Friday Finds (3/6/15)

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A great big list of awesomeness to share this week...

 

As you know, I'm a fan of memoirs. I read memoirs like other folks eat candy. If I didn't read so many of them, I might be tempted to call them "guilty pleasures." But if I labeled so much of my reading as guilty pleasures, I'd feel pretty bad about myself. Anywho...

 

I stumbled upon Girl in the Dark this week, and I'm intrigued. Anna Lyndsey is a woman who cannot tolerate light, so she shuts herself up in a blacked-out room and listens to audiobooks. There's more to it than that, I'm sure, but that was enough to hook me.

 

What Comes Next and How to Like It is a memoir by the author of A Three Dog Life, which I loved, though I barely remember. It's about Abigail Thomas's life after her husband's passing.

 

 

Okay, this next one is an odd addition, but hear me out. I care very little for Jerry Lee Lewis, could name a couple of his hits, but not much more. But I love Rick Bragg's writing. His books (All over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man, esp.) are heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure. He's one of those writers who is gifted enough to make me want to read a book about someone I've never been interested in.

 

I've had a copy of The Tipping Point on my bookshelves for years now, so it's time to read it. I enjoyed Gladwell's Blink immensely years ago.

 

And I'm adding another poetry collection with an audio component. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky has put together many anthologies of poems, and apparently I'm collecting them all. This one is titled Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud. 

 

I read a picture book by Candace Fleming last year (Imogene's Last Stand) that hooked me on her history books for kids. Recently, her newest book, The Romanov Family, won two ALA honors. While it's on my list, I've also added Amelia Lost and The Great and Only Barnum. I've been interested in the Amelia Earhart disappearance since I was little, and as a kid, I went to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It's where my fear of clowns caught hold.

 

 

Do you know about The Penderwicks? I'd never heard about these books until I read an advance review of the fourth book coming out later this month. They sound like fiction for more sensitive kids, and I applaud that. The author said when she was a kids she ran out of books she wanted to read and decided to remedy that when she grew up. The first of the books, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (shown here), won the National Book Award.

 

Apparently I'm in a circus mood this week, because my last book is about a circus elephant and the boy who loves him. Modoc is "The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived." I ask you. How can you not want to read about the greatest elephant that ever lived?

 

 

What's on your list this week?