October 2009 Staff Book Reviews

Last Updated on Monday, 30 November 2009 12:06

Frequently Asked Questions - Reader Services

After playing, walking, or working out in the cool fresh air, you may be looking for a relaxing activity to occupy your time indoors.  Well, the library has several materials to amuse you and your family indoors.  The library staff would like to share some books, audiobooks, and videos with you that they have recently enjoyed. 

So take a look at these suggestions and visit you hometown library to check them out.  If you don't find anything you like on this list, still take a visit to the library to browse all the other materials available.

 Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Staff Reviewer: Christi Pyle, Newcastle Public Library
Genre: Adult Fiction

Dan Brown's "Lost Symbol" did not disappoint.  His fast paced style kept me intrigued and anxious for more.  The spellbinding web of  conspiracy and secrets enveloped me into the fictional depths of the Freemason's and the mystism associated  with their fraturnal organization.  The abundance of techie vocabulary proved to be more than I could comprehend sometimes but the book was great!

Sing, Hoot & Howl with the Sesame Street Animals

Staff Reviewer: Alice Fielding, Pioneer Service Center
Genre: Children Video

Sing, Hoot & Howl with the Sesame Street Animals is one of my top picks for young adults who grew up with Sesame Street and want to share the memories with the children in their lives. The song titles in the table of contents may not ring a bell for you, but it has the song about “I’m a dog, I’m a workin’ dog, I’m a hard workin’ dog,” the pretty one about the starfish, the one about Ernie singing the insects in your neighborhood, the “I’m an aardvark and I’m proud” song, the cute song about “cows have calves and I’ll bet you didn’t know that elephants have calves too,” among others. I like to think that our generation is not so cynical that we can’t appreciate the “We are all Earthlings” song.

My three-year-old daughter liked this video well enough to request to watch it again after seeing it for the first time, which is a positive vote from her. But I enjoyed watching it just as much as she did!

The Summer Kitchen by Lisa Wingate

Staff Reviewer: Kelly Lempges, McLoud Public Library
Genre: Adult Fiction

This book was great. It was a bit hard to follow at first as every other chapter is told from a different characters viewpoint. Runaway Cass Blue is thrown into the role of an adult at 12 years of age after the death of her mother. Cass and her brother Rusty, who is only 17 are trying to make it on their own far away from home. SandraKaye Darden a wealthy doctors wife comes to the rescue of Cass in a very unique scenario. Sandra's son Jake has run away and her marriage is crumbling, along with her relationship with her other teenage son. The book addresses the struggles of not having enough food to eat and the ability to survive when responsible adults are not providing for small children. Both Cass and SandraKaye are facing personal crisis. The ending brings solution to both. It is a great read.

The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi

Staff Reviewer: Susan Gregory, Development Office
Genre: Adult Fiction

If you loved the movies, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Love, Actually, you will absolutely love the novels of British writer, Penny Vincenzi. She is one of my favorite authors, whose gift for writing page-turners with charming and flawed characters is second to none. She’s like the gifted child of Nora Roberts and Rosamund Pilcher: she’s able to write addictive stories that immediately draw you in and then dazzle you with a mix of laughter, happy endings and a few tears—seasoned with endless cups of tea.

One stormy afternoon on a busy interstate outside of London, a tractor trailer overturns and triggers a chain of crashes that kills three innocent people and injures dozens more.

One of the injured is eighty-year-old Mary, who is on her way to Heathrow Airport to meet the man she fell in love with sixty years earlier in WWII London. Both widowed, they’ve promised to meet and see if their love has survived. Abi, a troubled yet talented teenage actress, had hitched a ride into London with the driver of the crashed tractor trailer; she flees the scene before she can tell law enforcement what caused the driver to lose control. Jonathan is the brilliantly successful doctor who becomes the hero of the day for his aid to the victims, despite the fact that he’s cheated on his wife with the seductive young woman in his car. Toby, a wealthy and irresponsible young cad, will fortunately never make it to his wedding, despite his best man’s best efforts to get him there. William is the young farmer on whose land the crash occurs. His aid to the littlest victims of the crash will bring him to the attention of someone whom he never thought he’d find—the love he’s been hoping for but had no clue how to find. How these characters—and many more—find each other, lose each other and return once more is a fascinating, wonderfully fun journey for the reader.

Penny Vincenzi is hugely popular in England and Europe, but is just becoming well-known in the States. A former journalist for Vogue and Tattler, she brings extraordinary insight and humor to each character, as well as a healthy dose of realism. Her books are addictive and difficult to put down, but perfect for the next rainy afternoon.

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

Staff Reviewer: Nancy Rimassa, Norman Public Library
Genre: Adult Fiction

American culture is exuberant, busy, and comfortable for most of the people who live inside its borders. This cheerful lifestyle is supported by the tiny, unnoticed moving electron and the pathways that it follows through all the electronic tools used every minute of every day throughout the land.

Now picture unknown assailants detonating a few nuclear devices 25 miles above the surface of the earth, positioned just over the middle of the North American continent. The bombs generate a force, real and not imagined, known as an electromagnetic pulse or EMP. Think of it as a lightning strike. In a line-of-sight fashion it travels downward to the earth, faster, stronger than any bolt of lightning and bringing absolute death to complicated electronic devices. It doesn't hurt living things and it doesn't continue to prevent electrical transmission.

One Second After tells the horrific tale of the fate of these living things in the aftermath of an EMP strike. The story takes place in a small town close to Asheville, North Carolina, ringed by mountains and national forest. The community supports a small college. It is a suburban community with no industry and little agriculture. Electronic pacemakers, blood sugar monitors, microwave ovens are gone, never to work again. Lights are off and communication devices are silent. Semis and family sedans are stalled on Interstate highways across the nation. People are stranded far from family. Collapse of the great society is predictable as individuals come to realize that the survival of one may depend on the death of another. Local officials struggle to take control of the situation and keep folks alive. The main character, a college history professor with a military background has his own internal battles to contend with which helps to keep the story moving along, saving it from the domain of scientific press release.

The writing is pedantic but the story is thought-provoking, terrifying and well worth the reader's time. The EMP effect described is real. (http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/emp.htm) Nuclear bombs exist and the method of delivery is believable. Will you be prepared? Read the book and wonder how you could survive.

The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles

Staff Reviewer: Susan Gregory,Development Office
Genre: Adult Fiction

This lyrical book is for anyone who has ever traveled to the Wichita Mountains, stood at the top of Mount Scott and marveled at the beauty of the landscape that was once home to the Comanche Indians, and then wondered about the price that the Indians paid in giving up their ancestral lands. It’s for anyone who has ever been curious about the fate of the Quaker Indian agents who were sent by the federal government to teach reluctant Indians how to farm. Most of all, this book is about one freed slave’s journey to North Texas after the Civil War and his amazing journey to rescue his wife and children from the Comanches after they’re kidnapped in a brutal raid on their new homestead.

The story of freed Kentucky slave, Britt Johnson, is true. Novelist and poet, Paulette Jiles, came across his story while researching her book, Enemy Women, and resolved to write about him one day. She’s done a magnificent job of illuminating both the beauty and the cruelty of life for both the Indians and the white settlers who struggled for the right to live in southern Oklahoma and north Texas after the Civil War. She especially sheds light on the tragic consequences for those settlers who are kidnapped in Indian raids, then returned to their original families. For those who are “rescued”, life will never be the same. Often children when they’re captured, the returning captives no longer fit into settler society but long for the Indian families whose love gave their lives meaning. One of these lost souls is Britt Johnson’s son. No one is left unscathed in this bitter and bloody period of our state’s history. Paulette Jiles is a magnificent writer and poet whose words give this story a remarkable, painful beauty. I highly recommend this for anyone who loves Western history and particularly, the history of Oklahoma.