I must confess I am an avid serial reader. Once I find a good book that is part of a series, I continue reading one after another until I have finished the series or I wait, with much anticipation, until the next book is published. This is not something new as I began this addiction as a child when I fell in love with the “Little House on the Prairie” books. I am more in to the mystery/thriller genre right now and these are a few of my favorite authors and their series:

Author James Cain best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce has a new novel published 35 years after his death. He began it in 1975 and died in 1977. James Cain is one of the “big three” of crime classics—with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His work Mildred Pierce is a recent HBO award winning series. Before his death at the age of 87, he put elements of his life into one last novel-angina and nitroglycerine pills. He borrowed from his best known work of a young attractive woman getting out of a bad marriage, an older man, a handsome young man, economic challenges and implication in her husbands’ death. The Cocktail Waitress story is told in the main character’s own words and viewpoint. Cain worked on his novel up to his death and it was found in the files of a deceased Hollywood agent. There was a whole manuscript, several partial ones, fragments, lines on notebook paper and another draft labeled “original”. Its completion took nine more years. The reviewer compares the main character, Joan Medford, to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce. In the editor’s afterword, the story of the publication of the “lost” manuscript describes the collection of its pieces like a mystery solved.

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook examines why she thinks women’s progress in achieving leadership roles  in the workplace has stalled and offers solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential.  Even prior to its release Lean In has been inspiring a great deal of discussion. From what I have gathered on various blogs and articles some are either greatly inspired by Ms. Sandberg's  message, while others find her views somewhat elitist. She was recently  featured on the cover of Time with the headline "Don't Hate Her Because She's Successful" and just this past Sunday, was interviewed on 60 Minutes where she urged women to lean in, not back at work and stated "that there's an awful lot we [women] can control and we can do for ourselves to sit at more tables, raise more hands."   The book should make for an interesting read.  Check out some of the links below for more information about Lean In and Ms. Sandberg.

The 2013-2014 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominees can be checked out from Richland Library.  Get your hands on a copy, today!

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