The Biblio File
May 30, 2022
The library ghost has been relatively inactive for the past few months so he might be making up for lost time by leaving two books on the floor overnight.
The first is Satori by Don Winslow (2011):
“It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu, or “naked kill,” is fluent in seven languages, and has honed extraordinary “proximity sense”-an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world’s most fearsome assassin and now the CIA needs him.
The Americans offer Hel freedom, money, and a neutral passport in exchange for one small service: to go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union’s commissioner to China. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori-the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.”
The second is The Dry by Jane Harper (2016):
“In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain.
Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier.
But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Falk thought was long buried. A secret Luke’s death now threatens to bring to the surface in this small Australian town, as old wounds bleed into new ones.”
If the library ghost’s choices are a bit too serious for your liking then you’ll love this Librarian’s Choice (and book review).
“I have to admit, unless I’m familiar with the author, I pretty much always choose a book by its cover. Sometimes it’s the colour, sometimes the picture, this time it was neither. I’m not sure what drew me to this book – maybe it’s because lately people have been talking more about gardens, farm to table, farmers markets, carbon footprint, and living a bit more in harmony with the land. Regardless of the reason, The Woefield Poultry Collective by Susan Juby turned out to be an unexpected treat. It’s written from the point of view of the four main characters and there are some laugh-out-loud moments that added to the base feeling of wanting to try my luck with self-sufficiency and living off the land. An unlikely dream, as my gardening efforts tend to end with the sight of the first spider, but it’s nice to imagine. This book was so fun that I’ve already ordered myself the sequel – The Republic of Dirt.”
“Woefield Farm is a sprawling thirty acres of scrub land, complete with dilapidated buildings and one half-sheared, lonely sheep named Bertie. It’s “run”―in the loosest possible sense of the word―by Prudence Burns, an energetic, well-intentioned twenty-something New Yorker full of back-to-the-land ideals, but without an iota of related skills or experience. Prudence, who inherited the farm from her uncle, soon discovers that the bank is about to foreclose on Woefield Farm, which means that she has to turn things around, fast. But fear not! She’ll be assisted by Earl, a spry seventy-something, banjo-playing foreman with a distrust of newfangled ideas and a substantial family secret; Seth, the alcoholic, celebrity-blogging boy-next-door who hasn’t left the house since a scandal with his high school drama teacher; and Sara Spratt, a highly organized eleven-year-old looking for a home for her prize-winning chickens, including one particularly randy fellow soon to be christened Alec Baldwin.”