Books @ Noon March 2021 Picks

1) Magpie murders

Author

Horowitz, Anthony

Series

Magpie murders volume 1

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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A "brilliant and strikingly original reimagining of the classic whodunit (a la Agatha Christie) with a contemporary mystery wrapped around it"-- After working with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, editor Susan Ryeland is intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries in sleepy English villages. His traditional formula has proved hugely successful, so successful that Susan must continue to put up with his...

2) Moonflower murders: a novel

Author

Horowitz, Anthony

Series

Magpie murders volume 2

Notes

...and Bonnie mentioned being baffled by the short page count of Moonflower Murders given its thickness until she realized it was a twofer: a novel within a novel. This is a sequel to Magpie Murders, linked next.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Book - Hardback, Book - Paperback, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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"Branlow Hall is a beautiful hotel in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Unfortunately, it is also the site of the brutal murder of Frank Parris, a retired advertising executive. Stefan Codrescu, a Romanian maintenance man, is arrested after police find blood spatter on his clothes and bed linen. He is found guilty and spends eight years in prison. It appears an open and shut case, but there is more than meets the eye. Alan Conway, the late author...

3) A bright ray of darkness

Author

Hawke, Ethan

Notes

Carolyn enjoyed the new Ethan Hawke novel.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Large Print

Description

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"The first novel in nearly twenty years from the acclaimed actor/writer/director is a book about art and love, fame and heartbreak--a blistering story of a young man making his Broadway debut in Henry IV just as his marriage implodes A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked...

4) The liar's dictionary: a novel

Author

Williams, Eley

Notes

Kristin shared that the bookishness of this newer novel would appeal to attendees. Featuring two timelines and a failed dictionary publisher, there is a lot of humor in this one. The world Kristin was searching for that refers to non-words planted in dictionaries (typically to protect copyright) was mountweazel!

Formats:

Book, Book - Hardback, Book - Paperback, eAudiobook

Description

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"An exhilarating and laugh-out-loud debut novel from a prize-winning new talent which chronicles the misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world"--

5) Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; and, In Watermelon Sugar

Author

Brautigan, Richard

Notes

Bill mentioned (re?)reading Trout Fishing in America and enjoying the humor.

Formats:

Book, Book - Paperback, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Collected in one volume, three counterculture classics that embody the spirit of the 1960s.

Included here are three great works by the incomparable Richard Brautigan:

Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through the country’s rural waterways—a book “that has very little to do with trout fishing and a lot to...

6) Pet

Author

Emezi, Akwaeke

Description

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In a near-future society that claims to have gotten rid of all monstrous people, a creature emerges from a painting seventeen-year-old Jam's mother created, a hunter from another world seeking a real-life monster.

7) Freshwater

Author

Emezi, Akwaeke

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heart wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in...

8) The death of Vivek Oji

Author

Emezi, Akwaeke

Notes

As we moved into speed sharing, Wendy mentioned reading and enjoying this title and the author's other books were also mentioned and linked next.

Formats:

Book, Book - Paperback, eAudiobook

Description

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"A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds"--

9) March: Book Three

Author

Lewis, John

Series

March volume 3

Formats:

eBook, eComic, Graphic Novel, Kindle

Description

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By Fall 1963, the Civil Rights Movement is an undeniable keystone of the national conversation, and as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is right in the thick of it. With the stakes continuing to rise, white supremacists intensify their opposition through government obstruction and civilian terrorist attacks, a supportive president is assassinated, and African-Americans across the South are still blatantly prohibited

...

10) March, Book Two

Author

Lewis, John

Series

March volume 2

Formats:

eBook, Graphic Novel, Kindle

Description

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After the success of the Nashville sit-in movement, John Lewis' commitment to change through nonviolence is stronger than ever — but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement's young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear

...

11) March, Book One

Author

Lewis, John

Series

March volume 1

Formats:

Book, eBook, Graphic Novel, Kindle

Description

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Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.Now, to share his remarkable story with

...

12) Persepolis: 2 :the story of a return

Author

Satrapi, Marjane

Formats:

Book, Book - Hardback, Book - Paperback, Graphic Novel

13) Persepolis

Author

Satrapi, Marjane

Formats:

Book, Graphic Novel

Description

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An intelligent and outspoken only child, Satrapi--the daughter of radical Marxists and the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor--bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, where it elicited comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution....

14) Maus: a survivor's tale

Author

Spiegelman, Art

Series

Maus volume 1

Notes

Claudia also is very much enjoying approaching this graphic novel classic for the first time. If you are considering reserving, the volume linked here contains both Vols. 1 and 2. Kristin also mentioned that readers might enjoy another newer classic of this form: Peresepolis. Both parts are linked next. In addition there is a new 3 part graphic novel series written by Rep. John Lewis that is a memoir of the civil rights movement set against the backdrop of President Obama's inauguration, which is also linked below.

Formats:

Book, Graphic Novel

15) Me and white supremacy: combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor

Author

Saad, Layla F

Notes

Claudia shared that she had started reading this title as it was recommended by Jacqueline Woodson during her author talk.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Book - Hardback, eAudiobook, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #meandwhitesupremacy, she never predicted it would become a cultural movement. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it... Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and over 80,000 people downloaded the supporting work Me and White Supremacy. Updated and expanded from the original edition, Me and White Supremacy...

16) A swim in a pond in the rain: in which four Russians give a master class on writing, reading, and life

Author

Saunders, George

Notes

Kristin had just started reading this book about Russian short stories and said it was the kind of book that the people in attendance would enjoy. She has now finished reading and continues to think that this is one of those books that the Books@Noon regulars will very much enjoy. This is a book version of Mr. Saunder's seminar on the Russian short story at the Syracuse MFA program where he teaches.

Formats:

Book, Book - Hardback, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...

17) The lost city of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon

Author

Grann, David

Notes

Carolyn loved this "Raiders of the Lost Arc"-like adventure featuring English gentleman and Amazonian exploration!

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called "The Lost City of Z."--Publisher description.

18) John Adams

Author

McCullough, David G

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook

Description

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The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling biography of America's founding father and second president that was the basis for the acclaimed HBO series, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.
In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American...

19) The quartet: orchestrating the second American Revolution, 1783-1789

Author

Ellis, Joseph J

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Paperback

Description

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The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal government with power over their individual autonomy. The Quartet is the story of this second American founding and of the men responsible. Some names are familiar, such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, and some less so, such as Robert...

20) first principles what americas founders learned fr

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