by Beth
Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
We have many
customers who like to keep up on the latest and greatest books. Here is an overview of some of the books we
have at the library that are generating the most buzz around the country this
fall.
Margaret
Atwood’s MaddAddam completes her MaddAddam trilogy, which also includes Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. It’s
a dystopian imagining of the near future.
Atwood says, “Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not
include any technologies or bio-beings that do not already exist, are not under
construction or are not possible in theory.”
Reviewers say this satire is full of humor and hope. Atwood is the winner of many literary awards
over the past fifty years.
Jhumpa
Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her first book, Interpreter of Maladies. Her new book, The Lowland,
is on the short list for the Man Booker Prize, a major book award in the United
Kingdom. The novel tells the story of
two brothers, one a radical who stays in India and one a parent-pleasing
academic who goes to America.
Thomas
Pynchon is a reclusive author who won the National Book Award for Fiction in
1974. Bleeding Edge is his newest, a
detective story set in 2001 after the dotcom bubble has burst. The story leads up to and through September
11th in New York City. Some
people praise the genius of Pynchon’s writing while others call it
unreadable. Publishers Weekly says that
“reading Pynchon for plot is like reading Austen for sex”: you never quite get
there.
Stephen King
has just come out with a sequel to The Shining, 36 years later. In Doctor Sleep, Dan Torrance is now a
middle-aged hospice worker who uses his dimmed supernatural powers to aid the
dying. When he meets a young girl with
far stronger powers than he ever had, he has to help protect her from a group
that wants to prey upon her to stay alive.
The author
of Eat, Pray, Love has a new book out: The Signature of All Things. Elizabeth Gilbert’s historical novel tells
the story of a woman botanist in the nineteenth century. This was a time when ideas about science and
religion were changing rapidly and amateur scientists and explorers could still
make great discoveries. The reviews are
positive.
Malcolm
Gladwell made a name for himself with his books The Tipping Point and Outliers. His newest is David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. This nonfiction book looks at how success can
arise from obstacles and disadvantages.
It sounds like his conclusions are controversial and thought-provoking,
as usual.
New books
that everyone is talking about can be hard to find on the library shelf for a
while. I suggest that you request these
titles through the library catalog or ask a staff member to request them for
you if you want to read one of these books soon.
