by Donna Rueff | Jan 7, 2019 | Books by the Beach
Donna Leon is the creator of the Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series beloved throughout the world, as well as by many in the Grover Beach Community Library Senior Book Break. Our affection for the characters has not dimmed through the more than 20 books...
by Donna Rueff | Dec 7, 2018 | Books by the Beach
2018 has been quite a slog, and I think we’d all enjoy a bit of lightness and humor to end the year. In Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, Mark Dunn shows us in a humorous way the joy that the manipulation of words and language can bring to those of us who treasure...
by Donna Rueff | Nov 7, 2018 | Books by the Beach
This month’s selection was chosen in honor of the centennial of the Armistice ending World War I effective on November 11, 1918. Despite the rather lurid title, Marthe McKenna’s memoir of her harrowing adventures as a real spy for the Allies during World War I is a...
by Donna Rueff | Oct 7, 2018 | Books by the Beach
Katrina, Harvey, Maria, Florence: everyone knows the names of these recent major U.S. hurricanes that caused immense physical and psychological damage. What few people know about, and which no one alive today remembers, is the hurricane of September 8, 1900 that...
by Donna Rueff | Sep 7, 2018 | Books by the Beach
Zora Neale Hurston (b. 1/7/1891; d.1/28/1960) was an accomplished ethnographer, folklorist, anthropologist, and novelist. She attended Howard University and received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1927. As an African-American woman from the South at that time, she...
by Donna Rueff | Aug 7, 2018 | Books by the Beach
A strange thing happened on my way to this month’s blog. I had planned to discuss something completely different (which I’ll do another time), but Paula Huntley’s 2003 book kept creeping into my mind. Reading the blurbs raised a question for me: can one small,...
