Jen B.

  • Historical romances

    When you think of historical romance, chances are you envision women in off-the-shoulder poufy dresses posing with bare chested swains, and in many cases this is the norm. The romance genre is, however, much deeper than you may think. Though Regencies (poufy, swains) are the most prevalent type of historical romance, this in no way… Continue reading

  • Individuals

    While explaining diversity to the class, a teacher says, “We are all individuals,” which prompts one student to proclaim, “I’m not!” A funny joke, but it’s also an apt depiction of “different.” Manuals on identifying and coping with human differences are factually and practically useful, but sometimes hearing about someone’s life helps a reader more… Continue reading

  • Think about stuff

    I was tidying the shelves in the Living Room at Central Library when I ran across a book called Tattoos: I Ink Therefore I Am. I read through the chapter titles: “How to Read a Tattoo, and Other Perilous Quests,” “Tattoo You,” “To Ink or Not to Ink,” “The Vice of the Tough Tattoo.” Other… Continue reading

  • Crime: Beneath the Antimacassars

    I like a dark, creepy Victorian crime novel — the real doozies – stories so strange and bizarre, nobody’s thought of them yet. The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair is a doozy. The Victorian mystery as we know it is turned on its head, so to speak, with a “normal” scientist, Captain William T.… Continue reading

  • The New Gothic Novel

    In the 1970s “gothic” fiction book covers featured a girl in a diaphanous gown running away from a castle/mansion at night — during a storm. Perhaps Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is the most famous of the older gothic novels. In this classic story the “new” Mrs. de Winter cannot overcome the feeling that she’s not… Continue reading

  • Crime: Imagining Jack the Ripper

    Whitechapel, London, 1888 Would Sherlock Holmes identify Jack the Ripper using his astute powers of deduction? Arthur Conan Doyle never put Holmes on the Whitechapel set, but Lyndsay Faye pits the pipe-smoking, cognitively-advanced detective against the Ripper with disastrous results in her novel Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John… Continue reading

  • Reading John Irving’s ‘In One Person’

                               Note: John Irving will speak at Town Hall, this Thursday, at 7 p.m. Slightly shocking, discomforting and utterly wonderful: these words describe every book John Irving has written, some more than others. And if you check the literary components chart under Irving’s name in Wikipedia, you’ll note that nearly all of the author’s repeat… Continue reading

  • Inspired by Darcy: Characterizations of Jane Austen’s proudest hero

    Have you noticed how many novels are based on or inspired by classics, especially novels by Jane Austen? First there are the retellings of stories, like Emma and the Vampires, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, in which an author takes the original classic and adds exciting paranormal characters.… Continue reading

  • Family lives and relationships in fiction: 10 books to try

    As families have changed to become more inclusive so has our concept of what used to be called “domestic fiction” or “women’s fiction.” Here are 10 newer stories that reflect social changes and are of interest to a wider variety of readers. Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close Realizing it’s time to get their… Continue reading

  • Who’s you mama? Who’s your daddy?

    by Jen Baker and John LaMont Most of us at one time or another wonder about our ancestors: where they came from, how they got here and why they came. My family came from Germany, Wales and England and I’ve traveled to all three. Curiously, I made an emotional discovery in Wales – I felt… Continue reading

  • Let’s talk about “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter”

    Beginning December 1, Book Chat (the Library’s virtual book discussion group) will discuss Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, the story of a childhood friendship marred by misunderstanding and suspicion. Silas, the African-American child of a single mother barely making it, and Larry, the white son of a coarse, loud braggart, were close friends despite living… Continue reading

  • A book group you can join in your PJs

    Can we talk about book groups? Why is it so hard to find a good one? I mean, it’s easy to join a book group at a book store or a library, but they may be a bit impersonal, they rarely serve food or drinks, and there’s always that one person who talks too much.… Continue reading

  • Title Sparring

    I am obsessed with book titles and how some really strange, overlong and obscure misnomers slip through the editing process. I have a bone to pick with these titles I recently found in a few minutes searching for self-help and do-it-yourself books on the library catalog. Great books with ambiguous titles can really put me… Continue reading

  • What’s Funny, Part 2: Dysfunction — how bad is it?

    The time for labeling and loving books about “dysfunctional” families is past. Readers have moved on, having acknowledged that no family is actually “functional” and that’s okay. Now we want to read more exciting dysfunction stories: we need more drama, more humor, and more action. We might throw in a little horror and suspense like… Continue reading

  • Who is like Flavia de Luce?

    After you find The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, what’s left but the plate? If you loved Alan Bradley’s child sleuth Flavia de Luce as much as I did, you can’t help feeling bereft at the end of this brilliantly funny “cozy” mystery in which she prevents a family catastrophe – the conviction… Continue reading

  • Grownup Thanksgiving

    Need something to get you in the mood for THE HOLIDAYS? Try staging an informal reading to celebrate Thanksgiving. From old-fashioned and heartwarming to cry-in-your-beer hilarious, there’s a story for every audience. In The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote, seven-year-old Buddy has a problem with a school bully named Odd Henderson, so his cousin- a… Continue reading

  • The new medieval historicals 2010

    This is a great year for historical fiction! A plethora of medieval and Renaissance novels entered the market in competition with the ever-popular Philippa Gregory. Gregory’s latest novel, The Red Queen, is fabulous by the way — an imaginative portrait of Margaret Beaufort, the indomitable, ambitious and frighteningly powerful mother of Henry VII. Alison Weir’s… Continue reading

  • Yelling librarians confront book worms

    In Blake Charlton’s Spellwright, if you can’t spell right, you can’t become a spellwright at the wizard school in Starhaven, where Nicodemus Weal lives. He has a unique disability: every spell he touches goes wrong, partly because he can’t spell the words written in his body, and partly because a piece of his soul lies… Continue reading