Good Help is Hard to Find

The Help by Kathryn Stockett takes place is a world that is totally alien to me. A world where everybody has a maid. Where the lines between black and white people are carefully drawn. And where speaking out against the status quo can get one killed.

It is 1963 in Mississippi and the civil rights movement is only a murmur in the distance. The white women in town can’t live without their black maids, who cook their food, clean their homes and take care of their children. Yet, at the same time, they don’t want these maids using the same bathrooms as they do. When a young white woman sets out to write the stories these maids have to tell about their lives, we get a keen insight into these color lines and how they affected people both black and white during this turbulent period.

Stockett draws interesting and very well rounded characters and the story is compelling. The white people are not shown as evil ignorant Southerners, just people with some very deeply imbedded ideas about how the world should be. And the black people are not portrayed as noble martyrs but simply as human beings hoping for something better.

Though I know a lot about the civil rights movement, I was touched by the personal stories of bravery in this book. Though they are fictional, I could see how the smallest act of defiance during this time period could be an important step in equality and freedom.

Besides the historical and political themes of the book, it’s also just a great read. There are some terrific characters that you’ll simply fall in love with. I would highly recommend it!



Reviewed by Lori M

To find this book in the Library, go to our website at www.newberglibrary.org

New at the Library

Non-Fiction
Inaugural Address by Barack Obama
A. Lincoln: a Biography by Ronald C. White Jr.
Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop by Cynthia M. Bulik
Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 20th Century by George Friedman
Flat Belly Diet by Liz Vaccariello

Fiction
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
Drood by Dan Simmons
Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Shatter by Michael Robotham
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

DVDs
Nights in Rodanthe
City of Ember
Brideshead Revisited
The Duchess
Autism: the musical

Inspirational
When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin
Let them Eat Fruitcake by Melody Carlson
On a Whim by Robin Jones Gunn
Promise for Spring by Kim Vogel Sawyer
Rebecca's Reward by Lauraine Snelling

Audio Books
American Lion by Jon Meacham
Bones of the Dragon by Margaret Weis
The Good Rat: A True Story by Jimmy Breslin
Heaven by Randy Alcorn
Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich
Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani

To find these books in the Library, visit our website at www.newberglibrary.org

Princess Leia did what?

Maybe you only know Carrie Fisher as the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher (and, infamously, the step-daughter of Elizabeth Taylor). Or you maybe you only think of her as Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies. Or perhaps you’ve enjoyed her funny and acerbic novels like Postcards from the Edge and Delusions of Grandma.

Well, if you think you know Carrie Fisher at all, you haven’t read her new memoir Wishful Drinking. Fisher cultivated the book from a one-woman show she does by the same name and she doesn’t hold anything back.

Fisher unhinges her famously sharp wit to make such things as a father’s abandonment, drug addiction, mental illness and a dead friend in one’s bed absolutely hilarious! Holding nothing back, she recounts all sorts of juicy tidbits making them less about gossip and more about the pieces that have made her what she is today. Never whiney, and far for the spoiled Hollywood brats we often see in the media today, Fisher delivers a smart biting tell-all about how growing up famous (and, more importantly suffering from drug addiction and mental illness) affected her. If you like your memoirs nutty, this might be a good read for you!

To find this book in the Library, go to our website at http://www.newberglibrary.org/

Reviewed by Lori M.

Love, secrecy, passion and devotion...

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee takes place in Hong Kong during two time periods, 1941-42 and 1952-1953. The reader gets a glimpse of pre-occupation Hong Kong through Will’s eyes and follows his story through the Japanese occupation. The reader then follows Claire, the young British piano teacher, as she teaches young Locket, the daughter of the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Chen in the 1950s. The story glides back and forth between the two decades revealing Will’s life along with the Chen’s and other characters. The connections among several of the characters unfold as the book progresses.

The story is well written and the characters believable. Love, secrecy, passion and devotion are brought up through the various characters’ stories. The reader is challenged to determine how far one would go under stressful situations to survive and /or hold on to your integrity. What does bring happiness? What is love?

To find this book in the library, go to our website at www.newberglibrary.org

Reviewed by Denise

A Good Old Fashioned Adventure Tale

With touches of Robert Louis Stevenson and a hint of Oliver Twist, The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti is an orphan’s adventure into the dark underworld of Colonial New England. Ren is twelve years old and remembers nothing of life before being abandoned at the orphanage at St. Anthony’s. He also can’t remember how he lost his left hand.

Nearing an age where he’s bound for involuntary army service if he isn’t adopted, Ren suddenly finds himself swept away by a man claiming to be his brother. He soon finds that this conniving con man is not his brother, but he may have a connection to where Ren comes from. Meeting all sorts of shady characters along the way, Ren learns to be a grifter himself. But, as the title suggests, he has a hard time letting go of being good.

This is a terrifically bleak adventure full of great characters and unexpected situations. It’s pretty gross too, but that only adds to the story! For anyone who loves a good old fashioned tale of adventure this is a great read!

To find this book in the Library, visit our website at www.newberglibrary.org


Reviewed by Lori M.

What's Hot at the Library!

New Fiction
Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein
Dangerous Laughter: 13 Stories by Steven Millhauser
Among the Mad: a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear
The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee

New Nonfiction
Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin
Guilty by Ann Coulter
Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan by Suze Orman
We Can Have Peace in the Middle East by Jimmy Carter
The Well Dressed Ape by Hannah Holmes
Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent

To find these books in the Library, go to our website at www.newberglibrary.org

A Modern Chinese Woman

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo is a strange little book about the experiences of a Chinese woman finding herself despite being lost in a sea of people in a country where she does not fit in. The book is divided into twenty chapters, hence the title, and follows FenFang as she travels from her peasant village to the city. In her quest for simple survival, FenFang also seeks love, friendship, and some vaguely indefinably sense of her artistic self. Weaving in and out of boyfriends, jobs, apartments, and loneliness, FenFang is an outcast, from her family, her culture, and herself. Though there is no clean conclusion to this poetic story, it is a lovely read and quite different from what you might expect from a Chinese writer.

Guo wrote the original novel in Chinese and only recently translated it into English, “reworking” it rather than going for a word-for-word translation. I found the character and the novel fascinating!

To find this book in the Library, go to our website at www.newberglibrary.org

Reviewed by Lori M.