Another reason to love your library!

 

The Book with No Pictures by B. J. Novak

My first thought (before reading this book) was "A children's book with no pictures? Boring." I was wrong.

My second thought (after reading this book), after my giggles subsided, was "Why didn't I think of this!? It's silly, it's funny, it's playful... it's simply great fun for kids.

My third thought was "I can't wait to have grandkids, someday, to read this to"!

 

Books, the ultimate palate cleanser to remove the icky residue of life.

The ideal home for a book worm.

 

Of course, the outside has a pool with enormous floaties to read on 

as well as lounge chairs surrounded by fragrant flowers in the shade for reading.

A visit to book heaven - The Book Loft, Columbus Ohio

My family and I went to visit The Book Loft in German Village, Columbus, Ohio yesterday. I hadn't been there in many years and it was just as magnificent as I remembered.  32 "rooms" of books! Some as small as cupboards or closets, but 32 of them in a maze of wall to wall full book shelves in which I'd happily be lost in for hours! 

I highly recommend visiting if you are ever in Columbus!

Tour the shop and see more pictures on their website here: www.bookloft.com/tour-store

The Sun Down Motel By Simone St. James

This spooky novel is part murder mystery, part ghost story, with a serial killer and a family saga bouncing between two different eras... all in one mostly empty and forgotten motel in a tiny creepy town in upstate New York.  

Fell, New York, 1982. Viv is on her way to New York City, when she discovers that she has run out of money along the way. She stops at an old mostly empty motel to see if she can talk the clerk into letting her stay for one night. Not only does he let her stay, he offers her the job of night clerk to earn money before she moves one. Not in any hurry and intrigued by the motel, she accepts. During her weeks as the night shift clerk, she encounters mysteries and murders and ghosts (a woman, a boy and a man who smokes). Rather than being scared off, she becomes determined to stop the killer and unravel the mystery. One night, she disappears.

Fell, New York, 2017. Carley has always been curious about her aunt Viv who disappeared, suddenly, before she was born and whom her mother refused to speak of until the day she died. She visits Fell and the Sun Down motel in hopes of finding clues to the mystery of the disappearance, and herself becomes intrigued with the motel that hasn't changed since 1982. Same shower curtains, same candy machine, same décor. It doesn't take long before she is obsessed with the same ghosts and murders and she too decides to find the killer.

Through chilling twists and turns, things aren't always as they appear and murderers get murdered, ghosts get revenge, and knowledge is shed on mysteries that are decades old.

Recommend for those looking for a fun and creepy read.

Books are magic.

 

 

Marsupial Sue, a vibrant, funny and sweet story by John Lithgow.

Written by John Lithgow, not just a brilliant actor, but quite a talented storyteller as well!

This is the story of Marsupial Sue, a sweet Kangaroo, who doesn't enjoy all the hopping.

Claiming that all of the bouncing that kangaroos do rattles her brain, she wanders away from her family. During her adventures she encounters a group of koalas playing in a tree, a platypus asleep on a beach, and a big family of wallabies and gets to see how they each live. 

Through the ups and downs of her escapades, she discovers that a kangaroo life is exactly what she wants and loves.

With amazingly colorful and beautiful art (they are more than just pictures) and rhyming throughout in a playfully fun way, there is even a CD included with music and the book includes lyrics to make it into a sing along song and. 

I highly recommend this for all little ones.

Yes. Fact. Nothing is truer than this.

 

This makes me happy. Libraries are so important.

 

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce

A delightful novel. An original story using the "odd couple" storyline.

1950's London. Two very different women end up on the same journey.

Margery, a spinster school teacher set in her minimalistic ways in an ordinary life.

Enid, a fun loving, gregarious women who wears tight hot pink clothes with pom-poms on her shoes.

One day Margery snaps. After her students act badly for the last time, she steals a pair of boots from a colleague and runs out of the school, never to return. She decides to follow her childhood dream of finding the illusive golden beetle of New Caledonia, if it even exists. She had grown up studying beetles with her father and after ruining her reputation at the school, she decides to hire an assistant and prove the fictional beetle really exists.

Enter Enid who has her own secrets and ends up as Margery's assistant by accident. Two women with nothing in common stuck in a cabin of a cross-ocean sea voyage to end up in a sort of tree house bungalow alone in the middle of a jungle at the bottom of a mountain and being pursued by a sinister man who is obsessed with Margery.

Much hilarity and adventure ensues. Watch a spirited friendship blossom. I recommend.