This week we’ll be celebrating Dr. Seuss Day activities in the Youth Services Department. There will be a story in the afternoon, and snacks. Call the library for more information. This is the last week I’ll be highlighting older books in our collection that are from non-American authors. With the cold weather outside, now is the perfect time to do some arm-chair traveling to distant places.

This week’s review is a modern classic written by a Nobel Prize winner.  It has been made required reading in college classics, and other reviewers have cautioned readers not to attempt this book in one sitting.  If you’re in the mood for a bit of a literary challenge, you may want to dive right into One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. First published in Spanish in 1967, this book has been translated into over two dozen languages. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the rise and fall of the mythical Columbian town of Macondo and the Buendia family. But don’t let the title fool you; this novel covers more than 100 years, and the fictional village is hardly isolated. It starts in the early 19th century and follows the generations from there. Rather than follow one or two main characters this story follows an entire family, many of whom share the same name. The names Aureliano, Ursula, and Remedio appear several times and even though there is a simple family tree in the front of the book, readers may want to take their own notes. Don’t let the foreign sounding names deter you, the themes in this book are universal and timeless.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been praised for combining both humor, mystery, and magical realism in this master work. And really, who can resist peeking further at a book that starts: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

You can get more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.

For the next few weeks I’ll be highlighting older books in our collection that are from non-American authors.  With the cold weather outside, now is the perfect time to do some arm-chair traveling to distant places.

Fans of lengthier reads and also the classic children’s story The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett should pay attention to this week’s Port Pick. Four year old Nell is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913.  With only a small suitcase and a single book of fairy tales to indicate who she might be, she is adopted by the dockmaster in Australia and only told the truth of her lineage on her twenty-first birthday.  So begins The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, published in 2008.  Nell begins to search for her past, leading her to abandoned Blackhurst Manor on the Cornwall coast in England and the doomed Mountrachet family.  However, before completely solving the mystery of her past Nell dies and it is her granddaughter Cassandra who completes Nell’s quest. This novel bounces back and for the between the past and present, but the date is set at the beginning of each chapter. Author Kate Morton is a native Aussie, and has published a few more novels since 2008.  If you like her writing style, the library also has The Secret Keeper, published in 2012.  Each novel is unrelated so you have no worry about starting an unfinished series.

Next Thursday at 7 pm the library will host an e-books workshop, giving an overview of the many ways patrons can get free e-books on their e-readers, phones, tablets, and computers.  Call by Wednesday to sign up. Meanwhile, you can get more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.

The rotating book van has visited us last week, so be sure to check out our new selection. Also, the library will be closed Monday for President’s Day. We’ll reopen Tuesday at our regular time. For the next few weeks I’ll be highlighting older books in our collection that are from non-American authors.  With the cold weather outside, now is the perfect time to do some arm-chair traveling to distant places.

Maeve Binchy is a popular Irish author, known for her books about relationships and women that reach into the heart of the reader. In 1998 she published Tara Road, a rather long novel that focuses on the lives of two women: Ria from Dublin and Marilyn from Connecticut. Ria is happily married to dashing real estate agent Danny and they have two kids together. Ria’s circle of friends includes several fun characters and Ria is blissfully unaware that life could be any different until Danny announces he’s leaving Ria for his pregnant girlfriend. A chance phone call from a woman named Marilyn Vine in the United States give Ria the chance and excuse to get away from her suddenly complicated life. Marilyn is married to a college professor and has her own career but spends her time trying to keep her prying neighbors and coworkers out of her personal life, shutting her husband out in the process. In an effort to find a chance at solitude, she leaves her husband to his summer work in Hawaii, instead following up on contacting a real estate agent from a vacation to Ireland long ago. Author Binchy does not skimp on the details of each woman’s summer exchange and by then end both have made new friends and realized what’s most important in their lives. This book was made into a movie of the same name in 2005 starring Andie MacDowell, among others. And if the plot sounds familiar The Holiday, another romantic comedy movie from 2006, was released starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet.

You can get more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.

The rotating book van visits Tuesday, so look for a new selection on our rotating shelves starting Wednesday. For the next few weeks I’ll be highlighting older books in our collection that are from non-American authors. With the cold weather outside, now is the perfect time to do some arm-chair traveling to distant places.

What if you had the chance to do-over the last ten years of your life? That is the chance Alice Love gets after falling in spin class at her gym and misplaces a decade of her life. Ten years ago, Alice was twenty-nine, crazily in love with her husband, and expecting her first child.  Certainly not a regular at the gym.  But now she has three children and is nearly divorced from her husband, living the life of a exercise obsessed and expensively dressed modern mom. British author Liane Moriarty explores what a person would do, given the chance to erase the past and start over, in What Alice Forgot, published in 2009.  After her bump on the head, Alice’s memory doesn’t come back.  At least not right away, and not all at once.  This gives the reader the time to dive deep into Alice’s life and relationships and learn along the way what strayed Alice from the path of a free-spirited young woman to the nearly middle aged control freak she is.  In addition to an estranged husband Alice has also nearly wrecked her relationship with her sister Elizabeth. Throughout the story are also sprinkled diary entries from Elizabeth and blog entries from Alice’s grandmother Frannie.  When Alice’s memories do return, she has the task of combining the old Alice with the new one to find balance, and hopefully reconciliation, with her life and family.

You can get more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.