What Reader Services Is Reading

As you might expect, we in the Reader Services Department are avid readers with a wide variety of reading interests that often go beyond the latest bestsellers. To give you an idea of what we've got perched on our reading tables or nightstands, I asked my coworkers to tell me what they're reading right now. So here's a peek into the exciting off-hours lives of your librarians!


The Round House by Louise Erdrich  

When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.        

The Goldfinch by Donna Tart

The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld.

The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

As children, they formed a special bond, growing up in the small town of Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eighth different states, yet they managed to maintain an extraordinary friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, the death of a child, and the mysterious death of the eleventh member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the enduring, deep bonds of women as they experience life's challenges, and the power of friendship to overcome even the most daunting odds.

The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il.

Still Foolin' 'Em by Billy Crystal

Nearing age 65, Billy Crystals acknowledges his accomplishments -- hosting major award shows, appearances on TV series like Soap and Saturday Night Live, and roles in blockbusters like When Harry Met Sally, and more -- with all the wry and quirky charm for which he is famed. Fans will find that Crystal still sparkles as he shares private disappointments along with details of those public successes, and fellow baby boomers will relate to Crystal's humorously catalog of the indignities of aging.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden

A captivating book derived from a widely read and much beloved New Yorker piece about Wickenden's grandmother and her grandmother's best friend who left their affluent East Coast lives to "rough it" as teachers in the wilds of Colorado in 1916.