"The Long Goodbye" by Meghan O'Rourke

The Long Goodbye is a stirring memoir that recounts the grief one feels after the death of a mother. O’Rourke’s first-person voice communicates feelings of anguish that jump off the page, and her poetic writing style beautifully captures the enduring power of love and the overwhelming surge of emotions that surround the death of a loved one. Because her writing seems both refreshingly personal and wholly universal, I found myself wanting to audibly agree with her and underline several particularly good passages. The book belongs to the library, though, so I refrained.

The Long Goodbye is also about O’Rourke’s realization that the history and rituals of grief were still a mystery to her, even as she was experiencing her own grief. Therefore, she spent a lot of time reading scientific studies, novels, and poetry about bereavement in order to write The Long Goodbye. Her writing reflects that this act of seeking knowledge was in itself therapeutic. However, she ultimately discovers that there are very few accepted rituals that Americans still possess to communicate grief. For instance, we no longer dress entirely in black for months, and it’s certainly not acceptable to wail in public or be entirely truthful in our display of grief. Instead, suffering is sequestered. This is unsettling, and it left me with a lot to digest after finishing the book. Highly recommended.

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Book review by Rebecca.

May We Suggest...Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. She grew up on her parents' farm, outside the town, and went to a one-room schoolhouse. Joyce enjoyed the natural environment of farm country, and displayed a precocious interest in books and writing. Although her parents had little education, they encouraged her ambitions. When, at age 14, her grandmother gave her first typewriter, she began consciously preparing herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college.

When she transferred to the high school in Lockport, she quickly distinguished herself as an excellent student. She contributed to her high school newspaper and won a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she majored in English. When she was only 19, she won the "college short story" contest sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine. Oates was valedictorian of her graduating class. After receiving her BA degree, she earned her Master's in a single year at the University of Wisconsin. While studying in Wisconsin she met Raymond Smith. The two were married after a three-month courtship.

In 1962, the couple settled in Detroit, Michigan. Joyce taught at the University of Detroit in the 1960s. The civil rights’ violent realities influenced much of her early fiction. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, was published when she was 28. Her novel received the National Book Award. In 1968, Joyce took a job at the University of Windsor in the Canadian province of Ontario. In the ten years that followed, Joyce Carol Oates published new books at the extraordinary rate of two or three per year, while teaching full-time. Many of her novels sold well. Despite some critical grumbling about her phenomenal productivity, Oates had become one of the most respected and honored writers in the United States though only in her thirties.

While still in Canada, Oates and her husband started a small press and began to publish a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. They continued these activities after 1978, when they moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Since 1978, Joyce Carol Oates has taught in the creative writing program at Princeton University. Her literary work continued. In the early 1980s, Oates surprised critics and readers with a series of novels, beginning with Bellefluer, in which she reinvented the conventions of Gothic fiction. Just as suddenly, she returned, at the end of the decade, to her familiar realistic ground with a series of ambitious family chronicles, including You Must Remember This, and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. The novels Solstice and Marya: A Life also date from this period. She used the materials of her family and childhood to create moving studies of the female experience.

In addition to her literary fiction, she has written a series of experimental suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. To date, Joyce Carol Oates has written 56 novels, over 30 collections of short stories, eight volumes of poetry, plays, innumerable essays and book reviews, as well as longer nonfiction works on literary subjects ranging from the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the fiction of Dostoyevsky and James Joyce, to studies of the gothic and horror genres, and on such non-literary subjects as the painter George Bellows and the boxer Mike Tyson. In 1996, Oates received the PEN/Malamud Award for "a lifetime of literary achievement." Today, Joyce Carol Oates continues to live and write in Princeton, New Jersey.

READ-A-LIKES

Margaret Atwood - Similar to Oates, Atwood is a prolific and versatile writer that delves into provocative issues such as feminism, families, relationships and politics. Try reading Alias Grace or The Year of the Flood: a novel.

Chris Bohjalian - Fans of Oates appreciate Bohjalian's provocative novels that deal with controversial topics and difficult situations. Readers should try Midwives or Secrets of Eden:a novel.

Doris Lessing - This acclaimed novelist is another good suggestion for fans of Oates. Her work addresses social, cultural and environmental issues at great length. Good novels to start with are The Golden Notebook or The Sweetest Dream.

"Where's Walrus?" by Stephen Savage

A walrus is on the loose in New York City and must find a place to hide from the zookeeper. He finds plenty of places to hide using the technique of camouflage. However, he can't help standing out in the diving competition he enters covertly. Later, when he returns to the zoo he uses his new found talent to entertain the crowd. Young children will delight in their ability to find the lost walrus in this bright, colorful book.

Check out this fun "Where's Walrus?" video on YouTube.

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Book review by Mary.

"Music" by Andrew Zuckerman

Music by Andrew Zuckerman isn’t the sort of book you need to read cover to cover. You don’t have to read it at all: you could simply flip through to see unexpected photographs of famous musicians.

Before you even crack its spine, you know this is an unusual book. At first, I wasn’t even sure that it was Ozzy Osborne in the cover photo. I reacted this way to each of the fifty artists inside; each time, the author/photographer captured something I hadn’t seen before, which is saying something for people who are constantly on display. Because these portraits are mostly life-size, you see physical imperfections (acne blemishes, an untrimmed whisker, clothing wrinkles). With some artists, like Eve, you marvel at how their beauty shines even under such close scrutiny.

Alongside their photographs, each artist reflects on music, and the text adds to the thoughtful, uninhibited tone set by the photographs. These essays are freeform and conversational, and like the book in general, you really don’t need to start at the beginning. Fellow musicians will recognize the love and awe for music and the process of creation; others will have a rare glimpse inside the creative minds where so much of our popular music is born.

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Review by David.

May We Suggest...Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Charles Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 31, 1965. As a child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling in Fair Oaks, California, at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his mother a homemaker, then an optometrist’s assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.

After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.

He and his wife Catherine were married in July 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second, unpublished novel and worked a variety of jobs over the next three years. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medalist, and it was published. Though it received scant publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.

He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved to North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook and in October, 1995, rights to the The Notebook were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October 1996, and he followed with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding(2003), True Believer (2005), At First Sight (a sequel to True Believer) (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and a non-fiction memoir, Three Weeks With My Brother (2004), written with his brother, Micah. All were domestic and international best sellers and were translated into more than 45 languages. His newest book,The Best of Me, will be released in October 2011.

The film version of Message in a Bottle, starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright, was released in 1999, A Walk to Remember, starring Mandy Moore, was released in January 2002, and The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, was released in June, 2004. Nights in Rodanthe, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, was released in September 2008. Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, and The Last Song, starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear, were released in 2010 to great box office success. The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron, has a tentative release date of spring 2012.

Along with his wife, Sparks founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina, and he spent five years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and family.

READ-A-LIKES

Richard Paul Evans is another popular author of gentle stories of great love and inspiration. Characters are less tortured and more in need of finding their inner strength and faith. If readers have already discovered the Christmas Box trilogy, they should sample one of Evans' most recent books, The Last Promise.

Sparks' fans should turn to Emily Grayson when looking for a similar author. Grayson writes in a slightly more dramatic style about romantic relationships with endings that are as emotional as Sparks' but less bittersweet. Start with her second novel, The Gazebo, which follows the enduring love of two people who tried their whole lives to be together and failed.

Writing in the same vein, but with more nostalgia is James Michael Pratt. His first three books, The Last Valentine, The Lighthouse Keeper and Ticket Home, use the dramatic backdrop of World War II to tell the stories of couples who are separated by war but joined at the heart.

"The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer is aptly named, and though most of the novel is set in 1950s California, it spans the decades before and after through the memories of its narrator, Pearlie. The phrase “We think we know the ones we love” becomes a bittersweet mantra as she tells the story of her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Holland. As the phrase suggests, there are many revelations to come, especially when a wartime friend of her husband mysteriously arrives one afternoon. The reader will guess his connection to them long before the narrative makes its big reveal, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating for Pearlie or the reader.

The author includes several large “surprises” throughout, but it is much more satisfying to watch these characters discover what they love and make choices accordingly, all while presenting a wholesome front to the suburban neighbors. The collective fear of nuclear holocaust and communist spies hangs in the air, but even more terrifying is the characters’ own desires when they don’t align with 1950s sensibilities. Exploring these is what ultimately makes this novel such a satisfying read.

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Reviewed by David.

May We Suggest...Anne Rivers Siddons

Georgia born and Auburn University education, Anne Rivers Siddons is the author of more than a dozen bestselling novels. Her works include Sweetwater Creek; Islands;Nora, Nora; Hill Towns; Outer Banks; and Fault Lines and many more. She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

Many of her books take place in and around Atlanta, Georgia, or explore characters from the south that are living elsewhere.

Siddons and her husband, Heyward, spend their time in Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklin, Maine.

NOVELS -

• Heartbreak Hotel (1976)
• The House Next Door (1978)
• Fox's Earth (1981)
• Homeplace (1987)
• Peachtree Road (1988)
• Kings Oak (1990)
• Outer Banks (1991)
• Colony (1992)
• Hill Towns (1993)
• Downtown (1994)
• Fault Lines (1995)
• Up Island (1997)
• Low Country (1998)
• Nora, Nora (2000)
• Islands (2004)
• Sweetwater Creek (2005)
• The House Next Door (2007)
• Off Season (2008)
• Burnt Mountain (7/2010)

READ-A-LIKES -

Rita Mae Brown - Brown's work has a similar tone to Siddons. She fills her books with Southern settings and the tough, vibrant, multi-generational women that live there. The characters face down social taboos and the risky politics of race. Try reading Venus Envy and Southern Discomfort

Lee Smith - Writing with an equally appealing Southern voice, many fans of Siddons enjoy the work of Lee Smith. She creates significant relationships that grow and change within her characters. Begin with The Last Girls or News of the Spirit.