The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
By Eva Jurczyk (2022) December 2022 “Who doesn’t love a mystery involving rare books and bad librarians?” says Karen Joy Fowler’s blurb for this book’s jacket. While most of us who read this blog are familiar with the lending library, there’s another type of library with a very different purpose and style of operation and management. Security is...
Summer Hours At The Robbers Library
by Sue Halpern (2018) October 2022 As you stand amid the rubble that was once your perfect life, what you always wanted and worked hard for, you wonder: what just happened here? Do I cry? Scream? Drown my sorrows in wine or Haagen-Dazs, or both? Leave the country? None of the above. YOU GO TO THE LIBRARY! (Before I tell you the rest of the story,...
Books: A Memoir
by Larry McMurtry (2008) September 2022 Someone has to say it: Larry McMurtry was an over-achiever! ONE successful career is enough for most people, but not for McMurtry, who died in 2021. He’s most widely known for his popular books and other written materials about the American West and Texas. In all, he wrote over 30 novels and collections of...
The Book Collectors and Syria’s Secret Library
The Book Collectors by Delphine Minoui (2017) and Syria's Secret Library by Mike Thomson (2019) August 2022 One day during a pause in bombing in the Syrian civil war, a young Syrian man on the rebel side took a walk through the devastated town of Daraya, his home. He found a book in the rubble...and that’s where it all started. War and books have...
The Paris Bookseller
by Kerri Maher (2022) July 2022 Sylvia Beach, an American, fell madly in love with Paris when vacationing there with her family in her mid-teens. She spent nearly 15 years devising various plans for moving to Paris, finally settling on the idea of opening a French bookstore in New York. She was a voracious reader even as a young child, but knew...
The Sacred Bridge
by Anne Hillerman (2022) June 2022 Tony Hillerman was a beloved author of numerous popular books about the American Southwest, featuring the Navajos in particular. His fans, of whom I am one (full disclosure here), were deeply saddened to lose his rare voice about this place and group of people. Classified as mysteries, they were good stories...
Books By the Beach News
Books By The Beach is on hiatus for the month of May. We plan to have Donna's literary insights return in June. We hope you enjoy reading some of her past reviews.
The Christie Affair: A Novel by Nina de Gramont (2022)
April 2022 Agatha Christie is one of the most famous and popular authors of the last hundred years. While she’s best known for her detective novels, she also wrote short stories and plays for the stage. Readers’ thirst for a good “who-done-it" has not diminished in the current times. Many people also know that she lived her OWN private mystery in...
TASTE by Stanley Tucci (2021)
March 2022 Stanley Tucci is an actor, director, producer, and writer whom you’ve probably seen in many movies. Most recently, he’s known as a lover and promoter of fresh Italian food in his CNN 6-episode show “Searching for Italy.” In it, he travelled to various parts of Italy from the far north to Sicily to learn about and eat regional dishes. I...
A THOUSAND DAYS IN VENICE by Marlena De Blasi (2002)
February 2022 In honor of Valentine’s Day, I want to share with readers perhaps my favorite romantic story. It’s true, it’s a story of the middle ages (not to be confused with The Middle Ages), and by every standard of reason, should never have happened...yet it did. Marlena and Fernando lived half a world apart, spoke different languages, but...
