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Sunday, September 25, 2016

It's Banned Books Week! What Will You Be Reading?

Defend the First Amendment



September 25 to October 1 is Banned Books Week, a time to celebrate our freedom to read and the importance in our society of free and open access to information. This week I will be reading Looking for Alaska by John Green (who also wrote the fabulous book The Fault in Our Stars). In 2015, Looking for Alaska was the book that was most often the target of attempts to have it banned from libraries and schools according to data collected by the American Library Association. So of course, I must read it.

Let's all defend the First Amendment! Exercise your freedom to read and to have access to information. And please support your public library.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Highly Recommended Reading: A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny is a terrific book. The plot is twisty and engaging, the story is full of interesting characters, and there are layers of ideas and philosophy that make this a tasty novel, not a thin-soup murder mystery (we've all dashed through those, haven't we?). But while the book provides lots of interesting things to think about, there nonetheless is a murder to solve.
Beauvoir looked down at the body
"Suicide?"
"Maybe," said Gamache. "Does something strike you as strange?"
Beauvoir examined the scene more closely.
"Oui. The gun. It's on the wrong side. If he'd killed himself, it'd be on the same side as the entrance wound."
Gamache nodded, lost in thought.
Former Chief of Homicide for the Surete du Quebec Armand Gamache is now in charge of the police academy. The school has been riddled with corruption and Gamache is taking bold steps to right the ship. But the changes he sets in place create more pressure in an already tense institution. And when a murder takes place at the school, the faculty, students, even Gamache himself come under suspicion.

Tied to the murder at the academy is the mysterious map found inside a wall of the bistro in Three Pines, Gamache's home town. Gamache had given copies of the map to four cadets with the assignment of solving its riddle. When one of those copies is found with the murder victim, the residents of Three Pines get pulled into both mysteries.

A Great Reckoning is highly recommended reading.





Thursday, September 15, 2016

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Library Luck

With nothing in the house that I wanted to read, I ambled over to the library yesterday. Climbing the stairs to the main floor, my expectations were in check; but my library is fabulous, so I had hope of finding something, some gem to read. And sure enough, library luck struck me. When I reach the top of the stairs and looked ahead at the shelf containing popular books, there it was, its cover boldly displayed directly in front of me: Louise Penny's new novel, A Great Reckoning. Yes!