New Booktalk Booklist - A Tub of Tomes 2010

On March 19, 2010 at the Bethany Branch library, Lisa V. presented a booktalk on the theme of A Tub of Tomes 2010 (featuring a mixture of both fiction and non-fiction titles) to the regular Books Talk group that meets weekly at that neighborhood library.

A Tub of Tomes for 2010
Bethany Branch Books Talk, March 19, 2010
Lisa V.

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had
by Susan Wise Bauer [028.8 qBau]

Bauer offers advice on strategies and skills of reading for adults wishing to give themselves a classical liberal arts education. Introductory chapters discuss the act of reading itself, describing ways to transform oneself into a skilled and dedicated reader. The latter half of the text is dedicated to describes strategies to gain the most of novels, autobiographies, histories, drama, and poetry through critical reading.

The Bricklayer
by Noah Boyd

The FBI recruits Steve Vail, an agent it has just fired, to solve a brilliant and deadly extortion plot where a group called Rubaco Pentad is killing human targets one by one unless the bureau gives them cash, with the dollar amount and body count escalating each time the agency doesn't pay up.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
by Alan Bradley

Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, must exonerate her father of murder. Armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together and examine new suspects, she begins a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
by Mark Harris [791.43 Har]

Harris explores the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde-and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever.

The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills

A remarkable novel set in the Tuscan hills: the story of two murders, four hundred years apart-and the ties that bind them together. Adam Banting, a somewhat aimless young scholar at Cambridge University, is called to his professor's office one afternoon and assigned a special summer project: to write a scholarly monograph about a famous garden built in the 1500s. Delving into his subject, Adam begins to suspect that his summer project might be a setup. Is he really just the naive student, stumbling upon clues, or is the villa's ownder using him to discover for herself the true meaning of the villa's murderous past?

The Beautiful Cigar Girl -- Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
by Daniel Stashower [364.152 Sta]

This book tells the sensational real-life story of the 1841 murder of Mary Rogers, New York City's "beautiful cigar girl"--along with the real-life story of how Edgar Allen Poe transformed the crime into the short story that would invent modern detective fiction and that he hoped would turn his failing career around.

Three Bags Full
by Leonie Swann

A witty philosophical murder mystery with a charming twist: the crack detectives are sheep determined to discover who killed their beloved shepherd. On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George's killer.