National Book Award Winners for 2014

On November 19th, the National Book Foundation presented the winners of the National Book Award for 2014.  Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for her impact on American literature. Check out her remarks regarding book publishing in America which everyone is talking about!

Other winners that you may request from the library include:

Fiction

Redeployment by Phil Klay





Nonfiction

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos





Poetry

Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck




 Start the New Year off with the winners and finalists of the National Book Award on your reading list!   SH

Andrew Carnegie Medal Shortlist for Fiction and Nonfiction Announced

The American Library Association has announced the finalists for the prestigious Andrew Carnegie Medal.  The books selected represent the best American adult titles published in the previous calendar year.  The winner will be announced at ALA's June meeting.  

In the meantime, here are great titles to add to your spring/summer reading list OR click on the links and reserve a copy at our library right now!  Remember we also offer these titles on Book on CD and Downloadable E-Book & Audiobook.

 

2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Shortlist

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. By Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. By Sheri Fink.

On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History. By Nicholas A. Basbanes.

2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Shortlist

Americanah. By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Claire of the Sea Light. By Edwidge Danticat.

The Goldfinch. By Donna Tartt.

SH

MASSBOOK MUST-READS ANNOUNCED

Support Massachusetts authors and read the books selected for the Massachusetts Must-Read list for
2014!  The four categories are Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Children's/Young Adult.  These books created by Massachusetts authors and books about Massachusetts have been chosen because they will lead to conversations in the community.

The titles currently available in Minuteman are linked to our catalog so you can place a request and read a summary of the book and it's reviews.  Contact the library if you would like to request a title that is not currently in the catalog.

Pick up one of these titles today and share with your friends and book groups.

Fiction
Along the Watchtower, David Litwack (Double Dragon)
The Celestials, Karen Shepard (Tin House)
The Hanging Judge, Michael Ponsor (Open Road Media)
News from Heaven, Jennifer Haigh (Harper)
Together Tea, Marjan Kamali (Ecco)
Vatican Waltz, Roland Merullo (Crown)

NonfictionBook of Ages, Jill Lepore (Knopf)
A Fort of Nine Towers, Qais Akbar Omar (FSG)
Breach of Trust, Andrew Bacevich (Metropolitan)
The Last Train to Zona Verde, Paul Theroux (HMH)
Margaret Fuller, Megan Marshall (HMH)
Miss Anne in Harlem, Carla Kaplan (Harper)






Poetry

Belmont, Stephen Burt (Graywolf)
Boy Singing to Cattle, Mark D. Hart (Pearl Editions)
Frost in the Low Areas, Karen Skolfield (Zone 3 Press )
Grass Whistle, Amy Dryansky (Salmon)
Inside the Splintered Wood, Myles Gordon (Tebot Bach )
Strange Borderlands, Ben Berman (Able Muse)
  

Children's/Young Adult
The Extra, Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick)
White Fur Flying, Patricia MacLachlan (McElderry/S&S)
Journey, Aaron Becker (Candlewick)
Garden Princess, Kristin Kladstrup (Candlewick)
The First Drawing, Mordicai Gerstein (Little, Brown BYR)
A Place for Turtles, Melissa Stewart (Peachtree) 





SH

Celebrate the Freadom to Read--Banned Books Week 2013

Tomorrow is the last day of the official Banned Books Week where we have an opportunity to reflect on all of the treasures we may have missed if individuals and groups had succeeded in suppressing the access to published works in libraries.

What are some of these titles that have been challenged or banned in the United States?

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

1984 & Animal Farm by George Orwell

Color Purple by Alice Walker

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling

Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Parks

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey

This is just a sampling of the many titles that requests have been made to remove or have been removed from library shelves due to political, sexual, religious, or social reasons..  For more lists see the ALA Banned Books website. 

Celebrate that you live in a country where you have access to the published word and that you have a public library that is the place to find what you need!  SH

Ann Patchett Recommends....

Many of you may not know that Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto, owns a bookstore in Nashville named Parnassus.  At the American Library Association meeting in June, she offered attendees a list of books she recommends to her customers that I thought might be of interest to all of you.  The books she recommends are:

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Coming of age in middle America, eighteen-year-old Rosemary evaluates how her entire youth was defined by the presence and forced removal of an endearing chimpanzee who was secretly regarded as a family member and who Rosemary loved as a sister.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Marra has written a brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences. 

Claire of the the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
From the best-selling author of "Brother, I'm Dying" and "The Dew Breaker: " a stunning new work of fiction that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a small seaside town where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing. 

A Day at the Beach: recollections by Geoffrey Wolff
In these autobiographical essays, Wolff shares with the reader the wisdom of an alert man learning through the unsettling collisions of time, place, and local custom, and through the force of hardship and hazard, to bring his many disparate selves together --
with astonishing high-stakes candor and dazzling literary agility.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam
Filth is a lawyer with a practice in the Far East. A few remember that his nickname stands for Failed In London Try Hong Kong. But Old Filth is not as pompous as people imagine, and his past contains many secrets and dark hiding places. 

The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
Pagford is a town at war.  Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations? Rowling's first novel for adults is blackly comic, thought-provoking, and constantly surprising. 

The Patrice Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope and Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn
This single volume brings together the first four Patrick Melrose novels by Booker Prize Finalist Aubyn. The collection includes "Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope," and "Mother's Milk." The novels take the reader into the world of the English upper class as they
follow Patrick Melrose's story from child abuse to heroin addiction and recovery.  Beautifully written.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
This is a story of a boy and his painting.  Theo lost his mother in an explosion and came into possession of a dutch painting entitled "The Goldfinch" that has the biggest impact on his life.  As an adult he is led into the dark world of art theft.  The novel has well-drawn characters, beautiful prose, and takes the reader through loss, love, and the world of art.

Take Ann Patchett's recommendations or check out our booklists here on the blog or our Pinterest site.  Enjoy!  SH

Mass Book Awards 2013 announced in time for Summer Reading!

The Massachusetts Book Awards' mission is to highlight the work of our vital contemporary writing community and encourage readers to do some "close reading" of those imaginative works created by the authors among us.  

 We highlighted the MassBook "must reads" announced in March and are happy to provide you with the winners so you may add them to your summer reading list.  Click on the link and request today!

2013 Winners:

Fiction

The Technologists by Matthew Pearl.  (One of my favorite books.  The audio is quite good.)
A well-researched mystery set in 1868 which brings to life the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's first senior class, the beginnings of the MIT/Harvard rivalry, and life in early Boston.

Non-Fiction
Brothers: George Howe Colt on his Brothers and Brothers in History by George Howe Colt.
An idiosyncratic and masterful blend of memoir and history featuring both the author’s three brothers and iconic brothers in history—the Booths, the Van Goghs, the Kelloggs, the Marx Brothers, and the Thoreaus.


Children's/Young Adult

Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm.
Explains how all life on the Earth depends, directly or indirectly, on light from the sun, and describes how all ocean life, from the tiniest plankton to great whales, including the creatures in the darkest depths, form a web that uses sunshine.

SH

2013 Edgar Award Winners Announced

The Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the Edgar Award on May 2.  Three of the categories were Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Fact Crime.  You may also enjoy the nominees, so check out the list and place your requests.

The winners are:

Best Novel

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.  

Best First Novel

The Expats by Chris Pavone
When expat Kate begins to travel around Europe, she finds herself buried in layers of deceit so thick they threaten her family, her marriage, and her life. Intricate, riveting, and surprising, this thriller is of the highest caliber. 
This was a title discussed at the Wellesley Free Library Monday Night Book Group in May.

Best Fact Crime

Midnight in Peking: how the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of old China
by Paul French
Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking.  Two detectives—one British and one Chinese—race against the clock to solve the crime before the Japanese invade and Peking as they know it is gone forever. Can they find the killer in time, before the Japanese invade?

SH

60th Anniversary of the Korean War

To enrich the observance of the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War, check out the 2^nd floor display table for a variety of Korean War nonfiction and fiction books, audiobooks, and DVDs.  The Reference Department also has booklists available for you take.

The official website for the anniversary, Korean War 60th Anniversary, offers (by clicking on History on the toolbar at the top of the page) the history, personal testimonials, photographs, biographies and more for this Forgotten War,

Some of the titles available on the display include:

Naval Aviation in the Korean War 




Bully Able Leader : the story of a fighter-bomber pilot in the Korean War

Home: A Novel by Toni Morrison

Mash: A Novel about 3 Army Doctors by Richard Hooker

War Trash: A Novel by Ha Jin

SH

Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced!

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners for Letters, Drama, and Music have been announced and we now
have more wonderful titles for our wish lists.  Be sure to place your requests today.

The 2013 winners are:

Fiction
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson.

follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. 
  

History


Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations, distinguished scholar Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. 

Biography
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

.
Born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French nobleman in present-day Haiti, Alex Dumas (father of the writer Alexander Dumas) was briefly sold into bondage but then made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. 

General Nonfiction

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys by Gilbert King
Shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”


Poetry
Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds.
Through verse, the author carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending.  Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting

SH

Earth Day--April 22

Celebrate Earth Day 2013 (April 22) by stopping by the 2nd floor

display table and picking up a book, book on CD, or DVD.

The display is entitled Oh What a Beautiful World and features topics on geology, geography, gardening, early humans, animals, environment, energy, AND even some fiction focusing on these topics...or at least with related words in the title.

Some titles you might enjoy are:

Books
Adventures in Tornado Alley:  The Storm Chasers
The Neandertal Enigma
K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Global Climate Change: The Book of Essential Knowledge
Dust:  A History of the Small & the Invisible
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

Book on CD
Silent Sea
World Without End
Global Warming:  Global Threat
Terminal Freeze
Journey to the Center of the Earth

DVD
HumanPlanet: The Complete Series
Ape to Man
Ascent of Man
The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey (6 vols)
Dirt: The Movie

Stop by the display and find what else is waiting for you....

SH

Massachusetts Book Awards Must Read for 2013

The Must Read Books for 2013 have just been announced by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.  From this list of 2012 published books by a Massachusetts author or about a Massachusetts subject, a winner will will be chosen in late April to reign as the Mass Book winner for 2013 in each of 4 categories.

Some nominated books from each category include:

Fiction
The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro
The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

Non-Fiction
Brothers by George Howe Colt
Autumn in the Heavenly by Stephen R. Platt

Poetry
Shortly Thereafter by Colin Halloran 
What is Amazing by Heather Christle

Children's/Young Adult
Red Thread Sisters by Carol Antoinette Peacock
There Goes Ted Williams--the Greatest Hitter that Ever Lived by Matt Tavares

Don't wait to check out the other titles and place your requests for these titles.  

If you have read any of these, which would you place your vote for to win this wonderful award?  Please leave a reply here to promote your favorite title!

SH

Read the books for 26 movies premiering in 2013

Read the books for 26 movies premiering in 2013

With the news waves saturated with the Golden Globes winners and Oscar nominations, we know that movies are very popular.  If you love to read the books that movies are based upon, it's time to start reading as 26 new movies fitting this bill have already been announced for 2013!

Waiting for us in the near future is Catching Fire, the sequel to the best seller Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and the movie of the same name.  Other authors getting the nod are Donald Westlake, Joe Hill, Joseph Finder, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orson Scott Card, and more.  

Check out the link to plan your reading list now!

SH 

Goodreads announces Best Titles for 2012

If you love to read and haven't discovered or used Goodreads yet, now is a great time to see what they have to offer with the GoodReads Choice Awards. 

This 2012 Best Books list is voted by readers.  Take a look.  It may help with your choices for gifts as well as what you should read next!

SH

Book Award Winners--Nobel & Massachusetts Book Award

I know that many of you add prize winners to your reading list so this post will expand the number of titles that you must read!  Not only is the Nobel Prize winner listed below, but please enjoy the MassBooks of the year, including the list of must reads for 2012.

With the absence of a winner for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, these titles fill a need right now for personal reading as well as holiday giving!

2012 Nobel Prize winner for Literature--Mo Yan who the Nobel Committee describes as""who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".  To learn a bit more about his writing try this article from the New York Times. 


Try requesting and reading two of Mo Yan's works:

Life and Death are Wearing Me Out
During Mao's Land Reform Movement of 1948, the beneficent landowner is robbed of his property, then put to death. He endures prolonged torture in hell before he is allowed to return to Earth and his own farm in the form of animals who relate their feeling of the culture and politics that in in place.

The Republic of Wine
When Chinese special investigator Ding Gou'er hears persistent rumors that there is cannibalism in the province known as the Republic of Wine, he is dispatched by his superiors to learn the truth.  Wild, bawdy, politically explosive, The Republic of Wine is both mesmerizing and exhilarating, proving that no repressive regime can stifle true creative imagination. 

2012 MassBook Award Winners

Fiction--Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington
A profoundly moving, uplifting contemporary novel about those who are left at home during wartime and a teenage girl bravely facing the future. 

Nonfiction--Killer Stuff and Tons of Money by Maureen P. Stanton
The story of one dealer's journey from the populist mayhem of flea markets to the rarefied realm of auctions, and reveals the rich, often outrageous subculture of antiques and collectibles.


MassBook 2012 Fiction Must Reads and MassBook 2012 Nonfiction Must Reads  will offer you 24 recommended lists!  

These titles may leave you wishing for a long winter so you can read them all!  SH