Good Reads & Views

Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg
Nonfiction 

What it’s about: Imagine Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet and Hamlet—all texting away on their smartphones. In this witty and whimsical book, you’ll get to spy on the text exchanges of famous literary characters. Reading some of literature’s most famous scenes played out via text message is both funny and thought-provoking. (Thank goodness they didn’t have smartphones back then!)

Why you might like it: If you enjoy books with quirky formats and razor-sharp humor, this book is for you. It’s also a great choice if you’re looking for a book you can dip into; read a short segment now, then pick it up later to read another literary character's texts.

What sets it apart: This book delightfully blends modern technology, classic literature, and humor. Since it satirizes (and celebrates) the classics, you get to feel smart for getting the jokes, even as you laugh out loud.

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A Shot in the Dark by Lynn Truss
Fiction

Not your typical mystery: This comic whodunnit is actually solved about half way through. The rest of the book is about young hero Constable Twitten's hilarious attempts to get his superior to believe him. Twitten believes theatre critic A.S. Crystal was killed because he remembered a crucial fact about an unsolved bank robbery years before, but Inspector Steine believes there is no crime in the seaside village of Brighton, and just wants to eat his ice cream in peace. Only the charwoman takes any notice of what Twitten says. Get ready for a wryly hilarious read.

Reviewers say:  "Truss successfully combines wry humor with a fair-play mystery” (Publisher’s Weekly); “Truss piles up ingenious plot twists, preposterous coincidences, snarky asides, and characters out of P.G. Wodehouse” (Kirkus Reviews).

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The Secret Wisdom of Nature by Peter Wohlleben
Nonfiction 

What it’s about: The final title in German Forester Wohlleben’s Nature Trilogy (The Hidden Life of Trees; The Inner Life of Animals) looks at the connections between all living things and suggests that human intervention has unintended consequences.

Reviewers say: The author “thoughtfully and lucidly illuminates scientific facts, and his quiet leaps of brilliance are thrilling… Wohlleben conveys his findings in passages of pure poetry; he truly is an author to treasure” (Booklist).

An excerpt: “But nature is much more complex than a clock, isn’t it? In nature, not only does one cog connect with another; everything is also connected by a network so intricate that we will probably never grasp it in its entirety. And that is a good thing, because it means that plants and animals will always amaze us. It’s important for us to realize that even small interventions can have huge consequences, and we’d do better to keep our hands off everything in nature that we do not absolutely have to touch.”

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The Power of Noticing by Max Bazerman
Nonfiction

What it’s about: Bazerman's book reads like a novel and examines how mistakes are made when we fail to investigate the details, notice trends, identify our blind spots, and more.

Why you might like it: He examines in detail several business disasters that could have been averted and offers counsel so we can learn how to examine our own work, actions, the significance of delegation, and how to reduce error margins.

You might also like: Dare to Lead by Brene Brown.

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We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
Fiction

Read this if you like:  Vengeful teenage girls, genre blending, and long-buried secrets.

What happens? This combination thriller, western, and literary coming-of-age story begins at the end, thirty years after Walk, a small-town chief of police, turned in his childhood best friend Vincent for causing the death of a child. Time hasn’t healed Walk’s pain, or that of Star Radley, the child’s dazzling but troubled older sister, now the single mother of two—Duchess and Robin. Duchess, a fierce13-year-old who introduces herself as “the outlaw Duchess Day Radley,” considers herself the protector of both her little brother and her mother, whose addictions and penchant for tough men have often gotten her into trouble. Soon after Vincent returns home from prison, there is another murder and Walk and Duchess each set out to unmask the killer and avenge the death. A dark and moving page-turner.

Want more like this? Try True Grit by Charles Portis, for another suspenseful western about a feisty teen girl pairing up with a lawman to exact revenge. Duchess’s unusual cadence of speech is reminiscent of that of Mattie, the True Grit heroine. The Round House by Louise Erdrich is also about a young teen seeking justice for a crime against their mother and is equally heartbreaking.

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Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Fiction

Book Buz: #1 New York Times Bestseller & Amazon Best Book of September 2021

Reviewers say: “Liane Moriarty devotees, rejoice!” (CNN).

You might also like: Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney or All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

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The Guide by Peter Heller
Fiction

What it’s about: A remote fly fishing camp seems like the perfect destination during a worldwide pandemic. But in this atmospheric and menacing story, it slowly becomes apparent that the fishing camp is one of the most dangerous places to be. A fishing guide gradually realizes that the strange rules at his new job are hiding something terrible.

Why you might like it: This novel is a wonderful blend of lyrical writing, an intimate character study, and a slow-burn thriller with an intensifying pace.

You might also like: Also pick up The River by Peter Heller, the prequel to The Guide. While you can read each book on its own, they’re more powerful when read together. For a similar slow-build of the strangeness of a new home environment, read Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas—the story of a school with unusual and increasingly menacing rules.

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The Cleaner by Paul Cleave
Fiction

The main characters: There is Joe, janitor for the police department by day (The Cleaner), serial killer (The Christchurch Carver) by night. Then there is Sally, Joe's maintenance co-worker, who thinks of him as a stand-in for her dead brother. Last but not least there’s Joe’s wacky mother who keeps making him meatloaf (which he hates), Pickles and Jehova, Joe's beloved goldfish, and a rescued cat (you'll see).

Who it’s NOT for: People who can’t handle serial killers who are not pc; people who are squeamish; people who love goldfish.

An aside: This is definitely to be enjoyed on audio (available from hoopla), the narration is great and I kept laughing. (I know, I know!) And the scene where Joe goes after the cat he rescued is priceless on audio (The cat lives!). Fans of the TV show Dexter should appreciate this.

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Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Nonfiction

What it's about: Ona “Oney” Judge was born a slave at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. One of the chosen few to accompany Martha Washington to the new nation’s capital, Judge discovered that any slave kept in Pennsylvania for more than 6 months was legally emancipated. To circumvent this, Washington sent his slaves back to Mount Vernon every 6 months. When Mrs. Washington decided to give Judge to her granddaughter, Judge had had enough. She used her contacts in the free Black community to escape to New Hampshire. This history shows a different side of the Father of our Country.

Reviewers say: “This work adds new insights into the little-known story of Ona Judge and provides an important look at America's first president from the perspective of a woman he enslaved” (Library Journal); “A startling, well-researched slave narrative that seriously questions the intentions of our first president” (Kirkus).

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The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory
Fiction

What it’s about: This is a very engaging novel focusing on Hannah Verde/Green. She is a young (secretly) Jewish girl who had just escaped the Spanish inquisition to England with her father, who is a bookseller. In an unusual twist, her father, to protect her, disguises her as a boy. The author makes it clear how difficult it was to be Jewish in Tudor England.

Why you might like it: It's a view from someone who must hide in full view; completely unfamiliar to the courtly lifestyle, who must figure out which alliances to cling to, and which secrets to keep all to save her life as she becomes increasingly part of this new world.

You might also like: The next book in this series, The Virgin’s Lover by Philippa Gregory.

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