(Here's my current to-read list to give you some buying ideas if you are looking for a new read, but note on your calendar that Coconut Library's first annual Book Giving Gift Guide will be posted on December 2nd).
Like all of you, my to-read list shifts and grows depending on what mood I'm in, what books are being recommended, and what I've read last. There is only so much this lady can take of any one kind of book before I need to switch to another. I find that there are definitely genres I stick to. Hey, I know what I like! I do try to read out of the box when I can, and the challenges are helpful in getting me to do that.
However, I have a few quite serious books on my list, and a several not-so-serious (ok, not serious at all).
Let me share with you what is on my to-read for the near future (we'll see how it goes).
Weighty Reads:
Night by Elie Wiesel: "Night" is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan: Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances.
A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees-a microcosm of today's Africa-a Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear.
Uwem Akpan's debut signals the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer who gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances in stories that are nothing short of transcendent.
While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty: While I'm Falling is a gripping story of what happens to good people blind-sided by unforeseen circumstances of divorce and financial insecurity. Like the best writers of suspense, Laura Moriarty keeps the reader engaged with her vulnerable and heroic characters as she exquisitely mines the murky terrain of families and people in crisis and recovery.
Push: A Novel by Sapphire (about to be released as a motion picture called Precious): Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as she learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it truly her own for the first time.
Heartwarming Fiction:
The Bride Quartet Series by Nora Roberts: As little girls MacKensie, Emma, Laurel, and Parker spent hours acting out their perfect make believe "I do" moments. Years later their fantasies become reality when they start their own wedding planning company to make every woman's dream day come true. With perfect flowers, delicious desserts, and joyful moments captured on film, Nora Roberts's Bride Quartet shares each woman's emotionally magical journey to romance.
The Lakeshore Chronicles by Susan Wiggs: (The following description is about the 6th, and latest book, in this series.) The prim librarian is finally getting her chance to direct Avalon’s annual holiday pageant, and she’s determined to make it truly spectacular. But it might just require one of those Christmas miracles she’s always read about.
Because her codirector is recovering former child star Eddie Haven, a long-haired, tattooed lump of coal in Maureen’s pageant stocking. Eddie can’t stand Christmas, but a court order from a judge has landed him right in the middle of the merrymaking.
Maureen and Eddie spar over every detail of the pageant, from casting troubled kids to Eddie’s original - and distinctly untraditional - music. Is he trying to sabotage the performance to spite her? Or is she trying too hard to fit the show into her storybook-perfect notion of Christmas?
And how is it possible that they’re falling in love?
#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs conjures the heartwarming holiday tale of two people looking beyond the disappointments of the past to the promise of the future. Amid the holiday bustle of crackling fires, caroling singers and delicious secrets, the season of goodwill becomes the backdrop for Willow Lake’s most unlikely love story yet. (description from goodreads)
Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter by Lisa Patton: Leelee Satterfield seemed to have it all: a gorgeous husband, two adorable daughters, and roots in the sunny city of Memphis, Tennessee. So when her husband gets the idea to uproot the family to run a quaint Vermont inn, Leelee is devastated...and her three best friends are outraged. But she's loved Baker Satterfield since the tenth grade, how can she not indulge his dream? Plus, the glossy photos of bright autumn trees and smiling children in ski suits push her over the edge...after all, how much trouble can it really be?
But Leelee discovers pretty fast that there's a truckload of things nobody tells you about Vermont until you live there: such as mud season, vampire flies, and the danger of ice sheets careening off roofs. Not to mention when her beloved Yorkie decides to pick New Year's Eve to go to doggie heaven-she encounters one more New England oddity: frozen ground means you can't bury your dead in the winter. And "that" Yankee idiosyncrasy just won't do.
The inn they've bought also has its host of problems: an odor that no amount of potpourri can erase, tacky decor, and a staff of peculiar Vermonters whose personalities are as unique as the hippopotamus collection gracing the fireplace mantle. The whole operation is managed by Helga, a stern German woman who takes special delight in bullying Leelee for her southern gentility. Needless to say, it doesn't take long for Leelee to start wondering when to drag out the moving boxes again.
But when an unexpected hardship takes Leelee by surprise, she finds herself left alone with an inn to run, a mortgage to pay, and two daughters to raise. But this Southern belle won't be run out of town so easily. Drawing on the Southern grit and inner strength she didn't know she had, Leelee decides to turn around the Inn, her attitude and her life. In doing so, she makes friends with her neighbors, finds a little romance, and realizes there's a lot more in common with Vermont than she first thought.
In this moving and comedic debut, Lisa Patton paints a hilarious portrait of life in Vermont as seen through the eyes of a southern belle readers won't soon forget. A charming fish-out-of-water tale of one woman who learns to stand up for herself-in sandals "and" snow boots-against the odds.
The Perfect Christmas by Debbie Macomber: What would make your Christmas perfect? For Cassie Beaumont, it's meeting her perfect match. Cassie, at thirty-three, wants a husband and kids, and so far, nothing's worked. Not blind dates, not the Internet and certainly not leaving love to chance.
What's left? A professional matchmaker. He's Simon Dodson, and he's very choosy about the clients he takes on. Cassie finds Simon a di[fb03] cult, acerbic know-it-all, and she's astonished when he accepts her as a client.
Claiming he has her perfect mate in mind, Simon assigns her three tasks to complete before she meets him. Three tasks that are all about Christmas: being a charity bell ringer, dressing up as Santa's elf at a children's party and preparing a traditional turkey dinner for her neighbors (whom she happens to dislike). Despite a number of comical mishaps, Cassie does it all—and she's finally ready to meet her match.
But just like the perfect Christmas gift, he turns out to be a wonderful surprise! (description from goodreads)
The Christmas List: A Novel by Richard Paul Evans:
Dear Reader,
When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave our class the intriguing (if somewhat macabre) assignment of writing our own obituaries. Oddly, I don't remember much of what I wrote about my life, but I do remember how I died: in first place on the final lap of the Daytona 500. At the time, I hadn't considered writing as an occupation, a field with a remarkably low on-the-job casualty rate.
What intrigues me most about Mrs. Johnson's assignment is the opportunity she gave us to confront our own legacy. How do we want to be remembered? That question has motivated our species since the beginning of time: from building pyramids to putting our names on skyscrapers.
As I began to write this book, I had two objectives: First, I wanted to explore what could happen if someone read their obituary before they died and saw, firsthand, what the world really thought of them. Their legacy.
Second, I wanted to write a Christmas story of true redemption. One of my family's holiday traditions is to see a local production of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I don't know how many times I've seen it (perhaps a dozen), but it still thrills me to see the change that comes over Ebenezer Scrooge as he transforms from a dull, tight-fisted miser into a penitent, "giddy-as-aschoolboy" man with love in his heart. I always leave the show with a smile on my face and a resolve to be a better person. That's what I wanted to share with you, my dear readers, this Christmas -- a holiday tale to warm your season, your homes, and your hearts.
Merry Christmas
Admittedly, some of the heartwarmers might be a little cheesy, but for the most part they'll be feel good books. After some of the more serious ones on my list (or watching the news and living life for that matter) a little light heartedness can be good for the soul. As you've also probably noticed a few of my to-reads are Christmas books. Yes, I am getting into Christmas mode already. This upcoming holiday season (Thanksgiving/ Christmas) is my favorite, with Christmas being my #1. I love Christmas movies, songs, stories, books, decorations, well -- basically anything Christmas related! You're bound to see more books relating to this festive time making their way onto my list in the next several weeks.
Maybe you've just gotten a few more ideas to put on your lists, or maybe none of these sound good to you. No fear, there are too many good books out there for me to mention in this post! If you are looking for a good holiday vacation read, or need some suggestions for gifts (before my gift guide comes out on December 2nd), feel free to contact me. You can leave a comment here with your question, or you can contact me via the e-mail found on my 'about' page. Don't forget that I will have a post early next month with book gifting ideas for all types of readers.
Here's to hoping you find something good to snuggle up with as the weather gets colder and the day gets shorter... or something to make the numerous long travel days of the holidays feel not quite so daunting!
xo,
The Coconut Librarian
all descriptions taken from indiebound unless otherwise noted
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