Anne works in the adult services department and enjoys reading about new technology, playing with gadgets, Kansas road trip adventures, and photographing abandoned buildings. Ask her about poetry, she has a master's degree in it and in library science.
Contact Anne at apepper@tscpl.org
Fables is a marvelous read for anyone interested in the old storybook characters turned slightly on their heads and given a mature audience rating. I’ve recently started reading more graphic novels because I have the attention span of my one-year-old. The first book in the series focuses on the suspected murder of Rose Red [...]
Leo Babauta is the kind of author that flies under the radar for only so long. After reading The Power of Less for the third time, I realized that his advice is really sticking with me. This is a rare find of a book. Babauta is a proponent of simplifying one’s life, releasing ourselves [...]
I’ve recently become interested in the history of food – why have we eaten certain foods at certain times in our American and world history, and what does it all mean? Happily, our library carries a number of titles that answer these and other questions. In the time before Thanksgiving and other holidays it’s a [...]
If you are interested in reading A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book you might enjoy these readalikes: The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pear In the 400s, as the Roman Empire settles into dust, landowner-turned-bishop Manlius attempts to record the ideas of his teacher, the Neo-Platonist Sophia. In the 1300s, this treatise (“The Dream of [...]
If you are interested in reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall you might enjoy these readalikes: My Father’s Tears and Other Stories by John Updike John Updike’s first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, My Father’s Tears finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives [...]
If you are interested in reading Anita Shreve’s A Change in Altitude you might enjoy these readlikes: Home Safe: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg Helen Ames is a popular and prolific writer living in Oak Park, Illinois, much like Elizabeth Berg. But Helen has lost her ability to write. Her inner world is as stunned [...]
If you are interested in reading Rebecca Wells’s The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder you might enjoy these readlikes: Morning Sky by Judith McCoy-Miller Nothing will ever be the same after boisterous Aunt Lilly Verdue arrives in the new settlement of Nicodemus, Kansas, in the early summer of 1880. Her brother-in-law is not at [...]
Want a technology that lets you plan a killer vacation? This is it! Otalo.com makes renting a place wherever –in-the-world you’d like to travel a breeze. Search “Where do you want to go?” and you’re off. Or, if you’re not sure on the Where yet, try a suggested subject search from: Beach Bliss, Skiing Awesomeness, [...]
What happens when a father allows his son to drop out of school as long as he watches three movies a week? This memoir draws a reader in with this question and lets them find their own answers.Gilmour’s writing is lovely and thick with emotion at times for a son who has faced the divorce [...]
I have great expectations of a New York Times writer tackling a memoir. While I can relate to the almost comically painful interactions that take place between mother and daughter in this slim volume, I find many of them hard to believe. In many instances, the book takes on an almost perceptible whiny quality. The [...]
From the author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia comes this enlightening book about living with bipolar disorder. You must read Madness: A Bipolar Life. I’ve got a reason to be interested in this topic. Depression and mental illness run in my family. I picked it up, honestly, to read about someone else’s madness for [...]
