Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

April 20, 2009 will mark the 10 year anniversary of the awful massacre/shooting at Columbine High School. While a lot of the information related to the shooting has become public knowledge in the past decade, Cullen's extremely detailed work sheds much light on the many myths and wrong details that still pervade popular culture. For starters, Eric Harris was the ringleader of the duo (I had always thought Dylan Klebold was the main instigator) and a complete psychopath. The two were not really involved in the infamous Trench Coat Mafia, nor were they isolated loners subject to bullies. In reality, they were popular within their social circle, extremely intelligent and faked normalcy for over a year, deceiving friends, their families and other members of the community. Furthermore (and I found this to be the most shocking), Jefferson County Police had had knowledge that Harris was up to something bad. They had been alerted many times by the Brown family (Harris had threatened Brooks...

Set in Pakistan, this series of short stories revolves around the servants, family members and employees of wealthy landowner/farm manager K.K. Harouni. Readers only meet Harouni in one story, the rest of the time, he is a mere catalyst, representative of great power and opportunity, or else a figure to be manipulated. The nice thing about this book is that characters appear several times throughout the different stories at different points in time. For example, Haruoni's nephew Sohail appears in "Lady in Paris," at a turning point in his relationship. He appears again in later stories in a much different type of setting. The not so nice thing about this book is the abject poverty and sense of hopelessness can be brutal at times. While some of the characters enjoy their meager living situations (see "A Spoiled Man," which had a heartbreaking ending), the majority of the female characters in all of the stories are ruthless in their attempts to break out of thei...

Jay Asher's debut novel has an interesting premise - Clay, a high schooler receives a mysterious package of audiotapes in the mail. They are from Hannah Baker, who committed suicide a few weeks earlier. On the tapes, Hannah narrates the 13 reasons that led her to kill herself (i.e. the people that caused her such anguish). Clay was "lucky" enough to be on Hannah's list and must pass off the tapes when he is finished listening to them. The story is obviously told in flashbacks that detail several indviduals who were just awful to Hannah. Pretty much any kind of bad high school experience is on Hannah's tape-drinking, sex, bullying. Though this is a YA book, the amount of teen angst is a little too much at times. Hannah herself doesn't really come off as a fabulous (or even likeable) character considering that suicide is an inherently very selfish act and she spends 250+ pages blaming everyone else for her death. The only character that you feel kind of bad for...

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.

Though this novel exceeds 500+ pages, its story remains relatively simple - Marion and Shiva Praise Stone are twins born to a nun (a nurse) in an Ethiopian hospital. Their mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, dies while giving birth. The presumed father, Thomas Stone, is the head surgeon who vanishes after he is unable to save her in the OR. While this may seem to be a rather bleak situation, the book becomes an almost light story about family, love, and medicine. The twins are raised by the hospital's other surgeon and gynecologist, who treat the boys as if they were their own. Everything is hunky-dory until the day when Shiva commits the ultimate betrayal and creates a divide against the two. As the boys age, the political landscape of the country changes drastically, forcing Marion (the narrator) to flee to the United States. It is in this last segment of the novel where Shiva and Thomas Stone are able to experience some kind of redemption for the pain that they caused Marion. Ove...

This book #6 in the Diane Fallen series. If you have never read Beverly Connors books before please do. Start with #1" One Grave Too Many". Shattered Graves follows the main character forensic anthropologist Diane Fallon as she and her team at the crime lab in RiverTrail Museum of Natural History try to find out who killed the mayor and police chief, who were harassing her and were hiding secrets of their own. I love the character of Fallon. And if you enjoy this series you will also love Ms. Connors other series that has the main character Lindsay Chamberlain an archeologist.