Staff Reviews

The Staff of the Quincy Public Library recommends the following books for your reading pleasure:

Darien Gee gives readers a gift with the first book of a series set in the fictional town of Avalon, Illinois.  Julia Evarts was dealt the blow no parent should ever face: the death of a child.  She still gets up every morning, but mostly for the sake of her daughter Gracie.  Nothing else seems to matter.  Returning home one day, they find a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread, a bag of starter with a request to share it, and a note: “I hope you enjoy it.”  Gracie’s enthusiasm was all that kept it from ending up in the trash.  Baking that first loaf is the beginning of the Evarts family’s return from existence to living.  During their reawakening, they meet the inhabitants of this town who may have started out as strangers, but quickly became something more than friends. Friendship Bread is touching and poignant, plus it has the recipe for Amish Friendship Bread!

It seems that every day there is a new claim how this or that particular food helps fight cancer, burns fat, makes your skin smoother, helps restore vitality, increases eye health, and the list goes on and on.  In the new book The Kitchen Table Book, the editors of FC & A Medical Publishing have compiled hundreds of these ideas and suggestions into one easy-to-read book.  You never know – an apple a day just might keep the doctor away!

Diana Highsmith was witness to the fatal accident that took her husband’s life on a climbing expedition in Switzerland.  Since that time, she has rarely left her house.  Most of her communication is done through the Internet.  She and her partner, a reformed computer hacker, run an Internet security company.  For Diana, it means she can work from the safety of her home and participate in life from behind closed doors.  At least she can until her sister disappears. Suddenly she is forced into the world once again, whether she is ready or not.  Hallie Ephron’s latest nail-biter, Come and Find Me, captivates readers from page one.

One day Ingrid Betancourt was a politician campaigning for the Colombian presidency, the next she was a prisoner of the FARC, a terrorist organization at constant war with the government.  For the next six years, Betancourt was held captive in a series of ever-worsening jungle prisons.  While she made several escape attempts, none were successful.  Finally freed in 2008 by the Colombian army, Betancourt recovered from her ordeal and began a campaign to draw attention to the plight of other terrorist hostages and captives.  She chronicles her experiences in the book Even Silence Has an End.

William R. Freudenburg is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Robert Gramling is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  Both of these men are eminently qualified to share their observations about the BP Gulf oil spill.  From the bad decisions and poorly thought out disaster plan to the oil industry’s increasing risky oil drilling procedures, Blowout in the Gulf is an intelligent and educational study of one of the world’s worst man-made disasters.

All of these books are available for checkout from the Quincy Public Library and the York Street Branch located in the Quincy Senior and Family Resource Center if you have a current Quincy or Tri-Quincy Area Public Library District card. Reciprocal borrowing cards from other Illinois area libraries will be honored as well. You may also place reserves on library materials and check your patron record online at www.quincylibrary.org.