New Slacker Title: The Poems of Billy Collins

April 2011

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins. With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.

The New York Review of Books claims, “It is difficult not to be charmed by Collins, and that in itself is a remarkable literary accomplishment.”

Celebrate National Poetry month with a slim volume of poetry by someone who captures the simple joys and sadness of life and makes you laugh – all at the same time!

New Slacker Title: The works of Roland Merullo

March 2011

Read one of Roland Merullo’s books this month and then join us when the author comes to Reading Public Library on Wednesday, March 23 at 7 p.m. in the Library Meeting Room.

Roland Merullo is the critically acclaimed author of novels and nonfiction including Fidel’s Last Days, American Savior, Breakfast with Buddha, Golfing with God, A Little Love Story, Revere Beach Boulevard, A Russian Requiem, and Leaving Losapas currently optioned for film rights by John Turturro. Masterfully written and diverse in theme, his books range from political mysteries to spiritual comedies to nuanced family dramas.

This free event is sponsored by The Reading Public Library Foundation as part of The Helen A. Nigro Speaker Series.

New Slacker Title: All souls : a family story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald

February 2011

A bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald’s Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger’s crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald’s Southie is populated by sharply drawn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community’s code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but moving honesty.

New Slacker Title: Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb

January 2011

With his latest story, WISHIN′ AND HOPIN′, Wally Lamb takes a turn toward the lighthearted and laugh-provoking. In a vein similar to Jean Shepherd′s A Christmas Story and David Sedaris′s The Santaland Diaries, Lamb′s holiday tale focuses on a feisty parochial school fifth grader named Felix Funicello–a distant cousin of the iconic Annette! Both poignant and hilarious, WISHIN′ AND HOPIN′ transports us back to 1964, when LBJ and Lady Bird were in the White House, Meet the Beatles was on everyone′s turntables, and Christmas meant mistletoe, mangers, and midnight mass. Then it propels us from the past to the present so that we might measure what we′ve gained and what we′ve lost. Although this is billed as a holiday story – it doesn’t have to be Christmas to laugh your head off reading this wonderful book!

New Slacker Title: Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

December 2010

This  Slacker title written in 1938 is the perfect combination of romance and suspense!

A vacationing young lady meets, falls in love with, and marries handsome and wealthy widower Maxim de Winter. He takes his new bride home to his estate, Manderley. But the new Mrs. de Winter finds her married life dominated by the sinister, almost spectral influence of Maxim’s late wife, Rebecca, who still rules from beyond the grave.

New Slacker Title: City of Thieves by David Benioff

October 2010

This new Slacker title is a spellbinding story that is a perfect blend of tragedy and comedy.

During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.

New Slacker Title: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

September 2010

This new Slacker title will leave you with the unanswerable question…”What if…?”

Wanting more opportunities than 1950s Ireland can offer, Enniscorthy native and aspiring bookkeeper Eilis Lacey leaves her mother and sister to start a new life in Brooklyn, where she attends school and finds work–as well as romance. But when devastating news reaches her from home, Eilis must return to Enniscorthy and settle family affairs. Will she have to sacrifice her new life (and love) in America to resume the existence she’s left behind?

New Slacker Title: That Old Cape Magic

August  2010

This new Slacker title is the perfect book to wind down the summer on the beach with.  According to The Washington Post -  The book’s two-part structure is simple and elegant: two weddings, a year apart, the first on Cape Cod, the second in Maine. Russo’s focus in both parts is on Jack Griffin, a 57-year-old English professor who’s having a “middle-age meltdown.” Even while the wedding march plays for members of the younger generation, he’s busy fumbling his own 34-year marriage. Griffin loves his wife, but “his dissatisfaction had become palpable.” He’s bored with teaching, and he hankers after the excitement of his Hollywood writing days. His bigger problem, though, is that he still harbors enough “pathological resentment” toward his parents for a therapists’ convention. He’s been carting his father’s ashes around in the trunk of his car for nine months, waiting for just the right moment to let go of the mortal remains of the man who drove him crazy. And meanwhile, his 85-year-old mother keeps heckling him from her nursing home. It’s a sign of Russo’s comic genius that these two hilariously acerbic parents — one on the phone, the other in an urn — just about steal the show.  Richard Russo has written a novel for people who are terrified of becoming their parents, which is to say for everybody.

New Slacker Title: Without a Map by Meredith Hall

July 2010

Meredith Hall’s moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father’s hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.

New Slacker Title: A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

May/June 2010

This month’s Slacker title is just the kind of Chick Lit to tuck into your beach bag before you head out the door!   Claire Danner Crispin, mother of four young children and nationally renowned glassblower, bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair the Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala. Claire is asked to chair the benefit, in part, because she is the former high school sweetheart of rock star Max West. Max agrees to play the gala and it looks like smooth sailing for Claire-until she promises a “museum-quality” piece of glass for the auction, offers her best friend the catering job, goes nose-to-nose with her Manhattan socialite co-chair, and begins a “good-hearted” affair with the charity’s Executive Director, Lockhart Dixon. Hearts break and emotions are pushed to the limit in this riveting story of one woman’s attempt to deal with loves past and present, family, business, and high-powered social pressures.