Wilton Library - Book of the Month

Reserve your copy today! Call us at 762-3950 to set aside a copy that is on our shelves or reserve online by clicking the cover of the book you'd like to read...

July 2008: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri		From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes a new collection of eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand and which concern the assimilation of Bengali characters into American society. “An eye for detail, ear for dialogue and command of family dynamics distinguish this uncommonly rich collection,” Kirkus Reviews. Lahiri’s *The Namesake* is Wilton Reads! pick for this year and she will be speaking at the Library October 19. Register Now.
June 2008: America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of a Modern Nation, by Jim Rasenberger		Shedding new light on stories we thought we knew and telling fresh stories we can’t believe we’ve never heard, America, 1908 brings to life our nation as it was one hundred years ago, at a moment of delirious optimism and pride.
May 2008: Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult		Bestselling author Picoult (Nineteen Minutes, My Sister’s Keeper) writes another story of redemption, justice and love. June Nealon’s husband and daughter were brutally murdered; years later, her surviving daughter needs a heart transplant. The person who wants to give her his heart is the man convicted of the murders, who is on death row. Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love?
April 2008: Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe, by Nancy Goldstone		Set in the thirteenth century, Four Queens tells the story of four provocative sisters who rose from near obscurity to become the most powerful women in Europe. The marriages of Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia and Beatrice, the daughters of the count of Provence, made them the queens of France, England, Germany and Sicily. “This is a fresh, eminently enjoyable history that gives women their due as movers and shakers in tumultuous times,” Publishers Weekly.
March 2008: Cheating at Canasta: Stories, by William Trevor		From a chance encounter between two childhood friends to the memories of a newly widowed man to a family grappling with the sale of their ancestral land, William Trevor examines the tenuous bonds of relationships, the strengths that hold us together and the truths that threaten to separate us. These 12 stories of regret, deception, adultery, aging, and forgiveness make up this new collection from Trevor, "the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language," The New Yorker.
February 2008: Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Danny Danziger		Danziger interviewed 52 of the 2,000 employees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art resulting in a group portrait of New York’s most visited tourist attraction. Profiled are the florist, the security guard, the cleaner as well as philanthropists, millionaires and the director. “Danziger’s finely crafted interviews remind us that a museum is more than its collections,” Booklist.
January 2008: Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo		From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls, Richard Russo’s latest is a tale of a blue-collar town in upstate New York defined by magnificent secrets and nearly devastating contradictions. Louis Charles (“Lucy”) Lynch hopes to untangle the mysteries of his life by writing a history of his family and hometown, one that spans over sixty years. Russo is ‘one of the best novelists around,” NYT Book Review.
December 2007: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children, by John Wood		In Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children, John Wood chronicles his struggles to find a meaningful outlet for his managerial talents and entrepreneurial skills. He leaves his high-powered job at Microsoft to launch the nonprofit organization Room to Read (roomtoread.org), which has created much needed libraries and schools for children across Asia. It’s an “infectiously inspiring read,” Publishers’ Weekly.
November 2007: Run, by Ann Patchett		The new novel by Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, is the story about secrets, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children. Set over a period of twenty-four hours in a blinding New England snowstorm, Run tells the story of Bernard Doyle and his family and what happens when an argument inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child. “Run shimmers with its author’s rarefied eloquence, and with the deep resonance of her insights,” New York Times.
October 2007: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, by Alan Alda		Having been saved by emergency surgery after nearly dying on a mountaintop in Chile, actor Alan Alda finds himself not only glad to be alive but searching for a way to squeeze the most out of his new life. Reflecting on the transitions in his life, he wonders if there's one thing--art, activism, family, money, fame--that could lead to a "life of meaning." Alda is chatty, easygoing and humble. . ." (Publishers Weekly).
September 2007: The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama		Gail Tsukiyama, bestselling author of five previous novels, including Women of the Silk and The Samurai's Garden, has penned a new historical title to be released on September 4, 2007. Ms. Tsukiyama will be here at the Wilton Library on Tuesday, September 18 at 7 pm to discuss The Street of a Thousand Blossoms. Set in Japan between 1939-1966, the book unravels the hardships and triumphs of two brothers. Click here to register for the author talk and click here (and then on first available copy) to place a hold on the book. Or, call us at 762-3950 and we'd be happy to reserve your seat for the program and place a hold on the book for you. Multiple copies of Ms. Tsukiyama's novels are available now for you to check out.
August 2007: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver		Bestselling author, Barbara Kingsolver (*The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible) writes a nonfiction narrative account of the year in which she and her family move from Tucson to southern Appalachia to make “every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew…and to eat food produced from the same place where we lived.” Along with sidebars written by her husband “Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars” and recipes by her daughter “Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp”, Kingsolvers tale is “both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny,” Publishers Weekly. Also, check out her article in the Spring 2007 edition of our new magazine, Edible Nutmeg*.
July 2007: On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan		It is July 1962. Florence and Edward, newly married that morning, both virgins, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. This new novel by Ian McEwan (Atonement, Saturday) describes their worries about the wedding night to come. Decisions made by both that evening affect the rest of their relationship. This is a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
June 2007: American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work, by Susan Cheever		Enter the world of those who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Little Women and Nature. Publishers Weekly states, "If it won't offer much new information for serious students of American literature, it does provide a lively and insightful introduction to the personalities and achievements of the men and women who were seminal figures in America's literary renaissance." Far from typically Victorian, this group of intellectuals, like their British Bloomsbury counterparts, not only questioned established literary forms, but also resisted old moral and social strictures.
May 2007: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers		First published in 1940, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is an enduring masterpiece of American fiction. Carson McCullers was just twenty-three when she published this, her first novel. The book became a literary sensation and writers such as Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright praised McCullers. Mick Kelly, an adolescent in a Southern town full of outcasts and misfits, becomes friends with John Singer, a deaf mute. This classic touches all, and as The Nation noted, "McCullers leaves her characters hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory."
April 2007: Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant, by Daniel Tammet		Daniel Tammet has a compulsive need for order and routine. He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures. He is capable of incredible feats of memorization. He can learn to speak new languages fluently in less than a week. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition which makes him the subject of numerous tests by the world's leading neuroscientists. Born on a Blue Day is an inspiring memoir of a young man who has been able to live a fully independent life.