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Library Staff Favorites
This rotating feature will present recommendations by Library Staff.
Each will list 3 of their favorite books and why. An archive link
below will take you to past features.
Linda Coppola, Liaison/Librarian for Liberal Arts
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84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
Helene Hanff was a New York writer and Frank Doel a London bookseller. This
is a collection of their letters from 1949 to 1969, published in 1970. They never met, but became friends through their love of books. You also meet the other members of the bookstore staff and gain a knowledge of their lives after World War II as well as the author's ups and downs in the writing field and something of her friends and neighbors. A charming read. Then when you have finished it, find a copy of the movie. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are perfect in these characters. Then take a look at the website which pulls together a history of the store.
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Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler
"Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Butler's 15 stories, set in the Vietnamese enclaves of suburban New Orleans, capture the voices of people who have lost their homeland and are trying to adapt to an alien culture." (Publisher's Weekly 5/3/93 p.303) I found his voice to be very lyrical. It put me into the lives of these people and gave me an understanding of a part of history that I was unaware of.
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Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
This is Kingsolver's first book, published in 1988, an introduction to her writing. I have read everything she has written since, but this is still my favorite. A girl of 22 leaves her home in Kentucky in a battered VW, picks a new first name to accompany her new start and heads west. She ends up in Tucson where her car breaks down and she decides to stay. Along the way she acquires an abandoned Indian baby. The secondary characters are memorable and the series of events she is exposed to cause her to grow and learn about herself and the world. A great first novel.
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