Vancouver Mall Library

Welcome back to Question of the Week! This week's question is...

What is one book you love that nobody else seems to? What do you like most about it?

Amber: "A book that I liked that not many other people do is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is a bit of a running joke in my branch at the library about how much a few of my coworkers hate this book. My focus in college was American Literature post Civil War up through the 60s, so I read a lot of great American novels. Some hold up better than others.

Honestly, The Great Gatsby always worked for me. I like a stylistic book. The narrator Nick, is a great vehicle for the audience to get a glimpse into a wealthy world of longing and debauchery. We as the audience feel the class divide. Like Nick, reading the books feels like watching people through a gleaming glass window. Most of the characters are beautiful, but awful people. I enjoy seeing the cracks in the facade as much as Nick is horrified by it. The book is a glimpse into a world and time that I would never experience, and I think it does an excellent job of it. The book is a light and easy read, and one that I've always felt was one of the more enjoyable of the quintessential required high school novels. The themes are easy to grasp, the writing is fun and pretty, and the plot of the novel moves forward at a pace that keeps the reader engaged.

I think many people dislike the book because of the memory of having been forced to read it in school. For those who had that experience, I say give it another go. If you still hate it, commiserate with my co-workers, and leave me to my novel, old sport."

Now it's your turn! We look forward to hearing from you!

There are still spaces available at today's Red Cross Blood Drive at Cascade Park Community Library! If you have some time and want to make a big difference in another life, sign up at
https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/find-drive

Thank you to everyone who joined us today for our program and special thanks to Paradise of Samoa Polynesian Dance Troupe for sharing your dances with us! We had a lot of fun and we hope you all did, too!

For more information on upcoming events, check out our events calendar at https://fvrlibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/events

Welcome back to !

Amber's pick: This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

"I have been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, so I decided to go back and read a bunch of books by Sarah Dessen. These books were some of my favorite books when I was in middle school and they really held up! 'This Lullaby' was always dear to my heart, and I was thrilled when the novel still held the depth and charm that I remembered from my youth.

The story is about a girl named Remy who is quite jaded when it comes to love and romance. Her romance book author mother is on her 5th husband, her rebel brother is being tamed by his stick-in-the-mud girlfriend, and one of her close friends has just been dumped. Her philosophy on love and relationship is that all are temporary, so she guards herself from hurt by keeping everyone at a distance. That is until she meets Dexter, who breaks all of her rules. He's a musician, he's messy, and he makes her care for him in ways that she doesn't know how to deal with. Remy takes comfort in secret by listening to a song by the father she never knew about her own birth, a song she professes to hate by the first person who showed her that people are temporary. Her relationship with Dexter and her friends change over the summer before college, making Remy question her rules and the way she has guarded her heart.

This is certainly one of the less serious of Sarah Dessen's books, and reading it feels light and easy. It's a book about learning what love means, what it does to a person, and not giving up on people. This would be a great read for a young adult or someone who wants a light romantic read with a great uplifting message."