Eastern Standard tribe - Cory Doctorow (SF) fan review; Doctorow's blog (one of them)
The boys are back in town - Christopher Golden (SF/YA) an interesting, very mixed, fan review
Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson (SF, takes place in DC) BookPage review
Life - Gwyneth Jones (SF) an interview with Ms. Jones
Shadows in the darkness - Elaine Cunningham (F) allreaders database entry; Harriet Klausner's review
The ordinary - Jim Grimsley (SF/F) BookPage review
Dark dreams (Horror and suspense, anthology) Harriet Klausner's review
No guarantee that you will find any of these genre books in these more standard review sources, but take a look.
The New York Review of Books
London Review of Books
NYT Book Reviews (get a login identity from bug-me-not)
Along with some genre review sources.
Have you seen the documentary Stone Reader? It is available as a DVD rental from Video Americain Takoma Park (uptown on Laurel) and from Netflix. (Be certain to watch all the supplementary material on the second disk.) The movie is about passion for books, and follows, in an around-the-barn fashion, a quest for the author of The stones of summer.
As scores of other titles are mentioned in the movie with great affection, keep a notebook, pen and your DVD controller handy.
We do own:
FIC MOSSMAN The stones of summer -Dow Mossman
in the new B&N edition that resulted from the success of the movie. Place a hold on it if it is not available when you come in. And read Stephen King's review. (We may have owned the original edition. If so, it long ago went into a library book sale.)
We also have:
[FIC] H 685 The furies - Janet Hobhouse
which is the title currently championed by the lost books club. Indeed it has been forgotten and neglected here at the library. There were seven checkouts in 1993. One in September 1995. And that was it. For nine years it has been stowed on the shelf while not a single person checked it out.
We own two of the greatest American novels, both mentioned repeatedly in the DVD material:
FIC ROTH Call it sleep - Henry Roth (no checkouts within the last five years)
817 T969 Roughing It - Mark Twain (two checkouts within the last five years)
and, of course,
J PIC JOHNSON Harold and the purple crayon - Crockett Johnson
as well as many Hardy Boys books. They are always being checked out.
We no longer own, but are re-ordering, The man who cried I am by John Alfred Williams. Overlook Press has just published a new paperback edition.
One of the titles which simply flashes by on a paper sheet is
FIC OZEKI My year of meats - Ruth Ozeki.
This is beloved by many library staff members and one of our group even managed to wangle a dinner with the author when she visited the area a couple of years ago. If you like Meats, snatch up a copy of her potatoes book, All over creation, anywhere you can find it.
Mentioned somewhere on the DVD, and unforgettable:
878 SUETONI Lives of the Caesars - Suetonius
And anything by John McPhee. We have 17 titles, so check the catalog.
Title confusion: Another great word-of-mouth "stones" book is
FIC HEGI Stones from the river - Ursula Hegi.
If you loved that, be sure to find a copy of the quieter companion Floating in my mother's palm, which we used to own but unfortunately have lost.
Please post your own list of favorite books here. Call Rebecca at the library for instructions.
301.891.7259