A Recommendation from Joyce

Jane Stanton Hitchcock's latest, Mortal Friends, takes place in the upper echelons of Washington DC society. When the latest victim of the "Beltway Basher" shows up in a chic Georgetown neighborhood and a detective starts nosing around, Reven Lynch decides to find out what's going on. Joyce enjoyed all the curves in this mystery that People magazine called a "killer read."

Autism and Asperger's Resources

Several years ago, HCL received some sort of grant that allowed us to buy a bunch of books about autism and Asperger's. I wasn't here, so I don't have all the details about the grant, but I do know that the collection is remarkably sizeable and helpful. We have books for different age levels, and the topics range from treatment to explaining autism to support for parents. New books on the topic are coming out all the time--here are just two of them:

Quirky, Yes--Hopeless, No by Cynthia La Brie Norall can perhaps best be described by its subtitle, Practical Tips to Help Your Child with Asperger's Syndrome Become Socially Accepted. Norall, an educational psychologist, uses twenty years of experience with Asperger's children to create this easy-to-follow, practical guide. With topics such as "How to Greet Others and Make Eye Contact" and "How to Pay Compliments," this book gets right to the nitty-gritty of human interaction.



Growing Up on the Spectrum: A Guide to Life, Love, and Learning for Teens and Young Adults with Autism and Asperger's by Lynn Kern Koegel and Claire LaZebnik is aimed at older children and people in their early 20's, so it deals with topics that aren't always addressed in the autism and Asperger's literature. Subjects like dating, romance, and life beyond high school and college are explored. LaZebnik's 15-year-old autistic son also weighs in, and contributes drawings for the book.

I Might Have a Weird Sense of Humor

While graphic novels as a genre have been very hard for me to get into (if you have any suggestions for a reluctant graphic novel reader, you should let me know), I've always enjoyed comics of the "funny papers" variety. Which might help to explain my latest obessession, Pearls Before Swine, which is written by Stephan Pastis. While Pastis always depicts himself as a something of a pathetic slob with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, he doesn't smoke and is actually quite handsome.






That's him right there.







His work is featured in over 150 newspapers, and has a cast of characters that are both funny and touching. There's Pig, who is optimistic and good-natured and innocent. Rat is conniving and doesn't like other people (and is a little bit like Dogbert at times). Goat is the smart one, while Zebra lives next door to a fraternity of crocodiles that want to eat him. I know it all might sound a bit bizarre, but what comic strip doesn't? What really matters is that Pastis has a delightfully skewed view of the world that entertains me greatly.


Where can you find Pearls Before Swine? Several collections and treasuries--like Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic--are available via interlibrary loan. Pastis also has a blog which is highly entertaining.

New Books from Old Favorites

Fall is the season when most publishers go all out, releasing the biggest books by their brightest authors. This autumn is no exception! Here are just a few of the much-anticipated new releases.

Jacquelyn Mitchard's stunning debut, The Deep End of the Ocean, was a gigantic hit. In the 13 years since its publication, it was chosen by Oprah for her book club, was made into a major motion picture, and became a favorite of book groups all across the nation. Now Mitchard has written a sequel, No Time to Wave Goodbye, and it's been getting rave reviews. With the Cappadora children from the first book grown, fledgling filmmaker Vincent makes a documentary about abducted children who are still missing. When the film is nominated for an Academy Award, the entire family is thrust into the spotlight and forced to confront their feelings about what happened so many years before.


Another book that was a favorite of both book groups and Hollywood is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Her Fearful Symmetry, while not a sequel, is the latest thing to come from Niffenegger's pen. The New Yorker describes the book by saying, "when Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her estate, including an apartment overlooking the graveyard, to the twin daughters of her twin sister, from whom she has been estranged for twenty years. When Valentina and Julia show up to claim their inheritance, they soon discover that Elspeth is still in residence, in ghostly form."

Nicholas Sparks' latest offering, The Last Song, is a family drama centering on 17-year-old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller. As she tries to navigate her first romance while dealing with the fallout from her parents' divorce three years earlier, she learns that love can both hurt and heal. The movie version of this story, starring Miley Cyrus, is set to release in April, 2010.

Popular Michigan author Mitch Albom writes about belief, faith, and the struggle to find meaning in this world in his latest, Have a Little Faith. A request to write a eulogy leads to Albom becoming reaquainted with both his hometown rabbi and the faith he had left years before. At the same time, he becomes involved with the pastor of a struggling Detroit church, and questions of faith loom large.

Stephen King is a prolific writer, and his fans eagerly await the release of each of his books. Under the Dome, which tells the story of a town in Maine that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field, should be no different. King's latest is such an event, the final cover isn't even available now, and will be "unveiled" when the book hits the shelves!

The Help

Our book club recently read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It is a very thought provoking, well written first novel.

Skeeter Pelhan is ahead of her time; she is over 6 feet tall, a college graduate and she wants to be a writer. A sympathetic publisher charges Skeeter with submitting something different, something that hasn't been done before. So she writes the stories of several black women who work as maids for white women, in Mississippi, during the 60's. I don't know about you but the words, "Mississippi during the 60's" always send a chill through me. The stories that unfold are sad, funny, outrageous and dangerous for those who tell them.

LeAnne

Mixed Media

Having worked in both the publishing and library worlds, and having heard for years about the inevitable death of the printed page, I'm always interested in people who experiment with the book format and push the technological envelope. This is precisely why Level 26: Dark Origins by Anthony E. Zuiker caught my eye. Zuiker is the creator of the television show CSI, and his new book incorporates short films, a website, and other interactive technologies. Basically, you read a certain number of pages and then you are directed to a website to watch a short film. Yahoo even featured the book in one of its news stories. The Hillsdale Community Library has already ordered our copy, so you can expect it on our shelves as soon as it releases.

The same concept is used in a new series for middle-grade kids, written by Patrick Carman. Skeleton Creek is already out, and the second book, Ghost in the Machine, is set to release in October. I was lucky enough to see Carman speak--and to watch one of the short films from the second book--and I can tell you that this is spooky stuff! Maybe this is one way to get all those computer-addicted, thrill-seeking boys to actually want to read.

Hillsdale County Big Read 2010


The votes have been counted and the winner is:



The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.