We hope you're enjoying our Breakfast Serial, A Long Walk to Water, weekends in the Centre Daily Times!
The next book we invite you to read is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. In the book, Virginia Woolf discusses why it is that men, and not women, have always had power, wealth, and fame. She suggests two keys to freedom: fixed income and one's own room.
The Breakfast Serial will start Sunday, May 9th in the Center Daily Times and it will run every Saturday and Sunday. In total, there will be 18 riviting chapters.
This year's Breakfast Serial is A Long Walk to Water by Newbery Award winning author Linda Sue Park. It is the true story of Salva Sut, on of the Lost Boys of Sudan. In the 1980's, Sudan was overtaken by a civil war. Southern Sudanese villages were attacked, mostly at night, and many of the individuals were killed. Large numbers of young boys from these villages managed to survive because they were away tending herds or because they escaped to the nearby forests. About 20,000 displaced orphan boys traveled hundreds of miles across the desert seeking the safety of refugee camps. Only about half of the boys survived the various horrifying conditions they faced on their journeys. 3,800 of the Lost Boys have been resettled to the United States after the U.S. State Department discovered the intolerable living conditions of the refugee camp in which they lived.
We hope you enjoy Salva Dut's inspiring story of survival and courage. If you would like to find out more about the Lost Boys and the war in Sudan, there are multiple resources available at Schlow Library and the Centre County Libraries.
Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.
Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.
Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master.
