Check It Out

Our Summer Reading participants discovered the following gems this June and July. Though the official Summer Reading Program is over, the warmth and sunshine of summer continues, so if you’re looking for a great book try one of these fellow patron suggestions:

The Strange Library
by Haruki Murakami
In a fantastical illustrated short novel, three people imprisoned in a nightmarish library plot their escape.

Dear Mister Rogers: Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?
by Fred Rogers
In this collection of letters and replies, Mister Rogers encourages parents, grandparents, and teachers to cherish the questions and comments that come from their children.

Finders Keepers
by Stephen King

King’s instantly riveting story about vengeful reader John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades.

Under the Never Sky
by Veronica Rossi
Aria has lived her whole life in the protected dome of Reverie. Her entire world confined to its spaces, she’s never thought to dream of what lies beyond its doors.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
by Rachel Joyce
Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
by Ruth Emmie Lang
Raised by wolves after being orphaned in childhood, Weylyn Grey, a man with astonishing powers, is evaluated by the people who care or wonder about him.

An American Family
by Khizr Khan
This inspiring memoir by a Gold Star parent is the story of one family’s pursuit of the American dream and why–especially in these tumultuous times–we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.

After Anna
by Lisa Scottoline
Noah Alderman, a doctor and a widower, has remarried a wonderful woman, Maggie, and for the first time in a long time he and his son are happy. But their lives are turned upside down when Maggie’s daughter Anna moves in with them.

Encore Provence
by Peter Mayle
Peter Mayle is back in his beloved Provence, celebrating his homecoming by sharing with us a whole new feast of adventures, discoveries, hilarities, and culinary treats, liberally seasoned with a joyous mix of Gallic characters.

Have you taken up this summer’s challenge of Reading Takes You Everywhere? If Destination E: Read a Book of 150 Pages or Less is a stop on your journey, perhaps one of these books will get you there! Check out the first lines of these five books to see if any pique your interest.

“While this walking tour will cover a distance of only three city blocks, the compilers of this guide book suggest, based on our experience, that tourists and the curious be prepared to devote an entire day to it; there will be much to see and experience in your walk.”

A Walking Tour of the Shambles by Neil Gaiman

“In the department of — but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice and, in a word, every branch of public service.”

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol

“The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.”

Very Good Lives by J. K. Rowling

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

“Ennis del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window frames.”

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

Have you taken up this summer’s challenge of Reading Takes You Everywhere? If Destination P: Read a Collection of Poetry is a stop on your journey, perhaps one of these books will get you there! Check out the first lines of these five books to see if any pique your interest.

“I thank the universe / for taking / everything it has taken / and giving to me / everything it is giving.”

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

“I celebrate myself / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

Leaves of Grass by Walk Whitman

“who are you,little i / (five or six years old) peering from some high / window;at the gold / of november sunset / (and feeling:that if day has to become night / this is a beautiful way).”

Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings

“Sit where the light corrupts your face. / Mies Van Der Rohe retires from grace. / And the fair fables fall.”

In the Mecca by Gwendolyn Brooks

“Her heart was wild / but I didn’t want to catch it / I wanted to / run with it / to set mine free”

Love Her Wild by Atticus

Have you taken up this summer’s challenge of Reading Takes You Everywhere? If Destination S: Read a Book by an Author Using a Pseudonym is a stop on your journey, perhaps one of these books will get you there! Check out the first lines of these five books to see if any pique your interest.

“The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all.”

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre (David John Moore Cornwall)

“Though Robin Ellacott’s twenty-five years of life had seen their moments of drama and incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived.”

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)

“Summer’s here. Not just summer, either, not this year, but the apotheosis of summer, the avatar of summer, high green perfect central Ohio summer dead-smash in the middle of July, white sun glaring out of that fabled faded Levi’s sky, the sound of kids hollering back and forth through Bear Street Woods at the top of the hill, the tink! of Little League bats from the ballfield on the other side of the woods, the sound of power-mowers, the sound of muscle cars out on Highway 19, the sound of Rollerblades on the cement sidewalks and smooth macadam of Poplar Street, the sound of radios – Cleveland Indians baseball (the rare game day) competing with Tina Turner belting out ‘Nutbush City Limits,’ the one that goes ‘Twenty-five is the speed limit, motorcycles not allowed in it’ – and surrounding everything like an auditory edging of lace, the soothing, silky hiss of lawn sprinklers.”

The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

“Victoria Claire Huntington knew when she was being stalked.”

Surrender by Amanda Quick (Jayne Ann Krentz)

“The prince had all his young life known the story of Sleeping Beauty, cursed to sleep for a hundred years, with her parents, the King and Queen, and all of the Court, after pricking her finger on a spindle. But he did not believe it until he was inside the castle.”

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

Have you taken up this summer’s challenge of Reading Takes You Everywhere? If Destination Y: Read a Book from the Young Adult Collection is a stop on your journey, perhaps one of these books will get you there! Check out the first lines of these five books to see if any pique your interest.

“I shouldn’t have come to this party.”

The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas

“It’s a weirdly subtle conversation. I almost don’t notice I’m being blackmailed.”

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

“Pick me. It’s all I can do not to scream.”

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

“At the time I first realized I might be fictional, my weekdays were spent at a publicly funded institution on the north side of Indianapolis call White River High School, where I was required to eat lunch at a particular time – between 12:47 P.M. and 1:14 P.M. – by forces so much larger than myself that I couldn’t even begin to identify them.”

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

“There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.”

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Have you taken up this summer’s challenge of Reading Takes You Everywhere? If Destination Z: Read a Book About a World Changer is a stop on your journey, perhaps one of these books will get you there! Check out the first lines of these five books to see if any pique your interest.

“April, 1975. Phnom Penh city wakes early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat.”

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

“‘My grandfather was born into slavery,’ Jackie Robinson later wrote, ‘and although my mother and father…lived during an era when physical slavery had been abolished, they also lived in a newer, more sophisticated kind of slavery,’ as sharecroppers in the sugar-cane growing region of southern Georgia.”

Jackie Robinson: An Integrated Life by J. Christopher Shultz

“A cobalt blue house stands on the corner of Allende and Londres streets in a comfortable but unassuming residential area of the Mexico City borough of Coyoacan.”

Frida Kahlo at Home by Suzanne Barbezat

“As we stepped off the plane at the small airport, the howl of the jet engines deafening and the snowcapped foothills of the Himalayas looming behind us, two old friends embraced.”

The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Cosmos by Carl Sagan