Staff Favourites from 2012: Part 1
Last week members of Book Buzz, Toronto Public Library's online book club shared their favourite books of 2012. This week I've asked staff members for their recommendations.
This is the first in a series of blog posts featuring staff suggestions.
Ab:
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Divergent by Veronica Roth
During a summer cottage getaway, I devoured Divergent, the first part in Veronica Roth’s dystopia trilogy series for young adults. Soon after, I ran to the bookstore to pick up its recently-released sequel, Insurgent. Told through the eyes of heroine Tris, the series explores a fascinating world – and the resulting conflicts – where society is divided into five different factions: Erudite, Dauntless, Candor, Amity and Abnegation. The series is now being developed into a movie, with the industry already buzzing that it will be the next Hunger Games. I can’t wait till the final book comes out next fall.
Cathy:
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Kurt Vonnegut: Letters edited by Dan Wakefield
Vonnegut's unique
point of view on the world always makes for great reading. In his own
words: "I am an American fad — of a slightly higher order than a hula
hoop."
The Women by T.C. Boyle
Great read from a master storyteller about all the women in the life of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Large Print
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
Jill:
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Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
All the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries by Canada's best mystery writer, Louise Penny, are worth reading, but Bury Your Dead , set in Quebec City, takes the series to another level.
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• Large Print
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
Rosemary:
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The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan
I enjoyed the
beautiful writing and found the dark fantasy (selkie story gone badly) to be
challenging and provocative.
• eBook
The Ghosts of Ashbury
High by Jaclyn Moriarty
Both funny and heartbreaking I love the way
the author develops the unique and complex personalities of the main
characters.
Sarah:
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Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa.
Follows the story of strong and bold Amal, a girl born in a Palestinian refugee camp. Powerful and heartwrenching, the novel covers four generations of stories from the pre-conflict years in the ancient village of Ein Hod through 60 years of conflict to present day Palestine.
• Large Print
Winona:
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Are You My Mother?: a Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
Bechdel draws on psychoanalytic ideas and literary works to explore her fraught relationship with her mother and her development as an artist in this emotionally honest and visually captivating graphic memoir – the sequel to Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic.
Life is about Losing Everything by Lynn Crosbie
A dazzling, episodic roman à clef covering seven years in the life – real and imagined – of poet, professor, and Globe and Mail columnist Lynn Crosbie. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, graceful and grotesque.
• eBook
Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger
Brainy, unnerving, and explicit, Berger’s story of the erotic awakening of a teenage girl is also an unflinching examination of the politics and power dynamics of sexual desire. Reader be warned: this is several shades darker than Fifty Shades of Grey, but it is also far smarter and much better written.
• eBook
My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force; art by Jane Mount
See which books were chosen to grace the imaginary ideal bookshelves of 100 celebrated cultural figures – writers, musicians, chefs, designers – in these charming illustrations by Jane Mount, accompanied by commentary drawn from interviews with Thessaly La Force.
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