers will see how the two become intertwined within each other. Be warned: this book is really depressing, not because of the sad story behind the young girl in 1942, but because most books concerned with the Holocaust are really really depressing as a rule. It's absolutely shocking that such atrocities took place during the war in countries far beyond Poland and Germany.

In what is an obvious homage to Dickens, a young orphan by the name of Ren is adopted by a mysterious and charming man named Benjamin Nab. The two make their way around New England where lots of (illegal) hijinx ensue and eventually Ren discovers that he and Benjamin have more in common than he previously thought. This debut novel by Tinti has been making the rounds in literary circuits by racking up tons of praise, but for some reason, I just didn't really enjoy this one. Maybe my problem with the novel was that I've gotten so used to serious fiction that I couldn't just lighten up. Though there are lots of Gothic images and sequences, Tinti does use a light tone when describing scenes and dialogue. But, I don't know, maybe I just don't find 12 year olds grave robbers or the thought of criminals prying teeth out of skeletons all that charming and lighthearted....Whatever, just an opinion.

Swift won the Booker Prize for Last Orders back in 2004(?)...but I don't think he'll go 2 for 2 with Tomorrow , a quick read about a family with a dark secret. Paula Hook lies awake on the eve before her and her husband Mike divulge a long kept secret to their twin teenagers. The story centers around the history behind this secret and the rationale behind it. Truthfully, I was kind of annoyed for most of the book. The build up goes on and on for many pages with, like, no pay off whatsoever. The ideas in my mind were juicier than the real "truth" that was going to be told to her children. Though the prose is extremely well-written, I still kept saying to myself, "jesus, get to the point already"

I'm a fan of Coben but, I did not like this book. Not even a little bit. There were way too many plots and characters to keep track of. The story was all over the place jumping back and forth from one to the other. OK maybe it's just me, I like a book with defined characters and plot. I might just be so simple that my mind won't wrap around the chaos of this book,,,,,,,,NOT. I find it hard to even give a description of the book. It starts out with a muder, jumps to a family with a troubled teen who they spy on via spyware, jumps to yet again a troubled family( I'd move from this neighborhood) who's son killed himself. Yadda Yadda Yadda........... I'm taking a deep breath to calm down,,,,,, In the end you'll just have to read the book and try to stay focused and awake.........