Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Adult Summer Reading Program

Enjoy Summer Reading as Much as the Kids Do!
Monday, July 7 through Thursday August 7, 2008 at

THE TOWN OF PELHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY

“Summertime, and the living is easy…” It’s a great time to relax and enjoy a good book! We have created a program to enhance your reading pleasure.

Enjoy a new book or rediscover an old favorite, either fiction or nonfiction. After you read or listen to it, please write a short, informal book review. You can submit it to us in one of two ways:

1. Type it on an 8 ½ x 11” piece of paper, and drop by the library to hand it in. Please fill out and submit one entry form with each book review.

2. Send it to the Library blog on the Pelham Library website: www.pelhamlibrary.org We'd love to be able to post your book review on our blog so that other readers may enjoy them. Who knows, maybe we'll get a conversation started! We will fill out entry forms for each book. (Reviews that are e-mailed online will not be accepted, nor will anonymous submissions.)

For every book you read or listen to from July 7 to August 7, you may enter to win prizes that we will draw for at 8 p.m. on five Thursday evenings: July 10, 17, 24, 31, and August 7. The prizes are gift certificates to Barnes & Noble. After August 7 we will compile all the descriptions and reviews in a booklet for display.

Entry forms are available at the circulation desk. Please limit submissions to one entry per book per person. No registration is required; however, participants must fill out each entry form completely and must have a current Westchester Library System member library card.

Happy reading, and we look forward to seeing you!

Claudia Gisolfi, Librarian
Generously funded by the Friends of the Library
Library Friends, Trustees, & Staff not eligible

5 Comments:

Blogger Diva Mommy said...

Just stopping by to say hi. I started a new blog and I am just looking around.

3:10 PM  
Blogger Pelham Library News said...

Glad that you stopped by! What are you reading these days? Please stop by again and give us your book comments.

10:09 AM  
Blogger Lea Gavrieli said...

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Falling Man deals eerily and intimately with the shattering shocks and aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. It explores the ways that people were drawn together though they might otherwise not be as close. At the same time we hear in each character’s thoughts the intensely private ways in which each person experienced the event. The resulting barriers insulate even as they also isolate, leaving each of them, ultimately, alone in their grief.

The title character is a performance artist who goes to various locations in the city to simulate his own fall, looking much like the bodies that fell from the burning buildings on that fateful day. We are never privy to the inner thoughts of the ‘Falling Man’, and so have not a clue why he has decided to do this. But his willingness to face the horror repeatedly throws into sharp relief the inability of the central characters to adequately grapple with their own inner demons.

In including passages which also probe the thoughts and feelings of one of the hijackers, DeLillo brings the reader close to the most terrifying truth of all – that any one of us could fall at any time and there’s a chance there would be nothing that could save us.

Lea Gavrieli

7:12 PM  
Blogger Lea Gavrieli said...

The Time It Takes to Fall
Margaret Lazarus Dean

The closing line of this coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the Challenger Shuttle disaster haunted me long after I had put the book down.

Dolores Gray lives in Cape Canaveral, FL, where NASA is the largest employer and most of her classmates’ parents work for NASA in one capacity or another. Though most of her peers are interested in just about anything but space travel, Dolores is fascinated, keeping careful records of missions and launches, and harboring the secret wish to be an astronaut like Judith Resnick, who is her hero.

As she faces seismic changes in her academic and social life as well as her parents’ marriage, along with the usual growing pains of living in a body that doesn’t feel completely hers, Dolores finds stability and comfort in her continued dedication to the space program, one constant in a sea of change.

When the Challenger goes down, it takes Dolores with it for a time, as her sense of what was constant and immutable is shaken to its core. And yet this paradigm shift, however painful, is what is essential to the transition we each must make from innocent child to capable adult – her response rings true for anyone who has had their world upended.

Ultimately, Dolores finds herself irreversibly changed, and yet essentially herself. She’s stronger, more sure of herself, and perhaps more aware of the resilience to be found in each of us.

Lea Gavrieli

7:54 PM  
Blogger Pelham Library News said...

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan

Ring the bells! The next big read is here. Those who loved The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a novel that reads like a memoir about growing up in Afghanistan, will certainly love this memoir-like book, about a woman’s life in India. The author’s Brahmin grandmother Sivakami, becomes a widow in her early twenties. She must manage her lands, children, and servants during an age of superstition, male dominance, and severe social restrictions. The book begins in 1896 and continues through 1957, covering the enormous upheaval of Indian independence from Great Britain. Sivakami’s life, from girlhood through becoming a great grandmother, is beautifully portrayed. There is a rich gallery of personalities who interacted with Sivakami. Besides her husband and children, she had a life-long relationship with Muchami, her servant, who became her voice when tradition prevented her from acting on her own. Her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren live their own unique lives, always interesting and sometimes devastating. This book powerfully describes a faraway land and culture, but because we see through the eyes of Sivakama, Indian life becomes eerily familiar.

Lillian Hecker

9:22 AM  

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