If you enjoy reading The New York Review of Books*, why not try a book published by the same publishing house? The wide variety of books from New York Review Books includes fiction and nonfiction, which they describe as "exploratory and eclectic," and most include an introduction by a writer or literary critic. Check out their website for more about the books!

The Mountain Lion

Jean Stafford

Eight-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother Ralph are inseparable, in league with each other against the stodgy and stupid routines of school and daily life; against their prim mother and prissy older sisters; against the world of authority and perhaps the world itself. One summer they are sent from the genteel Los Angeles suburb that is their home to backcountry Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an enchanting new world-savage, direct, beautiful, untamed-to which, over the next few years, they will return regularly, enjoying a delicious double life. And yet at the same time this other sphere, about which they are both so passionate, threatens to come between their passionate attachment to each other. Molly dreams of growing up to be a writer, yet clings ever more fiercely to the special world of childhood. Ralph for his part feels the growing challenge, and appeal, of impending manhood. Youth and innocence are hurtling toward a devastating end.

Everything Flows

Vasily Grossman

Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his masterpiece, Life and Fate. The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. But in a novel that seeks to take in the whole tragedy of Soviet history, Ivan’s story is only one among many. Thus we also hear about Ivan’s cousin, Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, and Pinegin, the informer who got Ivan sent to the camps. Then a brilliant short play interrupts the narrative: a series of informers steps forward, each making excuses for the inexcusable things that he did—inexcusable and yet, the informers plead, in Stalinist Russia understandable, almost unavoidable. And at the core of the book, we find the story of Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells about her eager involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932–33, which led to the deaths of three to five million Ukrainian peasants. Here Everything Flows attains an unbearable lucidity comparable to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

Stoner

John Williams

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams's luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

Pedigree

George Simenon

Pedigree is Georges Simenon’s longest, most unlikely, and most adventurous novel, the book that is increasingly seen to lie at the heart of his outsize achievement as a chronicler of modern self and society. In the early 1940s, Simenon began work on a memoir of his Belgian childhood. He showed the initial pages to André Gide, who urged him to turn them into a novel. The result was, Simenon later quipped, a book in which everything is true but nothing is accurate. Spanning the years from the beginning of the century, with its political instability and terrorist threats, to the end of the First World War in 1918, Pedigree is an epic of everyday existence in all its messy unfinished intensity and density, a story about the coming-of-age of a precocious and curious boy and the coming to be of the modern world.

* Did you know? You can read The New York Review of Books through our E-Library, using the database Masterfile Premier. Follow this link, click on Masterfile Premier, and log in with your library card:

Masterfile Premier

We've all heard the warning: don't judge a book by its cover. But I find I've often grabbed a book because of something eye-catching, intriguing, or mysterious on the cover... Today we are giving you permission: judge a book by its cover! And if you come across a book you just had to read based on the cover, leave a comment to share it with us! Here are a few that caught our attention:

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais

"That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist."

And so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life’s journey in Richard Morais’s charming novel,The Hundred-Foot Journey. Lively and brimming with the colors, flavors, and scents of the kitchen,The Hundred-Foot Journeyis a succulent treat about family, nationality, and the mysteries of good taste.

Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela S. Choi

Look to the blatantly homicidal intent in the title, not the hot pink cover, to get a sense of this debut novel, which combines the violence and nihilism of a Chuck Palahniuk or Brett Easton Ellis novel with chick-lit label-dropping. The shock-value plot should provoke plenty of hype, but it’s Choi’s furious, laugh-out-loud social commentary that is most noteworthy.

Angela S. Choi lives in San Francisco, California. Born in Hong Kong, Angela practiced law until she took up writing. Hello Kitty Must Die is her debut novel.

Them or Us by David Moody

The war that has torn the human race apart is finally nearing its end. With most towns and cities now uninhabitable, and with the country in the grip of a savage nuclear winter, both Hater and Unchanged alike struggle to survive.
Hundreds of Hater fighters have settled on the East Coast in the abandoned remains of a relatively undamaged town under the command of Hinchcliffe - -who'll stop at nothing to eradicate the last few Unchanged and consolidate his position at the top of this new world order.

Apples by Richard Milward

This unassuming debut novel plucked from the imagination of a remarkable new 21-year-old talent is an affecting, ingeniously crafted coming-of age novel that has critics calling Milward the voice of the MySpace generation.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them "an ambitious senator seeking the presidency." With the help of Washington's greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called "transitioning") all the way to the White House, over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.

By Tyler Jones

About twenty years ago, when I was a fresh-faced young book seller, I read a book called Jesus’ Son by an author I’d never heard of - Denis Johnson. At first this collection of short stories just seemed like a pointless series of tales of confused and directionless young man’s attempts to get as drunk or high as possible. I was pretty sure that the author was himself an addict – the stories had an air of authenticity and were not written in the polished prose I had been led to believe made “good” writing. As I read on, however, I realized there was significant depth to these stories about one man’s attempt to make sense of his world. Then I saw that there was an overarching structure to the collection, in fact it was a novel posing as a short story collection. By the time I finished I was convinced Denis Johnson was a genius. I immediately read his (then) two available novels: Angels and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. Both are absolutely riveting portrayals of people who have been forgotten, marginalized and institutionalized. It would not be a stretch to say that these books taught me I have a great deal in common with those less fortunate than myself. A bit of bad luck and few bad choices and any one of us could end up there.

As the years passed I eagerly read every new Denis Johnson book. Or tried to. Already Dead, his massive 1997 novel of California counter-culture was confusing and unfocused and I could not get more than fifty pages into it. Tree of Smoke, an even more massive novel about Vietnam, had the same effect on me. Strangely these two books are often cited as Johnson’s best by critics. Tree of Smoke was so well received that it was awarded the National Book Award in 2007. Perhaps it is I, not the books, that is confused and unfocused.

I love his shorter works. The Name of the World, a short novel about a mid-western professor living in the aftermath of the death of his wife and child, was beautiful and gritty at the same time. It made me understand that personal tragedy can affect us in ways we cannot control or even really comprehend. I think having read this book prepared me in some way when years later I found myself trying to make sense of a senseless loss. When I think of people who say fiction has no real purpose but to entertain, I think of this book and know they are wrong.

This year Johnson released Train Dreams, a novella. I am amazed at how much Johnson has packed into the 116 pages of this book. He says as much as a lesser writer would take 300 pages to say. It is both the story of a poor labourer in the American northwest and a story about the development of America itself. I was completely captivated by the mix of realism and dream-logic the novel employs. It was my favourite book of 2011.

So there you are. If you have never read the work of Denis Johnson, I believe you have some great books to look forward to reading.

A little while ago we posted a few titles under the heading “Books to Change your Life” and asked you to share your personal reading suggestions with us.

We’ve loved getting your feedback!

We learned that you also loved a few of our recommendations, and, of course, had many to recommend in return.

When we recommended Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, not only did people agree, but you’ve also shared other children’s or young adult novels that had an impact on you, including the classic such as L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham, as well as works of Asimov, Vonnegut, Faukner, Pyncin, Nabokov, Heinlein, and many more.

Here are the other great books with the power to change your life:

• The Bible
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
• Laura Ingalls Wilder's books

• Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene
• Ramona series by Beverly Cleary
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• The Outsiders by S. E Hinton
• Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

• Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear
• Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu
• Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night Time by Mark Haddon
• A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

And if you missed sending us YOUR recommendation, now is your chance!

Send us the book or books that changed YOUR life!

We are avid readers and, just like you, we love to get personal reading recommendations! So here are some more staff picks for you to enjoy as winter makes another appearance. There is a wide variety here, and as always we would LOVE if you would post YOUR picks in the comments!

We the Animals by Justin Torres

Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.

War and Peace: original version by Leo Tolstoy

A new version ' the one Tolstoy originally intended, but has been hitherto unpublished ' of Russia's most famous novel; with a different ending, fewer digressions and an altered view of Napoleon ' it's time to look afresh at one of the world's favourite books. War and Peace is a masterpiece ' a panoramic portrait of Russian society and its descent into the Napoleonic Wars which for over a century has inspired reverential devotion among its readers. This new version is certain to provoke controversy and devotion in equal measures.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers . . .Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

Dark Fire by C. J. Sansom

Matthew Shardlake, the marvelous hunchbacked 16th-century attorney who first appeared in Sansom's Dissolution, returns in this spellbinding Tudor-era tale of murder, conspiracy and betrayal. Shardlake normally handles property cases and the occasional dangerous mission for Lord Thomas Cromwell, the king's high counselor. Now he is engaged to defend a young woman accused of a curious murder, and the case seems hopeless. The girl refuses to speak and, under English law, unless she offers a plea in court she will be slowly crushed to death. Cromwell offers Shardlake a two-week stay of execution if he will agree to undertake a secret mission. Desperate to save the girl's life, Shardlake agrees. Rumors abound of a new and terrifying weapon called Greek Fire, and Cromwell orders Shardlake to find it, along with its secret formula and the two alchemists who possess it. Before Shardlake can even speak to the alchemists, they are brutally murdered, the formula and Greek Fire go missing, and horror and death are unleashed.

Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James

On a desolate stretch of the East Anglian coast, high atop a sweep of cliffs, sits the theological college of St. Anselm's. Down below, smothered by a fall of sand, lies the body of a young ordinand, the son of a powerful business mogul who wants Scotland Yard to investigate his death. Dalgliesh, doubting there is much to uncover in the case, agrees to go, motivated only by a desire to revisit a place where he spent several happy summers in his boyhood. Yet no sooner does he arrive than the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious murder and Dalgliesh finds himself embroiled in one of the most puzzling and horrific cases of his career: no one is above suspicion, and suspects abound.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: a modest bestiary by David Sedaris

Featuring David Sedaris's unique blend of hilarity and heart, this new collection of keen-eyed animal-themed tales is an utter delight. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life.

At first, The Tiger Claw seems to be a fairly ordinary WWII spy drama focused on a radio operator in occupied France. However, Noor Khan’s name signals that she is not an ordinary spy. Astonishingly, she was a real person, lovingly recreated by Shauna Singh Baldwin with fictional details unknown to history.

Baldwin uses our expectations to smooth the way for us to encounter a revision of history. Yes, the basic facts of Europe‘s War play out the same, but Baldwin inserts the parallel history of colonial peoples to enrich the mainstream recollection of this time.

Noor Khan is young woman raised in France in a Sufi Muslim family. Faced with the German invasion she and her family flee to Britain where their British colonial passports from India allow them entry. Soon after, Noor escapes the confinement of her family’s traditions by volunteering to be a spy – an operator of the radios that enabled the French underground to communicate with British intelligence during the war. Life-span was short for such operatives. Madeleine is Noor’s code name, and Madeleine fulfills all her duties meticulously. The private self remains “Noor”, who has a secret goal - to find her illicit Jewish French lover, Armand.

The novel unfolds with the intertwined story of Armand (addressed to Noor’s once-existent fetal baby), the story of a fractious community of spies operating against ruthless invaders, and the anguished story of her imprisonment by a German officer. Threaded through the emotional turmoil of her stories are dry political observations about all invaders and colonial powers. Doesn’t the Nazi regime adopt the same techniques of interrogation that the French used in Algeria? Haven’t the British also used semi-starvation as a method of subjugation in India? Aren’t the Indians and the Algerians striving for their own liberation even while individuals such as Noor fight on the side of the Allies during the War? Noor has no simple answers: her pondering these questions while engaged in a life of action raises The Tiger Claw to an impressive level of sophistication. Shauna Singh Baldwin’s literary talent ensures we enjoy the adventure while reflecting on the complications of real life.

Judith Umbach

Ring in the New Year with a primer on E-Readers!

Overdrive? What is it?

It works just like the regular Library. You can borrow eBooks and audiobooks or place a hold for books that are already out. They are automatically deleted from your device on the due date. Card holders have access to popular fiction and non-fiction titles, in both eBook and audiobook formats. Depending on your device you can checkout and download:

• Adobe EPUB eBooks
• Adobe PDF eBooks
• Mobipocket eBooks
• OverDrive WMA Audiobooks
• OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks

What do I need to get started?

Click on the “My help” button on Overdrive (hint: click on 'Overdrive' to go to the page) button in the upper left corner to determine what software you need to download.

More Information?

We’ve gathered a lot of useful links on this page: eBook Help

If you follow the link above you can click on a link to see information on the following topics:

• Overdrive Help
• Online video tours
• Quickstart Guide
• List of compatible devices
• Lending policies and procedures
• FAQ

Still deciding which e-reader you should buy?

The right e-reader for you will depend on a lot of personal factors including whether you want a dedicated device or something that does other things like a tablet, your price point, screen brightness, battery life, weight, and whether you want e-books and/or audiobooks.

Check out this information from Overdrive on ‘supported devices’: Supported Devices

Help!!!

Maybe you’re still feeling a little overwhelmed? Well don't worry, there is lots of help! Check out Calgary Public Library's Program Guide for programs offered at the library.

You can also find some helpful online videos explaining how to use Calgary Public Library eBooks. Click here to find them.

Or if you need some technical assistance most devices also provide that. You can find links to that here: Technical Assistance Just find your device and click on the ‘support’ link.

However you might be reading - e-book or paper copy - we hope you're enjoying it!

A few weeks ago we posted a blog with some of our favorite 2011 books, and asked you to tell us about the titles that you like the most. You sent us your comments on our Facebook page and commented on our blog, and we've compiled a list of books that our customers enjoyed in 2011!

• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

• IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
• When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
• A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

• Jagger: rebel, rockstar,rambler, rogue by Mark Spitz
• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
• The Help by Kathryn Stockets
• Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

• Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
• The Free World by David Bezmozgis
• Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

• Room by Emma Donoghue
• Forgotten garden by Kate Morton
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

• Russian Winter by Dapnhe Kalotay
• Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
• Bossypants by Tina Fey

Happy Reading in 2012!

When I find a book that absolutely rocks my world, the only thing that can make it even better is sharing it with my friends.

I think its human nature to want to share a great experience with others but it’s interesting that what you love is sometimes what someone else hates. I asked some colleagues for what books they make their friends read and when one person mentioned Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen another person said that was one of the books they never could finish (personal aside – I love Jane Austen)!

So here a few books we make all of our friends read (and yes, they’d make great gifts this year)!

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

As private investigator Jackson Brodie investigates three resurrected old crimes, he finds himself caught up in a story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate. Now a TV mini-series on Masterpiece Mystery!

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

Absolutely the best last line of a novel – and no you can’t just flip to the back to read it, or else you won’t fully appreciate it!

After being orphaned, Alexander MacDonald comes to Cape Breton Island yearning for family connections and finds himself working in the mines with his wild older brother and caring for another brother, who is dying.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contraditions between public and private life.

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

In a cozy Irish village, when their beloved shepherd, George, is found struck down by a spade, his flock of clever sheep, led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill, launches its own investigation to find George's killer among the local village inhabitants.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

Orphaned at the age of eight, British-born Lilly devotes her life to the teachings of the Qur'an from within a Sufi shrine, but is persecuted for her foreign heritage, forcing her to flee to London, where she is equally disconnected.

Because friends don't let friends go bookless!

Christmas is the time of year for tales that move us and for stories that showcase small miracles, a time for suspending cynicism and renewing our faith in human nature. As I looked through my list of past reads for my December book review, I came across this heart-warming tale that I read last year. A Dog named Christmas is the story of a developmentally challenged boy and how his passion for animals changes life for his family and for the people of his town.

Todd McCray hears that the local pet shelter is seeking homes for the animals over Christmas. His father at first refuses his request to take in a dog, but finally bows to Todd’s persistence. After Todd has picked a dog, that he names Christmas he starts to worry about the other pets at the shelter. And the story goes from there. This is a wonderful Christmas read that will be especially enjoyed by any animal lover.

Greg Kincaid, a practicing lawyer who specializes in divorce and family law mediation, has written other novels including Christmas with Tucker. He has received a Genesis Award from the Humane Society for raising public awareness for sheltered dogs.

Now I’m ready to re-read another heart-warming story, the Christmas classic, A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

And, I would like to revisit still another Christmas story involving animals, The Christmas Day Kitten by James Herriot. This story of a Christmas miracle which I read to my children many years ago, can be found in James Herriot’s Treasury of Inspirational Stories for Children.

And, having satisfied my sentimental side, my Christmas wouldn’t be complete without some mayhem and mystery, such as Anne Perry’s

A Christmas Homecoming, A Killer’s Christmas in Wales by Elizabeth J. Duncan and Christmas Mourning by Margaret Maron.

~ Pat