213 listings found.
Displaying 1 - 10
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Godwin, Peter
Educational, emotional, exhausting. Peter Goodwin's memoir is a lesson in history, political science and familial love that reads like a novel. Goodwin, raised in Zimbabwe, often revisits the country due to his father's failing health. The deterioration of the country as well as his father's health is evident as his travels become more perilous. An incredible story of a family and a country.
[Adult Nonfiction Book 968.9105 G]
Joyce L., Ridgedale Library
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The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History and Culture of Clouds
Pretor-Pinney, Gavin
Abandon your "blue sky thinking" and get your head in the clouds! As the official publication of the Cloud Appreciation Society, how can one pass up a book which describes itself as a serious "celebration of the carefree, aimless and endlessly life-affirming pastime of cloudspotting"? The text includes plenty of hard science about cloud formation along with photographs, drawings, poems, and a harrowing story of a pilot who parachuted through a cumulonimbus cloud and lived to tell about it.
[Adult Nonfiction Book 551.576 P]
Roberta R., Maple Plain Library
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Loving Frank
Horan, Nancy
When you read "Loving Frank" you will recognize that every layout of organic architecture has his own tongue. It speaks to you and you become a listener instead of a reader. This is a fictionalized true story of the American greatest architect Frank Lloyd Wright. What stands out most are, however, a true love and courage arising from human hearts that defies time and tradition and culture. Written with elegance and rich with ideas, "Loving Frank" is also a story of an independent, highly educated, rebellious woman at odds with restrictions of early 20th century. Good news for those of you who're planning to write your first book. If you like "Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, you will like this book.
[Adult Fiction Book HORAN]
Guthema R., Golden Valley Library
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Hold Tight
Coben, Harlan
Parents suspect their 17-year-old son is in trouble and install a software program to spy on his computer. They also use a GPS locator on his cell phone. The parents learn some mysterious information, and have to decide how to act. Being a thriller, the plot leads to action, drugs, and guns before several plots lines are resolved. This fast-paced novel asks the question: what do you do when you invade the privacy of an older teen through technology?
[Adult Fiction Book COBEN]
Ann M., Web Services
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Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life
Halberstam, Yitta
Have you ever experienced something that seemed random but it was also very meaningful? If you're open to it, it happens frequently. Small Miracles describes 60 real-life coincidences; fun to read yet awe-inspiring. Were they strictly coincidences or did the universe intervene? You be the judge. I liked this little book so much I added it to my personal collection.
[Adult Nonfiction Book 133.8 M]
Kim B., Ridgedale Library
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Chief Bender's Burden
Swift, Tom
Born in1884 near Brainerd, Minnesota, Charles (Chief) Albert Bender began learning the skills to play baseball while living at the Carlisle Indian School, which he started attending in 1896. He pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, from 1903-1914, was one of the greatest clutch pitchers of his time, and amassed impressive numbers for a great team. In 1953 he became the first Native American ball player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
[Adult Nonfiction Book 796.35709 S]
Jennifer L., Ridgedale Library
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Heir to the Glimmering World
Ozick, Cynthia
Ozick takes us to the outskirts of the Bronx in the 1930s, as New York fills with Europe's ousted dreamers, turned overnight into refugees. Rose Meadows unknowingly enters this world when she answers an ambiguous want ad for an "assistant" to a Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large, chaotic household. Rosie, orphaned at eighteen, has been living with her distant relative Bertram, who sparks her first erotic desires. But just as he begins to return her affection, his lover, a radical socialist named Ninel (Lenin spelled backward), turns her out. And so Rosie takes refuge from love among refugees of world upheaval.
[Adult Fiction Book OZICK]
Kim P., Southdale Library
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Making Money: A Novel of Discworld
Pratchett, Terry
Having successfully revitalized the all-but-defunct Ankh-Morpork postal service, former conman Moist von Lipwig is bored, so bored he's climbing the Post Office walls (really!) and breaking into his own offices. So he's more than ready to accept Lord Vetinari's challenge to run the even more behind-the-times Ankh-Morpork Bank and Royal Mint. But the Assassin's Guild is soon after him, the new bank chairman is a dog, there's a mad scientist working on an economic engine in the cellars, and whole lot of gold missing from the vaults. If you haven't visited the biggest city in Terry Pratchett's Discworld before, now's the time, for some of smartest and funniest satire in this, or any universe.
[Adult SciFi Fantasy Book PRATCHET]
Claudia K., Rockford Road Library
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Walk the Blue Fields
Keegan, Claire
Keegan's literary allegiance is signalled in the first story in this collection, when we find the main character reading Chekhov. Like Chekhov, Keegan has the ability to sum up a life, or a significant chunk of one, in apparently trivial, quotidian events. In the title story, a priest is tormented by having to officiate at a marriage. Later, he meets an unlikely counterpart in a Chinese healer, and experiences a kind of epiphany. It sounds simple to summarize, but it's the careful arrangement of events which gives the story its power. All the stories are set in rural Ireland. They tell of harsh, lonely lives, alleviated by drink or dreams, in a voice that is lyrical, thoughtful, but with a thick strain of melancholy running through it. Keegan has won many writing awards including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
[Adult Fiction Book KEEGAN]
Eddie A., St. Anthony Library
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The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport
Hiaasen, Carl
Nice work if you can get it. What a deal - Hiaasen is paid to play golf for over a year and write about it. He humorously breaks down his misadventures with the sport of golf. This is a great book for hackers who struggle with the game, or for anyone looking for a funny read about one man's struggles to improve at a merciless sport.
[Adult Nonfiction Book 796.352 H]
Ryan P., Web Services
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