Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

      Paper Towns by John Green was first published in October of 2008, and was his third novel. With the announcement that Paper Towns was going to be adapted for the screen, following the success of the film adaptation of Green's latest novel, The Fault in Our Stars, I decided it was a perfect time to reread the book.       Paper Towns follows the story of a highschooler named Quentin "Q" Jacobson and his friendship with an eccentric girl named Margo Roth Spiegelman. The bulk of the novel is Q following clues left behind by Margo after she runs away from home several weeks before they were to graduate. Along the way Q finds himself forced to reevaluate his perspective about his town, his friends, his classmates, and his idealised image of Margo. ***       Rereading this YA novel, I immediately remembered what it was about Paper Towns that set it apart from other YA novels. There are a lot of stories in the Y...

      Hyperbole and a Half is a blog written and run by Allie Brosh in which she uses a combination of web comic and narrative prose to describe stories of her childhood, incidences with her dogs, and advice based on her observations of adulthood. Using an intentionally artistically crude drawing style (rendered in the Mac Paintbrush program) coupled with observational and absurdist humour, Brosh has gained internet popularity since 2009 as a blogger willing to speak bluntly and openly about her own struggles with depression, social anxiety, ADHD, chronic procrastination, and other conditions. Several of her comic drawings have exceeded well beyond her blog and achieved meme status on social networking websites like Reddit, Tumblr, and Imgur. ***       In October 2011, Brosh made a blog entry which displayed in detail her experiences with depression, which was praised both by followers of her blog and by practicing...

“Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things…” (taken from the Goodreads summary ) ***       American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett follows the story of former policewoman Mona Bright, as she tracks down information regarding her deceased mother and finds herself in the small town of Wink, New Mexico. Suddenly the benefactor of her mother’s old house, Mona decides to temporarily reside in the town of Wink while she decides what to do with the house. The town is strange, mysterious, and dangerous as a whole, and even stranger as individual residents are introduced. The undoubtedly human residents seem quite content to make arrangements and conditions for strange unseen forces while never ever venturing out of their houses after dark; staple community members are unquestio...

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...

Portia Nathan is in an unenviable position - as an Admissions Officer at Princeton University, she has the job of deciding to either fulfill or destroy people's dreams on a daily basis. The problem is is that Portia doesn't really have much of a life outside of the admissions process; she's so immersed in studying the lives of the people applying to Princeton that she has virtually cut herself off from a life outside of that institution. Obviously, there are some major reasons for why Portia is the way she is. The rest of the novel delves into that. I enjoyed this book, though the prose was a bit wordy, though I guess when you're married to a well known and award winning poet (Paul Muldoon), you learn a thing or two about semantics. My one complaint is that I totally called the one "twist" near the end. I'm usually really bad at anticipating plot, so I'm not sure what that says about Korelitz's narrative. But overall, a solid read.