Recommended Reading: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

I adored this book. The characters were brave, witty, humorous and intelligent (even *gasp* the female characters). The plot was fast-paced and engaging. The setting was painted with careful attention but not so detailed you start skimming for the next section of dialogue. This is a great read for anyone who enjoys light-hearted historical romances with plenty of humorous banter.

Book Description: 
Deciding that true romantic heroes are a thing of the past, Eloise Kelly, an intelligent American who always manages to wear her Jimmy Choo suede boots on the day it rains, leaves Harvard's Widener Library bound for England to finish her dissertation on the dashing pair of spies the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. What she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: a secret history that begins with a letter dated 1803. Eloise has found the secret history of the Pink Carnation the most elusive spy of all time, the spy who single-handedly saved England from Napoleon's invasion.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a wildly imaginative and highly adventurous debut, opens with the story of a modern-day heroine but soon becomes a book within a book. Eloise Kelly settles in to read the secret history hoping to unmask the Pink Carnation's identity, but before she can make this discovery, she uncovers a passionate romance within the pages of the secret history that almost threw off the course of world events. How did the Pink Carnation save England? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?

North Shelby has copies of this book in print and audio book. Stop by the library to pick up a copy or click here to reserve a one through our catalog.

Morgan
Children's Librarian

Flat-Out Love - Book Recommendation

 Flat Out Love by Jessica Park                                                        

I read this last year, when it was just available as an ebook and absolutely loved it. I was working my way through the Beautiful Disaster read-a-likes and this title kept popping up.(which if you haven't read Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire and enjoy reading books filled with angst, featuring super possessive alpha males and the girls who love them-you have to read this) . Flat-Out Love surprised and delighted me and I'm so glad our library has now acquired some print copies available for check out now. It is labeled as a young adult novel, but adults will enjoy it as well. It is not filled w/ anxiety or super possessive males, but it has a lot of heart and might even make you tear up.

Book description: 

Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. And Julie Seagle, college freshman, small-town Ohio transplant, and the newest resident of this Boston house, is determined to get to the bottom of it.

When Julie's off-campus housing falls through, her mother's old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side ... and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The youngest, Celeste, is a frighteningly bright but freakishly fastidious 13-year-old who hauls around a life-sized cardboard cutout of her oldest brother almost everywhere she goes.

And there's that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. Geographically? Definitely unavailable. That's because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates. Before long, through late-night exchanges of disembodied text, he begins to stir something tender and silly and maybe even a little bit sexy in Julie's suddenly lonesome soul.

To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that ... well ... doesn't quite add up. Not until she forces a buried secret to the surface, eliciting a dramatic confrontation that threatens to tear the fragile Watkins family apart, does she get her answer.

Flat-Out Love comes complete with emails, Facebook status updates, and instant messages

Michelyn

Reference Librarian

December Book Club - Skipping Christmas

The NSL Book Club had a fantastic end of the year get together.  We read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. We wanted something light for the end of the year and a movie, ’Christmas with the Kranks’, to go with it.

The discussion was less about the book itself and more about the holidays and how we celebrate, or don’t celebrate. Do we have too much pressure on us to decorate our house, like the Kranks? Have the perfect party? Have gifts for everyone we know? Or those of us in aggressive homeowners associations with intimidating block leaders demanding the requisite bow on the mailbox be the perfect shade of burgundy, or other such similar situations, and how to survive with a smile.  I think we all agreed that we felt overwhelmed or stressed at times and it’s hardly ever a Christmas Hallmark movie, which is why we’re addicted to watching them. We also discussed the commercialization of Christmas and that fact that some of us really like all the commercial “trappings”.

In honor of Charlie Brown I made a little lopsided book tree. It was not nearly as grand as last year, but still filled with exciting ARCs for the members.

 January's book is The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje and we meet on Thursday, January 17th.. Our entire reading list for 2013 is up here: http://alturl.com/58ge2 To see what we've read throughout the years check out our GoodReads page, http://alturl.com/9d9bn. 

Happy Holidays everyone!

Library Fundraiser!

Fundraiser Night @ Joe's Crab Shack

Thursday, Dec 6th 2012

11am - 9pm

Present this flyer and 10% of your check will benefit the library

Joe's Crab Shack
20 Meadowview Drive
Hoover, AL 35242
205.981.2999

Hard and Soft Research or Arguing with your Relatives

The holidays typically mean time with family and friends. This togetherness does not always resemble a Hallmark Holiday movie. When you get a group of adults together and conversation is flowing, you can have quite a mix of opinions and viewpoints. Some enjoy a friendly discussion/debate, some get very passionate, which can lead to tempers lost, hurt feelings and a line through your name for the next family get together.

I bring this up because of a heated discussion on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” that was brought up over the Thanksgiving holiday. The “passionate” person in this debate accused the other party of only listening to propaganda. However, turns out Mr. Passionate was getting his information off the Internet. I know, right? Clearly no propaganda is on the Internet. Mr. Passionate was not a teenager either, but a man of a certain age, who one might think would know better.  Every side of every topic is available for you on the Internet. Is it all credible? No.  If you would like to be well informed about matters, especially matters that involve scientific and objective research where facts and measurable evidence are essential, then hard research is required and you need to be using authoritative sources. If you need info on a soft news topic (fashion, celebrity twitter wars, or other subjective and/or cultural topic) than the Internet and social media is a great place. If you are a member of this library, you have access to hundreds of journals, magazines, newspapers, all for free. We have access to more sources than our parents had, and we should take advantage.

  

Go here: http://alturl.com/ockkp to see the various resources available. 

If you would like to research “fracking”, I recommend going to the News/Current Events tab, or Gale Powersearch w/ keyword “hydraulic fracturing” or any term you’d like, or General academic and choose one of the databases.

For information on getting a library card http://alturl.com/zx96o

Happy Holidays! 

NSL Bookclub -  September 2012

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a story about a bi-racial girl, Rachel, who is being raised by her grandmother in Portland, OR. She was the lone survivor in a tragic event in which she lost her mother and siblings. She never saw her father again. The actual circumstances of the event are the mystery of the book, eventually realized at the end. This book conveys the struggle of identity and race and succeeds in demonstrating that race is still a way of defining others as a way of defining yourself, which is why Rachel felt so lost.

Most of the group felt as if this was more an introduction to the characters and that they could have been explored more. The different viewpoints felt disjointed. We were also unsatisfied with the ending. I personally remember yelling at the book ‘That’s it??!’.

Emotionally, you feel for this lost girl and feel depressed that there are real kids right now suffering the neglect and abuse faced by Rachel and Brick. And the fact that this book was inspired by real events gives it even more weight.


View all my reviews

For our next book click here.

Summer Reading 2012 Kick-Off Party

Summer Reading 2012 Kick-Off Party, a set on Flickr.

Look at all the fun we had at Kick off! Be sure to get a calendar or click here for more info: http://alturl.com/vgzr4