LibraryPoint Blog

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.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen: "Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor. Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount. And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence."

If you enjoyed this title, here are some other novels you may also enjoy:

Deep Down True by Juliette Fay
Newly divorced Dana Stellgarten has always been unfailingly nice--even to telemarketers--but now her temper is wearing thin. Money is tight, her kids are reeling from their dad's departure, and her Goth teenage niece has just landed on her doorstep. As she enters the slipstream of post-divorce romance and is befriended by the town queen bee, Dana finds that the tension between being true to yourself and being liked doesn't end in middle school...and that sometimes it takes a real friend to help you embrace adulthood in all its flawed complexity (catalog description)
 

Faith by Jennifer Haigh
Sheila McGann is estranged from her complicated family. But when her older brother Art, pastor of a large suburban parish, finds himself at the center of a scandal, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him. Her strict mother lives in a state of angry denial; her younger brother Mike has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila's questions and refuses to defend himself. (catalog description)

 

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin, is a gentle, wondrous Chinese fantasy book for children. Set in a long-ago times, it follows a brave and bright girl named Minli who lives with her parents in a poor farming village. There is barely enough rice to keep them fed and certainly not any for luxuries. Most all the people are downtrodden and worried about their daily lives, but not Minli. She does not like the hard work in the sticky, muddy rice fields, but every evening she can look forward to stories told by her beloved father.

These tales fill her heart and her mind in such a way that she becomes the most radiant and hopeful young girl living near Fruitless Mountain. Indeed, she is so hopeful that when a peddler comes to their village with bowls of lucky goldfish, she takes her small savings to buy one, with high expectations. But when no luck seems to come and her father starts sharing his small supper with the hungry fish, Minli knows she must let it go. Releasing it into the Jade River, a river created according to legend from the body of a grieving dragon, she is surprised when a sweet, high-pitched voice—the goldfish!—offers to help her find her fortune by telling her the way to Never-Ending-Mountain where lives the Old Man of the Moon. The Old Man knows all things, including how her family’s fortune might be changed.

Since the release of the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, most “zombie invasion” narratives have dealt primarily with zombies as an external threat, an anonymous, unreasoning force that can never be controlled or incorporated into human society.  As such, the typical zombie story is driven by the fear of the living survivors of the undead; the zombies can be killed, evaded, or fortified against, but never empathized with. But what if, instead of being an unthinking, unknowable threat to civilization, the zombies were only shadows of our loved ones who passed away, and the true “zombie apocalypse” was the horror of humanity trying to understand why their beloved family members had returned from the grave? In Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let the Right One In, tells a tale of a civilization in crisis as it tries to communicate with the “reliving”—zombies risen during an intense electrical disruption that pose no violent threat to humanity, but challenge society’s philosophical notions of what it means to be alive.

A trip to the farmer’s market is one of the highlights of a visit to “Aunt Bek’s” house.  Recently, my six year-old niece declared she couldn’t wait to go to the market.  The only correlation I could make during the cold winter months was the grocery store and I kept wondering why the sudden interest in food shopping.  Finally it dawned on me that she meant the Farmers’ Market.  Her enthusiasm is understandable.  There she meets the people who planted the seeds and grew the produce.  The farmers welcome her, encouraging her to touch and taste a new and wide variety of food.  Never an adventurous eater, this is a chance for her to possibly expand her palette.  She also loves helping choose the ripest plums, pay for them and carry the bags.  

Starting in May, the library will visit each of the four area Farmers’ Markets once a month, offering information on library resources, checking out a few recipe books for cooking the delicious produce and providing quick, fun hands-on activities for children.  

Facing forty, Benjamin Benjamin finds himself in a dingy church basement attending a class called The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which is also the name of a poignant novel by Jonathan Evison. Benjamin has lost his home and family, and a caregiver certificate might be his only chance at finding his way back to normalcy.

Congratulations to the 10th Annual Teen Poetry Contest Winners!

Each year we celebrate National Poetry Month in April with our Teen Poetry Contest.
Teens in grades 7-12 from Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Westmoreland, are invited to submit up to three original poems. Out-of-region library cardholders may also enter. 

This year's winners were chosen (anonymously) by Claudia Emerson, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
Entries were accepted online between April 1 - 14, 2013, and winners were selected from participants in grades 7-9 and grades 10-12. We had 158 entries this year!

Winners are awarded prizes and invited to read their work at Teen Poetry Night at Headquarters Library, Wednesday, May 1, 7:30-8:30.

And the winners are ...

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is author Prudence Shen's laser-guided, satirical commentary on a clash of the cliques that has the potential to destroy friendships, dreams, and dozens of deadly, armored robots. 

Hollow Ridge High School is dealing with the fight of the century. In this corner we have the cheerleadering squad. Popular, gorgeous and fierce, these ladies are looking for some brand-new uniforms. Looking for funds throughout the school, merciless head cheerleader Holly has set her sights on one club's unused budget.

In the other corner is the robotics club. Led by their neurotic but clever president Nate, these geeks are not going down without a fight. 

Stuck in the middle of this struggle is poor Charlie, captain of the basketball team. His only crime is being the ex-boyfriend of Holly and Nate's best friend.

Genealogical research is a profession for some and a hobby for many.  With the advent of TV shows such as “Who Do You Think You Are?” and the multitude of resources available online, there are some interested novices entering the field who need a little help knowing where to start.  The following brief overview is for these beginners.