Welcome to BookBuzz @ the Bentley Library!

Matched by Ally Condie

Looking for a new, quick Young Adult read? Then Matched, by Ally Condie, might be for you. It’s a step above the Twilight series, as far as readability for adults is concerned. It’s not quite as brilliant as the Hunger Games triology, with which it shares some basic similarities. There is a love triangle, which seems to be mandatory in current Young Adult fiction. The Matched series also takes place in a dystopian future land that may or may not be the former United States.

In Condie’s world, the reader follows 17-year-old Cassia in her pre-planned world. Cassia and her family have their whole lives determined by the Society; what they eat, where they work, who they marry, right down to what they wear.

Books, music, poetry and more have been whittled down to what the Society deems acceptable and necessary. There are the 100 poems, 100 songs, etc. Any poems not included in the Society’s list are considered contraband. Writing has become outlawed. Cassia’s family, friends, and neighbors accept all these limits in a copacetic manner, until the cracks start to reveal themselves to Cassia.

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An excerpt of Matched is available to view, courtesy of Dutton Books.

Nancy Pearl, a commentator for National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” included Matched in her 2011 list of “10 Terrific Summer Reads.”

Learn more about the author on her website.

Check It Out

Check our catalog to see if Matched is available to borrow. We also have the second book in the triology, Crossed, in our collection.

Are You Making a Beach Reading List? Need Some Inspiration?

Several weeks ago the library began its own pinboard on Pinterest for New Popular Reading Titles (and another for New Audiobook Titles). Why not check out our pinboards? You can re-pin the books you want to read to your own pinboard.  Visit the New On Our Shelves link on Book Buzz anytime to be brought to our Pinterest page so that you can see firsthand what’s new on our shelves! On this page we are presenting the covers and linking to the catalog records of the books as we receive them.

The Submission by Amy Waldman

Imagine this: the year is 2003. An anonymous competition has been set up to design a memorial for the World Trade Center in New York City. The competition’s jury finally agrees on a design, the architect’s name is revealed…and it turns out he’s a Muslim-American. What would your reaction be: as the jury? As a family member of someone who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks? As the architect? As a politician? As a fellow Muslim-American? Amy Waldman explores the repercussions of this fictional situation for members of all of these groups – some characters belong to more than one of these groups. I found the consequences fascinating and totally believable. Without coming down firmly on one of the many sides of the issue, Waldman shows how well-intentioned people can come to totally different conclusions and act in radically different ways when put under pressure, and how small details can be blown out of proportion. (The media play a huge role in the book – one of the only truly unsympathetic characters in the book is a New York Post reporter – which surprised me when I found out that the author herself was a reporter, and co-chief of the New York Times‘ New Delhi bureau.) Waldman’s writing is gripping, and kept me turning the pages, eager to see what would happen next. The different characters’ paths cross and re-cross in ways I wouldn’t have imagined at the beginning of the book, the way people’s paths do cross in a big city, or when involved in a common tragedy. I highly recommend this debut novel.

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Amy Waldman has said this book was inspired by the controversy over Asian-American architect Maya Lin’s winning design for the Vietnam War Memorial. Learn more about the controversy by checking out the DVD Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision  or viewing the film World of Ideas: Maya Lin in our database Films on Demand.

Go to The Submission‘s official homepage to see quotations from both the book and real-life commentators on the terrorist attacks and memorials, character sketches, and notes on the novel’s beginnings. Or check out reviews, excerpts, and interviews at NPR Books, the Washington Post, and PBS.

Check It Out

Click here to check the availability of the library’s copy of The Submission.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

This Fillory series has been compared to Harry Potter and Grossman compared to C. S. Lewis, but I think this second book in the series truly shows that this story is more in line with the land of Narnia with swearing, sexual content and many adult themes than that of the realm of Hogwarts. The descriptions are vivid and the characters are believable in the context of the story. I did not feel much empathy toward some of the characters as they were running around with the “Oh poor me” attitudes, but their dark perspective is finally explained in the end. The two main characters, Quentin and Julia, have stories that are intertwined. They are nicely woven together at the end, but I found it difficult to switch gears through the story. Please keep in mind that I listened to this story and there might have been better visual cues in the print version to help with the switching back and forth between the narrative. Overall I recommend this title to those who were fans of the first novel, The Magicians.

- Review by Kimberly Morin, Reference Librarian

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New to the Fillory series? Be sure to read Kim’s review of the first book The Magicians.

To find out more about the making of The Magician King, read the interview from Forbes.com with author Lev Grossman about the science of magic or watch the Huffington Post interview.

Check It Out

The Magician King is available in both print and audiobook formats. Missed the first book in the series? The library has a copy of The Magicians in print.

The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín

Usually, my reading plate is full with writers I know and love, but the library’s recent Best Books of 2011 display made me curious about lots of writers whose books I hadn’t tried yet, so I checked out Colm Tóibín’s collection of short stories The Empty Family.

These are stories about people’s internal lives and relationships, sometimes with little or no dialogue. They build slowly and quietly, leaving you with impressions rather than specific plot details. Even though many of the stories are about sadness or alienation, I found reading them very calming. My favorites were “The New Spain,” about a woman returning to her family in Spain after having been in exile for being a Communist, and “The Street,” an unlikely love story between Pakistani immigrants, also set in Spain. (Other stories take place mostly in Ireland.) One caveat: I usually don’t comment on sex or violence in my reviews; I figure people expect some of both in books written for adults. But one story, “Barcelona, 1975,” contains continuous descriptions of fairly graphic sex, so be forewarned if that’s not your cup of tea.

If you prefer a swiftly moving plot with lots of action, you might skip this book, but if you’re in the mood to get into the minds of thoughtful characters, and experience other places through their eyes, I recommend this short story collection.

-review by Liz Galoozis, Reference Librarian/Research and Instruction Coordinator

Check It Out

Click here to check the library’s availability of The Empty Family, and click here to check the availability of Tóibín’s other books and audiobooks in our collection.

Learn More

Read an excerpt and reviews at NPR Books, watch an interview with Colm Tóibín at the New York Public Library, or see what the Boston Globe had to say about this book.

Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt by Butch Walker

Drinking with Strangers by Butch Walker with Matt Diehl

This memoir is a great read; a cautionary tale of the perils of the music industry as recalled by Butch Walker (with Matt Diehl). If you’re not familiar with Walker, I like to call him “the man who writes the songs the whole world sings.” He’s been in, like, a zillion bands (i.e. SouthGang and Marvelous 3). He has been a successful “mid-level” solo artist for over a decade. Where he makes his bread and butter is writing and producing with folks like Katy Perry, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Weezer, Bowling for Soup, Sevendust, The Donnas, Hot Hot Heat, American Hi-Fi, Midtown, Puffy AmiYumi, Pete Yorn, Fall Out Boy, All-American Rejects, SR-71, Dashboard Confessional and … Lindsay Lohan. Yes, Lindsay Lohan. The man has a family to support.

Some of the best insight comes from Walker describing his work with Avril Lavigne: “I learned a valuable lesson when I went to work with Avril on ‘My Happy Ending.’ I’d mentioned that I had written those verses as a stoic sort of piano ballad in a lower key; they are just not a typical cookie-cutter pop lyric. And when I sang that version to Avril during that session, it was a million words a minute, full of words she didn’t even understand. When I got to the chorus, I just saw her cock her head to the side with this weird look in her eye, looking very confused. Seeing that gesture, I had an epiphany: I saw ten million little girls behind her cocking their heads with a quizzical look at the same time. At that moment, I realized, ‘That’s it! It’s too damn smart. It can’t be too clever.’ By no means an insult to people, but those who listen to pop radio really don’t want to think … because they need it as an escape.”

If you’re a fan of Walker’s you gotta read this memoir. If you love music or have ever had your heart broken by the music biz, it’s a must. The ending gave me goosebumps.

Review by Amy Galante, Interlibrary Loan Supervisor

The reviewer with Butch Walker and current music industry guru Kate Hutchinson during the Marvelous 3 age.

Check It Out

Check our catalog to see if Drinking with Strangers is available to check out.

Learn More

Follow the avid Tweeter, Butch Walker. Visit his website, where you can find his blog, get tour updates, and listen to music. Or browse through the book on the Harper Collins website.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt : a novel in pictures by Caroline Preston

How could a scrapbook possibly amount to a novel? Amazingly, Caroline Preston pulls off not only a visual feast of 1920s memorabilia that manages to amuse and charm but that simultaneously fleshes itself into a coming-of-age novel with a witty narrator and engaging plot. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt spans most of the 1920s and is so much more than a graphic novel. Using a mix of media – photos, newspaper and magazine ads, food labels, recipes, street maps, poems, handwritten notes, fashion plates, yearbook pictures, college term paper grades, graduation programs, Coney Island ride tickets, valentines, – and interspersed with snippets of narrative typed on a vintage Corona – combining Frankie’s (sometimes self-deprecatory) thoughts, conversations, all the while providing context to the visual material – the novel is presented in true scrapbook form. We meet Frankie in her hometown of Cornish, NH just before she begins her college days at Vassar. Through her story, we travel beyond her quiet New England town to Poughkeepsie NY to Greenwich Village and to Paris aboard the cruise ship riding 3rd class. We meet Frankie’s family, her crushes, her friends, and her true love. She is such a likeable protagonist and the story moves along with such ease that it is quite easy to read in one sitting. What surprised me more than anything when I finished this book was just how well-developed Frankie was as a character and how wistful I was that I had no more of her scrapbook left to read. I was reluctant to let go of Frankie’s voice in my head and her story on the page.

- review by Colleen Mullally, Reference Librarian

Check It Out

Click here to check the library’s availability of books by Caroline Preston.

Learn More

Get a feel for the book by visiting Caroline Preston’s website. Watch an interview with Caroline Preston as included with the Huffington Post review (here) and read the review from NPR (here). The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt received a starred review from Kirkus and selected by them as one of the year’s best books for historical fiction (here). Interested in other works by Caroline Preston? Check out our Book Buzz review (here) of Gatsby’s Girl.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

If, like me, you loved Jeffrey Eugenides’ 2002 book Middlesex, you were probably also very excited for him to publish something new. The Marriage Plot, while a very different book from Middlesex, does not disappoint.

The novel opens on graduation day, 1982, at Brown University, and follows three characters – Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell – through the year following graduation, with plenty of well-timed flashbacks to give insight into how the characters act. One of my favorite things about the book is the way Eugenides would revisit a scene from earlier in the book from a different character’s point of view, giving a totally different take on it.

Here’s a warning: The first section can be a little slow-going. There is some serious literary theory being thrown around in Madeleine’s English courses, but once I realized that the students discussing it (for the most part) didn’t know much more than my bare-bones understanding, I relaxed and just observed what it revealed about the characters. I also had a hard time at first because some characters seemed like silver-spoon, pretentious snobs – but you just have to get to know them.

A lot of this book is about what it’s like to be in that time of life – the last year of college, and the year following graduation. Both you and others in your life (like your parents) expect you to know what you’re doing, and the realization comes that not only do you not know now, but you may never know. This realization comes slowly to all three characters, and it’s sort of comforting.

A lot of the book also, of course, is about marriage, and love, and the ways those both manifest themselves both in the books the characters read, and in the characters’ lives (who, of course, are in a book themselves). In the video interview (linked below), Jeffrey Eugenides talks about the way people write about love and marriage now.

Learn More

See Jeffrey Eugenides talk about religion, love, literature, and other themes in the book in this video interview with The Guardian. You can also find interviews at the Christian Science Monitor and at NPR Books (which also includes an excerpt).

Check It Out

Click here to see if The Marriage Plot is available to check out in either book or audiobook form, and click here for other books by Jeffrey Eugenides, as well as the film based on The Virgin Suicides.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

–Riches to rags, he said, tenderly.

–No, I said. Not exactly.

This exchange, delivered long after the plot action has passed, doubles as an ambiguous yet wholly accurate summary of Rules of Civility, a novel about the events of a single tumultuous year for three young people in New York City. Katey Kontent is a young woman trying to make it in the city, with a boardinghouse room, a secretarial position on Wall Street, and a beautiful roommate/friend Evelyn Ross. In an underground jazz club on New Year’s Eve 1937, they have a chance encounter with a coolly handsome banker who mistakenly places his coat on an empty seat at their table. From there, things happen. Lives are turned upside down. In some ways, this is a typical girl-meets-boy, coming-of-age story of the young and graspingly, upwardly mobile. Lest you think that this will make for an ordinary plot, I’ll remind you that life rarely is as cut-and-dried as it may appear on the surface.

A novelist’s use of language can often make the difference between a book that you read dutifully in free moments, and a book that you can’t put down until it ends. In addition to the author’s skillful recreation of the place and time period, I loved the inventive descriptions that the author often used, such as: “When the phone rang a few nights later, I adopted the voice of a girl with one hand on her key chain and the other through the sleeve of her coat.” and, “She had changed into high heels and a tangerine-colored blouse that clashed with all her best intentions.” I kept reading this book long after I should have turned out the lights, which for me is a criterion denoting a highly engaging and entertaining novel.

This would be a great read for the upcoming holiday break.

-review by Macee Damon, reference & cataloging librarian

But Don’t Just Take Our Word For It!

This title has appeared on two notable lists for best books of 2011 – the Amazon Top 100 of 2011 and the NPR Best Books of 2011!

Check It Out

Check the library catalog to see if Rules of Civility is availble to check out.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

From the screenwriter of the cult geek hit movie Fanboys, is Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. It’s a quick, fun read filled with eighties pop culture in which our hero, Wade, attempts to find a hidden Easter egg in a virtual reality world called OASIS. In a dystopian future, humans spend most of their time in this online world created by the late James Halliday, who is a mix of Steve Jobs and Howard Hughes. Armed with knowledge about Rush, John Hughes flicks, and videogame history, Wade must beat the corporate thugs to the prize. 

Ready Player One certainly will not be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Literature, but it is a decent debut novel and a must read for gamers and nerd aficionados. If you find yourself wondering what happened to your Atari system and are nostalgic for Family Ties reruns, then this book is for you.

-Review by Amy Galante, Interlibrary Loan Supervisor

Check It Out

Check the library catalog to see if Ready Player One is availble to check out.

Learn More

Visit the Ready Player One Facebook page to read excerpts of the book. To keep up-to-date on author appearances by Ernest Cline, follow Ready Player One on Tumblr.