Join the discussion next Thursday for The Dog Stars!

Spice up your Thursday morning with a fun, energetic discussion of The Dog Stars by Peter Heller on November 7. The "Let's Talk" book club will meet at 10:30 a.m.  in the Junior Home room at T-SPL.

After the end of the world, all Hig wants to do is fish for trout. But the trout are all gone, along with much of the weaker flora and fauna of the world, including most of the humans. Hig now lives at an abandoned airport with his dog Jasper and another survivor named Bangley. One day Hig receives a radio transmission and flies to meet it in his plane. His destination is past the point of no return, so Hig must take a leap into the unknown to find what he is searching for.

To get your brain buzzing, here are a couple things to think about:

• The prose style of The Dog Stars is clipped, terse, often fragmented. Why would Heller choose this way of writing this particular story? In what ways is it fitting?
• What does the novel imply about human nature, after the constraints of civilization have been removed? What does it suggest about the possible consequences of the way we are living now?

Join us for light refreshments and fun discussion - we'd love to see you there!


Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

Have You Missed Coffee By the Book?

Coffee By the Book, started last year as a joint venture between the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library and Bailiwicks Coffee Company, has been a rousing success throughout its first year of existence.  This is not your normal book group.  First, there's obviously coffee.  How can you go wrong there?  Second, the book selections may surprise you.  The focus is on debut novels, often quirky, that may have slipped under your radar.  Finally, there is the group itself.  We have a very good group who are energetic and love talking about books.

We discussed The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman at our last meeting.  This heartbreaking novel follows a young man who becomes a lighthouse keeper on a small island off the coast of Australia.  He meets a young woman while on shore leave and they soon get married.  After several failed attempts at starting a family, they find a boat that has washed up on the island.  The boat contains a man who has passed away and a healthy baby. The decision they make ends up haunting them for a long time.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday, November 21 from 6:00 to 7:00 at Bailiwicks.  Herman Koch's The Dinner is our next book.  Koch looks at two brothers who share a dark family secret.  The entire story takes place during a single dinner which gets more and more hostile.  Our discussion should be interesting since the meeting is one week before Thanksgiving!  Copies of the book are now available at the Information Desk. 

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

The Death of Spiderman's First Love - Debut Novel by Sarah Bruni

Sheila obsessively studies French in the hopes of leaving her small town home after her high school graduation. At her job as a nighttime gas station attendant, she meets a stranger who calls himself Peter Parker, after the true identity of the web-slinging superhero Spiderman. He believes that Sheila is Spiderman's first love, Gwen Stacy, and despite that (or perhaps because of it) she is drawn to the mysterious stranger. Soon he convinces her to run away with him to Chicago, but will not tell her why. The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni is a one-of-a-kind debut coming-of-age novel, with romance, literary fiction, and comic books mixed in.

The book is a dizzying blend of fantasy and reality, where one cannot tell where the myths end and the real world begins. It relies on the Spiderman narrative to frame its story, but don't worry! Readers not familiar with the comics will not be lost since the novel is more about the search for identity and the creation of new ones than about the superhero story. One fault of the novel is that the characters tend to be emotionless and can be hard to identify with, but fans of Spiderman will enjoy Bruni's numerous nods to the original comics. If you love Spiderman or smart, experimental fiction, you should read The Night Gwen Stacy Died.

The Past CAN Come Back

Everyone deserves a second chance, right?  We all make mistakes, especially in our younger years, and can make up for those mistakes.  But sometimes it's not quite that easy.  Alex Marwood shows this in his debut novel, Wicked Girls.

A series of murders in a seaside town in the UK becomes the hot news story for Kirsty, who arrives from one of the larger UK newspapers.  The latest victim, a young girl, is found by Amber, a worker at the local amusement park.  We soon find out that Kirsty and Amber know each other...as Bel and Jade.  The story moves back and forth between present day and the fateful day 25 years earlier in which Bel and Jade became involved in a horrible criminal act.  Their chance meeting during a murdering spree threatens to tear apart everything they have built in their quest for normal lives.

I really enjoyed the fact that this thriller was more about the characters.  Each is developed well and the reader really understands the struggle they go through.  Kirsty and Amber each have their own motivations for not getting involved with the other, but other reasons for finding out what the other knows.  The psychological struggle in this novel makes it one not to be missed!

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

Dark Vampire Horror by Kathleen Tierney

Siobhan Quinn is a monster hunter for hire - she takes out rampaging vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and the like. A junkie with a tragic past, Siobhan will do anything for her next fix - until she comes out on the wrong end of a fight with a werewolf and is infected with the loup virus. To add insult to injury, an angry vampire changes her into one of its own kind, making her an abomination called a 'werepire.' An offhand comment by her vampire 'mother' tells her that her change was not by accident, and this sets Siobhan on a mission to find out why she was twice-damned, and by whose orders.

Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney is a grown-up supernatural mystery with an extremely unreliable narrator. Siobhan Quinn resists telling the whole truth and sometimes embellishes her story, and her numerous asides help to expand the world that Tierney has created (and can sometimes detract from it). The author is also careful to distinguish her book from other supernatural stories, but does include nods to other works. This paranormal adventure is not for the faint of heart, either, with plenty of gore, cursing, and adult situations. Fans of Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series will find much to like in this supernatural horror story, which is the first in a planned series.

Check Out Library Reads for Book Recommendations

I love making book recommendations through the Readers' Corner blog, the T-SPL Facebook page, and through in-person interactions.  It's one of those cool things I get to do at my job!  But I also love to speak with fellow librarians and receive recommendations for titles I missed.

There is a terrific new resource I would like to share with you called LibraryReads.  This is a program designed for librarians from around the country to make book recommendations.  The top ten titles of the month are then shared on the website!  What makes this program especially wonderful is the fact that multiple publishers are involved, including Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Penguin.  The love of reading and making recommendations is bringing these publishers and librarians together.

Check out the November LibraryReads list:

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield
Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer-Fleming
The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy
Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
Lies You Wanted to Hear by James Whitfield Thomson
The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy
The Raven's Eye by Barry Maitland
Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis
Parasite by Mira Grant

Man Booker Prize Shortlist

I have been meaning to post the Man Booker Prize Shortlist for a few weeks now, as they were announced on September 10.  If you missed our post on the longlist, you can find it at this link.

It is a bit embarrassing to admit that I have only read one of the titles making its way to the shortlist, We Need New Names, which was a wonderful read.  The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is currently waiting for me on my Kindle, so maybe I can make up some ground soon.  I promise to catch up and give you all a full report!


Here are the titles making it to the shortlist:

We Need New Names by NoViolete Bulawayo
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Harvest by Jim Crace
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

What is really interesting about this list is the vast diversity of the authors.  Authors from New Zealand (Catton), England (Lahiri, of Indian descent, and Crace), Canada (Ozeki), Ireland (Toibin), and Zimbabwe (Bulawayo) are represented here.  Take a tour of the world by reading these six finalists!

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

New Zealand, England, Canada, Ireland and Zimbabwe

The Sad Songs of Willow Frost

See what I did there with the title?  It should tell you all you need to know about this beautiful, yet heartbreaking novel by Jamie Ford.  You should remember Ford from his wonderful debut, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which was very well reviewed and nominated for a bunch of awards.

 This is a very touching book about young William Eng, a twelve year old boy living in an orphanage outside Seattle. He has vague memories about the night his mother disappeared, and the horrible sight that he saw but does not understand, which led to his placement at Sacred Heart Orphanage. He has never been told why she left and, more importantly, why she never came back.  Unfortunately, many of the young children at Sacred Heart have similar stories.

When the group is taken to a theater, William sees a woman on screen, Willow Frost, who looks just like his mother. He decides he must find this woman in an effort to finally find out the truth.  Aided by his best friend, Charlotte, a young blind girl in the orphanage, William escapes Sacred Heart in a desperate search for Willow Frost in the unlikely event that she is his mother.

The characters are very well developed. Charlotte, in particular, is an amazing young person in this story. Many of her moments with William are both beautiful and heartbreaking.  When you combine William's unfortunate past with Charlotte's, you have some powerful stuff.  But their will to not only survive, but to thrive, makes for a wonderful side story to William's search.  

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

Venice Thriller Debut by Jonathan Holt

In Venice, someone wearing priest's robes is found floating on the front steps of the Santa Maria della Salute, one of the city's most famous landmarks. The body turns out to be that of a woman shot in the head. By wearing sacred vestments, she has committed a grievous desecration in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Kat Tapo, a female Italian police captain, is tasked with solving the case. Meanwhile, Holly Boland, an American soldier from the military base in Venice, is given a Freedom of Information request dealing with a war lord in Bosnia, and what she finds may be a conspiracy decades old. The Abomination by Jonathan Holt is a tightly plotted, suspense-filled ride through the seedy underbelly of Venice.

The novel deals with themes of feminism, war crimes, loyalty, and internet privacy, so it is quite topical in terms of the recent NSA controversy. Holt shifts between a number of viewpoints during the course of the book, including Kat, Holly, and a hacker genius named Daniele Barbo, but the three viewpoints never become jumbled and are weaved together with skill. Holt also does a wonderful job of creating two strong female characters with dynamic personalities, which can be difficult for a male author. Fans of Stieg Larrson's Millennium series trilogy will be drawn in by this fast-paced, complex mystery, which is the first in a planned trilogy.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian