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Hobbies: Fact and Fiction
Enjoy our reviews of instructional books as well as fun novels with characters who share a common interest.
Humor - Don’t Leave Home Without It
“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility,” according to James Thurber. Often we find life’s little humiliations humorous with the passage of time. Luckily, talented writers often use these events to create essays and novels for our enjoyment. Trying to find witty material to read is serious business. Whether you are looking for slapstick, irony, or quirky characters, our featured titles will make you laugh out loud.
Scintillating Science
Do you think of science as boring facts and figures? Take a look at some riveting reads that bring the scientific process to life.
Recommended Books:
View this month’s featured booklists and reviews
Author, Margaret Maron's review of Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
"A favorite book that has influenced me? Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I discovered Millay when I was eleven and she made me want to write. She took me through the heartbreak of adolescence, she consoled me through deaths and disappointments as I grew older, she sustains me now in middle age. (The next time someone you love has a near brush with death, read "Thanksgiving Dinner" and feel the exaltation of that "and did not.") As a lyric poet she cares about meter, complex rhyme schemes and poetic images; yet her language is very clear, she uses homely images chosen from nature and she is completely accessible, which is probably why she's dismissed and undervalued by so many academics. (Like the King James Bible, she requires no priestly interpreter.) Her poems quickly spring to the universal, but they are rooted in the particular. A flower is not a flower. It is a spiked larkspur, a yellow violet, a specific blue flag in a bog. It isn't the scent of generic herbs, it's tansy or sweet basil or old-fashioned sage and it brings me immediately into her garden, into a sensuous landscape I can taste, touch, hear, see and smell. I am told that my books have a strong sense of place. If so, I learned it from Millay."
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Alexander McCall Smith has written more than fifty books, and is best known for his internationally acclaimed "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." The series now numbers a total of five books (McCall Smith is working on the sixth) and has been optioned for feature film. The series has become an international bestseller, with more than 3.5 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.
McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe, and educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor in Scotland, and it was in this role that he first returned to Africa to work in Botswana, the setting for his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series.
Alexander McCall Smith will be appearing at the Belk Theater on April 30 at 7 p.m. Presented by the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center & co-presented with the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County.
Individual tickets, $10-$29, are available at (704) 372-1000 or Joseph-Beth Booksellers, SouthPark.
Read our Alexander McCall Smith Interview
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April’s reviewer of the month is Angela from Imaginon. Angela is a voracious reader who reads a variety of books. She has reviewed several graphic novels, as well as young adult fiction and adult fiction titles for Reader’s Club. Here are thoughts on reading and writing reviews:
"I have always been a compulsive reader, so I try to make sure to have a good book on hand. I’m not very picky about what I read, because I truly enjoy a wide range of genres. Graphic novels and comic books, fiction and non-fiction, historical fiction, biographies, and picture books all receive equal attention from me. I always recommend a great book to people when I find one, and there are a lot of great books out there. Good books should be shared, not horded. When I write book reviews it’s because the book was enjoyable to me and I hope that other people will enjoy it too. I love recommending a book to someone and hearing how much they liked it. What a rush."
"The hardest question to answer is, 'What is your favorite book that you have read?' I haven’t found that favorite, perfect book yet, so I guess I need to keep reading."
Read more about our Featured Reviewer
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