Best Books of the Year

What were the most notable books of 2010? Here are some chosen by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon.com:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, Vol. I, by Mark Twain. The great American humorist is his own best character in this first volume of his unexpurgated autobiography that doubles as a razor-sharp portrait of the human comedy.

THE BIG SHORT, by Michael Lewis. Lewis has written the briskest and brightest analysis of the crash of 2008. Other books might provide a more exhaustive account of what went wrong, but Lewis's character-driven narrative reveals the how and why with peerless clarity and panache. When will they ever learn?

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee’s powerful and ambitious history of cancer and its treatment is an epic story he seems compelled to tell, like a young priest writing a biography of Satan.

FREEDOM, by Jonathan Franzen. Like Franzen’s previous novel, “The Corrections,” this is a masterly portrait of a nuclear family in turmoil, with an intricately ordered narrative and a majestic sweep that seems to gather up every fresh datum of our shared millennial life.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson. In the third installment of the pulse-racing trilogy featuring Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, the pair are threatened by an adversary from deep within the very government that should be protecting them.

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. An uplifting debut novel set during the cascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi, where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine: vital for developing the polio vaccine, uncovering secrets of cancer and viruses, and leading to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping.

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS, by Tom Rachman. This intricate novel is built around the personal stories of staff members at an improbable English-language newspaper in Rome, and of the family who founded it in the 1950s.

MATTERHORN: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes. In this tale, 30 years in the creation, bloody folly envelops a Marine company’s construction, abandonment and retaking of a remote hilltop outpost.

MR. PEANUT, by Adam Ross. In this daring first novel, a computer game designer suspected of murdering his obese wife is investigated by two marriage-savvy detectives, one of whom is Dr. Sam Sheppard.

A RELIABLE WIFE, by Robert Goolrick. Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, a successful businessman stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife."

ROOM, by Emma Donoghue. Donoghue’s remarkable novel is narrated by a 5-year-old boy, whose entire world is the 11-by-11-foot room in which his mother is being held against her will.

SHADOW TAG, by Louise Erdrich. Erdrich’s portrait of a marriage on its way to dissolution appears to be seeded with deliberate allusions to her own relationship with the writer Michael Dorris.

Holiday Closures

Don't forget, all four branches of the Chandler Public Library will be closed on:

Friday, December 24 (City observation of Christmas )
Saturday, December 25 (Christmas)
Friday, December 31 (City observation of New Years)
Saturday, January 1 (New Years)

Regular hours will be in effect all other days this holiday season.

Need information from the library while we're closed? Don't worry - we still offer:

Account access - look up your due dates, check if you have any fines or holds, and renew your materials online. Enter your library card number as your user ID and your 4-digit PIN. (Please note, you cannot renew items if others have placed holds on them or if they are already overdue.)

Information databases - search articles from newspapers, magazines, and reference sources, on all sorts of topics such as health, auto repair, and Consumer Reports ratings. All you need is your library card and PIN numbers, and you can log in from home!

Downloadable books - want to try out that new MP3 player or ebook reader you got for the holidays? Log in to the Greater Phoenix Digital Library and download ebooks or e-audio books. It's free and there are no late fees! (Please note, not all books are available in all formats, and some devices, including the Amazon Kindle, are not compatible.)

Still have a question? You can send it to us through our Ask A Question page, but remember we won't be able to answer it until the next working day after the closure.

Enjoy your holidays!

DVD Review: Mother Ghost

Wouldn't it be nice to work out issues with your parents this holiday season, even those who have passed on? You wouldn't have all those bad feelings and you could really get into absolute joy. Don't shake your head, it's really possible. All you have to do is watch the movie Mother Ghost.

Keith's life is falling apart because he has not accepted the death of his mother and has major issues with both her and his living father. His wife has threatened divorce and things that were buried with his mother keep reappearing. In absolute desperation he phones in to a faltering radio psychiatrist, Dr. Norris, who has been told he will lose his job if his ratings don't vastly improve. With Dr. Norris giving Keith a caring heart by phone, he begins a type of therapy that just might work for anyone. Besides bringing tears to your eyes, the movie will make you ask yourself if you have any unfinished business with your own parents. Mother Ghost has a unique storyline and excellent acting by Mark Thompson and Kevin Pollak. It is a psychological comedy that will grip your heart and maybe improve your holiday season. -Henry (Downtown)

DVD Review: Everybody's Fine

Marketed in theaters as a holiday comedy, Everybody’s Fine is a DVD release with Robert DeNiro and Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, and Kate Beckinsale as his adult children. The story plays out as a sad drama centered on a recent widower, DeNiro, who now must try and reconnect to his far-flung grown children and learn about them as adults. The film is a tear jerker, and the audience feels sorry for the father and the kids whom he never knew while they were growing up. Everybody’s Fine is a typical drama if you know what to expect: great performances from DeNiro and especially from Rockwell. Everybody’s Fine is rated PG-13 for a brief violent scene, sexuality, drug references, and language. - Kathy (Downtown)