Ohioana Book Award Finalists Announced

The Ohioana Library recently announced the finalists for the 2012 Ohioana Book Awards.  If you are not familiar with the Ohioana Library, check out the website here.  The organization "is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and promoting the written work of Ohio’s writers, artists, and musicians".  The awards reflect that by showcasing the best works by Ohio authors over the past year.  On to the nominees!

Fiction

Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Doc by Mary Doria Russell
Ziggy by Tom Wilson

About Ohio/Ohioan

Literary Cincinnati: The Missing Chapter by Dale Patrick Brown
George Szell: A Life of Music by Michael Charry
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz
Destiny of the Republic : A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
Over-the-Rhine Tour Guide: Cincinnati's Historic German District, Over-the-Rhine, and Environs by Don Heinrick Tolzmann

Visit the Ohioana website for more information on the 2012 awards.

In the Queue

A Gift for My Sister: A Novel by Anna Perlman

A heartwarming and touching story about the power of female friendship told through the eyes of two sisters.  When a series of tragedies strikes, Tara and Sky come together in the face of heartbreak, dashed hopes, and demons of the past.  They examine what sisterhood really means.

Calling Invisible Women: A Novel by Jeanne Ray

If you ever felt unattractive and unappreaciated you will understand how Clover felt.  As she enters her 50s, wife and mother Clover wakes up one morning and discovers she has become invisible, a condition which goes completely unnoticed by her family.

The Art of Intelligence: Lessons in the Life of the CIA's Clandestine Service by Henry A. Crumpton

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-rish, action-packed career while illustrating the growing importance of America's intelligence officers and their secret missions.

New eNewsletters Available!

Our eNewsletters have been a popular offering at the Washington-Centerville Public Library for many years.  These popular lists can be accessed on our website or sent directly to your email.  Whether you like romance, mystery, chick lit, or simply want to see what's new, we have an eNewsletter for you! 

We're proud to announce seven new e-newsletters that you can subscribe to now!  Are you a cookbook fanatic?  Try our new Simply Cookbooks list.  Do you enjoy reading about famous and historical people?  Our Biography & Memoir list has you covered!  Maybe you're looking for advice on getting into shape.  The Mind & Body Fitness list is a great place to start.  We also offer: Armchair Travel;
Home, Garden & DIY; Nature & Science; and Historical Fiction.

Sign up for these great eNewsletters through this link.  Or send us a message at readersadv@wcpl.lib.oh.us.

Stuck Between the Living and the Dead

I recently finished Rosamund Lupton's latest novel, Afterwards.  The premise was so intriguing that I just had to pick it up.

A school catches fire while the students, teachers and parents are outside during the annual sports day.  But one of the parents, Grace, is startled to find that her daughter, Jenny, is still inside.  She struggles against the smoke and flames to save her daughter but both are badly injured.  They find themselves in the hospital as patients but also as beings caught between the living and the dead.  The story revolves around mother and daughter who follow Grace's husband, her son Adam, and sister-in-law Sarah, a police officer, who are trying to unlock the secrets of the mysterious blaze. 

This was a very hard book to put down.  Yes, it is part mystery, and a very good one at that, but it's more centered around Grace and Jenny's relationships with those who cannot see or hear them.  Grace's husband has to simultaneously deal with his wife and daughter's injuries while trying to find how this happened.  Young Adam shuts down because his mom and sister may not live through the accident.  And Sarah goes against every rule in the book in her pursuit of the truth.

Pick up this fast-paced thriller and find out what it may be like to be stuck between the living and the dead!

Guest Post: Twice Upon A Time by Tim Waggoner

We at Fine Print are excited to offer you a series of local author blog posts throughout the year!  Our first offering is from Tim Waggoner, in which he discusses the books/authors that have influenced his own writing.  Click here for a list of books the library carries by Mr. Waggoner.

When I was asked to write a blog about books that influenced me as a writer, I really had to think about it. In a very real sense, every book I’ve ever read has had an impact on me, so how could I choose? Should I pick the first novel I remember reading on my own, a kids’ books called The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree by Louis Slobodkin? Should I mention the  anthology Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum (where I first read Ray Bradbury’s wonderful story “Homecoming”)? Or should I talk about how after reading quite a bit as a child, I stopped reading almost entirely in my preteen years? It wasn’t a novel that got me back into reading, though: it was comic books. Reading them eventually led me to start reading full-length written-for-adults novels. If it hadn’t been for comics, I doubt I’d ever have started writing. But after a lot of thought I narrowed it down to two books that had the most influence on me as a writer, and once I did, the choices not only seemed right, but – in retrospect at least – obvious.

I read both books sometime during my junior high years, although I can’t remember in which order. My guess is that Piers Anthony’s A Spell for Chameleon came first, so I’ll start with it. This is a fantasy adventure novel that takes place in the magical land of Xanth, but Xanth is special even for a fantasy world. It has more in common with Alice’s Wonderland than Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Xanth is absolutely drenched in magic – every plant, animal, and person there is touched by magic somehow, in ways both small and large. I loved the story, the characters, and the humor in the book, but what really impressed me was the wild creativity on display throughout the novel. Anthony let his imagination run rampant when creating Xanth, and reading this book – plus many of the sequels that he would write in the years to come – showed me the power of pure, unfettered imagination in action.

 The second book is Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. King was a new novelist back then, and I remember a friend of mine trying to tell me about this vampire book he’d read that wasn’t just scary, it was really, really scary. I’d always liked spooky movies and stories growing up, and I especially liked ones about vampires. I’d read and loved Richard Matheson’s classic I am Legend (recently voted best vampire novel of the twentieth century at the 2012 World Horror Convention) and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. So I figured King’s novel was right up my alley.

Salem’s Lot blew me away. King’s characters, his use of setting, his sense of language, his imagery, the way he built suspense . . . I’d never experienced anything like it before. Books are just a long series of words on a page, but King was able to use them to affect my imagination in a way no other writer had been able to before. From this book – and from the many others by King that I read afterward – I learned that a writer is like a composer. He or she writes the equivalent of a musical score and gives it to the reader to play, and the instrument the reader uses is his or her own imagination.
       
So from Anthony I learned how to unleash the power of my own imagination when it came to building fictional worlds, and from King I learned how to use words and ideas to reach out from the page, get inside readers’ heads, and stimulate their imaginations. I can truthfully say that I wouldn’t be the writer I am today – probably wouldn’t be a writer at all – if it wasn’t for the work of these two authors.

Tim Waggoner’s novels include the Nekropolis series of urban fantasies and the Ghost Trackers series written in collaboration with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of the Ghost Hunters television show. In total, he’s published over twenty-five novels and two short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.

In the Queue

The Lion Is In by Delia Ephron

Three unusual runaways take refuge in a roadside bar. They meet Marcel, a retired circus performer and begin to relax until their past catches up with them.

Fifteen Digits by Nick Santora

Five ’blue-collar’ men work at the law firm, Olmstead & Taft. Everyday their job is to copy and collate mountains of paperwork that document millions in legal secrets. Then one day they are approached by an ambitious attorney who teaches them that what they have is inside information. They can get rich, but at what cost?

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlan

In this irresistible memoir, the #1 New York Times bestselling author writes about her life and the lives of women today, looking back and ahead—and celebrating it all—as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss all the stuff in our closets, and more.

Seeing What You're Not Supposed To See

Children are extremely curious about the world around them.  If an adult tells them, "You're not supposed to go there," guess what, they are immediately heading to the forbidden area. 

Wiley Cash's extraordinary debut novel A Land More Kind Than Home shows how a child's curiosity leads to disaster.  Young Jess Hall and his mute brother, Christopher, like spying on people.  They watch their father working in the barn.  They watch their mother hanging laundry.  But when Christopher sees something he shouldn't, and gets caught, the consequences throw the whole family into a dire situation.

I really like how Cash chose to tell this story.  He alternates first person narrators between Jess, local midwife Adelaide, and the sherrif Clem.  They each bring their own particular knowledge about the main characters.  But the story also involves a local preacher who uses less than conventional methods of getting locals involved in his church.  This is the character you will want to read about in this debut novel.  I had the immediate feeling that there was more to him than what the locals knew about, but his story is sure to astound. 

Two questions come out of this story:  What would you do if you saw something you weren't supposed to see and got caught in the act?  More importantly, if you were on the other end and wanted to keep it a secret, how far would you go to make sure it never gets out?  Find out how Jess, Adelaide and Clem deal with these questions when A Land More Kind Than Home is released later this month!

Whatever You Love

Books that pose the question "What would you be capable of doing if everything was taken from you?" are very intriguing to me. The emotional output is often overwhelming and it's hard not to put yourself in the main character's position. That's why I picked up Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty, due out later this month.

The book begins with Laura's daughter, Betty, being killed in a hit-and-run. The case is handled in a way Laura finds unacceptable and decides to take matters into her own hands and seeks out the man who killed her daughter.  Her son is too young to understand what happened and she struggles to deal with her ex-husband and his former mistress, who is now his wife.  Laura is left as a shadow of her former self and as a person with very little to lose.

This book was a very pleasant surprise. It sounded like a typical revenge thriller, but it's more about Laura's struggle to find herself after losing her husband and her daughter. Her emotional struggle is difficult to read about due to all the circumstances causing it.  The ways in which she and David deal with Betty's death made this a page turner for me. I loved the way Doughty used flashbacks to fill in the blanks of their past relationship.  There are some of the typical elements of a revenge thriller, but the main purpose of this title is to show how a shattered family deals with grief.

The Good Father

Noah Hawley's latest novel, The Good Father, is a very intriguing and disturbing story of what a father is willing to go through for his son.  Dr. Paul Allen is enjoying a peaceful evening at home with his wife and two young boys when his life suddenly changes forever.  A news report comes on that a popular presidential candidate has been assassinated.  The person in custody is Paul's son from his previous marriage, Daniel Allen, now known as Carter Allen Cash.
The title obviously comes from the fact that Dr. Allen is willing to do anything to prove that his son is innocent.  Despite all evidence linking his son to the murder and Daniel (Carter) not willing to say whether he did it or not, Paul puts his new life on hold and pours all his energy into helping his son.  The obvious question that arises is: How far would you be willing to go? 
The story itself is interesting in its presentation.  We get snippets of Daniel's life on the road after he drops out of college.  He works his way from the East Coast all the way to Los Angeles, never stopping in one place for very long.  Hawley also includes history on different famous assassinations that Paul finds during his research.  And, of course, we get Paul's struggle with family, friends and his own son.

I found this to be quite a page turner.  Paul is what you would expect from a father trying to protect his son, but I really found Daniel to be the most intriguing character.  Whether or not he actually committed the crime almost becomes secondary to the fact that I found myself not being able to wait to hear what he has to say.  It's a unique story and one that I simply could not put down.  The Good Father is scheduled to come out later this month.

In the Queue

The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker

The Gilly sisters are very different and some of their neighbors think they are witches.  However, that doesn't stop Whit Turner from forcing his way into their lives.

The Good Father: A Novel by Noah Hawley

Dr. Paul Allen's quiet life is thrown into chaos when TV news reports the assassination of a Democratic candidate for President and names his son as the accused murderer.

American Icon: Alan Mulally & the Fight To Save the Ford Motor Company by Bryce G. Hoffman

The Ford Motor Company was near collapse in 2008, but CEO Alan Mulally was determined that would not happen on his watch.  Within two years, Ford was the most profitable car company in the world.

Book Recommendations Sent To Your Email!

We at Fine Print obviously love reading.  But it's difficult, even for us librarians, to keep up with all the new stuff coming out.  But we have our ways.  And we would love to share one of those ways with all of you!  How would you like to receive reading suggestions that are delivered straight to your email? We've recently changed the look of our service and have even added some newsletters to our offerings! Try Fiction A-Z or NY Times Fiction Bestsellers if you enjoy everything Fiction. Maybe you'd prefer Nonfiction by trying our New Nonfiction and NY Times Nonfiction Bestsellers lists. The separate genres are covered with our Chick Lit, Fantasy, Mystery, and Romance lists. We even have a Business and Personal finance list!

Teens and children are covered, too! Try our Teen Scene newsletter if you're looking for some great Young Adult titles. Picture Books and Fiction for Kids are excellent if your child is just starting to read.

Click here if you'd like to check out the weekly, monthly and bi-monthly booklists you can receive from the library! Click the checkbox next to the lists you'd like to receive and then enter your email address at the bottom.  We have had some recent problems in which the confirmation email does not go through if someone is signing up for more that two newsletters.  Just send us an email at readersadv@wcpl.lib.oh.us with the newsletter titles you would like to receive if you want to sign up for more than two newsletters.

In the Queue

The Dressmaker: A Novel by Kate Alcott

Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, comes this historical novel about a young woman who survives the disaster but has a difficult time with the media frenzy that follows the tragedy.

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

P.D. James and Jane Austen—you can’t get any better than that. Catch up on Darcy and his wife Elizabeth Bennett at their grand estate, Pemberley. Life is wonderful until Elizabeth’s sister, Lydia, arrives screaming that her husband has been murdered!

Connectome by Sebastian Seung

Neuron by neuron, Seung and his colleagues are drawing a map to represent what Seung says is the real key to what makes us each individuals.

Football Reads for National Signing Day

Tomorrow is National Signing Day.  If you're a college football nut, like I clearly am, you know this is the first day for high school athletes to sign their letters of intent to where they plan to play.  There are definitely negative things to be said of college sports these days, but thankfully there are plenty of good stories too.  Take the recent Heisman winner, Robert Griffin III as a good example of what happens when your determined and work hard to achieve your goals.  With that in mind, here are some good college football titles.

Meat Market by Bruce Feldman is a terrific (and somewhat disturbing) book about college football recruiting.  It shows the tactics that former University of Mississippi head coach Ed Orgeron used during one year of recruiting as he tried to attract talent away from other SEC schools.  A new book, Illegal Procedure, is due out soon.  It promises to bring to light many of the corrupt dealings between sports agents and college athletes.  Every Week a Season is another interesting look at how big college football has become.  Although it deals with high school football, Friday Night Lights is still a favorite of mine. The movie and television series were both great, but the book really hits on the struggles of being a high school athlete. 

For something a bit more positive, check out Michael Oher's uplifting story in The Blind Side.  Oher's amazing transition from outcast to nationally recruited athlete and the support he had along the way makes for inspirational reading.  Learn more about some of college football's most famous players in The Heisman: Great American Stories of the Men Who Won.

And, of course, who doesn't want to discuss the possible Death to the BCS?

Short Stories with Plenty to Think About

I've been on quite a short story kick for a while now.  Reading short stories is a great way to sample an authors work since you can easily read a story or two and then decide whether to continue or find another author.  Some of my favorites include:

Dan Chaon- An Ohio native, Chaon is always experimenting with different writing styles.  He has plenty of short stories and a few novels out there.  I'm eagerly awaiting his newest, Stay Awake, which is another set of short stories.  Among the Missing was my introduction to his work.  This is a fascinating work focusing on human relationships in new and subtle ways.  "Safety Man" is a great story from this collection, in which a widow desperately tries to protect herself and her family with a crime deterrent dummy.

Alice Munro- I've only read Too Much Happiness and Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, but I will definitely be checking out more from Munro's extensive short story collection.  Her ability to write about people ranging from juvenile to old age is nothing short of amazing.  Too Much Happiness is actually about death, regret, and loss, yet the final story in the collection brings new meaning and a fresh perspective to these life truths.

Kevin Brockmeier- I'm still not sure how I feel about Brockmeier's full-length books, but his short stories are terrific.  Check out The View from the Seventh Layer for something different.  The stories can sometimes be described as fables and other times seem more like science fiction.  I'll admit, it was very cool to see one story done in the Choose Your Own Adventure format!

Tove Jansson- I mentioned Jansson in my Favorite Books of 2011 post and would really like to mention Fair Play again.  It's not really short stories as much as the story of two artists shown through short vignettes.  Jansson has a knack for showing how the little moments in life we take for granted have a major effect on who we become.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we take a look back at the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  This is an important date celebrating one of the great people in American history.  The library carries many titles about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.  Here is a sampling of what you can checkout today:

Dr. King

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow

Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness History by Sanford Wexler
Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830-1970 by Lynne Olson
Civil Rights Chronicle: The African-American Struggle for Freedom by Clayborne Carson
Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall

The Invisible Ones

Stef Penney's newest title, The Invisible Ones, is everything I love in a good mystery.  The characters are intriguing and well thought out.  We have drastically different point-of-views as two of the key characters take turns telling the story.  And we have an ending that I never saw coming.

Rose Janko, who married into a gypsy family, disappears seemingly into thin air.  Nobody knows where she's gone, nor if she left with anyone.  Enter private investigator Ray Lovell, from a gypsy family himself, who is hired by the girl's father.  The catch...Rose has been missing from the Janko family for seven years.  Lovell must make contact with the Jankos, who are not the most cooperative bunch, to find out everything he can about Rose.  The story alternates between Lovell's thoughts and JJ's, a young boy within the Janko family.  J.J.'s shares with the reader what things are like within the gypsy family and what little he knows about Rose and the inner workings of the Janko clan.

I picked up an advance copy of this book because, besides enjoying a good mystery, I knew very little of gypsy culture.  Penney's treatment of the subject is true to life from the other reviews I've seen.  It makes for a good mystery since Lovell must get as much information as he can from a group known to keep to themselves.  I felt like I had the ending nailed at least twice, but was very wrong on both occasions.  Check this one out if like a good page turner that keeps you guessing until the very end.

In the Queue

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

Jean Patrick Nkuba, a Rwandan boy, dreams of becoming his country's first Olympic medal contender in track, but when the Hutu-Tutsi tensions explode, he must run to save his life.

Lost Saints of Tennessee by Amy Franklin-Willis

This story of a Southern working-class family follows Ezekiel, 42, and his mother, Lillian, from the 1940s to the 1980s as Ezekiel goes from anointed son to unhinged middle-aged man. His decline begins with the mysterious drowning death of his twin brother and the subsequent divorce from his wife.

Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle by Andrea Hiott

The Volkswagen came to symbolize American freedom and the power of thinking small. This is the story of the ungainly little car that began with the vision of a group of men who designed the car in 1923. Despite all odds, it became the most profitable and most beloved automobile in the world.

My Favorite Books of 2011

2011 was another very good year for readers.  Plenty of new titles came out and many new authors staked their claim in my ever-growing list of favorite authors.  I feel that I branched out and read some works I wouldn't have had interest in, say, a year ago.  Since I love lists, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite titles of 2011.

James Madison by Richard Brookhiser- I've always been fascinated by early US history, so this was a natural choice.  Madison's relationship with Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe is fascinating as they agreed on most things, but also set personal differences aside (especially Madison and Monroe) to create the Virginia Dynasty.

Darkness, My Old Friend by Lisa Unger- Fragile, the first in Unger's The Hollows series, was one of my favorite novels of 2010.  The sequel did not disappoint!  This is a fantastic suspense novel and Unger does a terrific job of creating characters the reader cares about.  I especially enjoyed the scenes about the town psychic, Eloise, who played a smaller role in Fragile.

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman- This is a suspense novel that does a wonderful job of upping the tension each chapter.  But, like Unger's writing, Lippman does a great job of creating interesting characters.  The plot centers around five children who wander the woods during summer break and find an old man who lives alone.  The ensuing tragedy, coupled with the now grown-up children not knowing what really happened, makes for a startling tale.

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante- It still amazes me that this is a debut novel.  LaPlante has created a story in which Dr. Jennifer White, who suffers from Alzheimer's, is accused of murdering her best friend.  The stunning part of this novel is that it's told from White's perspective.

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens- I placed a hold on this title as soon as it was announced.  Still Missing was my favorite debut novel of 2010 and Stevens follows it up with another compelling thriller.  Sara Gallagher was adopted at an early age and decides to finally learn about her parents.  We quickly find that "never knowing" may be a good option.

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens- Another debut novel!  Stevens does a magnificent job of creating heroine Vanessa Munroe, who travels the world gathering information for various clients.  She is sent to Africa to track down a missing girl in this debut with twists and turns.

Fair Play by Tove Jansson- Ok, I'm cheating here.  This isn't really a 2011 title, but it is the first translation of this work, so we'll keep it here.  I'm new to Jansson and have started looking for her other works.  The writing is nothing less than stunning.  We look into the lives of two artists, Jonna and Mari, through short vignettes.  The way in which these seemingly mundane moments in their lives help create who they are is a testament to Jansson's fantastic ability.

Not Sure What to Read? Try Our Reading Suggestion eNewsletters!

Are you wanting to find a new author to read, but not sure where to start?  It can be a daunting task with all of the great books out there.  Did you know the library offers reading suggestions that are delivered straight to your email?  We've recently changed the look of our service and have even added some newsletters to our offerings!  Try Fiction A-Z or NY Times Fiction Bestsellers if you enjoy everything Fiction.  Maybe you'd prefer Nonfiction by trying our New Nonfiction and NY Times Nonfiction Bestsellers lists.  The separate genres are covered with our Chick Lit, Fantasy, Mystery, and Romance lists.  We even have a Business and Personal finance list!

Teens and children are covered, too!  Try our Teen Scene newsletter if you're looking for some great Young Adult titles.  Picture Books and Fiction for Kids are excellent if your child is just starting to read.

Click here if you'd like to check out the weekly, monthly and bi-monthly booklists you can receive from the library!  Click the checkbox next to the lists you'd like to receive and then enter your email address at the bottom.  It's that simple!

In the Queue

Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

As Alfred the Great lies dying, his son Edwardhas been named his successor. But there are other Saxon claimants to the throne.

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

Inspector Thomas Lynley is surprised when called on to investigate a drowning that seems like nothing more than an accident. He soon learns there is much more to the case than he first thought.

Extra Virginity: The Sublime & Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller

For millennia, olive oil has been a food, a medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual.  Now Mueller offers the sacret history and profane present of this substance.