Sunday, August 1, 2010

Staff Selections - Melissa

What is your favorite genre? I like suspense, non-fiction, and clever or unique books.

Who is your favorite author? Bill Bryson hasn't let me down... yet!


What are you reading now? Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin (downloadable book), 1 Corinthians (downloadable too!), How Did You Get This Number: Essays by Sloane Crosley, and Psychology Today, one of our circulating magazines.

What have you read recently? Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon, Stop Getting Ripped Off: Why Consumers Get Screwed, and How You Can Always Get a Fair Deal by Bob Sullivan, Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch. Since I am a big fan of listening to books, I’ll include these books on CD that I have listened to: SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Kerplunk!: Stories by Patrick F. McManus, Dog on it: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn.

What is your favorite classic? Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

What are your all time favorite books/series? Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree by Robert E. Barry (along the lines of The Giving Tree, less the sad ending!), the Nancy Drew mysteries by Carolyn Keene, the Trixie Belden series by Julie Campbell and Kathryn Kenny, the Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol, and the Pippi Longstocking series by Astrid Lindgren (growing up I so tried to be like Pippi!). Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries and the works of Charles Dickens are favorites too. In juvenile non-fiction I love the Enchantment of the World series, especially the Slovenia and Croatia ones—shelving them led to a vacation there!

What are your favorite recommendations? Audio and downloadable books...to rest my eyes and feel like a kid being told a bedtime story! Our new Gale online resources, especially Books & Authors—it helps patrons find books they’ll like! Oh! You want titles and authors? Here goes: Revenant by Michael Punke, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown, The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Rigged: the True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil by Ben Mezrich, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood by Jimmy Carter, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25.00, and the Search For the American Dream by Adam Shepard, Heft on Wheels: a Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnus, Super Crunchers: why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart by Ian Ayres, Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, The Sociopath Next Door: How to Recognize and Defeat the Ruthless in Everyday Life by Martha Stout, Poisoned Nation: Pollution, Greed, and the Rise of Deadly Epidemics by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, and Kabul Beauty School: an American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez. For Fun: The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland, Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks, Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Broken Window: a Lincoln Rhyme novel by Jeffery Deaver, The Uglies series by Scott Westerfield, and The Don’t Know Much About... series of books by Kenneth C. Davis. Authors I recommend are: Bill Bryson, Clive Cussler, Vince Flynn, Ridley Pearson, Patricia Highsmith, Brad Thor, and Barry Eisler.