Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Favourite Reads of 2007 - The Librarian's Picks Part 1

Today we have a real treat. Nobody spends more time recommending books than librarians, and so here are two extremely avid readers and their picks for the top books of 2007

Ann Archer's Top 10 list - Ottawa Public Library

Because I love literary biographies and memoirs:

Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe

Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes's Doomed Love by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

Wild Mary: A Life of Mary Wesley by Patrick Marnham

Leonard Woolf by Victoria Glendinning

American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, et al, by Susan Cheever

Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass

Some fiction that gave me pleasure in 2007:

Does Your Mother Know by Maureen Jennings
The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards
Septembers in Shiraz
by Dalia Sofer
The Architects are Here by Michael Winter
The Welsh Girl
by Peter Ho Davies

And the must read book of the year:

28: Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen

Ann Archer is the coordinator of adult collections at Ottawa Public Library, dream job. Domestic bliss with new husband, trying to carve more time out for reading and knitting. Too bad one can't knit and read and sleep at the same time.....

Shonna Froebel's Top 10 List - Barrie Public Library

Many of the books I’ve chosen for this are ones that I had difficulty putting down when I was reading them. For fiction books, I was often struck by the characters, but the plot is important as well. It is a rare book that I like that doesn’t have a good plot to it. I’ve avoided some of the big hits (like A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini) as I feel readers are already aware of them. I’ve also limited myself to books aimed at adults although I’ve read some excellent children’s and teen books this year as well.
The nonfiction I’ve included here has all taught me interesting things (good for conversations) and often made me look at things in a new way. For more on the books I’ve read see my blog

In no particular order:
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani
Cloud of Bone
by Bernice Morgan
Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truth in Small Things by Richard Wiseman (NonFiction)
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Being Caribou
by Karsten Heuer (NonFiction)
A Good Death by Gil Courtmanche
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda (NonFiction)
Q & A by Vikas Swarup
This Book Will Save Your Life
by A.M. Homes


Shonna Froebel is the Manager of Adult Information Services at Barrie Public Library. Previous to that she worked in corporate libraries. She is on the CLA Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom and the OLA Readers’ Advisory Committee and OLA Evergreen Committee. She reads widely and voraciously thanks to the infinite patience of her husband, and the relaxing companionship of her two cats.

1 comment:

Maylin said...

Can I just say, YEA! WILD MARY!!!!