October Book Spotlight

 Written by Katie Edwards

Beautiful Ruins 
by Jess Walter

I read this over the summer and really enjoyed it.  It is one of those books that covers 50 years and two countries in the telling of the story, but it’s well-paced and the characters are sympathetic.  Romantic, sad, funny...this book has it all!

Amazon’s description:
 The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
 

Kid book:
Bear Snores On 

by Karma Wilson

This is one of my favorite books to read to my son...I love the gentle rhymes of the story, and the illustrations are really great.  The book tells the story of a hibernating bear, whose lair is invaded on a cold night by a host of small animals, all of whom bring something to the party.  But what will happen when a stray pepper flake causes the bear to sneeze and wake up?  Read on and find out!


About the Author
Katie Edwards lives in Needham with her wife and two children, ages 13 and 3.   She has a Master’s Degree in Library Science, but has been a stay at home mom for many years, so she is happy to have an outlet to share good books with others.  She loves to read [obviously], travel, try new restaurants, and gab with her friends.  Luckily she is in a book group where she can simultaneously eat and talk to friends about books.