Notable titles from 2010

Struggling to find the right gift? You'll find it on this list from the New York Times highlighting the top 100 books of 2010. Not sure you want to buy it? Check it our from your library first.

Daniel

Daniel / Henning Mankell


Hans Bengler, a Swede with a dwindling fortune and uncertain career prospects, travels to southern Africa in the 1870s to collect insects, particularly something rare that he can name for himself and thereby become famous. Instead, he discovers a young African boy of the San people, orphaned when his family is killed in a raid by white explorers. Bengler names the boy Daniel and takes him back to Sweden, where they begin a wandering life, with Daniel on display to curious Europeans. Their wandering ends in disaster and the abandonment of the boy to a farm family in the hinterlands of Sweden. Daniel pines for the desert and is visited by his parents' spirits as he searches for a chance to walk on the ocean in a return trip to the desert. Mankell, highly acclaimed for the Kurt Wallander mysteries, offers a haunting and fascinating story of clashes of culture and race in the nineteenth century as well as a touching, sometimes cruel examination of familial and other human ties.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
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Most Popular Book Club Titles

Titles and Total Checkouts

Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson, 27
The Book Thief by Zusak, 19
Eat, Pray, Love by Gilbert, 16
Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez, 14
The History of Love by Krauss, 14
My sister's keeper by Picoult, 12
Dreams from my Father by Obama, 11
The Passion by Winterson, 11
Leaving Mother Lake by Namu, 11
Julie and Julia by Powell, 11
Pope Joan by Cross, 11
The alchemist by Coelho, 11
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by See, 11
The Places in Between by Stewart, 10
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Foer, 10
Desert Queen by Wallach, 10
Firmin by Savage, 10
Water for Elephants by Gruen, 10
Bel Canto by Patchett, 9

Learn more about book club kits at your Wilkinson Public Library.

~ Faith

You Had Me At Woof

You Had Me At Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness / Julie Klam


Klam (Please Excuse My Daughter) recounts the touching, often hilarious tales of life with Boston terriers. She adopts her first pet, Otto, after a "substantial" little dog "came slow-motion scampering through the high grass and wild daisies of [her] sleep." With Otto, the then single Klam learned about compromise and sacrifice. Married and pregnant, the author adopts a little "doglet," Beatrice, and distracted by a newborn, forgets to have the puppy spayed-resulting in a series of hilarious misadventures worth the price of the book. She continues to rescue, foster, and adopt dogs-spirited Hank, adored Moses, chubby Sherlock-each with his or her own special needs, idiosyncrasies, and "teachable moments" in trusting one's instincts, achieving balance, helping others, finding contentment, loving fiercely, and letting go. This gem of a book is a gift to dog lovers everywhere. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC.
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The Sunset Cookbook

Just in time for the Holidays. The new Sunset cookbook has more than 1,000 recipes from the editors of Sunset magazine.
Check it out today and get cooking!

CATS....Masters of physics

New research on how cats drink without getting their whiskers or chin wet. Fascinating to read and watch the slideshow!

Travels in Siberia

From Ian Frazier, a frequent New Yorker contributor. This book details his travels.

Check it out today!

Washington: A Life

Washington:A Life / Ron Chernow


*Starred Review* With so much that can be said and said positively about this magisterial biography, it is difficult not to write a review as long as the book itself. Given the distinction of the author, who wrote, among other single and collective biographies, the glowingly reviewed Alexander Hamilton (2004), readers can safely assume from the outset that what lies ahead of them is a vastly enlightening, overwhelmingly engaging treatment of a great man. The subject of the book needs only, by way of identification, the one word that Chernow uses as his title: Washington. Another book on Washington? is a question rendered pointless by this one, which happens to be the author's masterpiece. Definitive Washington is the point and effect of this biography. Our first president is thought of as more marble statue than living, hurting, loving human; however, Chernow's Washington stands not in the opposite corner as hot-blooded and animated. Washington spent a lifetime practicing control of his passions and emotions; his innate virtues, undenied and even celebrated here, were sharpened and focused by the man's suppression of a natural volatility. His gift of silence and of inspired simplicity, as the author so aptly terms Washington's strongest suits, supported his consequent leadership as general and as president.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist
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Hitch 22

Hitch 22 / Christopher Hitchens

*Starred Review* Hitchens, who, in his earlier books, has expressed contempt for both God and Mother Teresa (although not in that order), is often described as a contrarian. In fact, in his book Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), he himself noted that he can appear insufferable and annoying, albeit without intending to. This memoir, bracing, droll, and very revealing, gives him yet another description: storyteller. He writes with a voice you can hear clearly, warmed by smoke and whiskey, and draws readers into his story, which proves as personal as it is political. As with many memoirs, it is not the public moments that are so fascinating, though there are plenty of those. Hitchens takes readers with him to Havana and Prague, Afghanistan and Iraq; tests himself by being waterboarded (he was disappointed in his early capitulation); and hobnobs with politicians and poets. He almost gets himself beaten up by defacing a poster in Iraq with a Hitler mustache. But the most intriguing stories are the personal ones, both from his early days, at home and at boarding school, and from his later life, when he learns that his mother was Jewish, which, if only technically, makes him Jewish as well. This revelation leads Hitchens on a quest to learn the story of his family, many of whom died in the Holocaust. How this new identity squares with his oft-proclaimed atheism sheds a different light on the meaning of religious identity. (He struggles mightily with his political identity as well.) Few authors can rile as easily as Hitchens does, but even his detractors might find it difficult to put down a book so witty, so piercing, so spoiling for a fight. He makes you want to be as good a reader as he is a writer.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
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Earth : a visitor's guide to the human race

Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show embark on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race: What we looked like; what we accomplished; our achievements in society, government, religion, science and culture. Here is the definitive guide to our species--completely unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity, or even accuracy.

Learn more about Jon Stewart at your Wilkinson Public Library.

~Faith

Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook

Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook / Kim Barnouin
Barnouin is back with her second cookbook (after Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, which she coauthored with Rory Freedman). She explains organic produce, buying local, and foods to avoid-e.g., processed foods, sugar, and dairy-and offers a shopping list for pantry and refrigerator staples. Kitchenware basics cover pots and pans and a food processor, bread machine, and vegetable steamer. With recipes like Curried Chickpea Cakes, Black Bean and Yam Tacos, and Nutty Monkey (an almond-milk smoothie with wheat germ), this will be in demand, especially by the many readers who enjoy the other "Skinny Bitch" books. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC
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Fall of the Giants

Fall of the Giants / Ken Follett


After a sequence of spy thrillers, Follett burst onto the historical fiction scene in 1989 with the megahit The Pillars of the Earth, set in twelfth-century England, and nearly two decades later (having written many other novels in the meantime), he followed with a sequel, World without End. His new book inaugurates what is to be a trio of historical novels (called the Century Trilogy), and it duplicates in structure the two novels mentioned above: showcasing the lives of five families from all walks of life and involved in various ways with the issues of the day from the outbreak of WWI to the early 1920s and reflecting these issues over a broad geographical range, the families here being from Britain, the U.S., Russia, and Germany. The social range of this big, sweeping, completely enveloping novel is announced in the very first line: On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, Wales. Actual historical figures populate the narrative along with fictional characters, all of whom experience in different ways war, revolution, and the fight for women's rights.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist

Moving from the medieval world of the best-selling The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, Follett's new historical novel is the first volume of a projected trilogy that follows five families-Welsh, English, German, Russian, and American-through the turbulent 20th century. Covering the period 1911-23, the narrative moves from family to family, country to country, as the Great War impends, happens, and closes. In the first pages, a Welsh boy enters the coal mines; he has just turned 13 that day. He can expect a short and dirty life, but it doesn't turn out that way. The book closes in confrontation: the ninth-richest man in Britain, Earl Fitzherbert, is forced by his own sense of manners to shake the hand of a bastard son he has never acknowledged. Fitz seduced the boy's mother when she was his housemaid. Now she's a Labour MP in the postwar coalition government. Fitz is the past. She's the future. The Great War has changed everything, even for the winners. Verdict Though lengthy, Fall of Giants never seems too long or confusing. Great fun, this is sure to be one of the best sellers of the fall season. The global broadcast of a TV miniseries based on The Pillars of the Earth starring Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland is sure to garner even more attention. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/10.]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
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