New Books #1
We've recently received a HUGE shipment of new books, and I thought I'd use this space to highlight the ones that I am most interested in. Obviously, you should come check them out for yourself, but here are my top picks for the day.
1. We finally have the first volume of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, His Majesty's Dragon. (We've had the second and third book for quite a while, but who wants to check out the second book without reading the first?) This series is a blend of fantasy and historical fiction -- an alternative history novel that isn't, for once, science fiction. The books take place in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, and is a fairly realistic account of the life and war tactics of the time, except that the air force flies dragons -- sentient, intelligent dragons who bond with their human riders -- instead of airplanes into battle. The books follow Capt. Will Laurence and his dragon Temeraire as they enter the British Aerial Core together and subsequently become a decisive pairing for Britain's victory or defeat.
2. We finally have the last two Harry Potter novels, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you've already finished the series (like I have), you can read them again; if you're still waiting for those last two to show up in the library, well, here they are.
3. We have Khaled Hosseini's new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. I have not read this yet, so here is an excerpt from the book jacket that will tell you what it's about: "a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years--from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding--that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives . . . are inextricable from the history playing out around them."
Tomorrow, I will feature a few more new books. All of these books should be available to check out by Monday or Tuesday.