Do you need gift book suggestions?

See our 8th annual holiday book list, with suggestions from Newton Free Library staff.  Titles include fiction, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, biography/memoir, and a long list of suggestions for children.For other ideas, see last year’s gift book list, found on our bibliographies page.

And for still more ideas, see what Mary Cotton of Newtonville Books suggests in the Newton Tab.

Away, by Amy Bloom

Lillian Leyb comes to New York alone in the 1920’s, her family wiped out in a Russian pogrom.  As she builds a completely new life, word comes that her young daughter is alive and well and living in Siberia.  The novel then turns from immigrant saga to road trip, as Lillian crosses America, Canada, and the Alaskan wilderness to try to reach the one part of her old life she still has left.  The story is filled with a cast of vividly-drawn characters, and as Lillian moves on and leaves them behind, Bloom ties up their stories for us.  A beautiful and heartbreaking novel of transformation and reinvention in early 20th century America.

Rating: ***** One of the best books I’ve read
Reviewd by: stc

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Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, by David Weinberger

A meditation on the nature of organization in the modern world, and how things no longer have merely their place, but places.  In the digital world (what Weinberger calls the “third order” of organization), we are no longer dealing simply with physical things which have one place, but digital information, which can fit in many categories.  This gives us the ability to order and search in multiple ways, depending upon our needs–and in the process is transforming business, education, politics, science, and culture.  In a “miscellaneous world,” authority becomes more diffuse, with information assembled not in a fixed way or according to someone else’s priorities, but reflecting our own needs and interests–which might change the next time we search.  A hard book to describe, but interesting to read.

Rating:  *** A good read
Reviewed by:  stc

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The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O’Neil’s America, by Joe Posnanski

The Soul of Baseball, has a very simple premise: sportswriter Joe Posnanski travelled around the country with Buck O’Neil for a year and listened to his stories.  But when your travelling companion is the 94 year old O’Neil (who passed away the following year), former player, ambassador for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and the first African-American coach in Major League history, there are a lot of good–and important–stories to be told.  What results is an engaging combination of baseball history (with the emphasis on race and the Negro Leagues), biography, and inspirational self-help from a man who experienced a lot but held no bitterness.
 

My sons were lucky enough to meet Buck O’Neil at a kids’ clinic at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, during Induction Weekend in 2005.  Wearing a cap from his old team, the Kansas City Monarchs, and with the joy and enthusiasm of someone much younger, he encouraged the young players, told stories and jokes, and led everyone–including the parents–in a singalong.  This book captures his wonderful spirit perfectly.

Rating: ****Very, very good
Reviewed by: stc

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