Hell of a Book - by Jason Mott

 

Add this book to the likes of The Seven Minutes, Inkheart, Commonwealth, and The Blind Assassin - books about fictitious books with the same name.

This work begins with a typical comedic scenario involving an author, and one of his fans in flagrante delicto being discovered by the woman's husband. The cuckold then chases the naked author into an elevator and the author then winds up  in bed with the front desk clerk. The book takes a turn, however, and themes of race, and mental illness come to the fore.

Over the course of  a book tour the unnamed author (the narrator) is confronted by the demons of his past, as well as the ghost of a young black boy who was killed by a police officer. The author is never quite sure what is real and what he is imagining, leaving the reader to consider all possibilities. 

Nour's Secret Library - by Wafa' Tarnowska

Based on a true story of children in Syria rescuing books from bombed buildings during a war to create a library, cousins Nour and Amir sort books into categories, clean them, and build shelves from discarded wood to create a library for their neighbors. All found books became part of the library 

big books, small books, thin books and fat books. Some were in Arabic, while others were in foreign languages - English Armenian, Greek, French, even Hebrew and Syriac.

The library was always open for those who wanted to read or learn something new.

Rescuers borrowed medical books to learn about the human body and how to treat wounds. Teachers looked for ideas for home lessons. Even Nour's Baba borrowed cookbooks to learn how to make foreign pastries and cakes, looking forward to a day when he could once again try out new recipes. 

It was especially troubling for me to read this story of a hunger for knowledge in light of  all the stories I see about those who are attempting to restrict books in the United States. No book in Nour's secret library was deemed unworthy. The books in Nour and Amir's library brought hope to all.

Reading this children's book I was reminded of The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu. Save the books!

The Library Fish - by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

 

Library Fish loves greeting all the library visitors, and going to story hour, and taking adventures in the bookmobile. When a snow storm closes the library Library Fish learns the real magic of books as she escapes her fish bowl and takes off on some extraordinary adventures.

Anne of Manhattan - by Brina Starler

In this reimagined Anne of Green Gables for the twenty-first century, Anne is a graduate student in Manhattan, getting her Masters Degree in Education at the fictitious Redmond College. Diana is her roommate. Anne is a go-getter who somehow manages to work full time at a bookstore, go to school full time, serve as a teaching assistant in a Shakespeare class, and run an after-school program for aspiring middle school writers. And if that isn't enough she can suck a mean dick, too. She also knows how to use the term quid pro quo when oral sex is on the table.

While I appreciate a story of a woman who owns her sexuality, there was much about this one that I just couldn't wrap my head around. The kind of time a person needs to do the amount of work (and play) that Anne does frankly defies the laws of physics. I'm also not sure the author has a firm grasp on what a person needs in order to get an Associate Professorship. Anne manages to score one of these increasingly rare gems of a job after earning her Master's degree. She even has the luxury of turning one job down in order to hold out for the one she really wants. Ummm...no. To begin with one needs a PhD to get that sort of position, and no one turns down such a position simply in hopes of getting the exact job they want.

The library of the Redmond Writers House, located on the ground floor, is one in which we can picture Anne Shirley settling right in

Three original fireplaces had been bricked over decades before, and now contained arrangements of silk flowers or sinuously twisted clay sculptures. Bookcases lined the walls, and although the rooms were small and crowded, with intimate seating arrangements, tall arching windows let in plenty of natural light tinted by multiple verdant green plants spilling out of hanging baskets. The entire library had an airy, bohemian feel to it...  

The library is also a dandy place for Anne and Gil to meet to work on their combined thesis project (again, really, not a thing in academia). As it turns out the "middle ground between their two apartments was technically the school library."

Caveat Lector
This ultimately is a romance novel with a rather trite resolution, so Anne of Green Gables fans should take heed. While the protagonist is still a feisty feminist, there are some hard-to-take romance tropes. 

My husband and I listened to this on Audible during a road trip.