You've Just Got to Try This

Categories: Cookbooks , Award Winners , Movies & Books , Rediscoveries , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Staff Picks , Nonfiction , Fiction

One of my favorite parts of my job is talking to people about what they’re reading.  Watching people light up when they tell me about something really, really good, and listening to their voices become urgent when they tell me “you’ve just got to try this”—I  find that absolutely irresistible. 

And of course, if it’s something I’ve read, we get to do that “isn’t he an amazing writer” and “wasn’t it wonderful when” and even “ooh, if you liked that, you have to read.”

I love writing for this blog, because of course I get to do the “you’ve just got to.”  (You can probably tell from some of my much-too-long entries how enthused I can get.)

But it’s not one-way.  It just occurred to me that everything I have out on my card right now and everything I currently have on hold was recommended to me personally by a library user or another librarian. 

I’ve just started listening to Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, read by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones.  A ninety-year-old man in a nursing home tells about his youth in a circus during the Depression.  I’m not very far along yet, but already we have hints of romance and drama to come, nicely evoked period atmosphere, and an appealing main character--so far so good.  (Thanks, Holly!)

In turn, I recommended to Holly The Blue Moon Circus, by Michael Raleigh, another wonderful novel about a dusty, ragtag circus in the 1920s; Carnivale, the grand and mystical HBO series about good and evil, set in a Depression-era traveling carnival (which Kathy recommended to me—thanks, Kathy!); and The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, a nonfiction book about the Dust Bowl that just won the National Book Award (thanks, Pat!). 

I just finished a fantasy series by Naomi Novik, recommended by someone who knows my fascination with Napoleon and the splendid sea stories by Patrick O’Brian.  Novik adds dragons to the mix—the hero of His Majesty’s Dragon and its sequels is a British naval officer reluctantly drafted into the Aerial Corps when his ship captures a precious dragon egg being sent from the Chinese emperor to Napoleon.  Very cleverly imagined, written with a good ear for period speech and sentiment, and lots of fun.  (Thanks, Barry!)

It’s not just books.  Tara positively made me take home M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, which I had avoided, thinking it was a horror movie.  But it turned out to be an enchantingly beautiful love story and fable about the price paid for paradise.  Tara also recommended the DVDs of The Closer, the Kyra Sedgwick TV series about a police chief who sounds like a Georgia peach but is as sharp as nails in the interrogation room.  (Thanks, Tara!)

And I’m still waiting for my hold on the first season of The Wire, which Janet recommended to me since I like the crime novels of George P. Pelecanos and the TV police series The Shield.  (Thanks, Janet!  I’ll let you know what I think.)

There’s more (there’s always more!) but I’ll stop.  What books and movies are making you say “you’ve just got to try this?”