The Book Bench from The New Yorker.

The Trouble With Recommending Books:Loose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department.

Posted by Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn



Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/06/the-trouble-with-recommending-books.html#ixzz0qTlrgBML

New Audiobook Arrivals!

Daniel Grey is no ordinary young man. Daniel has "the memory," the ability to recall past lives and recognize the souls of those he's previously known. And he has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Lucy (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together -- and he remembers it all. It is both a gift and a curse. For all the many timesthey have come together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart.



In 1908, a brilliant American battleship gun designer dies in a sensational apparent suicide. The man's grief-stricken daughter turns to the legendary Van Dorn Detective Agency to clear her father's name. Van Dorn puts his chief investigator on the case, and Isaac Bell soon realizes that the clues point not to suicide but to murder.






When young Waino Mellas, a Bravo Company lieutenant, is unceremoniously dropped into the jungle of Vietnam, he is instantly forced into manhood. Facing the horrors of war in Southeast Asia, Waino and his comrades embark on a long, torturous, bloody adventure, where the Vietnamese wilderness is just as dangerous as the enemy.





Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews, journalist and acclaimed author Guy Walters examines how Nazi war criminals escaped post-war Germany and evaded their pursuers. Some were eventually captured, while others spent the rest of their lives in hiding. However, they were all aided by others, including high-ranking and intellectual Europeans, Argentinean secret agents, or Western intelligence services. Here, Walters unfolds the story of Nazis escapees and their pursuers.

Charles Dickens: The First Great Travel Writer?

Travel Books:
Frank Bures digs into the legendary author's travel writing and finds some surprises.

Visit www.worldhum.com for the full article.

Back when the world wasn’t so known, travel writing wasn’t so much about being entertaining, or about letting the writer’s persona run wild. The point was to describe the world rather than to dance upon its stage. The purpose was to transport people to another part of the world in an edifiying, Victorian kind of way. It was something to make readers who couldn’t see the world become more worldly. It was more education than entertainment or art.

New York Times Literary Treat of the Week....

Gay, Timothy M. Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson.

Recent documentaries about the game would have us believe nearly all ball players had regular jobs in the off season. Yet from the 1930s to the mid-40s many of the best from the majors and Negro Leagues spent their autumns in for-profit exhibition games played in big cities and small towns. Players from both organizations either faced other or were teammates long before Robinson and Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey broke the major league color barrier in 1947. Gay chronicles how during that period of "barnstorming" the lives of three future Hall of Fame pitchers were altered: the seemingly ageless Leroy "Satchel" Paige, the flamboyant Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, and the phenomenal fastballer Bob Feller. Given his touring vantage point, Feller once said Robinson was ill-equipped for the majors in that he could not handle pitches thrown inside. That was interpreted negatively by many, which is ironic when one remembers Paige (who became friends with Dean) and Feller became teammates on the 1948 world champion Cleveland Indians.

Trouble Maker: Janet Evanovich

Alex Barnaby and Sam Hooker are back together and fighting crime the only way they know how by leaving a trail of chaos, panic, and disorder. Alex, an auto mechanic and spotter for racecar driver Sam Hooker, is drawn to trouble like a giant palmetto bug to a day-old taco. Unfortunately, she's also drawn to Hooker in the same fashion. There's no steering clear of trouble or Hooker when friends Rosa and Felicia call for help. A man has gone missing, and in order to find him Barnaby and Hooker will have to go deep into the underbelly of Miami and south Florida, surviving Petro Voodoo, explosions, gift- wrapped body parts, a deadly swamp chase, and Hooker's mom.

New York Times Literary Treat of the Week....

Orringer, Julie. The Invisible Bridge.

A sometimes overlooked fact about the Holocaust is that over 400,000 Hungarian Jews died at Nazi hands. Orringer, whose short story collection “How to Breathe Underwater” (also at Merrick Library) won two Pushcart Prizes, makes all too real in fiction what was faced by Hungary before and during World War Two. Andras Levy was a future architect studying in late 1930s Paris when his scholarship was cancelled by anti-Jewish laws. Andras does not return home alone. His wife, Klara, a ballet teacher has ties to a wealthy family in Hungary. They are separated when Andras is sent to a war labor camp where he is reunited with brother Tibor and contributes to a “subversive” camp newspaper. Meanwhile, Klara’s family fortune is bled dry by bribes paid to a puppet national government in order to keep a dark secret. An epilogue set in America serves as an effective backdrop to wind up this history-based saga of travail and tragedy.
Reviewed by Librarian, Bob.

New Audiobook Arrivals!

Tells the story of Manhattan columnist Carrie Bradshaw's high school years, her relationships with her peers, and how she became a writer.








At a family reunion, Special Agent Pendergast is finally overcoming the loss of his wife, who was mauled to death by a lion during an African safari. However, when Pendergast discovers that his wife's rifle was intentionally loaded with blanks, he is forced to reopen old wounds in an effort to locate those responsible for the violent killing.



Living among rats and roaches in a virtually abandoned unheated apartment building in Brooklyn, NY, 11-year-old Kimberly Chang narrates how, after recently immigrating from Hong Kong, she and her mother strive to eke out a life together working in an illegally run sweat shop. Though she was once the top-ranked pupil in her class in Hong Kong, Kimberly's English skills are so limited that she must struggle to keep up in school while still translating for her mother and attempting to hide the truth of her living situation from her well-to-do classmates.



Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth's hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Now, Elizabeth is forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to her, and that her deceptions will have profound consequences



Leo Hathaway must marry and produce an heir within a year to save his family home. Catherine Marks is intriguing and infernally tempting but hides a secret that could utterly destroy her. Can two wary lovers find a way to banish the shadows and give into their desires?



Nobel Prize-winning physicist Michael Beard coasts through life, lending his name to scientific institutions, lecturing for a high price, and listlessly participating in the effort to end global warming. But when his fifth wife reveals her infidelities, Michael realizes he's still in love with her even as their relationship collapses. Decidedly taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity, Michael travels to New Mexico, hoping to save his career and marriage by stopping an ecological disaster.