Amy Kay
Hooked on Books
For the 14th year in a row Goodreads.com has announced the winners of their readers’ choice awards. As library staff and avid readers, Goodreads is a great resource for reading inspiration. Here’s a sampling of some of the best books according to readers that voted this year:
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is a fast-paced and engaging, debut novel. Chemist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show due to her revolutionary skills in the kitchen, uses this opportunity to dare women of the 1960s to change the status quo.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a thought-provoking coming of age story that spans thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond. This is an intricately imagined novel that examines the nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before. Give this one a try if you like video games.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry has been a popular read amongst L&A Library staff. We love reading books about books and we might be here for the romance, too. Agreeing to a holiday escape to the country, literary agent Nora keeps running into a bookish, hardheaded, arrogant editor she knows from Manhattan, and wishes she didn’t, even as she discovers they have more in common than previously thought.
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid is another page-turning winner from the author of Daisy Jones and The Six. In this compelling tale, a tennis champion comes out of retirement to claim her title as the GOAT, after watching a young phenom beat her long-standing record at the 1994 US Open. Even non-tennis playing readers will root hard for her to win and cheer even harder when she discovers who she is without the sport.
The Maid by Nita Prose was one of my favourite books this year and one that helped me discover that I do in fact like to read mysteries. When she discovers the dead body of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black in his suite, hotel maid Molly Gray finds her orderly life upended as she becomes the prime suspect in the case and is caught in a web of deception that she has no idea how to unravel.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel links stories over the centuries as it contemplates the passage of time and its disruption, the value of art, and the endless mystery of life. In order to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, a detective travels hundreds of years in the past and meets a young Englishman exiled to Canada in 1912 and a famous writer who lives on a moon colony but is on a book tour on Earth in 2203.
All of these titles can be reserved at your local County of Lennox and Addington Library or online at www.countylibrary.ca.