So, you find yourself at the end of that great read. Your favourite genre - comedy, romance, thriller, science fiction. Why not dust of that library card, jump in the car (or walk if you need the fresh air and exercise and who doesn't?), and high-tail it to your local library. Be brave, get out of that genre rut and surf the shelves at the local.
Jack's local library in the City of Whittlesea, the YPRL, Yarra Plenty Regional Library, takes the thinking out of it for you if you are after something different. I know once Jack finished his latest adventure with Agnetha and Danny, as a part of his RnR he didn’t go anywhere near the 908s - History with Respect Groups of People. He took to the shelves based on recommendations from the readaholics that worked at the library.
If I worked there this is what I would reckon. Hey! Maybe I should apply for a job. After all my love of reading and writing makes me well qualified.
I will keep this up-to-date with three or four at a time and read the library recommendations and provide feedback. This should be a fun blog to all those who love reading and are game to try new genre.
Please have your say with some of your local library 'good-reads'.
Credit: With a little help from the guys at YPRL
1. See What I have Done - Sarah Schmidt
Cold. Claustrophobic. Creepy. This fictionalized account of the real- life Borden Murders that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1892 takes the reader into the heads of this dysfunctional family and associates, cleverly weaving back stories of the key living characters in this heartless, joyless house. We know from page one, a murder has been committed.
2. The Vale Girl - Nelika McDonald
Nelika McDonald’s debut novel is about a missing girl from a small town in NSW, set in the late ’80s. The author has chosen her era and setting well; the fictional town of Banville feels claustrophobic and hostile to the two teenage misfits who tell much of the story. Sarah Vale, the missing girl, is known as ‘the prostitute’s daughter’. Her friend and the instigator of the search for her is Tommy Johns, ‘the boy with the dead mother’. Tommy explains: ‘everyone in Banville had a little tag like that at the end of their name … the thing that the other residents considered most noteworthy. ‘
3. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World - John Baxter
Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat writer provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years. In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and long- time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city.
Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. Along the way, he tells the history of Paris through a brilliant cast of characters: the favorite cafes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce; Pablo Picasso's underground Montmartre haunts; the bustling boulevards of the late-nineteenth-century "flaneurs"; the secluded "Little Luxembourg" gardens beloved by Gertrude Stein; the alleys where revolutionaries plotted; and finally Baxter's own favorite walk near his home in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Paris, by custom and design, is a pedestrian's city--each block a revelation, every neighbourhood a new feast for the senses, a place rich with history and romance at every turn. "The Most Beautiful Walk in the World" is your guide, par excellence, to the true, off-the-beaten-path heart of the City of Lights.