Each month, Typhani Russo from the Altoona Area Public Library shares her top 10 book picks that center around a specific theme. This month’s theme is “Magnificent Memoirs.”
Book information and summaries cited from Goodreads.com.
All books listed are available at the Altoona Area Public Library.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS:
Book: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild, by Lawrence Anthony
Synopsis:
When Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a rogue herd of elephants in his reserve in South Africa, it was the last chance for these elephants. If Anthony didn’t take them, they would be shot. But he had no experience with elephants at all. What was he to do? Take them on, of course! What follows is an exciting and heartwarming series of adventures, in which Anthony learns about elephants and becomes part of their family. Full of both triumph and tragedy, The Elephant Whisperer, is a fascinating and unforgettable account of living with the majestic elephant.
ADULT BOOKS:
Book: Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik
Synopsis:
Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades, but this was, above all, a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens and who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century.
Book: Stronger, by Jeff Bauman
Synopsis:
When Jeff Bauman woke up on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in the Boston Medical Center, groggy from a series of lifesaving surgeries and missing his legs, the first thing he did was try to speak. When he realized he couldn’t, he asked for a pad and paper and wrote down seven words: Saw the guy; looked right at me, setting off one of the biggest manhunts in the country’s history. Just thirty hours before, Jeff had been at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon cheering on his girlfriend, Erin, when the first bomb went off at his feet. As he was rushed to the hospital, he realized he was severely injured, but he didn’t know that a photograph of him in a wheelchair was circulating throughout the world, making him the human face of the Boston Marathon bombing victims. In Stronger, Jeff describes the chaos and terror of the bombing itself and the ongoing FBI investigation in which he was a key witness. He takes us inside his grueling rehabilitation and discusses his attempt to reconcile the world’s admiration with his own guilt and frustration. Brave, compassionate, and emotionally compelling, Jeff Bauman’s story is not just his, but ours as well.
Book: I & Claudius: Travels With My Cat, by Clare de Vries
Synopsis:
Clare de Vries fulfills her dream of traveling the States when she decides to quit London with her ailing, beloved cat, Claudius, and spend his final months on the road. It was a bumpy, unpredictable ride from the dubious glamours of Manhattan down to the Appalachians, from the Smoky Mountains to Nashville. Graceland led to New Orleans where Voodoo did more for Claudius’s kidneys than the vet could. At last, the Pacific wind in his whiskers, Claude wrapped up his five month sojourn with Clare on a boat outside San Francisco. The characters along the way were a startling crew, including a brown bear, astronaut, and psychic. As crazy as the idea may have seemed from the beginning, at the story’s center lay something deep and real about our dreams of going away to find out who we really are.
Book: Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between,
by Lauren Graham
Synopsis:
In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood, along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.
Book: You Will Not Have My Hate, by Antoine Leiris
Synopsis:
On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Helene Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. Three days later, Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife’s killers, which he posted on Facebook. In his determination to honor the memory of his wife, he became an international hero to everyone searching desperately for a way to deal with the horror of the Paris attacks and the grim shadow cast today by the threat of terrorism. You Will Not Have My Hate is a remarkable and heartbreaking memoir of how he and his baby son, Melvil, endured in the days and weeks after Helene’s murder. With absolute emotional courage and openness, he somehow finds a way to answer that impossible question: how can I go on?
Book: Ciao, America!: An Italian Discovers the U.S., by Beppe Severgnini
Synopsis:
When Beppe Severgnini and his wife rented a creaky house in Georgetown they were determined to see if they could adapt to four seasons in a country obsessed with ice cubes, air-conditioning, and recliner chairs. From their first encounters with cryptic rental listings to their back-to-Europe yard sale twelve months later, Beppe explores this foreign land, holding up a mirror to America’s signature manners and mores. Succumbing to his surroundings day by day, he and his wife find themselves developing a taste for Klondike bars and Samuel Adams beer. Severgnini has come to grips with life in the United States and has written a charming, laugh-out-loud tribute.
Book: Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World, by Claire Fontaine and Mia Fontaine
Synopsis:
Determined to transform themselves and their relationship, the pair sets off on a five month global adventure. What awaits them is an extraordinary, often hilarious journey through twenty cities and twelve countries. One that includes mishaps, mayhem, and unexpected joys, from a passport-eating elephant to a calamitous camel ride around the Pyramids. Wiser for what they’ve learned from women in other cultures, they return with a deepened sense of who they are while embracing the mature friendship they’ve discovered and the profound love they share. Have Mother, Will Travel is a testament to the power and beauty of the mother-daughter relationship, one that illuminates possibilities for our own lives.
Book: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories, by Marina Keegan
Synopsis:
Marina Keegan was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. Even though she was just twenty two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem¬blage of Marina’s essays and stories that articulate the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.
READ IT BEFORE YOU SEE IT!
Book: Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter
Synopsis:
The quintessential cautionary tale, Peter Rabbit, warns naughty children about the grave consequences of misbehaving. When Mrs. Rabbit beseeches her four furry children not to go into Mr. McGregor’s garden, the impish Peter naturally takes this as an open invitation to create mischief. He quickly gets in over his head when he is spotted by farmer McGregor himself. Any child with a spark of sass will find Peter’s adventures remarkably familiar.
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