Patch Picks: Great Reads

We've started a new weekly feature called Patch Picks, highlighting editor and reader picks of great local businesses, destinations, services, organizations, ways to spend a day off, and more. 

You’ll find useful lists to help you, your family, friends, and significant others find the best places for everything from Sunday brunch to New Year’s Eve celebrations, pumpkin patches, date night destinations, florists, girlfriend nights out, kids party places, parks and more. 

For this week's Patch Picks we asked the experts – your local librarian – to chime in on five great reads. Grab a blanket and some tea, put your feet up and dig in. From Beachwood Librarian Matthew J. Weitendorf:

1. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson

Hugo winner Robert Charles Wilson writes of a reborn America run by President Deklan Comstock under the aegis of the Dominion Church.  The story is narrated by Adam Hazzard, a friend of the president’s nephew, Julian Comstock.  Fearing for his life, Julian joins the army under an assumed name and Adam gains fame with his exaggerated tales of his friend's derring-do, bringing unwanted attention upon them both.

2. Coming of Fabrizze by Raymond DeCapite

Originally published in 1960, this work by a Cleveland author and grandson of Italian immigrants has recently been republished.  It is the tale of the life of a young Italian who comes to Cleveland during the 1920s.  Finding their hard work and thrift rewarded, they discover the greatest opportunity of all – investing in the stock market.  The reader will find the story of the larger-than-life hero enhanced by the almost lyrical dialogue of the characters and the author’s obvious love for his subject.

3. A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 – The Space Age Begins Michael D’Antonio

In this book Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael D’Antonio has written a history that captures the exuberance of the United States at the dawn of the Space Age. D’Antonio takes the reader from the early days of rocketry, to Sputnik, to the space race of the Eisenhower years, and paints a portrait of Cape Canaveral as a lively boom town through the stories of the people who lived and worked there.  As the title implies, the author does not overlook the animals, such as Laika the dog and Gordo the monkey, who contributed to the conquest of space.

4. Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times by Susan Quinn

Harry Hopkins, chief of the Works Progress Administration, appointed Halle Flanagan as head of the Federal Theatre Project, charging her with creating employment for performers and theater workers. For four years Flanagan supervised vaudeville, circus and puppet theater, as well as the most innovative and controversial plays in America – finally drawing the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

5. The Accidental, Ali Smith

This book centers on a dysfunctional family, that is, even more dysfunctional than most, and the changes brought to their lives when Amber shows up on their doorstep.  The story is told through the eyes of each family member, for whom Amber functions as the equivalent of a Rorschach inkblot.  Whether Amber’s role in the story is as an irritant, a con artist, a savior, or a force of nature is, at the end, left for the reader to decide.