Tag Archives: fiction

eBook Friday: Slade House by David Mitchell

Posted on December 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

Slade House: A Novel, by David Mitchell:

Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents–an odd brother and sister–extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story–as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

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Every Friday, we highlight a title from our collection at
http://e-inc.lib.overdrive.com. Let us know what you think of these selections, and tell us about eBooks you’ve enjoyed – we may feature them here!

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Posted in eBook Friday

Tagged fantasy, fiction, literature, romance, thriller

eBook Friday: Thanksgiving

Posted on November 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

Thanksgiving, by Janet Evanovich:

When Megan Murphy discovered a floppy-eared rabbit gnawing on the hem of her skirt, she meant to give his careless owner a piece of her mind — but Dr. Patrick Hunter was too attractive to stay mad at for long … and soon she found herself falling irresistibly, helplessly in love. Playing house together, making Thanksgiving dinner for their families, filled them both with a longing for the sweet times to last. But Megan had wept over one failed love, and it hurt so much to risk again.

** Above copy excerpted from the original printing of Thanksgiving, 1988 **

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Tagged fiction, romance

eBook Friday: Purity: A Novel

Posted on November 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

Purity: A Novel, by Jonathan Franzen

A magnum opus for our morally complex times from the author of Freedom

Young Pip Tyler doesn’t know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she’s saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she’s squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother—her only family—is hazardous. But she doesn’t have a clue who her father is, why her mother has always concealed her own real name, or how she can ever have a normal life.

Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world—including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn’t understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Purity is a dark-hued comedy of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has created yet another cast of vividly original characters, Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers, and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Jonathan Franzen is a major author of our time, and Purity is his edgiest and most searching book yet.

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Tagged fiction, literature

eBook Friday: Piedmont Phantoms: North Carolina’s Haunted Hundred, Volume 2

Posted on October 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

Piedmont Phantoms:
North Carolina’s Haunted Hundred, Volume 2, by Daniel W. Barefoor:

Daniel W. Barefoot’s colleagues in the North Carolina General Assembly call him their “resident historian.” Now, he’s their resident folklorist, too.

North Carolina’s Haunted Hundred, Barefoot’s three-volume series, is a sampler of the diverse supernatural history of the Tar Heel State. One story is drawn from each of the state’s hundred counties. You’ll find tales of ghosts, witches, demons, spook lights, unidentified flying objects, unexplained phenomena, and more. Many of the stories have never before been widely circulated in print.

Piedmont Phantoms offers 40 tales from the state’s populous midsection. “Capitol Haunts,” the Wake County story, tells of strange doings at the State Capitol—an unoccupied elevator moving from floor to floor, an unseen hand touching a security guard, the sounds of books falling off shelves and barrels rolling down stairs. “Ghostly Legacy of the Swamp Fox,” the Robeson County story, introduces the spirits of the traitor who betrayed Revolutionary War general Francis Marion and the Highland Scot girl who made him do it. “The Hunter at the Zoo,” the Randolph County story, describes the ghost of the Confederate recruiter who once hunted human prey at what is now North Carolina Zoological Park.

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Tagged fiction, folklore, North Carolina

Book Review: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — David Foster Wallace

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace is known for being a difficult writer. He writes fiction with copious footnotes, uses words like “jejune” and “prognathous” seemingly for the fun of it, and never shies away from describing a small portion of a tennis match in dozens of pages of excruciating detail. His magnum opus, Infinite Jest, clocks in at 981 pages, not including nearly 100 pages of footnotes. When he passed away in 2008, he was working on a novel (The Pale King) about the IRS set in Peoria, Illinois, which was published this year in incomplete form – still 560 pages long.

What is less known about Wallace (at least to those who haven’t read him) is his enormous humor and his enormous compassion for human beings. These two character traits are radiantly apparent in all his work. I’ve read most of what Wallace has written, and I can’t think of another contemporary writer who is as funny or creates such a feeling of empathy for his characters as Wallace does.

David Foster Wallace’s collection of short stories, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, is as good a place as any to start if you want to get into reading him. The stories range from 5 sentences (“A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”) to 23 pages long (“On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright’s Father Begs a Boon”), and many of them are in fact Q & A sessions with (more or less) “Hideous Men”. This hideousness is more self-identified than anything else, consisting of confessions of fairly despicable (but utterly human) moral failings that dismay the reader while also being completely believable. If you’re looking for a (relatively) brief encounter with one of the most brilliant writers of the late 20th century, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is well worth the read.

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Posted in Book Reviews

Tagged 2012 Review, Brendan's picks, fiction

New Year’s Resolutions @ CCL

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

The new year is upon us – the time when we think back on the last 365 days and consider what we did right, what we did wrong, and what our hopes are for the future. Why not include the library in your New Year’s resolution plans? Take a look at some of the resources available at the Chatham Community Library that can help get your 2012 off to a great start!
(Numbers in parentheses are Dewey Decimal call numbers.)

Money: Economically-speaking, times are rough for many of us. CCL has a variety of resources to help you stretch your dollars, budget effectively, plan for retirement, spend wisely, and get out of debt.
Personal Finance (332.024), Retirement (332.024 & 646.79), Consumer Report (reference desk)

Health: Whether you’re looking to learn to cook, start cooking more meals at home, drop a few pounds, or manage a troublesome health issue, we have you covered!
Diet & Fitness (613.25-613.79), Cooking & Cookbooks (641), Psychology & Self Help (150-158), Medical Sciences (610-619)

Hobbies: Do you have a passion you never pursued, or a craft you’ve always wanted to learn? Maybe you’re just looking for something new and interesting to learn, or something fun to pass the time. We have everything from goat farming and beekeeping to quilting and knitting.
Gardening & Hobby Farming (630-635), Pets & Other Animals (636-639), Crafting (738-746), Music (780-788)

Education: Is your 2012 goal to go back to school, improve your knowledge of a subject area, or make the most of the education you have? Maybe you want to catch up with current technology or learn new software. We can feed your brain and give you the leg up you need.
Standardized Test Guides (378), College Majors (331.7023, 378), Computer & Software Classes @CCL

Career: Is 2012 the year you’ll start a new career? Launch your own small business? Improve your management skills or leadership? We have all the tools you need to set yourself up for success.
Resumes & Cover Letters (650.14), Business, Leadership, & Management (658), Small Business (658.022)

Family: Will you be starting a family in 2012, or perhaps expanding? Are you interested in researching your family history and lineage? We have a great genealogy section and plenty of resources to help you help your family.
Pregnancy & Fertility (618.2), Parenting (305-306, 649), Genealogy (LGH section), Adoption (362.734)

Reading: Last but never least, CCL is here to support reading and literacy. We have books and audiobooks galore in both hard copies and electronic versions available for download. Fiction, non-fiction, books for teens, books for children, practical, fun, informative, frivolous, whatever strikes your fancy. And don’t forget, if we don’t have a book or topic that you’d like to see on our shelves, feel free to fill out a purchase request at the circulation desk!
Fiction (adults, teenagers, children), Books about Books (011, 028, 809-810, 813), Books about Reading (372, 649.58)

Let us help you with your plans for the new year! We hope to see you soon.

Happy New Year from the Chatham Community Library!