The Librarians Are Reading....

It's National Library Week!  In addition to our upcoming ice cream social on Thursday, April 19, at 2 p.m. and our fun games, including the labor & employment law movie trivia quiz (Download movietriviaquiz.doc here to play and win fabulous prizes from Lexis and Westlaw!), the Zief librarians will be contributing posts this week about their favorite books and music. 

I've volunteered to go first, and I'm going to highlight some of my favorite books from the past six months or so.  But before I get to specific recommendations, I'll dispense a tip for those who will soon be studying for the bar.  If you're a voracious reader, you may feel that you'll have no time for recreational reading during June and July.  But I found that bar prep is much easier if you reward yourself with an hour or two of leisure reading for every three hours or so that you spend studying.  I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan (and would highly recommend all of Dickens works in addition to the books I list below), and I managed to finish a few of his novels in between bar-cramming sessions.  I found that making time for some "fun" reading made me a more efficient and effective studier.   

Now, on to the books:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  Although it was marketed as a "Young Adult" book, The Book Thief is really a book for all ages. I loved it so much that I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it in one day.  Set in Germany during World War II, the novel tells the story of a young girl, Liesel Meminger, who is sent to live with a working-class foster family during the war.   Narrated in a wry and humorous style by Death himself and filled with eccentric and moving characters, The Book Thief is a gripping tale about courage, fate, friendship, and love.

• The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.  What if Wonderland was a real country and Alice was a fugitive princess who was transported to 19th-century England in order to escape from the clutches of her murderous Aunt Redd?  That's the premise of this fast-paced and fun novel, which follows Alyss's adventures as she struggles to reclaim the Wonderland throne after a bloody coup by Redd.  She's helped by an array of  morphed Wonderland characters, including Hatter Madigan, her loyal bodyguard, and her tutor, Bibwit Harte.

• Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy.  Set in World War II, this six-novel series follows the fortunes and misfortunes of Guy and Harriet Pringle, a British couple who are trapped in Romania when Britain declares war on Germany.  As Romania slowly moves towards fascism and an alliance with Hitler, Guy, Harriet, and their fellow expats struggle to maintain a semblance of normal life.  The books are filled with unforgettable eccentric characters like Prince Yakimov, a Russian who becomes a shameless mooch following the death of his rich companion.  These semiautobiographical novels offer a clear and unsentimental picture of life and marriage during wartime.

• The Children of Men by P.D. James.  If you saw the trailer for the movie version of this novel, then you're familiar with the basic premise.  It's the year 2021, and no children have been born on Earth since 1995.  Nobody can figure out how to fix this universal infertility problem, and as the population ages, civilization is slowly grinding to a halt.  The frail and elderly are forced into group suicide,  those who commit crimes are shipped off to brutal penal colonies, and those who are left are facing an increasingly bleak, dreary, and dull existence.  That is, until a pregnant woman appears on the scene, and all hell breaks loose.  A fast-paced but thoughtful thriller.

• J.G. Farrell's Empire Trilogy (The Siege of Krishnapur, The Singapore Grip, and Troubles).  Although critics refer to these three masterpieces as a trilogy because each book concentrates on a different corner of the former British empire, each novel is set in a different historical era.  The Siege of Krishnapur describes what happens when a British outpost is attacked and besieged during the Sepoy rebellion in India during 1857.  Set in Singapore in the late '30s and early '40s, The Singapore Grip details the growing Japanese menace in Southeast Asia, and the British colonial community's absolute refusal to face the reality of the threat until it's too late.  Troubles is the most surreal of the three novels, telling the story of WWI veteran Major Brendan Archer's protracted and inexplicable stay in a decaying Irish hotel owned by an eccentric Anglo-Irish family.  All three novels are masterfully written, with moments of black, bleak humor punctuated by episodes of startling violence.

• Dracula by Bram Stoker.  It may have been published in 1897, but this is still one of the most gripping and exciting examples of horror fiction out there!