LibraryPoint Blog

You’ve probably encountered them - big flashing warning boxes on websites that inform you that your computer is infected with hundreds of viruses or malware or some such.  Scary, right?  You don’t want your computer to be infected with anything!  And these nice people are offering to scan your computer to clean it with their free download - how thoughtful!  So you click yes, please clean my computer, and it all goes downhill from there.

Which is cooler: Finding the answer to life’s most important question using brain power or Google? Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is optimistic about the future of technology and people working together as it looks at the question of immortality. In the novel, friends care about each other. A multi-generational fellowship forms. Two young couples get together. Read deeply and follow the clues to solve the mystery of the Unbroken Spine left by the fifteenth-century printer Griffo Gerritszoon. This novel is a mystery, but it is also about the love of books, whether you find them in the Central Rappahannock Regional Library; a big-box store like Barnes & Noble; a local, independent bookstore like The Griffin; or the quiet little stores built into our Kindles and Nooks.

One of my favorite customers called me to tell me that he loved the book Until Tuesday.  I am sure that this story about a veteran spoke to him since he is also a veteran who happens to love dogs. 

Until Tuesday is the true story of a highly-decorated Iraqi war veteran who returns home as a war hero.  However, Luis Carlos Montalvan has such incredible injuries to his body and his psyche that he cannot cope with everyday life. He hovers on the brink of suicide until he meets Tuesday, a golden retriever who also had an emotionally difficult journey to get to Luis.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

World War Z by Max Brooks: "Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace." (Publisher's Weekly)

If you enjoyed World War Z and other books dealing with pandemics and global menaces, here are some other novels you may enjoy:

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
When the Imperial prison barge Purge breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But soon after a boarding party returns from a scavenging expedition, a horrific disease breaks out and takes the lives of all but a half-dozen survivors whose only option forces them to return to the Star Destroyer--and the soulless, unstoppable dead waiting aboard its vast emptiness. (worldcat.org)

Feed by Mira Grant
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. NOW, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them. (catalog description)