2007 Notable Books--Outstanding Fiction

The American Library Association's Notable Books Council use the following criteria to select award winners. A book may be selected as notable for at least one, and preferably more than one, of the following reasons:

• it possesses exceptional literary merit;
• it expands the horizons of human knowledge;
• it makes a specialized body of knowledge accessible to the non-specialist;
• it promises to contribute significantly to the solution of a contemporary problem
  

Bigsby, Christopher, Beautiful Dreamer.
from Publishers Weekly "English author Bigsby unflinchingly explores a mushrooming tragedy that begins when a black man walks through the front door of a white-owned store in turn-of-the-century rural Tennessee."

Dean, Debra, Madonnas of Leningrad.
from Booklist "Her granddaughter's wedding should be a time of happiness for Marina Buriakov. But the Russian emigre's descent into Alzheimer's has her and her family experiencing more anxiety than joy."

Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss.
from Publishers Weekly "This stunning second novel from Desai (Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard) is set in mid-1980s India, on the cusp of the Nepalese movement for an independent state."

Doig, Ivan, The Whistling Season.
from Washington Posts' Book World "Ivan Doig writes about a vanished way of life on the Western plains with the kind of irony-free nostalgia that seems downright courageous in these ironic times. ... In pursuit of greater efficiency and rigor, the state has decided to close all its one-room schoolhouses."

Grenville, Kate, The Secret River.
from Publishers Weekly "Grenville's Australian bestseller, which won the Orange Prize, is an eye-opening tale of the settlement of New South Wales by a population of exiled British criminals."

Khadra, Yasmina, translated from the French by John Cullen, The Attack.
from Publisher's Weekly "Dr. Amin Jaafari is a man caught between two worlds; he's a Bedouin Arab surgeon struggling to integrate himself into Israeli society. The balancing act becomes impossible when the terrorist responsible for a suicide bombing that claims 20 lives, including many children, is identified as Jaafari's wife by the Israeli police."

Lansens, Lori, The Girls.
from Publishers Weekly "Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are linked at the side of the head, with separate brains and bodies. Born in a small town outside Toronto in the midst of a tornado and abandoned by their unwed teenage mother two weeks later, the girls are cared for by Aunt Lovey, a nurse who refuses to see them as deformed or even disabled."

McCarthy, Cormac, The Road.
from Publishers Weekly "Violence, in McCarthy's postapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea."

Meek, James, The People's Act of Love.
from Publishers Weekly "Set during the waning days of the Russian revolution, Meek's utterly absorbing novel (after The Museum of Doubt) captivates with its depiction of human nature in all its wartime extremes."

Mitchell, David, Black Swan Green.
from School Library Journal "Thirteen chapters provide a monthly snapshot of Jason Taylor's life in small-town England from January 1982 to January 1983. Whether the 13-year-old narrator is battling his stammer or trying to navigate the social hierarchy of his schoolmates or watching the slow disintegration of his parents' marriage, he relates his story in a voice that is achingly true to life."

Murakami, Haruki, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.
from Publishers Weekly "Murakami's new collection of 25 stories, many of which have appeared in the New Yorker and other publications, also describes these epiphanic instances. ...Murakami's stories are difficult to describe and one should, I think, resist attempts to overanalyze them. Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious. In addition, a part of Murakami's genius is that he uses images as plot points, going from image to image."

Savage, Sam, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife.
from Booklist "In Savage's darkly comic debut, the titular metropolitan lowlife is a rat, albeit one with lofty literary ambitions. The runt of 13 siblings spawned in the basement of a shambolic Boston bookshop, Firmin survives his lean first weeks by munching on the edges of books. He quickly develops a predilection for actually reading them, too."

Coming soon--Notable Nonfiction

Legacy of Love

Mr. Arun Gandhi has spent a lifetime putting into practice the philosophy of nonviolence that he learned at the hand of his grandfather, legendary peace fighter and spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi. Keep checking here to see when his lecture will be re-scheduled.

Book Description from Amazon

Called a messenger of peace, Arun Gandhi -- Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson -- has dedicated his life to spreading his grandfather’s teachings around the globe. This compelling memoir begins in the heart of apartheid South Africa where the author lived under conditions of zealous racism until he was 12 years old. Following are the two pivotal years he spent with his grandfather in India, learning the lessons that would undo his anger and cultivate a profound activism. His account also describes living with his parents in religious and socially activist communities in South Africa and India. This book presents the practical wisdom the author learned from his grandfather revolving around family, men and women, simplicity, religious unity, humility, truth, and nonviolence.

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

Library Journal describes this book as "farce, philosophy, madness, melodrama. " Originally published in 1978 by Iris Murdoch, who has been described as one of the best British woman novelists, The Sea, The Sea displays much inventive writing, tortuous plots and tangled relationships between a number of characters.

Meet at 7pm on Feb 28th in the Library Director's Conference room on the entrance level of the High Library.

Tell us at the meeting or on the blog, what you're ideas were about this book.

Questions? Contact John Bacon at 717-367-2689.

Exploring the Wilds of the Commonwealth (with camera)

The Best in Tent Camping by Matt Willen

Join in a conversation with Matt Willen on Tuesday, January 30th at 7pm in the High Library near the fireplace.

Matt will share his observations on some of the best places to hike and camp in central Pennsylvania and show slides by the glow of the library's new fireplace. Matt will sign copies of his book, which will be available for purchase.

Included in his book is information on day trips, suggestions for hikes and activities accessible from the featured campground, as well as local flora and fauna.

Please feel free to add comments before and after his presentation.

See you on the 30th of January at 7pm.

Twice a Stranger

Written by British journalist Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger tells the epic story of the massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. At the end of World War I, Greece invaded Turkey’s Anatolia region in an attempt to enlarge the Greek nation by including the numerous Greek Orthodox Christians residing in Turkey. This population of Christians had lived for centuries in this area of the old Ottoman Empire before World War I. The invasion was the culmination of a long-held Greek dream, called the Megali Idea (Great Idea), to reconstitute the Byzantine Empire.

Following Greece’s defeat and the burning of the port city of Smyrna, which was reported by a young foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star named Ernest Hemingway, a conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Under the auspices of the League of Nations, it was agreed by both Greece and Turkey to conduct a social experiment of monumental proportions: approximately 1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians were to be sent from Turkey to Greece, and about 400,000 Greek Muslims were to be sent from Greece to Turkey. Both of these groups had resided for centuries in their respective towns and villages. Clark interviews a number of people on both sides of this exchange who were young children during this event. The irony of this exchange is that many of the Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey did not speak Greek, especially those from the Cappadocia region of Anatolia. Furthermore, many of the Greek Muslims sent from Crete to Turkey did not speak Turkish. Hence the book’s title, Twice a Stranger.

The implications of this population exchange resonate till this day as both Greece and Turkey are now experiencing a return to a more multi-ethnic population. With the fall of Communism in Europe, a massive influx of Albanians, most of whom are Muslim, has flooded Greece’s underground labor market. In Turkey, they are still grappling with the identities of their Kurdish and Armenian citizens. How Turkey resolves this question will go a long way in determining whether it still wants to join, or will be accepted in, the European Union. A NATO member, Turkey could possibly decide that its fate rests more with the Muslim world and will no longer be the only secular Muslim government in the region.

So two nation-states once defined by their religion and language are once again facing challenges to their identities in a modern globalizing world.

Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune

The High Library Book Club will be meeting on Tuesday, January 24th at 7 pm in the Library Director's Conference room to discuss Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune. Please feel free to join them.

This is a girl's adventure story. It takes a feminist approach as Eliza leaves 19th century Valaparaiso society to follow her lover into gold-crazed California. She is befriended by a Chinese healer during her journey.

Does this book go too far as historical fiction? Does it convey the spirit, manners and social conditions of this past age with realistic detail and fidelity to historical fact?

Please post additional questions or comments using your google account. Need to create a google account?--https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.

Want to write about a book you've read on this blog? Contact Sylvia.

The High Library Book Club, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, meets the 4th Wednesday of each month at 7 pm in the Director's conference room. Meetings feature lively discussions of fiction and nonfiction. Questions? Contact John Bacon at 717-367-2689.

Thanks to Amazon for the photo.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

If you’ve heard about The Kite Runner, but haven’t read it yet, we offer a brief review:
Kite Runner is the first novel written by Khaled Hosseini, a practicing physician, whose family fled Afghanistan prior to the Taliban. Set in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1970’s, the story focuses on Amir, the son of a wealthy merchant, and Hassan, the son of one of Amir’s father’s servants. The day in 1975, when 12-year-old Amir wins the annual kite-fighting tournament, is the best and worst day of his young life. The title refers to the competitive kite-flying young people participate in, generally in teams, where the kite-flyer uses his specially-equipped kite string to cut down opponents’ kites, and his teammate attempts to collect the fallen kite as a trophy. Hosseini's harrowing story evokes the irony of life that makes a masterpiece: the brutality and compassion of man, cowardice and courage, freedom and oppression, loss and love.