Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

Fans of the movie When Harry Met Sally will undoubtedly love One Day. Nicholls takes a peek at the lives of goody two shoes Emma and bad boy Dexter on the same particular July day over the course of 20 years or so. Each year brings lots of new changes to their friendship as the two of them grow and mature over the course of the 2 decades. Will they eventually wind up together?

Acting as a follow up to the epic Pillars of the Earth , World Without End continues to follow the lives, tragedies and successes of the citizens of 14th century Kingsbridge. This time around, Follett's main characters are a group of young friends - brothers Ralph and Merthin, independent Caris and crafty Gwenda. As the four age throughout the book, each character becomes intertwined with each other as they each take different routes in life - knight, builder, healer and farmer. Kingsbridge is well known throughout the area for having a beautiful cathedral (built in POTE ) and there is much drama when it comes to how the priory is run. Things don't get any better when the Plague hits. Though this is a really really lengthy work, it goes by exceptionally fast. I still have the same qualms with this one that I did with POTE (unrealistic dialogue and character life spans, etc), but it was still a very enjoyable read.

The lives of Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen couldn't be more different in Jackson Mississippi - Skeeter is an aspiring writer, Minny is a maid with a major problem of sassing back at her employers, and Aibileen is a maid just trying to instill colorblindness into her young charges. But over the course of Stockett's debut novel, they all have many secrets to share and hide from themselves, their families and the town itself. When Skeeter attempts to write her first book, Minny and Aibileen will come to play pivotal roles in a dangerous situation. I enjoyed this book greatly and I could genuinely see how it's remained so high on the NYT best sellers lists. The story moves along at a nice pace and the language makes it very approachable.

In their first semester of college at Smith, four girls who live on the same floor manage to forge a strong connection with each other, despite their completely different backgrounds. Bree is a Southern belle, April is the moody uber feminist, Sally has just lost her mother and Celia is the wannabe writer. The novel spans their wild times at college and what happens afterwards when the girls meet up for Sally's wedding. As can be expected during college, the girls experiment with their sexuality, drugs, alchohol, and social issues. As can be expected post-college, the girls have problems with relationships, jobs and finding their niche in the world. April is truly the only one that carries on with the feminism after graduation. I think the problem with this book is that it tried too hard to be like a more socially conscious version of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep but with college students instead of high schoolers. Instead, readers end up with something that's more chick-lit ...

An entertaining novel that's full of melodrama, sex, intrigue, lifestyles of the rich and famous set in post WWII New York and California, Valley of the Dolls has been a classic soap opera read for the past thirty-plus years. The novel follows three heroines as they try to "make it" - Anne, the classic and sensible one, Neely, the young ingenue with a big voice, and Jennifer, the actress with a fantastic body. Set over the course of 15 years, readers unfortunately see the demands of fame, lost loves and struggles with drugs (the titular "Dolls")that plague each woman. I really enjoyed this one, though the end was a little depressing. The library has the movie adaptation of this, so it'll be fun to compare the two.

Set in the not-so-distant future where the government runs everything, a group of 24 teenagers from 12 different "Districts" (some as young as 12) are picked to participate to the death in the annual "Hunger Games." Told from the perspective of Katniss Everdeen, a teen who volunteers to participate to save her sister, this is a brutal but compelling tale. Who will win and at what cost? I know some people may think this book is a total rip off of the Japanese work Battle Royale , and while the two do share a lot of similarities, I'd say there are enough differences to merit reading Collins' work. What's nice too is that Hunger Games is Book 1 of the series, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. At any rate, if you liked reading this, you might want to also check out the old Stephen King (Richard Bachman) novel The Running Man , which is set in the future and shares the same kind of "survive while the government tries to kill you...

Bombay Time is Umrigar's debut novel and details the lives, loves and losses of a groupof people within a neighborhood/apartment complex in Bombay. All of the characters are middle aged and the book spends a lot of time in flashback mode (maybe a little too much, in my opinion). There's Rusi and his wife Coomi, who are dealing with a deteriorating marriage, Tehmi, a widow with a lifelong curse of bad breath (after breathing in the ashes of her dead husband), Soli, the joker with a broken heart, and a cast of others. Overall, it was a quick book..depressing at times, but when you're talking about slums, depression and the near deplorable conditions of Bombay, it's kind of hard not to feel for these people. But still, a good read.

What a sad little novel this was. Set in current day England, the novel is split into 4 different perspectives - best friends Dara and Abigail, Abigail's boyfriend Sean, and Dara's father Cameron. The narrative deftly weaves together all four characters, though each individual has to deal with their respective personal triumphs and tragedies (e.g. Sean's struggle to abandon his years-long dissertation on Keats, Abigail's infidelity, etc). The prose is tight, but incredibly moving and emotional.

As a major fan of the film, I decided to give the novel a whirl. Goldman's book is designed to appear as an abridged version of a much larger satiric work by S. Morgenstern, a Florinese (fictitious) writer. I'm not going to lie - I actually believed all of this at first, so color me naive. The story is about murder, magic, torture, friendship, fencing, monsters and above all else, true love. Through various twists and turns, Princess Buttercup is about to marry the evil Prince Humperdinck, though her heart belongs to Westley. Add a bunch of wacky and wonderful characters to the mix and you have a fabulous story for the ages. Goldman also was in charge of writing the screenplay to the film, so the bulk of the book made the leap onto the big screen, including choice bits of dialogue, which is awesome. "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

This book falls into the category where you just WISH they'd make a movie out of it even though it probably would be lousy because the scenes wouldn't match up exactly with what's in your head. At any rate, Secret History is a lengthy thriller about a group of friends who attend a small college in Vermont and wind up murdering someone within their circle (I promise I'm not ruining anything, you find out who dies on the very first page). All of them are incredibly intelligent and highly interested in Classics. One night, they partake in a crazy Dionysian ritual and things just go downhill from there...Let's just say that people with big mouths are silenced in more ways than one. Though there was an awful lot of "academic" talk spread throughout the novel (think classics and ancient Greek philosophy), Tartt still manages to create a taut and suspenseful read. Some readers might object to the rampant drug and alcohol use, but it actually helps to captur...