Contact Information
Need help finding a book?
Contact the Reference Department by phone or email, or stop by the desk while the library is open!
847-623-2041 x238
wkgnref@waukeganpl.info
Books About Books
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Call Number: FICTION BIVALDBroken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy’s funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist. Marooned in a farm town that’s almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend’s memory. All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town.
Fahrenheit 451 by Call Number: GROUPS BRADBURYGuy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden. Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think... and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do.
People of the Book by Call Number: FICTION BROOKSIn 1996, Hanna Heath, a young Australian book conservator is called to analyze the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a priceless six-hundred-year-old Jewish prayer book that has been salvaged from a destroyed Bosnian library. When Hanna discovers a series of artifacts in the centuries’ old, she unwittingly exposes an international cover up.
The Book of Lost Things by Call Number: FANTASY CONNOLLYTaking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded.” — Provided by publisher.
The Eyre Affair by Call Number: FANTASY FFORDEIn a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world’s Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.
The Little Paris Bookshop by Call Number: FICTION GEORGEMonsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story.
The Forgers by Call Number: MYSTERY MORROWThe murderer of Adam Diehl, a reclusive rare-book collector, begins to stalk Adam's sister's lover Will -- a convicted literary forger -- under the guise of letters from long-dead authors, and soon Will realizes that this killer threatens everything he holds dear.
The Thirteenth Tale by Call Number: FICTION SETTERFIWhen her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Call Number: FICTION SHAFFERAs London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey--a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
The Book of Speculation by Call Number: FICTION SWYLERAs Simon, a lonely research librarian, searches frantically for the key to a curse that might be killing the women in his family, he learns strange and fascinating secrets about their past. A tale full of magic and family mystery,The Book of Speculation will keep you up all night reading.
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Call Number: 028.8 SANKOVITAfter the death of her sister, Nina Sankovitch found herself caught up in grief, dashing from one activity to the next to keep her mind occupied. But on her forty-sixth birthday she decided to stop running and start reading.
Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living With Books by Call Number: 028.9 DIRDAAward-winning literary critic Michael Dirda shares personal essays on diverse topics ranging from literary pets and cursive writing to book inscriptions and the pleasures of science fiction conventions.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Makings of the Oxford English Dictionary by Call Number: LARGE PRINT 423.092 WINCHESTThe Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary — and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W.C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
The End of Your Life Book Club by Call Number: 616.994 SCHWALBEThe inspiring story of a son and his dying mother, who form a "book club" that brings them together as her life comes to a close.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Call Number: 820.9 NAFISIFor two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments.
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores by Call Number: 828.9202 CAMPBELLShares humorous and absurd exchanges the author has overheard in her line of work as a bookseller, from whether or not Beatrix Potter ever wrote about dinosaurs to an inquiry about the edible nature of a book.
Ink and Bone by Call Number: YA FICTION CAINERuthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. When Jess Brightwell inadvertently commits heresy by creating a device that could change the world, Jess discovers that those who control the Great Library believe that knowledge is more valuable than any human life--and soon both heretics and books will burn.
Matilda by Call Number: FICTION DAHLMatilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her parents think she’s just a nuisance. She expects school to be different but there she has to face Miss Trunchbull, a menacing, kid-hating headmistress. When Matilda is attacked by the Trunchbull she suddenly discovers she has a remarkable power with which to fight back. It’ll take a superhuman genius to give Miss Trunchbull what she deserves and Matilda may be just the one to do it!
Inkheart by Call Number: J FUNKETwelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.
The Book Thief by Call Number: TEEN ZUSAKTrying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
