The publishing industry traditionally releases its top books later in the year, but I usually discover a gem or two in the early months. One such treasure is The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander. This evocative novel tells the complicated story of a seemingly ordinary, upright Blüthner piano. When an artisan picks the…
Usually, a fire is red and orange and yellow and black. The fire in the library was colorless. You could look right through it, as if it were a sheet of glass. Where the flame had any color, it was pale blue… ‘we thought we were looking at the bowels of hell.’” – From The…
Whenever someone learns that I work in a library, this question inevitably follows: what’s your favorite book? It’s like Sophie’s Choice, impossible to answer. So when it came time for me to review a recently published memoir, I couldn’t pick just one. Following are a few of my favorites from this year. Written by four…
“They meant well, all of them. How could she explain that this city was a graveyard? That they were walking every day through streets where there had been a holocaust, a mass murder of neglect and antipathy, that when they stepped through a pocket of cold air, didn’t they understand it was a ghost, it…
I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I am not an avid fly fisherman nor do I spend my spare time tying salmon flies for fun. However, if you were to take a peek at my browser history, you might suspect otherwise. Some of my recent Internet searches have included “Greater Bird of…
